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I decided to go with a skaven army. Something about the bigger the army they better. Like i can field 200 skaven against 50 high elves and lose 195 skaven in order to win...something about that i really like
What are some things about the army that i should know? Like what units are a must have, which ones are pointless.
anything you feel is useful really.

Thank you

Excellent Units (I will refrain from saying 'Must Have')
Warp Lightning Cannon: All my lists start here. Cheap, deadly to both monsters and infantry blocks, all around amazing. IMO, the best rare in the Skaven army book.

Hellpit Abomination: Few things inspire fear in most opponents like the HPA does. They tend to either perform spectacularly, or draw so much fire they don't do anything but shield your army. Either way, excellent choice.

Skavenslaves: One of the best tarpits in the game. Cheap, don't cause panic in your other units, and seriously, cheap.

Gutter Runners: With poisoned slings, they can pop up wherever you want and take out war machines that have to die. Or many monsters. They're a surgical strike team, even if they really can't stand up to much return fire.

Warlock Engineer: Seemingly weak, but one of the most versatile single models in the skaven book. Dirt cheap with a Doom Rocket that will almost always serve you well. Fairly cheap casters who can use a Warp Energy Condenser to boost their Warp Lightning. (85 points total for a level 1 wizard) Warlock Engineers are fantastically versatile, and very cheap. Other armies have core choices that cost more per model than these guys. (Granted, they're also generally better/stronger than these guys...)

Grey Seer: In 1,500+ point games, these are our go to level 4 caster. Against anything but Ogre Kingdom armies, the Dreaded 13th is an ever present threat. In 1,000 or less point games, they're a serious gamble since you can't really protect them. I tend to prefer...

Warlords: In low cost games, they're cheap LD7 for your army general's Inspiring Presence. They will never really go toe-to-toe with other army killing lords, but throw one on a war-litter or Bonebreaker and you can end up with a serious boost to your CR.

Or go full crazy and give him the Wizarding Hat in for-fun games. Sometimes it lets you drop a comet on a bunch of elf-things...

Plague Monks: I haven't actually tried them in a game yet (I have 60 waiting to be assembled...) but I hear good things about them. They're a decent blender, usually rocking 3 attacks per front rank model. Granted, S3 attacks, but that's what the Plague Banner is for.

Stormvermin: Along with Slaves these are my bread and butter core choices. The extra killyness they have over Clan Rats is worth the extra points to me. They're still cheap enough I'll generally out number my opponent, so I'd rather have the S4 from Halberds.

Rat Dart: Giant Rats don't count for Core points (something I hope gets changed in the next book), but a few units of 5-6 Giant Rats with a Packmaster form a unit commonly referred to as a "Rat Dart". These little buggers are fantastic chaff, whose can muck up your opponent's charges lanes, race up and deal with war machines, or generally be a nuisance to your opponent.

If you take the SC whose name escapes me and Giant Rats count for core, huge blocks of them in Horde formation can be nasty, since they get Attack in Extra ranks, even on the charge. Not really worthwhile otherwise.

Chieftain: Our BSB. Get one, load him out with the best defense you can give him. BSB is, to me, even more important than the general. That reroll has saved me more times than I can count. They're also fairly cheap if you want to bolster a line to hide other characters, but that's more of a niche idea IMO.

Alright Units
Clan Rats: Cheaper than Stormvermin but decidedly less killy. If you load up on slaves and either just need a small unit as a character bunker or are trying to max out weapon teams for some reason, Clan Rats aren't terrible. Even with Shields for the Parry save and armor boost, they're cheaper than Stormvermin. Speaking of weapon teams...

Weapon Teams: Some are useful, some are powerful, all are fragile and expensive. With only 1 wound and heavy armor, even the 4+ ward when they're near their parent isn't going to save them from even light shooting. Still, they have their uses:
-Warpfire Thrower: probably the most deadly of them. This guy is Move or Fire, and has a fairly short range, but when it hits it usually does some serious damage.
-Poisoned Wind Mortar: Great for high toughness or high armor models. Being Move and Fire, and being able to hide out of LOS and still be able to shoot makes it the most survivable. It's also the longest ranged.
-Ratling Gun: Cheapest of the weapon teams, and not all that amazing, but it still has its uses. I use them to clear chaff, take pot shots at small cavalry units, and pretty much any single model unit. It also has the most forgiving Misfire chart...
-Doomflayer/Warpdrill thing: these pretty much belong in the "underwhelming" category. Excellent segue to...

