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Just picked up 2 iob boxes worth of skaven and never have played with skaven before and made the list and was wondering if its any good for a game i'm playing sometime this week, im semi new to warhammer so i'm not too sure of whats in general good or bad. Not too sure about what to get for equipment with the characters. any help would be great thanks.

999pts

90-Warlord
basic

70-Chieftan
battle standard

108-Warlock Enginseer
level 2 wizard
warlock pistol

270-clanrats(40)
shields
full command
warpfire thrower

285- clanrats(40)
spears
shields
full command
poisoned wind mortar

176- Rat ogres(4)
2 packmasters

hello, update: just played that game, lost but did pretty decent against empire. he ended up firestorming my spear clanrats and took out half of them first turn, other than that it went pretty well. Question about how many clanrats i should have in a regiment: would a regiment of 20 be okay? also, warpfirethrower: whats an ideal tactic for it? And is the mortar any good? any advice would be appreciated, thanks!

20 clanrats wont cut it usually, at least 30. It helps if you drop the spears. A problem I see with your list is the lack of slaves which are usually great coupled with ranged weapons such as warpfire since they can tarpit very well. Maybe lower the clans to 30 and then include a slave unit. Poison wind is pretty good since its mobile. Warp Fire is a bit risky and short but can be devastating. Another weapons choice is the doomflayer (easily converted via ratling) could use that if you still want weapon teams.

Okay, edited the list, by the way thanks for the assistance

995 pts
Lords-
warlord- 188
additionhandweapon, sword of battle, sword of might, armour of destiny
heroes-
chieftan- 123
additionalhandweapon, battlestandard, storm banner

warlock engineer 123
level2 wizard, warplock pistol, warpstone tokens

core-
SKAVENSLAVES-100
50 slaves

clanrats-225
30 clanrats, shields, command, warpfire thrower

Special
ratogres 236
4 rat ogres, masterbredx4, packmaster x2

couple questions, am i able to give my warlord those weapons legally and will they work together since i purchased the additional hand weapon. Also am i able to upgrade each rat ogre to masterbred or just one? do i have to buy the battle standard and then the magic banner or can i just buy the magic banner by itself? and is it okay to feel bad about downgrading a good portion of my loyal clanrats to slaves?

You can only have 1 magic weapon and only use that magic weapon. Masterbreds are unit champions so only one. Only way to have magic banners is either having a BSB or if a unit can take one

ugh.. i need more skaven... thanks kenshin620. with slaverats and clanrats should i go for a horde formation or 5 wide or how should i play that?

You could always take a musician. I prefer 5 wide but sometimes if I need to I can easily reform into a horde and vice versa

Not only can you have only one magic weapon, but they can't be combing with another hand weapon for an extra attack. :(

And I agree with Kenshin620 about running slaves 5 wide. They're really just there to hold up enemy blocks until your other units deal with them. The more ranks you have, the longer you'll be steadfast and the longer you'll hold that position. I held up several units of orcs for 3 full game turns with a single unit of slaves that simply refused to break. (But somehow managed to kill off an orc shaman in the meantime!) Who needs unit champions? XD

Aighty, thanks for the input guys. i have a 1000 pt game tomorrow morning against orcs. that makes sense fielding them 5 wide for the leadership and then if i have the advantage reform for horde.

Lords & heroes - 310
warlord
sword of might

chieftan- bsb, additional hw
warlockengineer- scroll of dispel & warplock pistol

core- 506
53 skavenslaves-
30 clanrats-fulll command, shields, warpfirethrower
30 clanrats- full command, shields, warpfirethrower

special -176
ratogres(4) 2 packmasters


So my plan is to have the skavenslaves be a little ahead of the group as bait then have the two warpthrowers do what they do against the orcs in the tarpit. Then have the rat ogres swing around the flank on one side and some clanrats on the other side hold down the flanks of my skavenslaves from whatever cavalry or goblins or whatever comes their way. hopefully i'm able to legally pull this off. Anyways what regiments should my bsb warlord and warlock be in?

Just one suggestion, I think your general tactics are ok, i just want to make sure you know to have at least 3 rat ogres in the front rank, not 2x2 so that they can get rank bonuses, and I sould suggest, 3 wide with one behind and the packmasters beside him, so that they can use their whips and he gets all 3 supporing attacks so you should get full attacks that way.

Skavencakes wrote:Aighty, thanks for the input guys. i have a 1000 pt game tomorrow morning against orcs. that makes sense fielding them 5 wide for the leadership and then if i have the advantage reform for horde.

Lords & heroes - 310
warlord
sword of might

chieftan- bsb, additional hw
warlockengineer- scroll of dispel & warplock pistol

core- 506
53 skavenslaves-
30 clanrats-fulll command, shields, warpfirethrower
30 clanrats- full command, shields, warpfirethrower

special -176
ratogres(4) 2 packmasters


So my plan is to have the skavenslaves be a little ahead of the group as bait then have the two warpthrowers do what they do against the orcs in the tarpit. Then have the rat ogres swing around the flank on one side and some clanrats on the other side hold down the flanks of my skavenslaves from whatever cavalry or goblins or whatever comes their way. hopefully i'm able to legally pull this off. Anyways what regiments should my bsb warlord and warlock be in?

You don't say so I'm not sure, but is the Engineer a caster? He would have to be to have an arcane item (the Dispel Scroll). You want your BSB to stick around as long as possible, so you may consider swapping the Extra Hand Weapon for a plain old shield. Gives him +1 armor save in general and gives him the 6+ parry in CC.

