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Ok so i decided on skevan for my army i picked up the start box a battle forc box 2boxes of stormraven and a squad of rattling guners is this a good start. also what's the ruff points for this i hopeing around 1500 . i got all that and codex for 320 is that a good deal

Skaven StormRaven, woohoo !
joking aside, I can't say if it's a good deal, just check on the GW website and compare
I'd say you are at about 1300-ish points, maybe more if you loads up on magic items
What I can say for sure is that you'll need more than 20 Plague Monks to make them effective. Aim for 40-strong minimum for Skaven combat units

Are skaven really that bad i see they all have very bad stats and really bad ld how do they even win in combat

Skaven individually suck quite hard
They are also cowards to the core indeed
Nonetheless, the best unit in the book (and maybe in the whole game) is SkavenSlaves, the cheapest unit all around with an effective Leadership of 10 with re-roll if you play it correctly (Ld7 from General bubble, then +3 from ranks), and their numbers make them Steadfast until they've been slaughtered for a few turns

Most Skavens players are quite succesful as we have lots of excellent tools:
Warp Lightning Cannon
Hellpit Abomination
Doomwheel
Slaves
Poisoned Slingers Gutter Runners
Plague Furnace + monks

the first 3 are all rare and you should often try to max out your rare (2 WLC is nearly mandatory, they're unreliable but pack an incredible punch when it goes well)
Slaves form your glorious and heroic battleline! (more like walls of flesh your opponent has to carve his way through). Also, you can shoot agaisnt enemis engaged in CC against Slaves, which is a huge capacity

It's not an easy army to understand properly (thank the drunk monkey who wrote the army book ..), but it's quite efficient when played correctly, and very potent once mastered (even though you can't really master randomness and luck)

Lots of very "pro competitive" players despise them because you cannot expect the Skavens to shine reliably, sometimes they suck and there's nothing to be done, sometimes you go "wow, I'm sorry dude ... I'm lucky today" and your opponent just cries

And as a finishing touch, it's rare to win combat with Skavens, it's normal, our army is weak in CC and should stall it for as long as possible usually

I recommand you to register and look up at this forum: The UnderEmpire

Really i guess i shouldnt have got in to skaven as ther a bad army and half the stuff in the codex is crap.

Well if you're looking for an army that looks "classy" and will whoop ass in Close Combat with a shiny smile and hair flowing in the wind .... well yeah, Skavens are stinky fleece-infested rats
It's true that some entries in the book suck (Night Runners are terribad, Ratasphere and Rat Ogres are hard to play efficiently), but it's mostly a powerful army (needing the units to support each other though, it's a combined arms army) that, however, takes a particular mindset to enjoy fully.
I'm a rat, I'm nasty and I'm fine with that

The saying about Skaven around here goes like this "You don't make friends with Skavens, you don't make friends with Skavens ..."
It wouldn't be the case if they were a weak army

So thers only one way to build a rat army seems kind of blah

zilka86 wrote:
So thers only one way to build a rat army seems kind of blah

Clearly, you're looking for Vampire Counts. Some ultra powerful units to make you salivate, and enough options to play it a hundred ways.

Not having played for some years, my experiene is somewhat outdated, but Skaven are hardly a one trick army. It's just that they have one trick that is overpowered in the current edition. You don't HAVE to play that way... unless you feel the need to min-max your army.

There are many ways to build a skaven army.
Some make things easier than others.
Some are more random but there are plenty of options.
Definitely my favorite.
Tankol is just referring to some of the norms.
Clanrat quality is low so you need more to make them effective.

I just don't like the idea of slaves i rather use clan rats

Its all about strength in numbers.

ClanRats ain't bad, I like them ...
But they still won't be winning any fights (except maybe against gobbos and zombies) and you can't shoot into their Close Combat anymore
So they basically do the same as Slaves (that is, dying) a tad slower while hampering your ability to hurt your opponent

And indeed there's lots of builds, I do run sometimes a full Warlord / CC army with no (or close enough) magic, big killers with Furnace + Queek unit in the same army and such
But he's asking if Skavens are weak ... so I was unrolling the Castle kind of list

Indeed if you want to punch face hard with style, Skavens aren't the ones