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So this might sound strange to some but I'm having trouble with multiple things. This usually happens to be skink skirmishers as I usually play against my friend. They don't do a lot to my units but against weapons teams they snipe my teams to death, they kill war machines and they can even do some nasty damage to single models like monsters. Gutter runners can't kill enough of them. If I charge them somehow they'll just flee and come back. If I use the doomwheel or abomination against them then they'll just get pegged by the skinks and possibly some terradons with flaming shots in reverse order so I have no regeneration saves. Fast moving units also tend prevent my random movement units from pivoting (which is a big deal) though that can be solved by gutter runners more likely.

Perhaps this is all a bad idea but I've been thinking about using these possibly either alongside warp lightning cannons or a couple doomwheels if possible. For me warp lightning cannons and doomwheels have mostly the same job. However against units that can march around all my units it's annoying. Also plagueclaw catapults may help against a gun-line or help me throw fire at things like elves which I tend to want to stay out of combat with. Not to mention if my enemy has kept some of his units out of his general's leadership bubble or his BSB then I can just throw it at those units and try panicking them to run away.

Against toughness 4 armies this is usually not a big thing but most toughness 4 armies have not so great shooting (except dwarfs mostly though ogres can be ok too). Also though they have range warp lightning cannons are out-done by the shots of the doomwheel which zap monsters hard.

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So in general I figure that perhaps this weapon would help give me range and force the opponent towards me instead of the other way around. Hopefully if I kill enough of their shooting hordes or panic them. Against my empire opponent that could fire waves of detachments as a stand and shoot reaction without negative penalty and in reaction to the parent unit getting charged this would have helped significantly. If I force my enemy towards me then maybe I can get some use out of the warpfire throwers against normally more ranged oriented opponents. If I combine this with my skitterleaping warlord and storm banner use then I can kill war machines with that (or go after the opponent's general or BSB with the warlord) and walk up on the enemy with no problem.

Well I have used 2 catapults vs high elves and dark elves, and providing most of these girls are S3, with 1-2 good shots I have dealt good damage. It's not very reliable unit, but it's very funny to see enemy bsb failing Look out sir! tests, or a unit failing a Ld tests just because they sustained 1 casualty. Doesn't happen often, but it happens. After all, Skaven is all about having fun. Best army in the universe.

The no armor save bit helps a lot.
So does the pie plate template.
On a hit, I've seen those 5" templates get ~30 hits.
That's 10 dead elves, or 5 dead chaos warriors/dwarves.

People poo-poo them for the flashier rares, but when I ran them, they worked out more often than not.

-Matt

My only issue with them is that S2. The Warplightning Cannon is only getting half as many hits, but far more of them turn into wounds.
And it hits everyone before that in a line.
And it does D6 wounds.
And it costs 10pts less.

The Catapult does have Indirect Fire and the Artillery+Scatter dice, rather than Artillery X2. I guess I'd call it a little more reliable, but significantly more limited and far less devastating.

Warpsolution wrote:
My only issue with them is that S2. The Warplightning Cannon is only getting half as many hits, but far more of them turn into wounds.
And it hits everyone before that in a line.
And it does D6 wounds.
And it costs 10pts less.

The Catapult does have Indirect Fire and the Artillery+Scatter dice, rather than Artillery X2. I guess I'd call it a little more reliable, but significantly more limited and far less devastating.

I'm more just afraid of them against t4 armies. That said orcs and goblins have goblins and night goblins as well as fanatics it could scatter into and destroy. It can also deal with skinks in lizardmen lists. It can handle t3 cavalry a lot more easily. It can probably do some damage to a gun-line without endangering units of guys (I know I can use slaves but if the enemy's gun-line is on high ground then it won't matter). It can deal with elvish punks unless I shoot at the unit with BotWD. It's pretty good vs hordes or low toughness things like elves, empire, bretonnia. The only thing it'd be useless against probably is warriors of chaos and ogres.

