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So I know some think rat swarms are bad but given I am not using more magic based of an army with some decent shooting I'm starting to like them for several things. Keep in minds these are all going to be done in units of 2.

Re-directors: Rat swarms have leadership 10 and can't be march blocked easily because of this. Being skirmishers means you can march and then reform whatever way you wish to force the enemy to reform or to overrun into a disadvantageous position . This is actually pretty huge in my opinion. Considering it can ruin an opponents battle line as you shoot them in the back or magic them is generally good news. Not only that but rat swarms need to be completely destroyed in order to be stopped and being skirmishers should help esp. since with slaves or other units doing re-directing they can be panicked easily and run out of the general's leadership bubble in case somebody is trying to panic them. So basically they're always a threat and consider that charges come first before everything else and it's a serious threat for plenty of opponents.

Can hold up some gunlines: Now sure it may or may not do much against faster shooting gunlines but against anybody that can only either move or shoot it is pretty tremendous. Just stay out of their unit's maximum range and then attack them in the flank. Theoretically you can hold up some gunlines this way and prevent the rest of your force being shot for at least a turn and perhaps more if you're lucky. Considering shooting lines are generally deployed 2 wide having only 2 guys attack back and only 1 extra rank and not much else for combat resolution when you're flanked and charged doesn't equal good combat resolution.

Can be shot over: It's not always a super sweet deal but you can always take some slave hordes as meat shields if you need them to block line of sight. However if you need to shoot over your rat swarms to hit units behind them or use magic missiles then this helps with the re-directing tactic even more.

Can kill war machines: They can possibly kill war machines. It really depends but if deployed on flanks against some gun-line armies it should work fairly well. Having leadership 10 helps vs march block so they won't be held down very easily.

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So yeah they may be fairly expensive when you take enough, they don't count against core or anything and they're not too tough besides being skirmishers. However I feel like they actually can make up for normal weaknesses in a skaven army. Finding good leadership in a skaven army is hard if you're anywhere away from the general and BSB or without placing characters in every unit. With my load-out with warpstone tokens boosting magic and some shooters I should be able to make a fortress and re-direct the enemy for a good while without issue.

Perhaps rat swarms aren't good for every army but if you play the stand back and shoot/magic type of skaven army is should help a lot and then you can just finish the rest of the enemy off with your guys after being thrown off course horribly.

step 1: take a full rat dart for every rat swarm base you otherwise take
step 2: profit

They are only better if you're taking advantage of the swarms unbreakable. And that means lots of them on the flanks away from the generals leadership.

While they cannot panic, they do cause panic. So it's best to keep them away from other units.
If you are going up against a gunline, taking a lot of rat swarms can help.

TanKoL wrote:
step 1: take a full rat dart for every rat swarm base you otherwise take
step 2: profit

They're not skirmishers though so they can't march and turn whichever direction you wish. I may take another look at the rat darts though. It still won't help if I'm trying to shoot a unit behind them and it won't help if a terror causing enemy tries to fake a charge nearby just to make them flee out of the way (since it'll be out of the general's range. Course a terror causing unit doing that would be giving up a lot to try to charge a rat dart away. I'm also not terrible fond of the fact rat darts can panic other things. I dunno we'll just have to see.

Oh and you did that wrong.

Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit.

Use them as a decent anvil and free up more versatile clan rats and slaves for better use.

Swarms are not anvils. Period. And in an army with access to perhaps the best tarpit in the game there is nothing they do better than something else does for a better price.

 Brennonjw wrote:
Use them as a decent anvil and free up more versatile clan rats and slaves for better use.

Oh yeah. And they crumble to bits after a single round. Because that's a decent anvil.

 thedarkavenger wrote:

 Brennonjw wrote:
Use them as a decent anvil and free up more versatile clan rats and slaves for better use.

Oh yeah. And they crumble to bits after a single round. Because that's a decent anvil.

Oh yeah. And having a 15 point warlock engineer proves my point. so now we have good leadership and even 4 bases is still 20 wounds is yeah, it is a decent anvil .

@Brennonjw: I think rat swarms would be good but only for facing war machines, re-directing and to flank a shooting unit (forcing an enemy to deal with them by wasting shooting or something else trying to kill them all). I don't expect them to hold up at all for very long. I have heard in the FAQ that slaves are able to be shot into without randomization which would be even more ridiculous with magic missiles and everything else. Dunno if i'll need the swarms as much anymore if that's the case but swarms don't block line of sight like slaves do so I might. Problem is the skaven FAQ/errata is long because the book is a mess with its rules.