Underwhelming Units
Poisoned Wind Globadiers: They have some situational uses, but even with their Globes ignoring cover, the short range and low LD from being Skirmishers means they're really, really fragile and have to be up in your opponent's face. Still, their ability to throw into ANY combat has its uses, and if you're trying to max out on Poisoned Wind Mortars and have met your Core points, 50 points for 5 Globadiers gives you a chance to take a PWM. Globadiers aren't completely awful as chaff, it's just Rat Darts are better and cheaper.

Warplock Jezzails: I want to love these guys, I really do. I commonly take them in my lists, despite them being down here in "Underwhelming". They're expensive, BS3, and their low LD creates an issue: If you go deep, your LD goes up but you have 20 point models not shooting. If you go wide, your Ld sucks. Still, a S6 Armor Piercing gun with a 36" range is nothing to scoff at. If the unit were cheaper or BS4 they would be worthwhile, as it is...

Rat Swarm: Too expensive for what you get. I have a bunch I keep on hand purely for when my HPA dies... Still, they're fast and have lots of attacks if you can throw a Bless with Filth on them. Still, your points are generally better spent elsewhere. Bless with Filth? I must be segueing into...

Plague Priest: Sure, he's T4 and W2, but he's still fragile. Plague Magic is generally short range and once in CC a Plague Priest isn't hard to splat. Still, give him a ward save, a Censor and a unit of Plague Monks, and he will surprise you (and hopefully your opponent!). OTOH, throw him on a Plague Furnace with a Flail and he might easily move up to "Pretty Good" status.

Plague Censor Bearers: Expensive and Fragile, they're pretty much a one shot missile in my (admittedly limited) experience. They run up, kill stuff with the Censor, throw out some decent attacks, then get slaughtered if they don't break their opponent. They're skirmishers, so their Ld isn't great even with Plague Monks/Priest around. Still, they'll definitely do what you need them to do (most of the time).

Rat Ogres: Another unit I want to love but just can't justify the points on. They're expensive, have no save and only T4 to protect them. They look awesome though (well, the newer models at least, and some of the old metals...), and can do decent damage if they hit your enemies lines. (And that's a big if.) Generally run either really small (2 ROgres and 1/2 packmasters for the Ogre-Dart) or really big (8-10 rat ogres). I generally run mine as space fillers in my Stormvermin right now. :(

Plague Claw Catapult: Large template that ignores armor saves? Heck ye-oh... S2. If you're running plague and can Wither an enemy unit a few times you might get a decent return. As it is, you'll have to hope for quantity of hits and a bit of lucky rolling, since even weedy T3 elves are only hurt 1/3 of the time.

Missed a few units, but that's my initial go at it. Gotta eat, and I'll fill in the rest if someone else hasn't by then. Pretty much everyone else but the Doomwheel belongs in Underwhelming, I think.

Hm. I'm curious to see more. I'm tempted to dip my toes back into Fantasy again (and I'll be plunging in completely if the new rules for 40k are horrible) and I'm looking at Skaven and am always curious to see more on them.

Is the Bell Seer as much fun as the model looks like?

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Hm. I'm curious to see more. I'm tempted to dip my toes back into Fantasy again (and I'll be plunging in completely if the new rules for 40k are horrible) and I'm looking at Skaven and am always curious to see more on them.

Is the Bell Seer as much fun as the model looks like?

It sounds totally valid though you'd have to run it 5 models wide with an assassin on each flank. Might sound odd but that's how it works. Forces the enemy to face 2 assassins and a hard to kill bell (as well as a grey seer that'll die quickly hehe).

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Hm. I'm curious to see more. I'm tempted to dip my toes back into Fantasy again (and I'll be plunging in completely if the new rules for 40k are horrible) and I'm looking at Skaven and am always curious to see more on them.

Is the Bell Seer as much fun as the model looks like?

It sounds totally valid though you'd have to run it 5 models wide with an assassin on each flank. Might sound odd but that's how it works. Forces the enemy to face 2 assassins and a hard to kill bell (as well as a grey seer that'll die quickly hehe).