All this said I don't exactly have to take plagueclaw catapults by themselves. I can gun-line better and take both warp lightning cannons and plagueclaw catapults. It'd cost a lot but it might be worth it. If I do that I could make the enemy come toward me and then I would get more use out of the warpfire throwers.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
It can also deal with skinks in lizardmen lists. It can handle t3 cavalry a lot more easily. It can probably do some damage to a gun-line without endangering units of guys (I know I can use slaves but if the enemy's gun-line is on high ground then it won't matter). It can deal with elvish punks unless I shoot at the unit with BotWD. It's pretty good vs hordes or low toughness things like elves, empire, bretonnia. The only thing it'd be useless against probably is warriors of chaos and ogres.

Against T2, the catapult causes 15 wounds on a direct hit. The cannon, on average causes 12
T3: the catapult causes 10, the cannon 12
T4: 5/12
T5: 5/10

The key difference is that the catapult is more likely to hit.

Yeah that's part of why I wanted it for fighting skinks. I face lizardmen a lot and pinning down those skink jerks is tough. It doesn't help that cold-blooded usually keeps them from running off the board either.

Elves are also an army I'd rather not face in combat although I suppose if I throw enough numbers at them as I should then it wouldn't be a problem. I just wish hordes and rares wasn't the only skaven tactic that works for the most part. I realize there are different choices but I'd like to focus on using troops effectively rather than just blobbing them and spamming my enemy to death. It's uninteresting and I'd rather see weapons teams and similar wasting a chunk out of enemy units.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Yeah that's part of why I wanted it for fighting skinks. I face lizardmen a lot and pinning down those skink jerks is tough. It doesn't help that cold-blooded usually keeps them from running off the board either.

Elves are also an army I'd rather not face in combat although I suppose if I throw enough numbers at them as I should then it wouldn't be a problem. I just wish hordes and rares wasn't the only skaven tactic that works for the most part. I realize there are different choices but I'd like to focus on using troops effectively rather than just blobbing them and spamming my enemy to death. It's uninteresting and I'd rather see weapons teams and similar wasting a chunk out of enemy units.

Going to be honest dude. It's gotten to the point where I'd rather play my beastmen than my skaven. For all the complaints about the skaven army book, it has a startling lack of variety, and thus fun.

 streamdragon wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Yeah that's part of why I wanted it for fighting skinks. I face lizardmen a lot and pinning down those skink jerks is tough. It doesn't help that cold-blooded usually keeps them from running off the board either.

Elves are also an army I'd rather not face in combat although I suppose if I throw enough numbers at them as I should then it wouldn't be a problem. I just wish hordes and rares wasn't the only skaven tactic that works for the most part. I realize there are different choices but I'd like to focus on using troops effectively rather than just blobbing them and spamming my enemy to death. It's uninteresting and I'd rather see weapons teams and similar wasting a chunk out of enemy units.

Going to be honest dude. It's gotten to the point where I'd rather play my beastmen than my skaven. For all the complaints about the skaven army book, it has a startling lack of variety, and thus fun.

You're kind of preaching to the choir here and it's really sad as I like the little guys. I'd like to see more of everything be useful but it's mostly just hordes are rares.

I did a bit of that today and I took weapons teams. The rares did really well the weapons teams were too short ranged to handle the dwarfs. That said I took no magic. We knew we were facing each other and made our lists on the spot. However I find that skaven magic overall doesn't do enough to justify the cost you end up paying for it. So instead I figure I should just throw out magic resistance warlocks into my units, give my warlord a 2+ armor save and 4+ ward save with the crown of command (or whatever the steadfast item was) and throw him in a unit of 40 stormvermin along with a warlock with the -1 to BS shooting for anything shooting at that unit. They either have to really kill off the warlord and he'll be hard to kill or they will have to kill off most of the unit and hope I fail my leadership. This would be easiest to do by flanking.

I also used 8 rat ogres with skweel today and they did decently. In the future I may not use skweel but I'm not sure. They may not have great WS and frenzy is a pain as well as the low leadership but the fact they won't panic and the fact that they probably strike first at initiative 4 (or at least against the things which could hurt them the most) is definitely helpful. It can help me kill enough enemies so that they don't do more damage to the rat ogres. They're not fantastic I won't lie but if you have one or two enemy units that absolutely must die they will do it though the price in points will be high. Also it's a unit that hits hard without being a rare and forcing you to take something so big that cannonballs will just peg it to death.

