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Well, the rather sneaky and cunning rat men have won me over (after showing me how difficult I was finding Wood Elves) and I just want to do a little digging on what is 'effective' for Skaven, in particular what I had in mind was something with Queek in it but other than that I don't know what I want to do and just want the low down, thanks in advance.

Lots of clan rat is a good start. Plague monks are good from what I've seen.

Island of blood is a great set for starting Skaven.

I've just started Skaven too, I've only had 3 games so far, I started off with the island of blood, then got 20 more clanrats and some more rat ogres. From there I got the hell pit abomination (just because it looks awesome), plague monks and a plague furnace and my latest edition is Queek and a unit of storm vermin.

No idea how competitive it will eventually be, as long as I enjoy the game I'm not so fussed about winning.

A'ight. Here's the deal:

You'll want Slaves. Lots of Slaves. A Grey Seer, too. And an Engineer, to carry your token Doom Rocket, since it is, in my opinion, the single most comically efficient anything in Warhammer.

You like Queek? Stormvermin. Clanrats will help bunker your characters down and field weapon teams.

The super-competitive stuff? Gutter Runners with poisoned slings (don't ask me how, but they can dissolve cannons in no time), which I'd just make out of Clanrats. The A-bomb is sick, sick, sick. And the Warp Lightning Cannon is even more so, for it's points (and when it works...which is almost depressingly often).
One of the great Unbreakable Engines would also serve you well, though the Plague Furnace is considered better than the Bell, usually.

Hope that helps.

Thats some interesting things there warpsolution, a total noob question here, I haven't seen any models for slaves so do you make them out of clanrats or other model kits?

Looks like I have some of the models you mentioned, hope the op finds it as useful as I did, thanks again

I'm pretty sure the slaves are in the clanrat box

For slaves people usually use the clothed not armoured bodies from the clanrat box, or just use clanrats but don't give them shields.

Cool, cheers Krellnus, might have to pick up a box or 2 for some slaves!

You can also scour ebay for the old school monkey style skaven. They're noticeably smaller, less geared and generally weenier looking than the new clan rats. That's what I use.

THERE ARE MONKEY SKAVEN!!
DO WANT
Thanks for the heads up on that steamdragon

No problem Kellnus.

Obviously they're not actually monkeys, but the sculpts were kinda bad overall. If you want an example, I believe the Night Runner box still uses that body shape.

Heck, other than their cost night runners might not make bad slaves as they're still smaller than the new clan rats and don't wear armor.

I suppose that because they are slaves you could use pretty much anything in rags as slaves, a few clanrats, flaggellants (sorry for the spelling) and the odd zombie or goblin thrown in, would look a bit odd but be kind of cool too.

Well, that's part of the concept behind slaves: a few of them are the odd man or dwarf that got himself captured. Though they die even faster in the suffocating pitch-black darkness deep below the earth, silent as the sea that overcomes.

Worst part about those old models for me: one of their feet (the right one, I think) was sort of malformed. ON EVERY MODEL. Gah.

Chimpskaven are a lot cheaper on the Bay of E, just keep in mind that they are made of 6 parts (7 with shield) versus 2 (3), and they're generally harder to paint, thanks to muddier details (AND DEFORMED TOES). A lot of people already had...two hundred of them. Already painted. So they use them.

...also, the new Clanrats are, what, two dollars cheaper than the old ones used to be? And they come in a smaller box? Hurray for the environment, I guess. Love those new models.

The first encounter I had with skaven was way back in heroquest/advanced heroquest, I can't believe its taken me the best part of 20 years to start a real skaven army.

I'm going to try and pick up a box of flagellants, throw in a few dwarf miners, maybe a zombie or two put it with a box of clanrats and get myself some grubby slaves

Here's where I started:

Island of Blood
2 Battleforces (got me 40 plague monks, 6 rat ogres, 20 giant rats, and like 40 clanrats plus 3? pack masters).
Plague Furnace
Abom
Doom wheel
2 warp lightning cannons.
1 Grey seer (which i converted from the one that came with the screaming bell).

I run a 2500pt list thats pretty mean and has been almost unbeatable, especially when i take extra warpstone tokens and a power scroll for the 13th spell.

Ideally I'd say you want around 60 (50-60 when you have a plague furnace) plague monks and 200 clanrats/slaves.

Out of the weapon teams I think the warpfire thrower is one of the most effective. Its s5, d3 wounds, and -3 armor, c'mon that melts like ANYTHING.