From what little I've read so far it sounds like Stormvermin pushing the Bell is a great combo since it makes them Unbreakable. And they're just as durable as Clanrats with shields, but better at actually fighting to protect the Bell.

But I'm willing to be told I'm wrong.

I did run across one recommendation that if you take Clanrats you basically want 1 for every 10 points in your list, and you want 1 Skavenslave for every 20 points in your list (some quick math worked this out to 300 bodies in 3 100 Rat Blocks at 2k....running the cost of half the list). Is this a good rule or a bit overboard on the "boys before toys" approach?

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Hm. I'm curious to see more. I'm tempted to dip my toes back into Fantasy again (and I'll be plunging in completely if the new rules for 40k are horrible) and I'm looking at Skaven and am always curious to see more on them.

Is the Bell Seer as much fun as the model looks like?

It sounds totally valid though you'd have to run it 5 models wide with an assassin on each flank. Might sound odd but that's how it works. Forces the enemy to face 2 assassins and a hard to kill bell (as well as a grey seer that'll die quickly hehe).

From what little I've read so far it sounds like Stormvermin pushing the Bell is a great combo since it makes them Unbreakable. And they're just as durable as Clanrats with shields, but better at actually fighting to protect the Bell.

But I'm willing to be told I'm wrong.

I did run across one recommendation that if you take Clanrats you basically want 1 for every 10 points in your list, and you want 1 Skavenslave for every 20 points in your list (some quick math worked this out to 300 bodies in 3 100 Rat Blocks at 2k....running the cost of half the list). Is this a good rule or a bit overboard on the "boys before toys" approach?

Actually I disagree on the clanrats with shields bit. The clanrats with shields run 5 wide are decent at defending and it totally depends on what they're fighting since that parry save can actually save quite a few more guys. From recent experience you would want to run stormvermin wide but you might want one unit of 50 or more given that skaven spells can only augment one unit at a time instead of 5 with one spell like some higher cast versions of 8th edition magic.

For the most part don't expect skaven to really do much killing. You should deploy slaves and clanrats deep instead of wide and then come around with another hard hitting unit to do all the killing if at all possible (abomination, stormvermin or special choices).

People don't seem to take shields on stormvermin as they find it's more affordable not to use them (you'd only use them against missile attacks anyway what with halberds being two handed weapons).

Skaven rare choices can be amazing or used to be. They're still pretty good but they're nowhere near as fearsome as they were when 8th just came out. Now that we have the 2nd oldest book even wood elves might be higher tier than us. We'll have to see. I never thought I'd hear somebody talk about a competitive wood elf list before but there ya go.

Gutter runners can be nice but warp lightning cannons can usually do what they do better. The only excepting part to this is clearing up small units of flyers, fast cavalry or war beasts which doesn't always end up working for gutter runners anyway and would probably be a waste of points. If you have to use small slave units or even possibly your own chaff to charge his chaff or get it out of the way. If small slave blocks or chaff units die it's no real big deal. I mean it's a loss of like 40 points of slaves or 20 or so points of giant rats with a handler. Normally I prefer the slaves since they take more casualties to panic and won't panic anything but other slaves. That said if they do take panic they tend to fail unless within the general's range which is often helped if it's from the bell unit.

I never heard that rule with clanrats and slaves but I have heard you should have at least 100 models for every 1,000 points you're playing.

Skaven can be tough these days since there's not a lot we can do. Our movement is mostly 5"-6" with no swiftstride or flying movement across the board. Our rules have been FAQ'd to h*ll. The rares are good but not as good as before. Core just needs to be swarmed. Our special choices kind of suck. We lack any sort of melee hitting power except with the abomination, rat ogres and censer bearers. The furnace dies too quickly against a cannon army. Our magic needs boosted versions with higher casting values so that our plague magic isn't all stuck at 12" range and filled with mostly crappy low end spells. We have no armor. Our shooting outside of gutter runners and warp lightning cannons falls kind of flat. If we ever had to wear the enemy down with shooting the only things that might be able to do it are the doom rocket and the warpfire thrower which can be shot to death by simple cavalry with bows, war machines on high ground and possibly even flyers. Warpfire throwers can be awesome but they tend to suck against any sort of decent ranged army to the point where you may as well just put them back away when facing dwarfs and empire. The only other good weapons team is the poisoned wind mortar and only because it can usually out-range most threats. That said when warpfire throwers hit with good shots it's absolutely glorious. Though sadly people learn how to take them down and it's generally not that hard.