I understand what you mean though that skaven don't seem to have too many different builds. Most of the specials suck or aren't that great. I just wish some things weren't so bad or so good in a skaven army. If it isn't a must have then it generally sucks or isn't that good. It's really unfortunate. I want doom flayers or the vermin lord to be decent but they really don't seem to be.

Agreed pretty much 100%.

I have wanted to try a list maxing out weapon teams, using a Warlord in Banner of Discipline Stormvermin (so tossing out Ld8 base), but I really don't see it being effective at all. Weapon teams are just way to expensive for one wound models. Throw in that all but the PWM are going to be out of range for the first few turns and you're just really not getting enough out of weapon teams to make it workable.

Doomflayers are whole other bag of crap.

Honestly, if/when the new book drops I'd be happy with mostly just recosted units. Jezzails, Rat Ogres and Globadiers would be okay to find if they cost less, even with 0 changes. I might even throw Night Runners on that list.

10 Nightrunners with slings are more pricey than they should be, but at 80pts, they're pretty good at harassing other units.

I just don't see how the Crown of Command is going to help Skaven much. I mean, by the time you're not Steadfast, your rank bonus is on the decline. So, even when the Crown does occasionally help you stick around, it's only just before your unit gets wiped out anyway.

Gonna' say again, though: Stormvermin have really been pulling their weight for me. They bring a decent punch while still being numerous enough to stack CR. The last tournament I was in (just 1000pts), 25 Stormvermin tore through a Hydra and the last remnants of Executioners. In another game, they got rear-charged by some Empire Knights, were steadfast, turned around and won via combat resolution.
Plague Monks are similar, but more focused in their ideal targets.

Skaven lack quite a few things and it becomes more and more apparent. For the most part we lack unit with good range that can put out plenty of fire and the ones we have like ratling guns don't put out enough and they can be sniped by arrows esp. on high ground or in a building. For what it's supposed to do doom flayers are way too fragile. I find it said most weapons teams die with one volley of fire from anything. Hell even really weak and normally pathetic shooting could probably do one unsaved wound to a weapons team even within 3" of its parent unit (and therefore having a 4+ ward save) and just auto-kill it.

After playing skaven long enough the way I see it is that if you face a ranged army your weapons teams normally won't do anything and will just die. Not to mention 5/6 of the mishaps for a warpfire thrower are extremely bad.

Dwarfs and Empire both getting master engineers or equivalents to fix their stupid cannons for every mishap and even get shots out of the stupid deal. Skaven don't but our cannons in ways aren't as good. Our cannon is variable strength instead of always strength 10 and though it ends in a small template that thing is hard to hit with unless there are a lot of units in the way or really big units.

So yeah skaven lack a way of throwing out enough shots at decent range or getting close enough fast enough.

All of our movement is between 5 and 6 except on the vermin lord and random movement units. We have no flyers, no cavalry, no armor, our magic is ok mostly unless you want to use 13th spell which has a high casting value and only works on infantry (so ogres and bretonnia are almost completely immune and horde units won't care much).

We have one unit with vanguard and they are night runners and won't go anywhere fast enough and are mostly inferior troops (can't take a banner or anything really). Even if you do take one nightrunners unit with a warp grinder there's a chance they'll mishap and die or land off target.

If we take gutter runners and scout them (the supposedly best option) then the enemy can just deploy their cannons and units a certain way and prevent your scouts getting anywhere near them.

So yeah more and more the only effective things become hordes and rares. I'm not even sure I want to make a screaming bell and throw a grey seer on it for fear of how many points it takes up, the idea of any large target general just getting sniped by cannons (considering how much a skaven army needs their general) and the idea that wizards don't do enough to justify their points with skaven as I'm finding out more and more.

