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So I am looking to start a skaven army if you did not see my post from about a month ago. Here is my question. When buying the Island of Blood Skaven clan rats/slaves from ebay. Do I want the ones with spears or hand weapons? Would hate to buy the wrong ones or a bunch that I don't really need. Thanks

For Clan Rats? Sword and Board is best (Parry Save), but i know shields arent cost effective for slaves (then again, can slaves even take spears?) and think slaves should be run naked....

So not much help im afraid, but a little idea at least. Have a look at the cost of the shield vs the points saved by 5+/6++

thx

Sword and board for Clannies.

Slaves is to taste. I prefer mine naked, but some people swear by a shield on them. I prefer them cheap as possible since I plan on them dying and exploding.

The question about the Slaves is "is there a comping on unit size?"
If not, take 50 of them naked
If there is, take 40 of them (usual cap) and eventually run them with shields to compensate for the 10 bodies

About the spears / HW, just mix and match them, no one sees the difference as they look messy and their spears are quite short and irregular
For a better look, I would advise to mix "straight slot" and "diagonal slots" bases, as well as new rats and older models (monkey rats)
When you look at them closely, they don't look awesome due to the monkey rats, but from an usual point of view, they will look much better.
If you only take the same new breed of rats and put them in "straight slots" bases, they will look like the PRC's Army on parade, which doesn't suit a Skaven look

TanKoL wrote:
If you only take the same new breed of rats and put them in "straight slots" bases, they will look like the PRC's Army on parade, which doesn't suit a Skaven look

I want to agree, but having seen pure blood island clanrats painted up perfectly, I simply can't. The crouch of the skaven model leaves it sort of overhanging the one in front of it. This, when it's a full unit, makes me think of rats scuttling over eachother, going in a uniform direction, which is exactly what you'll see if you open up a barn door to a completely rat infested granary

Yeah Purifier, I get your point, but they are ranked in such a neat manner it's annoying me
The ones from the Clanrats/Slaves box don't have this issue as they are glued to a non-slotted base and you can slightly alter their angles for a better look

Thanks again for all the input. The responses to my post have helped he a lot. Thanks again for the great ideas.

 Chute82 wrote:
So I am looking to start a skaven army if you did not see my post from about a month ago. Here is my question. When buying the Island of Blood Skaven clan rats/slaves from ebay. Do I want the ones with spears or hand weapons? Would hate to buy the wrong ones or a bunch that I don't really need. Thanks

Hand weapons with shield for clanrats and take them butt naked (hand weapon only) for slaves. Usually your opponent should allow a shield on there to signify nothing unless they're super hard *ss about it but most are decent folk that aren't so balls to the walls mean about something so small. I've taken spears as hand weapon and shield in a tourney. You just need to state what you took and have all the rules and FAQ with you and such and you should be ok.

I like my Clanrats with spears and shields. Fight in more ranks and have an extra save against arrow rain. For my slaves I run huge blocks with hand weapons, like most have said. I sometimes run them with shields just to keep them from getting totally pin cushioned. As someone else has mentioned, mix and match. If your opponent is alright with it, I think it looks more rat like to have a mixture of weapons in a block.

 Chute82 wrote:
So I am looking to start a skaven army if you did not see my post from about a month ago. Here is my question. When buying the Island of Blood Skaven clan rats/slaves from ebay. Do I want the ones with spears or hand weapons? Would hate to buy the wrong ones or a bunch that I don't really need. Thanks

Hand Weapons and shields. However if your playing with model build nazis just cut the bottom of the spear off so it looks like a make shift hand weapon. Doing this will save you money and make your army a little fluffy as the "hand weapons" could be scavenged arrows or bolts, or even make shift hand weapons.

But whatever is the better deal money wise.

Let's face it, skaven armies require a LOT of models. Go with whatever is cheapest. This leaves you with a couple options:

If you end up with nothing but HW/Shield models? Yay!

If you end up with a mix of models with hand weapons and models with spears, but the HW/Shield models in the first few ranks, and the spear models at the back. Fantasy is far less WYSIWYG than 40k, and as you remove models from the back you'll be removing spear-rats first.

If you end up with nothing but spear models, you can cut down the spears into regular hand weapons with a little work, or swap the weapon entirely depending on what other bits you have.