Plague monks are also decent in that they can take hits pretty well. Toughness 4 on a 7 points unit is pretty good but you might want to run quite a lot of them in horde formation. They can go well with the furnace but the furnace generally dies to cannons and basically any terrain which isn't completely flat. Seriously rivers, trees and pretty much anything in general hurts the bell and the furnace but the difference is the bell can take it whereas the furnace can't.

Anyway long story short the best stuff skaven have is mostly our core and our rares. Just hit hard with rares and swarm the crap out of the enemy with core units. You'll need a bajillion skaven so get to it. Get lots of island of blood skaven models off ebay or something as you'll need em.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Actually I disagree on the clanrats with shields bit. The clanrats with shields run 5 wide are decent at defending and it totally depends on what they're fighting since that parry save can actually save quite a few more guys. From recent experience you would want to run stormvermin wide but you might want one unit of 50 or more given that skaven spells can only augment one unit at a time instead of 5 with one spell like some higher cast versions of 8th edition magic.

Fair enough on the Clanrats. Shield and Spears was the thing I was seeing a lot of in my small amounts of looking, but they were also talking horde formations to try and drown the enemy in dice. Personally I like the sound of the Stormvermin more though. A massive block with the Bell would be a hard to shift block that could be fun to play with (at least now and then, I saw an interesting conversion for the Bell Seer model too I'd like to play with as I like that Seer model more than the classic ones so there'd be utility off the bell too).

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised of Stormvermin dropped just slightly in cost (like by a single point) just so GW can encourage people to buy more of them in the next book but maybe I'm being cynical with how this edition has pushed the large model count formations.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
For the most part don't expect skaven to really do much killing. You should deploy slaves and clanrats deep instead of wide and then come around with another hard hitting unit to do all the killing if at all possible (abomination, stormvermin or special choices).

Combat res, swarming the enemy and the rares do seem to be the big tactics I see advised.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
People don't seem to take shields on stormvermin as they find it's more affordable not to use them (you'd only use them against missile attacks anyway what with halberds being two handed weapons).

Yeah, the inability to get a bonus to the save in close combat definitely makes that less desirable so I can understand why people would avoid bumping points costs up for no real benefit.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Skaven rare choices can be amazing or used to be. They're still pretty good but they're nowhere near as fearsome as they were when 8th just came out. Now that we have the 2nd oldest book even wood elves might be higher tier than us. We'll have to see. I never thought I'd hear somebody talk about a competitive wood elf list before but there ya go.

Lucky me that I like the HPA, Warp Lighting Cannon and the Doomwheel models then. I'm actually building/painting a Doomwheel in my free time right now because I've always wanted one, and even if I don't pick up Skaven I want it in my collection.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Gutter runners can be nice but warp lightning cannons can usually do what they do better. The only excepting part to this is clearing up small units of flyers, fast cavalry or war beasts which doesn't always end up working for gutter runners anyway and would probably be a waste of points. If you have to use small slave units or even possibly your own chaff to charge his chaff or get it out of the way. If small slave blocks or chaff units die it's no real big deal. I mean it's a loss of like 40 points of slaves or 20 or so points of giant rats with a handler. Normally I prefer the slaves since they take more casualties to panic and won't panic anything but other slaves. That said if they do take panic they tend to fail unless within the general's range which is often helped if it's from the bell unit.

I was a little dissapointed to read that about Gutter Runners. I'd read good things about using them to deal with enemy Warmachines.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I never heard that rule with clanrats and slaves but I have heard you should have at least 100 models for every 1,000 points you're playing.

Fair enough. 200 bodies at 2k is still a lot of bodies.