The plague furnace is just sick since if you give your priest a censer it forces your enemy to take D6 toughness tests and then another one for each guy in base with the furance, before combat even starts (and it adds to your combat res). This is great against T3 things like elves and goblins. Plus, plague monks as T4 with 3 attacks (2 for 2 handweapons and then a 3rd for frenzy). Going along with that you also get the wrecker attack in your turn, which is an artilery die's worth of s5 hits on your enemy (so thats 2-10 additional s5 hits! if you dont misfire) so try to get into combat via a charge on your turn if possible and usually you'll win combat. And, theres a banner you can give the plague monks that lets them re-roll failed to hit and wound rolls on one round of combat (usable anytime during the game). Usually I run my furnace with 50 monks so thats 40 attacks each round of combat from them alone, plus the 9 from the crew, and the 4 from the priest (so 53 in total not including the wrecker).

Your plague furnace is usually your death star, and its infinitely more reliable than a screaming bell. However, a cunning opponent will either avoid it or target the furnace itself since it has no armor save.

I've found rat ogres just totally wreck in h2h, especially if you take a master bred rat ogre and a master moulder with an electro whip. I usually run a group of 3-5.

Warp Lightning cannons are just sick since they're only 90pts-ish and when the cannon ball explodes, EVERYTHING, under the template takes d6 wounds. Great for taking out knights and beasties like a stegodon or arachnorok. I think its more worth it than jezzails myself.

in terms of magic I always try to use plague, wither, and bless with filth if I can on my enemy. With works great with plague (-1T for the rest of the game and then plague makes the whole unit take a T test and it can keep going or spread to other units)

Skitterleap/Cracks call combo is awesome for things with low I values like Gobbos, lizardmen, etc... I'd probably run it with a warlock engineer tho since its pretty much a one shot deal and your guy will probably die on the opponent's turn rather than sacrificing a grey seer to do it.

But thats just some basics. Skaven are awesome, so have fun! And dont be afraid to just sacrifice units, playing skaven is kinda like playing tyranids in 40k, your whole army is pretty much expendable. Life is cheap eh? LOL

The 'leap/call combo is kind of hard to pull off, since your opponent knows what spells you have, and as he probably let you cast Skitterleap, he's still got quite a fistful.
But it can be a lot of fun when you clip say, a treeman and a few treekin. And by fun, I mean brutal.

Jezzails are indeed quite bad. The Cannon is considered to be hands down the best device in the Skaven book.

Plague is a scarier lore, but its range reflects that. Also, Scorch is just so good...

Rat Ogres seem to work best when there's at least 6 of them (to ensure they strip ranks) in larger games. But 2-3 works well in smaller point match-ups.

The two weapon teams to pick are Poisoned Wind Mortars and Warpfire Throwers. Ratling Guns don't do a whole lot, and Doomflayers do even less. Warp-grinders are just so bad it's comical.
The 'Thrower is by far the most devastating, but it makes up for that in that it's horrendously unreliable. Basically, this 70pt war machine will fail to make up its points half the time, and then kill 200+pts worth of stuff the other half.

I personally don't think you'd ever need 60 Plague Monks to push your Furnace (50 is easily enough), but then I'm not really one for the "all your eggs in one basket" kind of deal.

And I don't know why people give their Priest riding that thing a Plague Censer. It forces everyone in B2B with the Furnace to make a T test or die. So that's...five of his guys and...15 of yours. If he's T3, you're trading 2-3 of your guys for 1-2 of his (since you only fail on 6's). If you're engaged against models that are around 10-12pts/model, this will work out. But the number of T3 models that cost that much are...elves. So it's almost always a bad trade-off.

Wither makes things a little better, but since you might wound your Priest in the process, I'd consider it moot.

Warpsolution wrote:
And I don't know why people give their Priest riding that thing a Plague Censer. It forces everyone in B2B with the Furnace to make a T test or die. So that's...five of his guys and...15 of yours. If he's T3, you're trading 2-3 of your guys for 1-2 of his (since you only fail on 6's). If you're engaged against models that are around 10-12pts/model, this will work out. But the number of T3 models that cost that much are...elves. So it's almost always a bad trade-off.

Clan Pestilens models only take the wound on a roll of a 6, so 15 of yours will need 6s to wound so 2 of yours vs on a roll of typically 4-6 for 5 of his guys so 2.5 soy uo are going to lose 14pts so it really depends on what you are facing, against goblins leave it at home.

...did you...did you read what I posted? All of that and more is within that dotted-line box.

T3 is "average" in Warhammer in that "the average man is T3", but the mathematical average, that is, the number with an equal amount of scores above and below it, is T4. T4 is also the most frequently occurring across the board.

