Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I've recently convinced a mate to get back into warhammer and he is cursing me for it lol.

He's interested in starting skaven and I don't know that much about them... should I put him off it and nudge him towards a more competetive army? skaven are middle tier I believe?
What are there competetive builds and can you play and have a good time with them or do you just get stomped all over by the newer more competetive armys?

I hear that the rumours are that all the old army books will be renewed before the end of the year so i may try and convince him to revamp his old beastmen.

Skaven are definitely top tier, many consider them broken.

They have very cheap blocks of slaves that are very easily made Ld 10 and steadfast.

They also have crazy things like the doomwheel, HPA, and warpfire cannon which are completely silly for their points.

They also have hyper awesome magic and very competitive units like the plague furnace, etc.

Skaven are indeed a competitive army. The problem is that they're very luck dependent, and when the dice abandon you there's very little you can do. That's why Skaven tend to place near the top in tournaments, but rarely take the top spot...you're just too likely to get that one game where your toys don't work to get the 5-straight wins you need for the trophy.

There's also the fact that a fully-painted Skaven army is a rare sight indeed, which hurts your overall score. Also that a horde of brown / grey rats isn't very appealing, and is a tough sell for best painted compared to more elite armies where each model can get a bit more love from the brush.

Hmmm they sound alot better than i thought they were. what are they units to steer clear of using then? every army has those.

There is nothing in the army that's bad. Even the subpar choices are good, just not as good as the better choices.

Cool sounds like its a decent army for him to start on then, fun, competitive and no clear wrong choices. I should have started skaven...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Expensive though right? thats a lot of models he's going to need.

Skaven are one of the better Fantasy armies but, from a beginner's point of view, that's not the only thing you should be worrying about.

Skaven are very complicated, and their FAQ (which is needed to understand many of their rules) is massive. They're also a very expensive army to collect and, being one of the few 7th edition books remaining, will be updated in the not-too-distant future.

All that means that, whilst Skaven are a competitive army, they may not necessarily be the best choice for someone new or returning to the game. Food for thought!

What would you suggest as a good army for a returning player at the moment then?

I collect chaos and started just before the new book dropped which really annoyed me because the army i'd put together was suddenly a crap build as soon as the new book was released.

So I don't want to put someone in the same boat as I was ( I spent alot of money/time/effort into my enormous marauder unit lol).

Skaven is a strong army, but the armybook is a big lump of garbage written by an incompetent monkey

There is nothing in the army that's bad. Even the subpar choices are good, just not as good as the better choices.

That's very far from being even remotely accurate
Night Runners are utterly useless
Rat Ogres range from "meh" to "garbage" depending on how you use them
Weapon Teams are awfully squishy for their price, and randomness combined with their short range / move or fire makes them really bad
Censer bearers suffer immensely from their low Init in 8th Ed
Plague Claw Catapult is an Empire mortar (meh), but slightly worse quite often
Jezzails and globadiers are too situational and too hard to apply to be decent
Special characters are just too bad overall to be even mentionned

The rest of the book is generally really strong though, that's true

 TanKoL wrote:
Skaven is a strong army, but the armybook is a big lump of garbage written by an incompetent monkey

There is nothing in the army that's bad. Even the subpar choices are good, just not as good as the better choices.

Plague Claw Catapult is an Empire mortar (meh), but slightly worse quite often
Jezzails and globadiers are too situational and too hard to apply to be decent

The rest of the book is generally really strong though, that's true

I can agree with most of your points as they are spot-on, but I have to disagree with these two.
The Jezzails can be good, but it has to be the right army you are facing, as anything which is expensive with a good AS is gonna hate them. A unit will not kill them Dragon princes, Mourfang, Skullcrushers or the like, but they will hurt them, so they don't hit your lines at full strength.

Now the Plague Claw is nothing like an Empire Mortar, for two reasons. Yes a big template and Str2 hit, so wounding on either a 5 or 6, but these hits allow no armour save. Also, if you suffer a single wound, then you must take a panic test, I think it's a great weapon to have.

 TanKoL wrote:
Skaven is a strong army, but the armybook is a big lump of garbage written by an incompetent monkey

There is nothing in the army that's bad. Even the subpar choices are good, just not as good as the better choices.