Casually mentioned it to a friend who plays Warriors of Chaos and he was not happy about the idea of dealing with that many bodies because they could just slowly grind his army down. I can't imagine that he'd appreciate 200 anymore than that though.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Skaven can be tough these days since there's not a lot we can do. Our movement is mostly 5"-6" with no swiftstride or flying movement across the board. Our rules have been FAQ'd to h*ll. The rares are good but not as good as before. Core just needs to be swarmed. Our special choices kind of suck. We lack any sort of melee hitting power except with the abomination, rat ogres and censer bearers. The furnace dies too quickly against a cannon army. Our magic needs boosted versions with higher casting values so that our plague magic isn't all stuck at 12" range and filled with mostly crappy low end spells. We have no armor. Our shooting outside of gutter runners and warp lightning cannons falls kind of flat. If we ever had to wear the enemy down with shooting the only things that might be able to do it are the doom rocket and the warpfire thrower which can be shot to death by simple cavalry with bows, war machines on high ground and possibly even flyers. Warpfire throwers can be awesome but they tend to suck against any sort of decent ranged army to the point where you may as well just put them back away when facing dwarfs and empire. The only other good weapons team is the poisoned wind mortar and only because it can usually out-range most threats. That said when warpfire throwers hit with good shots it's absolutely glorious. Though sadly people learn how to take them down and it's generally not that hard.

So basically smart play matters just as much as what you play. Good to know.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Plague monks are also decent in that they can take hits pretty well. Toughness 4 on a 7 points unit is pretty good but you might want to run quite a lot of them in horde formation. They can go well with the furnace but the furnace generally dies to cannons and basically any terrain which isn't completely flat. Seriously rivers, trees and pretty much anything in general hurts the bell and the furnace but the difference is the bell can take it whereas the furnace can't.

First I'm hearing about the Monks having pretty much any redeeming qualities, but good to know.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Anyway long story short the best stuff skaven have is mostly our core and our rares. Just hit hard with rares and swarm the crap out of the enemy with core units. You'll need a bajillion skaven so get to it. Get lots of island of blood skaven models off ebay or something as you'll need em.

Sounds like a fair bit of advice there!

Well there are other players here and they probably can give better advice. TanKoL plays skaven if I'm not mistaken and Warpsolution is the best skaven player here though I don't think he played for the longest time.

Plague monks aren't super good but I can imagine they can take hits better than most anything else. Toughness 4 on 7 points per model hordes esp. with the plague banner on one of them is pretty good. I'm almost considering taking them outside of the furnace units but near the bell unit just so I can have a ton of them and the enemy will have a harder time chewing through them. They're not great I won't lie but they could be decent if horded.

Anyway if possible get advice from other people. There are a lot of better players than me out there. If I tend to be saying something away from the norm chances are the other people are probably right .

---------

You know it's actually kind of weird because though rat swarms are expensive I feel like they have uses. Unlike slaves you can keep them on the flanks of your army, they are skirmishers so can reform easily and they can easily march with Leadership 10 in case they're within 8" of an enemy unit. They are mostly there to kill enemy war machines and can do other things.

I mostly don't use them now because a heavily armored and warded warlord on war litter with skitterleap will generally get rid of war machines infinitely better than they do and much quicker too. If the enemy has no war machine you can get skitterleap near wizards if they're in weak enough units (they usually are but those units are behind everything else). You might not kill the enemy wizard but you will definitely keep the high level wizard in combat and thus prevent some of the more damaging spells from hitting your army. Which when you think about it could easily save you the game. Sadly you need to get skitterleap off first and once aware that you do this you might want to throw plenty of dice at it miscast or no. That might seem dumb and kind of is but cannons can wreck skaven large targets and when you think about it that's most of all the hard hitting stuff in our army and all the good hard hitting stuff. Besides you never know if the bell will roll the right result in time (though hopefully it does roll the d3 wounds per toughness 7 unit result). It kind of sucks because if you take the storm banner you'd be better off not taking the warp lightning cannons or the gutter runners in many cases and if you take the bell you'd need the storm banner so you would need to limit your early shooting to almost nothing.

It's a rather rough road for the skaven sometimes. Sometimes I wonder if I'd be better off taking the many units with warlords or chieftains in each to help leadership. It seemed to work well for one guy I played against. Perhaps I could eliminate most of the large targets altogether. All it takes is one cannon shot getting through to snipe out your grey seer on the bell and if that happens your general is dead and you have to spend most of the game without good leadership. It's just ridiculous and it doesn't take much either. So yeah the bell can be awesome but it can be random and sometimes sucks. At least it makes a unit unbreakable and sometimes it rolls good results though I've gone some games with no good results.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Hm. I'm curious to see more. I'm tempted to dip my toes back into Fantasy again (and I'll be plunging in completely if the new rules for 40k are horrible) and I'm looking at Skaven and am always curious to see more on them.

