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thinking about doing skaven in space and I was wondering which army list to use. right now I am leaning heavily towards tyranids. pack mentality, low str, low toughness, low ld... sounds like skaven to me. include some of the end times big gun monsters for the bigger nids.
im not sure how to try to justify them though. are they nurgle tzeentch creations? just call them unknown xenos?
theres too much fuss over what a hruud is so I don't want to call them that.

what do you guys think?

Guard, definitely Guard.

Large hordes of Skavenconscripts, Rat Ogryns, fancy doomsday machine conversions for use as tanks and artillery...

Renegades and heretics. Like guard, but there's way... way more of them and they can get oodles of wierd mutation and marked rules. Also access to big daemon things if you want big... rat things (giant spawn), and vehicles for warp-fire contraptions.
Nids are a bit of a stretch.

out of curiousity why do you feel nids are a stretch?
if you look at them from a stat standpoint alone I think that they line up pretty well.

I'd say Guard or Orks. Both let you get a lot of models on the table, but Orks allow you to have more random things that fit into the Skaven theme (plus encourage more interesting conversions in my book). Either way the Rat Ogres make for good Ogryns or Nobs in Mega Armor.

Most Nid armies these days don't field a lot of small guys. And Skaven just aren't the massive monsters Nids do use.

Some good answers above, but what about shooty Orks? The FC thing might be odd, but all the weird guns and stuff... And grots for slaves...

And there was a thread a while back when someone fielded skaven in 40k using *skaven* rules. WHFB rules on their turn, 40k on the opponents. Apparently it worked and was fun, but is probably easy to break.

(Renegades gets my vote, though)

Renegades is perfect for this.

 usernamesareannoying wrote:
out of curiousity why do you feel nids are a stretch?
if you look at them from a stat standpoint alone I think that they line up pretty well.

Nids are just what comes to mind, when you think of a "swarm" army but the TT, they actually represent Skavens rather poorly. Swarms are ineffective and you're also tied to using synapse creatures, which I don't see how that's representative of Skaven, in any way.

IG, only truly challenged by the Green Tide formation, are really one of the best armies in the game, if your objective is simply to bodies on the table. If you actually maxed out your 6 troops choices, with 5 HWT, 3 Special Weapon Teams, 5 Infantry squads, 50 conscripts and 1 PCS, you would actually get a total of 828 models in a single CAD(!!!) and this isn't even factoring in any commissars or priests.

I will second the traitor guard suggestion though. Unrealiable morale, random mechanics, chaotic ogryns and access to big monsters and runts, who bully lesser ranked runts is actually very representative of the Skaven nature.

Orks, too. Browntide!

I have seen Skaven/Guard online and they look pretty good, one of the people at the FLGS has a Skaven/Guard army and it looks great.

Obviously I'd play them as a cursed 13th founding successor of the Raven Guard... the Skaven Guard!

 Talys wrote:
Orks, too. Browntide!

That's gross.

I think Guard or Reneguard are the best way to go. Orks are a bit to direct and choppy for an army of Space Rats. Tyranids aren't really good because the only swarmy units they have that resemble Skaven are Termagants, and then you have to deal with synapse.

This won't many any sense but... Skavecron.

Because in the end, why not?

Orks. Numbers, unreliable and silly technology.

Orks or Renegades would be my suggestion, too. I think, crunch-wise, Orks might be the best bet, but as fof theme/fluff and options, Renegades might be the way to go, because the Skaven have some really messed up warp-tech.

Renegades and Heretics is another vote for me also, though I think CSM could work as well, bring the helcult formation with skaven as cultists, bigger dude as the dreadnought, big skaven as greater deamon, Skaven bikers would be cool also etc.

That Browntide made me laugh.

Also going to vote renegades and heretics. The book would be perfect, and allows you to ally in daemons/CSM for any big nasty stuff you want to bring that RH dont have.

so after looking over renegades and heretics I think I may agree with you all.
I wasn't to keen on the idea as I already run guard but maybe I can run these differently.