That's very far from being even remotely accurate
Night Runners are utterly useless
Rat Ogres range from "meh" to "garbage" depending on how you use them
Weapon Teams are awfully squishy for their price, and randomness combined with their short range / move or fire makes them really bad
Censer bearers suffer immensely from their low Init in 8th Ed
Plague Claw Catapult is an Empire mortar (meh), but slightly worse quite often
Jezzails and globadiers are too situational and too hard to apply to be decent
Special characters are just too bad overall to be even mentionned

The rest of the book is generally really strong though, that's true

Alright, I admit, I forgot about Night Runners.


As for Rat Ogres, in units of 2 with a packmaster, are amazing as tirestrips. And a unit of 14+ they make an amazing glass hammer, and do better in dealing with armour than the rest of the skaven book, barring rares. And, if you could pay 100 points to give a unit of ironguts, regen, poisoned, or an extra attack, would you? Of course you would.

As for weapons teams, keep them alongside units and use them as chaff! The amount of time I hide my 70 point teams until I need them to redirect is ridiculous. AND, my opponent gets NO points from them.

Censer bearers have been relegated to a flanking unit, which, in conjunction with Plague Priests, can stack the toughness tests that count to combat res, in addition to minimising attacks against them.

Okay, so a S2 template that IGNORES armour, is worse than a S3 template that doesn't? It's still one of the book's best ways to deal with armour, even though it's deceptive at a first glance.


As for Jezzails, they aren't situational. They're S6, magic, armour piercing shots. With a 36" range. You can board-edge them and be in range from T2 onwards. They do horrible things to that Nurgle Prince. As a matter of fact, these guys, and plagueclaws are the best way of dealing with him.
Globadiers are fairly situational, but you take slaves right? March them up 1" behind slaves and laugh as you fire into combat. Or, you can charge them into chaff and then shoot into it. They're difficult to use, and harder to master, but they are good.

As for Special Characters, Skaven have the best characters in any seventh book, aside from the obvious power choices. I mean, Tretch, Queek, Snikch, and Ikit are downright amazing for what they cost. Throt, and Skrolk are pretty good too. The generic choices just outshine them by being more versatile. Apart from the Vermin Lord, that's just bad.

BAN wrote:
What would you suggest as a good army for a returning player at the moment then?

Empire, Ogres and Dark Elves are the best beginners armies, with WoC, HE, Lizardmen and Dwarves being pretty decent too.

To be honest though, as long as your friend doesn't mind a challenge, there are very few armies that wouldn't be good to start up. You just have to avoid complicatedness (Skaven) and armies that screw over many of the Core rules (VC and TK). Avoiding high monetary costs and the potential of an imminent update is also useful, though not necessary.

Honestly the more people go on about skaven being over-powered and the more I hear their reports I have to wonder if they're just not facing really good players. Perhaps skaven just have a really high upper limit to how powerful their army can be. Thing is most people aren't in the category (that can unlock the skaven's potential nastiness) which do play skaven (though most people try to use army selection to give themselves a free win). In a sense if you're looking at skaven competitively then yes they need restrictions for the hardcore players that'll do whatever net-list or stupid build they can. However in normal games esp. with normal players skaven aren't used to their full potential and often take a lot of skill to unlock that potential.

Perhaps I'm wrong here but that's just what I get out of it. That said I'd like to find out more about who says what and when the last time they played or played against skaven was.

Skaven are a great army.
The real question is what does your friend want. Does he want Skaven? If that's the army that he wants, that should be what he takes.
Is his main concern wins and losses.? What does he expect to get out of it? Is he just going to play any army for you?
Skaven can be highly competitive and all armies have particular learning curves. WoC have the softest curve IMO because most everything works, and other things just work even better.
I don't have a very tournament minded meta in my area so I guess you can take my advice with a grain of salt.
Skaven play very much to hammer and anvil and have plenty of damage causing units, cheap tar pits.
I'm going to make a blasphemous statement...
If you want less random in a skaven army, don't take so many slaves.
Yes they are cheap.
Yes you avoid panic tests with other units, but that's relatively easy to mitigate.
Once slaves pop that's it, there are no more models. And skaven thrive on numbers.
I have found that just because a unit or list is the most cost effective it does not invalidate other options. We tend to use a unit once or twice, it doesn't do well so we think it's useless, or we take someone else's word for it.
That is the beauty of fantasy, there are so many builds that are competitive, yet we see tournament lists, so people mostly play those and then the assumption is that nothing else is viable.
Does that make sense?
If in 10 tournaments..9 have the same list and win 8 times and the 1 different list wins once...well hopefully you get the point.