Is the Bell Seer as much fun as the model looks like?

There are, in my experience, three ways to run the Bell.

5 wide with at least one other character: This creates a narrow unit which reduces the number of attacks coming at you, allowing the unit to survive longer. My only issue with this build is that it may protect the unit, but it doesn't protect the Grey Seer since the enemy can still simply direct their attacks at him. He's still T4, and the 6+/4++ save will only hold out so long.

Horde: The unit pushing a Bell is Unbreakable, so this is a rare instance where you don't have to be deep for the Ld bonus. This allows you to throw out more (hopefully S4 Stormvermin) attacks, which is good. Against many other normal Core choices, Stormvermin actually can hold their own. I'm not a super big fan of this format, because it's a midway between narrow and...

Super wide. I mean like... 19 wide: The point here is to make your unit as killy as possible. Naturally, you'll need a HUGE unit pushing the Bell, but you don't have to be super deep since the unit is Unbreakable as long as the Bell survives. Being this wide means that while movement can and will be extremely awkward, you are also able to take on most enemy blocks without the bell being anywhere close to the combat. All credit goes to (I think) Warpsolution for coming up with this. I have not personally tried this one yet, mostly because my Bell broke and I'm converting a new one in my (nonexistant) spare time...

Rat Swarms don't have terrible stats, they just cost too much for what you get (and don't count for Core either). Sure, they can race up a flank on their own and fight war machines and the like. Know what else can? A rat dart that's half the points of the swarm. Gutter runners that can do it from range, and can show up anywhere.

Oh, as to Generals. If you have the points for it: Warlord general. Grey Seers will receive a LOT of negative attention from your enemy. Moreso if they're on a Bell. Starting in at 90 points, a Warlord with a 5++(or preferably 4++) and a halberd is a not-awful choice for your general. No, he won't be going toe-to-toe with a Bloodthirster or Doombull or Warriors of Chaos. But what he can do is sit in a unit, buffing Ld to any other unit near by. He can dish out damage to most core choices and will generally be able to hide far better than a Grey Seer general. He also doesn't run the risk of Dimensionally Cascading himself into oblivion, and gets his 2++ LoS! against cannonballs.

Gutter Runners vs WLC isn't even a match up. They should almost always be going for different targets:
Warp Lightning Cannons ignore armor saves, have variable strength (average of 6 when they don't misfire though), blow up in a small template, and inflict Multiple Wounds (d6). One of the biggest things I see people do is treat the WLC like a regular Empire or Dwarf Cannon; it's not. It's basically a laser guided stone thrower. You use WLCs to put a hurt on large blocks (because models under both the line AND the template get hit), with things like Monstrous Infantry/Cavalry being your prime target. Big footprint, multiple wounds per model, usually tough. Another prime target? Big blocks of badass infantry ala Temple Guard, Warriors of Chaos or Greatswords. Gutter Runner slings are useless against these things. You CAN target monsters, but there are better options for dealing with those than the WLC. (See: Doomwheel)

Gutter Runners should be going after high toughness, low armor targets. War Machines being T7 at range with no save (or usually a crappy save) are a perfect example. Monsters like Giants, Sphinxes, or anything else with a high toughness are your prime targets, because Poisoned Attacks avoid Toughness entirely on a 6 to hit. Killing chaff is not what Gutter Runners should be doing. Leave that to Warp Lightning (the spell from Warlock Engineers, not the Cannon), Ratling Guns or your own chaff units.

Excellent Unit
Doomwheel: Not quite as durable as the Hellpit, the Doomwheel never the less has an excellent place in most lists. His Random Movement means that enemy units don't get a charge reaction, which is nice for keeping those tricksy skirmishers in place. Most importantly though, this guy is one of the top monster hunters in the game. His 3 shots automatically hit and have multiple wounds d6. Strength is variable (average of 6 when you don't misfire, giving you 4+ to wound most monsters), but that's about the only real setback. If I can spare Rare points after 2x WLCs and a Hellpit, Doomwheel is very hard to resist.