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The crown of command helps if you go wide instead of deep with your stormvermin. If you face an enemy that goes deep instead of wide but can do more damage and probably has a similar amount of ranks at the end of combat then your unit sticks. Doing this and having your warlord in the unit guarantees at least a leadership 7 or 10 if you're not flanked. If you have a BSB nearby the stormvermin have to all get killed off instead of just half killed off or one quarter killed off. The point is I get more fighting potential out of a unit I can use till the very end rather than one that flees with 3/4 or 1/2 of it's guys left. It also allows me to go horde and get more attacks than I would by going deep.

Um...a few things:

I agree that the "variety" of the Skaven book includes a handful of awesome things, and a bunch of mediocre stuff. And the awesome stuff, per the nature of the army, falls into the category of Big Ol' Tar Pit or Small, Expensive Death-O-Matic.

And yes. Weapon Teams are fragile. They might go up to W2, but that's about it. Hide 'em behind stuff, and hope to get off one shot. That's all most of them need to make their points back
...though the Ratling Gun really should be Move and Fire.

Don't tell me that the Warp Lightning Cannon isn't as good as a Dwarf Cannon. Ours is 30pts cheaper--before you consider Runes or an Engineer--still wounds most blocks on a 2+, on average, and can kill a dozen of them, instead of five. Sure, it's not as effective against monsters. But I'll take "can potentially kill anything" over "kills this thing always, and this thing never" every time.

The complaints of "no vanguard/flyers/cavalry" is all the same complaint. You want movement. Doesn't matter how you get it.
I'd love to see some M7 Rat Ogres (since every story ever says OMG THEY"RE SO BIG BUT ALSO SO FAST!!1!), and maybe a cheaper Warp-Grinder. That's all we need.
...maybe some baby-A-bombs that can tunnell...little mutant rat-grubs...yeah...

We also won't need armour if we have units with a high T or W/pt ratio, since that's basically all the same. Armour tends to lean towards smaller units that die less, which I'm against. Skaven should be dying. A lot. Just make Rat Ogres a little cheaper, maybe offer some actually cool upgrades via the Master Moulder or something, and we're set.

And yeah, our magic is outdated. No surprise there.

Gutter Runners are awesome. They spread out their forces to prevent me from placing them? Perfect. When my opponent alters his Deployment due to my 90pt unit, I'm a happy general.

Still not seeing it with the Crown, though. So you're in a Horde. Which means you have less ranks. Which means your Leadership goes down faster. Sure, you're Stubborn. But a Stubborn Ld8 is a scary roll, even with the BSB nearby, when it's your general's life on the line.
I guess I see what you're doing, but why would your opponent ever deploy deep against you? They'd go just as wide, knowing they can beat you in combat, and wanting to prevent you from the tried-and-true Skaven tactic of the Grind of Attrition.

Yeah, I can't really say I feel you on the WLC. I always take 2, first thing. I fully expect it to be nerfed and/or go up in cost in the next book. It's that good to me.

Skaven function really, really well in lower point games. (1,000ish points). Stormvermin are a fantastic unit, 90point WLCs can devastate blocks of anything, and even Warlords shine because they can actually afford gear that other armies' lord choices can't fit into 250 points. Start getting into the "normal" (or so I'm told) 2,000 - 2,500 point games and things go downhill rather quickly.

@Warpsolution

I'm not even sure we have "mediocre" stuff, at least, for their costs. We have really good deals, and bad deals. Clan Rats might be the only really "mediocre" unit we have.

Stormvermin, Slaves, Plague Monks and our Rares are worth their costs easily. (Okay, maybe not the PCC but even at 100ppm it's a decent deal for not allowing armor saves.) Gutter Runners also. Giant Rats would be auto-includes if they actually counted for core.

As we agree, Nightrunners need to come down a point, maybe 2 if you want to be generous. Rat Swarms should probably be 5-10 cheaper (Tomb Swarms are 40ppm, cause fear and are poisoned; granted, they're special not "not-core-but-really-core"). I mean, we can list just about every other non-hero/lord choice, but mostly it's the fact that the skaven army book is old. Older than Beastmen even.

As to weapon teams, I disagree they should be basically one-shot units. W2 would be nice, especially if combined with a 5-10ish points drop each. The Doomflayer needs a complete rework or something, as I'm not even sure W2 would be enough for that piece of garbage. "Hide em behind stuff" doesn't really work when they are both short range and Move-Or-Fire. You'll basically spend half the game just getting the damn thing in range before hopefully not dying long enough to fire once; if you're me, you then probably misfire.