 Brennonjw wrote:

Oh yeah. And having a 15 point warlock engineer proves my point. so now we have good leadership and even 4 bases is still 20 wounds is yeah, it is a decent anvil .

I can understand just enough of this to be able to tell you that you're wrong. Swarms are not anvils. End of story.

@Brennonjw: It's nice coming up with new ideas for your army. Trust me skaven are stuck in the same build mostly being about rares and core with mostly slaves. It's so basic it's just ridiculous. Trying new things is always nice to keep things interesting. Just sometimes ideas don't work. If I remember I was the one that suggested the triple warlock warp lightning build (substitute a spell for warp lightning on every warlock and give em warpstone tokens) and it's an alright build. Sometimes these things have good results and sometimes they don't do so well. I have play-tested the swarms a bit and they help somewhat but mostly if you have shooting/magic to take advantage of it.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

Oh and don't worry about that alex87 guy I've seen him be nasty to others including myself so don't worry about anything he says.

To slow on the edit there pal...
By all means point out where I have been nasty. Also, if you're telling someone not to worry about anything I say when I am telling him that swarms aren't anvils, then perhaps it's best for you to not bother commenting.
And for the record, me getting frustrated at your inability to take on advice offered in reply to your long-winded, un-edited rants is not the same as me being nasty.

alex87 wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

Oh and don't worry about that alex87 guy I've seen him be nasty to others including myself so don't worry about anything he says.

To slow on the edit there pal...
By all means point out where I have been nasty. Also, if you're telling someone not to worry about anything I say when I am telling him that swarms aren't anvils, then perhaps it's best for you to not bother commenting.
And for the record, me getting frustrated at your inability to take on advice offered in reply to your long-winded, un-edited rants is not the same as me being nasty.

I edited it because I wanted to be nice and get along without arguing. Course you decided to keep it going.

I've seen you be nasty to me when I was unhappy with the skaven army book. I felt it needed a re-vamp. At this point I'm not as unhappy with skaven but I seem to be having some bad luck with them. I am thinking part of it is because I haven't been changing up my army much in years which would explain it (I haven't been making models much either or going as into the game as hardcore as I used to). The skaven army is suffering from age though and that's true whether or not you want to believe it esp. considering how magic is for skaven. Others would also say it's been FAQ'd to hell because the rules were poorly written. People have recently been saying the army has also been downgraded. There's nothing wrong with me wanting my army to have more options, more new units and less of the same 'go to' lists that everybody uses. I've been told vampire counts have an army where everything can be decent and useful. That's what I would like to play with.

My rants also were not aimed to insult you. Remember that and remember you insulted me for having that rant. It was probably based more upon my lose streaks which feel strange for all the years I've played and how many wins I used to have in comparison. If nothing else it seems to show there's power creep going on. Possibly I suck as well but I dunno. Thing is in the GW I play in my army has mostly been the same because I can't afford to buy all the sh*t I need and when I play online everybody can take everything and is a complete bad *ss tournament level player.

So yeah maybe part of it comes down to if you have more money to throw down in real life you can buy more crap and do better. It always helps to have a crap ton of options. Just wish I found out what was good and what's not before having to throw down hundreds to find out in real life :(.

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By not worrying about what you say I meant I've seen you nasty to others. You may or may not be right but it matters the way in which you respond rather than the response. You could have been nice about it but decided to insult me instead. That's why I said that. The content of telling me how to correct my mistakes didn't need to be insulting but you made it that way.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

I edited it because I wanted to be nice and get along without arguing. Course you decided to keep it going.

You made an unprovoked, inflammatory comment specifically directed at me, expected me not to take offence to it and now you're trying to claim some sort of moral high ground. Really?

I've seen you be nasty to me when I was unhappy with the skaven army book.

Ill reiterate my point from my last post. Getting frustrated at a persons inability to consider advice and actually listen to possible solutions to the problems they are having is NOT me being nasty to you.

Remember you insulted me for having that rant.

You were never insulted in those rant threads. By anyone. But multiple people did raise concern about you seemingly ignoring the advice they were offering you.

I am thinking part of it is because I haven't been changing up my army much in years which would explain it

If nothing else it seems to show there's power creep going on.

Come on... really? You haven't changed your army for years. That isn't power creep, that's you not adapting to new rules/units/etc. Unfortunately that might mean investing in new models. If you can't afford to do that then that is unfortunate, and understandably frustrating. But still, that isn't the games fault.

alex87 wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

I edited it because I wanted to be nice and get along without arguing. Course you decided to keep it going.

You made an unprovoked, inflammatory comment specifically directed at me, expected me not to take offence to it and now you're trying to claim some sort of moral high ground. Really?

I've seen you be nasty to me when I was unhappy with the skaven army book.