I-don't-really-know Units
Night Runners: Full disclosure here- I've only tried Night Runners once and I turned them into a tunneling team for funsies. They pretty much popped up, lobbed some sling stones ineffectually, and then died. All that said, I've been meaning to give them another try at some point. They're a shooting unit that gets 2 attacks in CC thanks to 2x HW base. You can give them slings, which gives you a Core shooting unit option. They also get a free move at the start of the game, allowing you to put them out early, and then reposition them a bit after your opponent has deployed. One thing I did notice was that my opponent was very quick to reposition his forces to block my tunnel token, so if you want to mess with your opponent's head a little bit, Night Runners fit the bill. That said, the models are ugly. Like, seriously ugly. Ugly monkey face rat models. Ugh.

Assassins: My only real knowledge comes from seeing other people use them. Weeping Blade + Potion of Strength seems to be a popular combination to use- you pop up in B2B with an enemy character, chug a potion, and go to town with your Armor Piercing, Multiple Wounds (d3) weapon. It seem like it should work well, but at 170(175?) points for the combo... That said, I've been meaning to use one and see. Keep in mind that even though they don't come with any armor, nothing prevents them from taking Magic Armor. 45 points for the Armor of Silvered Steel gets you a 2+/4++ save, which makes for a survivable little bugger, who will still have Poisoned Attacks even with no magic weapon.

I think that covers every unit barring Special Characters. My group doesn't really use them, so I have 0 experience with them at all. Always wanted to use Thrott to make Rat Ogres core and then Skweel to hopefully give them a Regen save. Stupidly large amount of points for a gimmick build though. I do understand that of all our SCs, Ikit Claw stands out as the best. He's a level 3 wizard with decent CC stats and a portable WFT that he can reroll the artillery die for. Not bad at all.

Rat swarms are also unbreakable and can be a decent threat to enemy war machines till an opponent destroys them completely with the skirmishing ability giving another negative modifier to hit them with ranged units. They're not great but two or three units of two swarms per unit seems ok.

Thing is most skaven units don't put out enough firepower to deal with chaff which is why I kind of suggest using small slave blocks to charge them and deal with them. Ratling guns just don't put out the firepower, die easily and take up room for a much better weapon team.

If any decent opponent knows you have scouts they'll deploy cannons far behind the rest of their army and make sure you can't deploy behind their lines. At that point you have the army between you and the cannon. If you don't get first turn they'll get charged and you'll have to flee them and leadership 7 isn't that great overall so far away. Besides any decent empire or dwarf army could just easily shoot them to death no problem if they really needed to. It's not like anything else is going to be in range on turn one anyway.

Against monsters warp lightning cannons are decent. The doomwheel is better but it has random movement and you never know how far you'll roll (could be a few inches and could be 18"). The enemy could do a good job avoiding the doomwheel and remember that doomwheels have the double edged sword that is 'immune to psychology'. That means if it's charged it has to elect to hold. Some might ask why you'd want to flee the doomwheel but if a doomwheel gets charged by anything other than chaff or weak infantry it just dies. All it has in combat are the d3 grind attacks and 2d6 rat attacks if it gets charged. At that point even a f*cking monster could kill it. It's tricky to use the doomwheel the right way esp. since it can be faster than other units.

@steamdragon: I'm not sure whether you have more experience than me or if you're just getting all this stuff from online players. I suppose part of why I'm not the best is I try new things and often don't throw up a net list. I include good rares sure but I never throw out anything that stupid or annoying. I gotta admit the double assassin with bell loadout did give me the idea for triple plague priest with one riding a furnace. I may actually just throw out 3 plague priests without the furnace and give each a censer. I'd probably keep em just 5 wide if possible with all 3 in front and one command model in back if that's possible (god I need to get better acquainted with the rules again as it's been a while).

Rat Swarms are indeed Unbreakable, which is a decent plus over Rat Darts. Rat Swarms are 2+ for 25ppm, so 50 points a unit minimum. I can get 2 separate rat darts for each rat swarm. I admit, the only time I've ever tried Rat Swarms is when they came out of a Hellpit, and they munched the crap outta the peasants that finally downed my Hellpit.