The general tactics sound good, and I agree with Blak43's suggestion about 3 wide on the Rat Ogres. Warpfire Throwers are, on average, Template + 6", and while they can't move and fire, they can at least pivot on the spot to fire. If you can get them along side units, especially things like cavalry, you can do some nice damage.

The warlock is a caster, but you have to pay for even lv 1

yeah I know, but without paying for level 1 he's not actually a wizard, so no arcane item.

I probably should have clarified my question as "did you buy at least wizard level 1 for the engineer".

Yes sirs, he's a level 2 wizard who tends to kill himself a lot either by shocking himself with warplightning or irristable force. The 3 wide ogre thing sounds pretty solid. i found out today that they have frenzy after the game... guess i should read more closely haha. Anyways, i had a good run with my warpfire throwers and they didnt blow themselves up the second game i played against vampCounts. I lost both games by the way though. I find that when it comes down to it my skill in deployment is lacking.

Sadly I've had similar experiences with my Engineers

I have devised a couple setups that I think tend to work well:

"Darth Skabiccus" Engineer - Level 2 (pray for Skitterleap + warp lightning) w/ Warp Augmented Weapon, Warpstone Armor, Warp Energy Condensor This guy goes hunting for unprotected war machines. Skitterleap gets him behind enemy lines and generally within minimum range so the war machines can't get him. Sure, he's only got 2 S4 attacks, but as most war machine crews are T3 it's not a big deal. The Warpstone Armor keeps him alive with a 4+ save, AND if/when he saves has a chance to tick another wound off the crew that counts towards combat res. If he doesn't get skitterleap himself, start him near another caster that does.

Engineer - Level 2 (Warp Lightning and whatever) w/ Warp Musket, Warlock Optics, Warp Energy Condensor. This guy is basically a living machine gun. He can take shots in the magic phase with warp lightning, and then use his musket in the shooting phase. I generally only run this set up if I'm running a Jezzail unit though. Note if I'm also Skabiccus, then this guy doesn't get a Condensor, he usually ends up with a Dispel Scroll instead.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

blak43 wrote:Just one suggestion, I think your general tactics are ok, i just want to make sure you know to have at least 3 rat ogres in the front rank, not 2x2 so that they can get rank bonuses, and I sould suggest, 3 wide with one behind and the packmasters beside him, so that they can use their whips and he gets all 3 supporing attacks so you should get full attacks that way.

I actually noticed something this evening. Rat Ogres have 3 base attacks, but also have Frenzy which grants them each an extra. It might be worthwhile to run the 4 rat ogres all across, otherwise he's losing an attack. With Rat Ogres essentially 2 bases wide, 4 across would be roughly the equivalent of 8 ranks across. He should be able to get full frontage attacks against a 5 wide unit, assuming he places one rat ogre on a corner to corner match.

lol, i like to imagine what the warlock looks like after frying himself with warplightning with the smoke curling off the wiskers and all.

Those warlock setups sound fun. I think i'll have Eekers (my warlock) run as one of those setups when I hit 1500 points. I just recently bought a greyseer and pretty much replaced the warlord in my army with him.

anyways new 1000pt list
240-Greyseer
120-Warlock engineer- level2,warp energy condenser
72-Chieftain- shield, bsb

191- ratogres(4)- packmasters(2) and 1 masterbred upgrade

225-clanrats(30) -shields, full command, warpfire thrower

152-Skavenslaves(50) shields, spears, musician

i feel kind of silly taking shields and spears on my slaves but i don't know what else to take with those 50 points that i have models for (not big on proxying empty bases)



also excited because i just ordered my warplightning cannon and can't wait to use it.

If you find yourself facing a lot of shooty armies, the Storm Banner on your BSB could be useful. I'm also fond of the Dragonhelm, which increases your BSB's save by 1 and forces your enemy to reroll successful wounds against him.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oooh! You can also upgrade one of your packmasters to a Master Moulder with a Shock Prod (no armor saves against wounds it causes). The trick here is that because he's a champion he has to go in the first rank. People will often see him and think they'll crush you in a challenge. As you get to pick the model that fights though, you can instead accept the challenge with the Masterbred, who can crush most normal unit champions!

For the most part at our store there's not alot of shooty armies around. I just played against dark elves yesterday and the warpgale spell helped quite a bit against his 2 ballista things. I accidently found a good way to use skitterleap that i havn't thought of before, i took out his balistas with a skitterleap and a cracks call, that was fun. I ended up winning the game from like turn 2 because he cascaded twice with his wizard and the trees and the river kept doing wounds to his dark elves while they crossed.

The master moulder wouldn't be such a bad idea if i find an opponent who likes to challenge everything except for graveguard, I think i'll keep my ratogres away from them.

Oh yeah, Eekers died again after being skitterleaped in front of the ballistas to warplightning his loaders, but eekers failed to get the spell off haha. Poor little bugger.

streamdragon wrote:If you find yourself facing a lot of shooty armies, the Storm Banner on your BSB could be useful. I'm also fond of the Dragonhelm, which increases your BSB's save by 1 and forces your enemy to reroll successful wounds against him.

That's nto the dragon helm it's the trickster's helm, the dragonhelm is a 2+ ward save against flaming.

Ack, you're correct. I should probably double check item names >_<