Ill reiterate my point from my last post. Getting frustrated at a persons inability to consider advice and actually listen to possible solutions to the problems they are having is NOT me being nasty to you.

Remember you insulted me for having that rant.

You were never insulted in those rant threads. By anyone. But multiple people did raise concern about you seemingly ignoring the advice they were offering you.

I am thinking part of it is because I haven't been changing up my army much in years which would explain it

If nothing else it seems to show there's power creep going on.

Come on... really? You haven't changed your army for years. That isn't power creep, that's you not adapting to new rules/units/etc. Unfortunately that might mean investing in new models. If you can't afford to do that then that is unfortunate, and understandably frustrating. But still, that isn't the games fault.

An inflammatory comment that I edited out because I didn't want to start a fight.

Isn't power creep an army aging and possibly getting weaker. If nothing else it is getting old.

Oh no doubt I need to change my army more and I have but not as much as I could. I don't have the money it's the common problem and what models I have I just don't wish to make because I have to cut bits off plastic in my job and doing it for a bajillion skaven in my free time reminds me of work except I'm not getting paid. So I dunno.

If you checked everything else I said I was saying a variety of things. The skaven army book is aging and it's a 7th book in an 8th edition game. Our spells could use boosted ranges. I wouldn't mind a bunch of things getting changed and some being made weaker.

A bigger thing I want is more of the army to be viable. There's pretty much either must have units and units which you avoid like the plague (like most special units). I just want my army to have more options. Perhaps even just more movement options. I used to love weapons teams. It was part of the reason why I got into the army and now against every army with decent range on slightly favorable ground can snipe them out no problem and it's 55-70 pts down the drain. That said they rock face against close combat armies as long as they don't blow themselves up. I dunno maybe skaven just aren't for me anymore. Perhaps I should play a more elite army like dark elves. I used to play skaven for the wackiness that the war machines gave but now it's just the same general build of hordes and rares.

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Anyway this is heavily going off topic. I want to see skaven make effective use of rat swarms partly so I can come up with new ideas for seeing how the skaven army can work. For what I want I believe it could help if I place them in front of my opponent's units only to have them either forced to re-direct or spend a turn reforming during which time I will shoot and magic into them. The swarms also don't block line of sight so it should be helpful if I'm trying to hold down a more melee based army. Then slaves can be used in more effective ways as a big meat shield or in small units shooting away chaff with slings possibly.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:


Anyway this is heavily going off topic. I want to see skaven make effective use of rat swarms partly so I can come up with new ideas for seeing how the skaven army can work. For what I want I believe it could help if I place them in front of my opponent's units only to have them either forced to re-direct or spend a turn reforming during which time I will shoot and magic into them. The swarms also don't block line of sight so it should be helpful if I'm trying to hold down a more melee based army. Then slaves can be used in more effective ways as a big meat shield or in small units shooting away chaff with slings possibly.

IF I missed anything I apologize, I started skimming when things started drifting off topic...
The question was about rat swarms being viable...
The answer YEs...
But, Like everything else it is situational.
I can see the desire to make other options viable, I have been working with a Clan Moulder option for a very long time. Avoiding other clans as much as possible (Yes I am a fluff bunny...er fluff rat)..
The things to remember though are that no matter what you desire to do, there are certain things that units just aren't good at no matter what you do.
It really is hard to ignore slaves because unbreakable or not any hard hitter will make short work of a unit of equal points. Plus rat swarms still cause panic if wiped out, as opposed to slaves.
They can be useful as redirecting screens for warp lightning cannons or other skaven shooting units.
Also as a 1 turn delay because they are quite easy to get on a flank since most people ignore them.
I have used them in minor success as mini speed bumps as well. But slaves do it better for just a little bit more
(edit) I have also had success using rat swarms in front of rat ogres to counter frenzy baiting.
.
I'm a glutton for punishment though and I will take my losses and dance with joy at my occasional win within my theme.

Throt you're a rat after my heart. Horned Rat bless you .

The frenzy idea with the rat swarms sounds like it might work. I'll think about it maybe.

Now if only I could make the doom flayer viable. The impact hits are nice but the initiative based attacks at i3 are not. I hate how some of our hard hitters like censer bearers are fragile and low to medium initiative as well as usually hitting hard in the first combat phase. This would force us to win that combat without the enemy passing its leadership test. All our other hard hitters are large and vulnerable to cannons or random movement is rather tricky when your opponent knows how to handle it (may as well use the abomination to take out infantry units or it'll be led around the board all day by small quick flanking units and I have no idea why people think it's meant to kill small flanking units). It's kind of frustrating.