Most chaff units are small, you generally need to only kill 2 or so to force a panic check. Ratling Guns can easily kill 2 hounds or whatever. Sure, against Razorgors you run into trouble, but Razorgors are pretty nonstandard "chaff" (if you can really even call them that). As for better weapon teams, I'll be honest, I generally don't field them anymore. They're just too fragile and basically free points. Now, my meta is full of elves, lizardmen, dwarves empire and tomb kings, so YMMV if you're not facing armies with lots of shooting. If I do take weapon teams, it's almost always the Ratling Gun. I can almost always get 3 dice into shooting, which is usually enough. I don't need to wipe a unit, just force a break test or clear a lane. It's also the cheapest, so it gives up less VP when it dies.

Gutter Runners: don't forget that in addition to Scout, Gutter Runners get Sneaky Infiltrators which I almost always use to deploy them. This has two main effects: 1, my enemy usually castles around his war machines giving my WLCs a better target area. 2, when they do show up, they can show up on any table edge. Annoying flyer in my back field trying to kill my war machines? I can come in on my own edge. Fight not going well on a flank, they can plink or speed bump as needed. Most common use is to show up, waste a war machine or two, and then get slaughtered.

And yeah, a Doomwheel that gets charged is a stuck Doomwheel. Then again, your Warp Lightning jolts have an 18" range, so if you try to stay to the outside you can force your opponent to either risk some long charges, or take a few rounds of shooting before he charges you. Random Movement is a risk you take with both the Doomwheel and the HPA, but they're worth the risk. I've had my HPA go 17 inches on the first turn, which needless to say threw a wrench in my plans a bit.

As to my experience/lists. I don't net list, and I rarely play outside my group of friends. I usually field numerous sub-par units like Jezzails. One list contained not one, not two, but three units of Globadiers (for a second PWM). I almost never have more than 1 block of slaves (because I hate ranking them up).

Despite that, I have an at least even record with my Skaven. One game against High Elves would probably have been a win instead of a loss, but I took 2 WFTs and they both died without doing any damage at all. 140 free VPs to my opponent.

I actually like the fluff of that list you wrote. I just don't know about the list itself though. While it has fun toys the problem is no unit is quite big enough to really hold the enemy down while you lob shots into it. As you said weapons teams go down fast and hard. There's nothing wrong with some of it just you need either decent sized units to kill off the enemy after the weapons teams are done softening them up or you need to just have some other units doing something. Ugh I dunno whenever I look at skaven lists these days I just feel like there's always something missing and something that must be added but can't be.

I dunno weapons teams sound like fun but warpfire throwers are best against melee armies, ratling guns don't do enough and should stay behind lines to kill chaff (but even then take up a weapons team slot and don't do enough) and mortars are the mobile and good ones.

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My question is how to deal with chaff as skaven. Currently I just try to keep a decent amount of movement between them and my slave units and I try to get them to come to me or wait a while. If they flee against my small slave blocks it's all the better for me and if they hold at least one will probably get in there.

Well I suppose facing chaff isn't my problem so much that there's 2 separate types of chaff. The abomination and doomwheel can handle slower moving chaff ok but the fast moving kind (movement 8, 9 or flying chaff) tend to go into the flanks of random movement units and guide them off into nowhere. At that point I dunno what to do. I suppose against flyers I could use the storm banner or howling warpgale but it might not go off. I dunno I face lizardmen a lot and it never ends well. It's a tough battle every time. I know it's ill advised but if I face light cavalry and fast war hounds I may very well have to use gutter runners against them. I really don't want to but I dunno what to do. Perhaps if i have enough plague priests from that one list i can use 'cloud of corruption' but i don't think they'd let it go off and it only has 12" range. Ugh it's just tough to figure out what to do. Nothing we can use feels good enough unless i just advanced with a freaking wall of dudes. It helped once against skinks but otherwise i just wouldn't know what to do. Some slaves also get torn up in combat by too many skinks these days with poisoned close combat. It's so weird how much more potent lizardmen are now in close combat even with dinky little skinks. Slaves used to beat skinks in melee but not anymore when they have poisoned melee attacks.

I'm probably not a bad player it's just I need a bajillion slaves to face my opponent's in the real world as well as to set up my screaming bell though I always put things off for later :(. Online I face the baddest bad *sses around and they don't mess around.

I'll admit I've had little exp, but I frequently use globadiers. It's mostly for fluff but I find sucking 2-3 behind a shield wall of slaves is not only fun but semi-competitive. You just hold the enemy up with a slave horde and bomb globes into combat. You might lose a couple slaves, but it's better than losing a few chaos warriors our black orcs.