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Last night I took the plunge into Fantasy, I went to my FLGS and bought the Skaven Book, Scorched Brown Paint, and a Doom Flayer Weapon Team (looked way too cool IMO). My friend jumped into High Elves. Coincidentally we can buy the Isle of Blood.

I'm still in the process of reading the Skaven Book, but one thing came to me. Does Warpstone have to be green? The only reason I'm asking is because in the Skaven fluff section in the main rulebook the glow coming off of the machines and guns on one page were blue, not green. I thought it looked pretty good, but I don't want to be frowned upon for not using green on my warpstone.

Secondly, what units aren't competitive? I'm not looking to go super competitive, but I also don't want to buy things that are just plain bad.

Can't speak to warpstone, which I believe is all green but can't be 100% sure honestly. As to units that are less than stellar:

Lords
Vermin Lord: With as hefty a points cost as he has, he relatively fragile. In a world of cannons and poison darts, you'll find high T and a 5+ ward don't go as far as they should. Granted, he's an awesome caster and decent at CC support, but really in the end he's rarely worth his cost.

Core
Night Runners: I've been considering trying them out. A middle-of-the-road unit between shooty and CC, they have no armor and yet cost more than a clan rat and a slave together. It's pretty much what keeps them out of my lists.

Storm Vermin: With the same cost as Night Runners, they're still not worth the slave and clan rat most of the time. They don't get a parry save to tar pit like clan rats, and they don't have the numbers of a slave block. You might try using them as a nice hammer unit, but we generally have better options for that like Rat Ogres. Still, they're one of three units able to take a magic banner, so that counts for something.

Special
Jezzails: I want to love Jezzails, I really do. I want to use them and watch my little Rat Snipers dish out death from far away. But the reality is that they're too expensive for what they do. When you factor in BS3, range penalties and penalties for cover or skirmishers, most of the time you're not getting great to-hit rolls. Granted, when they do hit the Jezzail can kill off even heavy cavalry with relative reliability, but that 1-in-36 time that you kill off your own Jezzail by shooting...

Poisoned Wind Globadiers: Not completely terrible, but still underwhelming. The range on globes is fairly short, which means you have to be up in your opponents face to use them. They're also skirmishers which means they don't get Strength in Numbers to boost their Ld. Not good. Still, if you want another Poisoned Wind Mortar, a minimum unit of Globadiers is cheaper than a minimum clan rat unit.

Rare
Doomwheel: Another unit I really want to be able to throw into lists, but it competes for points with some of the best units in the skaven roster. It lacks the survivability of the HPA, and doesn't have the killy power of the Warp Lightning Cannon. It's another middle of the road type unit. Still, at lower point games the Doomwheel is great if you don't want to feel bad about adding a second WLC...


That's about it really. Some units work best in combination with other units, like Censor Bearers going in with Plague Monks. They don't have to, but it does boost them a bit. Also keep in mind that despite saying both Jezzails and Globadiers are underwhelming, I still tend to run small units of both. There's something to be said for weapons that either ignore armor saves, or as good as ignore them...

Your Warpstone can be whatever color that you want. Green is the default color, but the solidified stuff of Chaos itself could take on any color. If you want your Warpstone to be blue, then by all means man, make it blue! It's your army, after all.

The Doomwheel is perfectly competitive, it just isn't as nasty as the Hellpit Abomination. You certainly wouldn't be hurting your army by running one. There really isn't anything that is "just plain bad" in the Skaven army book. The Storm Vermin and Vermin Lord are probably closest, and even they can work out well every once in a while.

I read a post on Warseer where the guy wanted to paint his Warpstone yellow and the whole thread turned into putting him down. Then again that's why I stopped posting there...

I'm trying to think of a good color for my armor and cloth to go with my bluey gooey glowiness of my warpstone. With scorched brown fur and Enchanted Blue/Ice Blue warpstone, I'm not sure where to turn as I'm quite bad with color.

The internet is full of dicks, and not just on the pr0n sites. If any fluff fascists bother you about it, tell them that your army's Warlock Engineers have been experimenting with ways to refine their warpstone, and the end result is that yours has a blue cast to it. Problem solved.

Skaven can be hard to paint, since it's usually an army of dirty brown rats wearing dirty brown rags. Red is a complimentary color of blue, so you could go with a reddish cloth for your army, which would look pretty good alongside your blue warpstone bits.

If you can get your hands on it, the Heraldry book for Skaven has lots of good details for skaven clans that have varied color fur. There's a clan (Vulcan I believe) that lives near a volcano, so they paint their fur red. There's another clan mentioned that dyes their fur purple!

That's real craziness! Right now I have my first and only Fantasy Model (Doom Flayer Weapon Team, way too badass!). After work I'm going to throw some spray primer on it and paint it up! The Warpstone will be Enchanted Blue/Ice Blue, and the Fur Scorched Brown and a lighter brown when I pick one up later. The cloth/armor I'll do last. I've also decided that my clan is one of Clan Skyre!