[

All helpful information, i'll just forward him this link so he can have a look through your sage advise and decide for himself.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Honestly the more people go on about skaven being over-powered and the more I hear their reports I have to wonder if they're just not facing really good players.

I also agree here. Skaven are a very strong army, but some people seem to blow it out of proportion. I think perhaps it stems from when Skaven were ridiculously overpowered (around late 7th iirc). Lately the new rules and books have brought them into line. Still a good army, but certainly not broken and certainly not the best.

 The Shadow wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Honestly the more people go on about skaven being over-powered and the more I hear their reports I have to wonder if they're just not facing really good players.

I also agree here. Skaven are a very strong army, but some people seem to blow it out of proportion. I think perhaps it stems from when Skaven were ridiculously overpowered (around late 7th iirc). Lately the new rules and books have brought them into line. Still a good army, but certainly not broken and certainly not the best.

Daemons were the stupidly overpowered army in late 7th. Skaven were good, but not broken. This edition has given them a boost if anything with its more infantry-centric rules.

That being said, it's not a free win army by any means. You really need to know what you're doing with it to do well. Unlike, say, WoC, which in many cases the answer is MORE CHARGES. As much as I love my WoC.

The thing with skaven is that the damage dealing tends to come on a few units with very few dice rolls.
The infantry is hard to shift; steadfast-durable. The characters are for the most part cheap.
But that stuff that actually does the heavy lifting doesn't roll enough dice to be statistically dependable.
4-5 bad rolls of single dice neuters your damage output for a turn. (bad bounce on the warp lightning, not enough movement on a doomwheel, or the wrong chart roll for an abomination, the wrong misfire on a warpfire thrower).

It's the randomness that keeps them from being broken. A single phase may be fantastic, but over the course of a game, or a tournament, it will average out some.

HawaiiMatt summed it up perfectly. That's it. Right there.

Also, I'd just like to point out: the Plagueclaw Catapult is a good war machine. But the Warp Lightning Cannon is tons and tons better. It's usually stronger, it's easier to hit single targets with, it does D6 wounds, and it still ignores armour.

Night Runners are pretty crap. I've used a unit or two of 10, 5X2, with slings, to decent effect. 80pts for 20 shots, M6, and a semi-Vanguard is cool. But then you look at fast cavalry in other books, and you drop them for 3 Rat Darts.

The book is far from broken. But it's still good. Top tier? Could be. Middle tier? Possible. 8th was a fantastic equalizer.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Perhaps I'm wrong here but that's just what I get out of it. That said I'd like to find out more about who says what and when the last time they played or played against skaven was.

Last time I played against Skaven was against a Throgg Troll list. I took off the 18 trolls in one round of combat. And Warp Lightning'd the Prince off in a round. That basically gave me the game.

18 Trolls in one round of combat is an impressive unit to wipe off the board on one turn. I'm guessing...Queek's Stormvermin with the Flaming Banner plus backup...or you didn't actually kill them in combat, and the Bellstar broke them and ran them down. Yeah? Either way, when your opponent puts that many eggs in one basket, they shouldn't be surprised when they loose hard as often as they win hard.

Taking out a Daemon Prince in one volley of cannon fire isn't likely with two normal cannons, let alone two of ours.

As said above. The units and items that make Skaven a threat on the table all roll very few dice to determine their effectiveness. All the Ld10 Skavenslaves in the Underempire won't do us any good if our Warp Lightning Cannons Misfire, our Weapon Teams explode, and the Doomrocket flies off course while our Abominations and Doom Wheels roll low for movement.

Warpsolution wrote:
18 Trolls in one round of combat is an impressive unit to wipe off the board on one turn. I'm guessing...Queek's Stormvermin with the Flaming Banner plus backup...or you didn't actually kill them in combat, and the Bellstar broke them and ran them down. Yeah? Either way, when your opponent puts that many eggs in one basket, they shouldn't be surprised when they loose hard as often as they win hard.

Taking out a Daemon Prince in one volley of cannon fire isn't likely with two normal cannons, let alone two of ours.