Also, whenever I suggest that one thing is better or worse than another, I'm assuming that the list isn't being built with its opponent in mind, since that sort of advice isn't all that useful in this setting, and since that's what tournaments usually go with. So I refuse to take a Plague Censer with my Priest, not just when I'm facing O&G or other Skaven, but in general, since it performs poorly more often than it performs well.

I've seen a lot of people using Gutter Runners.
Do people buy the metal gutter runners or just use night runners that aren't ranked up normally?

I use the new Clanrat models with black clothes.

Two of the hand weapons in that box are katar-type deals (punching daggers). With one, you can file down the hand holding it, at which point it fits neatly over the left hand of one of your Gutter Runners.

Still working on how to represent slings (slings from old models, I guess) and snare-nets (just to add variety; I'd never use them).

Is there actually any difference between the gutter runners and the night runnner models?
As for slings, if you're using the clanrat models, why not just use the sling bitz pack GW released

Warpsolution wrote:
Still working on how to represent slings (slings from old models, I guess) and snare-nets (just to add variety; I'd never use them).

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440088a&prodId=prod890004a

made specifically for the newer plastics.

...huh. Awesome.

"And I don't know why people give their Priest riding that thing a Plague Censer. It forces everyone in B2B with the Furnace to make a T test or die. So that's...five of his guys and...15 of yours. If he's T3, you're trading 2-3 of your guys for 1-2 of his (since you only fail on 6's). If you're engaged against models that are around 10-12pts/model, this will work out. But the number of T3 models that cost that much are...elves. So it's almost always a bad trade-off."

Well, part of the reason is it adds more to your combat res whereas the loss of your own guys does not add to your opponent's. C'mon skaven are a throw away army. They're ALL expendable. I'll gladly sacrifice a few of my guys if it means i win combat and run his @$$ down.

Um...is there some new FaQ that says your casualties don't count towards combat?

And yeah, I'll sacrifice some of my guys to kill the enemy. But the numbers state that this particular method isn't the best step towards that goal.
Beyond that, a Furnace is a great way to lock up a lot of points; until that last Monk dies, your opponent doesn't get any points. Killing Plague Monks is a risk, and the stakes are higher than other Skaven gambits.

ALL wounds caused by the plague censer count towards combat resolution. A plague censer on a priest is a very poor move, especially since the priest will probably be the first thing in that unit that dies. All of his magic equipment should go towards keeping his ass safe (I prefer foul pendant + potion of toughness).

Slaves are easy to acquire, just use the IOB rats that have less armor/no helmets. I think I was able to isolate about 28 models out of every 40 that could count as slaves. I just use the far more heavily armored rats with helmets and such as my clanrats. If some appear a tad questionable, just put the raggediest ones up front.

Some will argue instead of buying shields you should just buy more slaves, but I like how frustrating it can be for my opponent when 2.5 point models are rolling ward saves. Plus, the cost savings alone make it worthwhile to me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Krellnus wrote:THERE ARE MONKEY SKAVEN!!
DO WANT

You really really don't, they are hideous.

I model my Clanrats with the spears and my slaves with the hand weapons. It's real easy to tell which is which that way.

Spears are a waste of points. I would just randomize what you give them, and as long as the front rank or two have the proper armament, it's irrelevant what the rest of the unit is wielding. I always felt rats were too disorganized to properly present a spear phalanx anyway, and having the random weapons in the unit make them look more raggedy and rat-like.

Warpsolution wrote:
And I don't know why people give their Priest riding that thing a Plague Censer. It forces everyone in B2B with the Furnace to make a T test or die. So that's...five of his guys and...15 of yours. If he's T3, you're trading 2-3 of your guys for 1-2 of his (since you only fail on 6's). If you're engaged against models that are around 10-12pts/model, this will work out. But the number of T3 models that cost that much are...elves. So it's almost always a bad trade-off.

The furnace does D6 tests, the censor adding another 4-5 is pretty sweet. The censor hits models no the unit, and goes before combat. That means it can whack unit champs or wound characters before challenges take place.
With the censor coming out of normal gear (not magic), it doesn't take away from the other options he has.

Killing 1-2 enemies, at the cost of ~2 of your own (don't rank up behind the furnace with censor), you're taking 8 to 10 tests, is a pretty great exchange.
From what I've seen on the table, anything more expensive than ~7 points a model puts you ahead. Anything cheaper than 7 points a model doesn't matter, because the volume of attacks from the rest of your unit will let you crush them anyway, and you'll be moving on to the next fight even faster.

-Matt