And that's another thing. Can we lose the "super unreliable" crap on the actual ruleset? There is no good reason to have worse misfire charts for everything; leave that crap in the fluff.

I won't lie that the warp lightning cannon is good. However I feel the doomwheel is better for monster killing as are normal cannons.

Weapons teams need more wounds. At least give a weapons team with 2 skaven crewing it two wounds for 2 skaven crewing it as reason enough. Heavy weapons teams in 40k work like this so I see no problem. I wouldn't even mind a slight point increase for it. I mean consider that lizardmen get weapons teams that can move and shoot, are aquatic (can march through rivers) and are tough enough to actually last some shooting or magic and you'll see why the weapons teams for skaven aren't durable enough even for the punch they give. Also hiding it in the shadow of a unit doesn't matter if you're being flanking by fast moving enemies that can shoot or anything with a range high enough to see them regardless (so cavalry, buildings, high ground, all ogres, etc.)

I wouldn't mind the super un-reliable misfire chart but I think we need stuff that makes up for it in sheer power.

We also could use a weapons team with more range and killing power. Make the ratling guns have a higher range if you have to.

Give the skaven something that moves fast. It could be war beasts, light cavalry, flyers or something but just give them something. We don't even have a unit with swiftstride currently. Also vanguard on a mostly slow highly expensive unit isn't enough.

I don't expect skaven to have armor but rat ogre riding stormvermin might be cool to see. It's not entirely out of the realm of possibility with the rat ogre bonebreakers.

My problem with skaven is that if you do go large targets you just get sniped by mass cannons or stone throwers. I don't have many ways to get rid of enemy war machines because everything would take several turns to get there. The only other shots I have would be the heavily kitted out warlord that gets skitterleapt up there which costs a lot and a gutter runner unit which can scout up there with opponents knowing just how to get around them through deployment. I can't just fly around my opponent like they can to me and nothing is fast enough that isn't also a large target and could get sniped by the cannons.

Ugh I dunno I just feel like I'm complaining too much now. The skaven have an old book. We need some new tricks. I don't even care if slaves or the abomination get nerfed a bit. I just want more choice in my army.

Weapon Teams kind of have a wound and a half, thanks to being able to take Look Out rolls.

As for the math on the plague claw, it seems a bit off to me. 5" template touches how many 20mm bases?


Here's a link I dug up:
http://warhammer.org.uk/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=104515&view=next

So for maximum carnage, a plague claw can score 45 hits.
Or, more likely way to express it, it can hit every model in most units.

The Warpfire Thrower is a super mobile Flame Cannon for half the cost. I know range is an issue, too, but I think it bears mentioning anyway.
Weapon Teams are and always will be fragile. Should they be less fragile? Yes. But they shouldn't suddenly become tough. One successful hit is all you need to make up the model's points several times over, except in the case of the Ratling Gun.

As for the Misfires, I'm going to have to firmly stand on the side of "Skaven are unreliable". Our stuff does crazy damage and does not cost all that much. There's got to be a downside. And I'd much rather this format than a less risk-less reward sort of approach. That's just not what the army's all about.

And yes, regular cannons and Doomwheels are better at monster hunting. But that's not the point. The point is: for less points, you get a unit that still makes monsters pretty nervous, but also that threatens EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE GAME, basically. Big units? Heavy armour? Multiple wounds? Ethereal? Clan Skryre's got your answer.

I just don't get it when people say, "I can't field a Bell, a Furnace, an A-bomb, and a Doomwheel, because they'll all just die to cannons". I mean, how many lucky shots would that take, to eliminate even half of those targets before they're in combat? How many cannons and stone throwers are people taking? How many armies have access to them? It's really not so overwhelming as that.
Also, I'd just throw it out there that the Stormbanner really does come in handy. I know it's pretty boring, at this point. But...eh? It's an old book.

That's also why I just can't stress enough why I like my Gutter Runners in small units. So they can actually fit where I need them to go.