As said above. The units and items that make Skaven a threat on the table all roll very few dice to determine their effectiveness. All the Ld10 Skavenslaves in the Underempire won't do us any good if our Warp Lightning Cannons Misfire, our Weapon Teams explode, and the Doomrocket flies off course while our Abominations and Doom Wheels roll low for movement.

Bellstar. Of course. And I should point out that I lost three models in that combat.

And it was with castings of Warp Lightnings.

 thedarkavenger wrote:

Warpsolution wrote:
18 Trolls in one round of combat is an impressive unit to wipe off the board on one turn. I'm guessing...Queek's Stormvermin with the Flaming Banner plus backup...or you didn't actually kill them in combat, and the Bellstar broke them and ran them down. Yeah? Either way, when your opponent puts that many eggs in one basket, they shouldn't be surprised when they loose hard as often as they win hard.

Taking out a Daemon Prince in one volley of cannon fire isn't likely with two normal cannons, let alone two of ours.

As said above. The units and items that make Skaven a threat on the table all roll very few dice to determine their effectiveness. All the Ld10 Skavenslaves in the Underempire won't do us any good if our Warp Lightning Cannons Misfire, our Weapon Teams explode, and the Doomrocket flies off course while our Abominations and Doom Wheels roll low for movement.

Bellstar. Of course. And I should point out that I lost three models in that combat.

And it was with castings of Warp Lightnings.

Well you must've forgotten the part where I said skaven probably have a very high power level if handled by incredibly skilled players. However for most players skaven aren't so OP. Usually it's the tournament people and tournament level players that seem to fear them and nobody else. That said they probably have a higher learning curve than warriors of chaos, gun-line dwarfs or some of the elves.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 thedarkavenger wrote:

Warpsolution wrote:
18 Trolls in one round of combat is an impressive unit to wipe off the board on one turn. I'm guessing...Queek's Stormvermin with the Flaming Banner plus backup...or you didn't actually kill them in combat, and the Bellstar broke them and ran them down. Yeah? Either way, when your opponent puts that many eggs in one basket, they shouldn't be surprised when they loose hard as often as they win hard.

Taking out a Daemon Prince in one volley of cannon fire isn't likely with two normal cannons, let alone two of ours.

As said above. The units and items that make Skaven a threat on the table all roll very few dice to determine their effectiveness. All the Ld10 Skavenslaves in the Underempire won't do us any good if our Warp Lightning Cannons Misfire, our Weapon Teams explode, and the Doomrocket flies off course while our Abominations and Doom Wheels roll low for movement.

Bellstar. Of course. And I should point out that I lost three models in that combat.

And it was with castings of Warp Lightnings.

Well you must've forgotten the part where I said skaven probably have a very high power level if handled by incredibly skilled players. However for most players skaven aren't so OP. Usually it's the tournament people and tournament level players that seem to fear them and nobody else. That said they probably have a higher learning curve than warriors of chaos, gun-line dwarfs or some of the elves.

There's like three armies at best that are pick up and play. Ogres, Warriors and Dark Elves. And all of them have a high power level if handled by skilled players. Yes, Skaven are random. But, they're also remarkably reliable. In that you can plan on your toys not working, and build your list around that. It's why I like the Bellstar so much. It's a reliable way of getting major points.

The Bellstar is also gak in a non-ETC environment
because you know ... cannons

 TanKoL wrote:
The Bellstar is also gak in a non-ETC environment
because you know ... cannons

The majority of Britain plays in a non-ETC environment. And you know what, the Bellstar is still the best list the book has.

For a multitude of reasons.

FIrstly, it takes about five cannons to kill a bell.

Secondly, if it gets in combat, and you use it right, it gets a lot of CR, without giving it up.

Thirdly, play it right, and cannons won't be an issue.

 thedarkavenger wrote:

 TanKoL wrote:
The Bellstar is also gak in a non-ETC environment
because you know ... cannons

The majority of Britain plays in a non-ETC environment. And you know what, the Bellstar is still the best list the book has.

For a multitude of reasons.

FIrstly, it takes about five cannons to kill a bell.

Secondly, if it gets in combat, and you use it right, it gets a lot of CR, without giving it up.

Thirdly, play it right, and cannons won't be an issue.

It'd still snipe the grey seer off the bell. If that's your general (which it probably is depending on points as it takes a minimum of 440 to use a bell) then you lose all those spells and all the general. Then again if you have a close combat oriented bell then people will probably kill the seer first so making him your general would be a bad idea.

It's funny how some people fear skaven so much even though I never see them played besides me anymore. We also have at least one rule that is often crap in 'verminous valor' because people usually just focus characters down with a bunch of attacks focusing on them rather than challenges. Oh and strength in numbers has no effect when flanked by enough enemy ranks and in my opinion will always be inferior to rules like cold-blooded (which always work).

In fact why do people fear skaven? If I remember witch lists for dark elves have always been scary, the corner castle is annoying, the empire 1+ armor save army is pretty obnoxious and lizardmen are sick.

In most ways lizardmen actually trump skaven besides numbers and maybe one ridiculous spell. They have a couple different flyers, a better leadership buff (which helps skirmishers a ton btw in comparison to skaven), they have cavalry, access to the rulebook lores and high magic as well as some slann abilities, their weapons teams are tougher (my god if I could have more than toughness 3 heavy armor with 1 wound I'd be so happy) can fire on the move and are more forgiving when they misfire (a misfiring warpfire thrower equals death 5/6 of the time whereas a misfiring salamander just eats some handlers though I will admit strength 5 d3 wounds is much better) and we have to buy ours with crappy core units which we usually don't even want, they have great core and access to a lot of flaming and poisoned attacks (skaven are more limited with flaming and poisoned).

So I dunno in my opinion lizardmen usually trump skaven in a stand up fight except for the hordes and war machines skaven have. Lizardmen even have better monstrous infantry and better skirmishers (skinks of both types).

Then again I guess I'm too noobish too just 13th down the slann. I guess I could. Wouldn't be too tough I guess. Was just annoying how most of my casting phases started with less dice than the dispel pool when I played my friends. Guess I need to 6 dice every spell.

Sounds like you had a bad experience. The Skaven book is good. It just wins harder and loses harder than other books (see: Orcs & Goblins).

Well sadly I found even if you try to use a big rank and file core unit to negate enemy steadfast and then hit with a hard hitter usually the hard hitters will get trumped by most things anyway. Doesn't help our hard hitting units are not only fragile but also have fairly low initiative (except rat ogres). I mean skaven are supposed to be fast but every hard hitter is super slow. Stormvermin are as fast as our infantry get and as hard hitting with rank and file. They're cheap yeah but skaven lack so many options as compared to some other armies. I just feel like I'm limited to cores and rare and every list will look and be the same. The abomination or two carry the whole team combat-wise. The rest you just have to magic and ranged attack your enemy to death. Don't even bother flanking most enemies with rank-and-file as you only get maybe a few combat resolution and the enemy tends to hold and reform and run em down anyway.

I won't lie I am starting to love some things about skaven again I thought I wouldn't. For instance warpfire throwers are good as well as a couple weapons teams but they're usually only good if the enemy comes to you esp. if they're a melee army. This should mean either lots of long ranged fire or other nastiness. Sadly I can't afford that many jezzails and big nasty rares. I hear jezzail mass is pretty ridiculous but unlike the nearby GW manager I don't get 50% off for all GW products I buy. If I did I'd probably have at least 10 jezzails by now.

That said magic with skitterleaping a cracks call warlock seems good. Usually one gets cracks call and when it walks down the flank of enemy cavalry, monsters or monstrous infantry amazing results ensue (unless the cavalry are high initiative in which case it's terrible). Supposedly I killed 7 bretonnian knights with one warlock with multiple cracks calls and he survived past the end of the game. The guy I played was a tournament champion and played for years though so there's that.

I don't totally see it though. I mean I've never really seen a specific skaven army that just rolls over the enemy. I have seen witch lists and stupid lizardmen builds that just roll everything down though. I think there was even an old previous army book lizardmen list on here where the guy failed with most of his magic and lost his slann and basically maneuvered around the enemy in one to two turns being everywhere at once. He even failed most magic and lost one of his slann but his strategy of shooting his skinks and falling back only to re-group them and fire again just got super annoying to watch. I told this to a friend and he took that game to heart from what little I mentioned. Can't say that was fun to face. I'm just so glad slann got nerfed. Slann used to be pretty obnoxious only 2nd as wizards to teclis in the old high elf book (don't know how an elf could be as good as a slann).

Under 8th, with the current book, Skaven are amaze balls. Most Skaven lists are so cheesy (obvious pun very much intended) and anti-fun it aint even funny.

Skaven are strong.... period