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I'm considering switching from Vampire Counts to Skaven, but would still likely keep my VC and use Skaven as a second army. One of the things that I'm concerned about, though, is that Vampire Counts is already a horde army of sorts and I'm concerned that the Skaven playstyle, being a horde army as well, will be too similar to VC for my taste. That being said, I've been reading a bit about Skaven and I'm starting to realize that they're even MORE of a horde army than VC...

...but what I'm curious about is whether or not it's possible to make a non-horde Skaven army in any sort of functional capacity (meaning, I won't lose EVERY game). I know they have Rat Ogres but is there anything else "big" like that? I also know they have assassins and I think that using them extensively will help differentiate the army from VC, but I've also read that assassins aren't that good and/or are overpriced. And, of course, they have lots of cool toys, but just how independent are they without the backing of, say, 100 clanrats?

Unless you go with ogres, chaos warriors based WoC or some unique list like Chariot army you will have to field blocks of troops with any army. Skaven are no different, if you want to field less troops have more stormvermin and less slaves. Skaven do have a lot of toys, for example I wrote up a 2k list yesterday had one of every rare choice minus the catapult and a gray seer on a bell and just those items alone came up just shy of 1,000 pts. I had 2 blocks of clanrats around 45 each with weapon teams a few heroes and some gutter runners overall about 110 models, you may want some clanrats on the side for The Dreaded 13th. Fun army though it's between skaven and goblins for the most fun army to both play and play against. Overall you only need 25% of your army to be core you could easily do that with 40 Stormvermin, full command, weapon team, storm banner (would land around 420) and maybe a smaller clanrat bunker for some heroes and lords and you'd be above 500 which would take you through 2k. Or add Queek and have him upgrade those Stormvermin so they cost 11pts each. Or take the smallest clanrat/stormvermin units possible and attach a weapon team to each one, after 3-4 of those you will be at your 25%

It would be possible to do a themed army based on Throt the Unclean, which allows to take two rat ogre units as core choice. Prolly not that performant way to go, but possible.

Skaven have a unique playstyle in that you want to get certain units into combat but your army sucks at fighting. All the time the major thing is to stay in that ld bubble. Your toys and magic are where the damage comes from. They may be a horde/bus army, but they don't play anything like VC.

I had looked up Rat Ogres a bit ago and just browsed them again and found them to be viable. They are slightly more expensive than Ogres/O&G Trolls. They got +1 Str on Ogres, +2 I, lack armor and have suckier LD but have Frenzy. I think it would be totally doable to have a Thrott army as long as you have some war machines as well, as you'll want to stay pretty tight for LD.

However, I think the Rat Ogre models are pretty ugly.

DukeRustfield wrote:
I had looked up Rat Ogres a bit ago and just browsed them again and found them to be viable. They are slightly more expensive than Ogres/O&G Trolls. They got +1 Str on Ogres, +2 I, lack armor and have suckier LD but have Frenzy. I think it would be totally doable to have a Thrott army as long as you have some war machines as well, as you'll want to stay pretty tight for LD.

However, I think the Rat Ogre models are pretty ugly.

They are viable, just not uber competitive. If I were to personally take them, I would run them with skweel so they could get regen in a unit of 8-12....

thedarkavenger wrote:
Skaven have a unique playstyle in that you want to get certain units into combat but your army sucks at fighting. All the time the major thing is to stay in that ld bubble. Your toys and magic are where the damage comes from. They may be a horde/bus army, but they don't play anything like VC.

So, from a viability standpoint, it's horde or nothing but I shouldn't be concerned that they'll feel like VC? How good are Stormvermin compared to units like ghouls, Gors, normal human infantry, elves, or chaos warriors? I'm assuming the skaven slaves are the worst of the worst, and the clanrats are a step above, with stormvermin above them.

Also, anyone have input on assassins? They're one of the big draws to the army that I feel.

The odd thing about skaven slaves is that despite being the "worst of the worst", they're considered one of the best priced infantry units in the game because as long as they stay in the ld bubble the steadfast rule will keep them as an uber tarpit for your a-bomb.

On assasins most consider them overpriced as despite them looking good on paper, they actually find it difficult to kill any reaonably good Lords/Heroes which is presumably why you'd take them.

 Tangent wrote:


So, from a viability standpoint, it's horde or nothing but I shouldn't be concerned that they'll feel like VC? How good are Stormvermin compared to units like ghouls, Gors, normal human infantry, elves, or chaos warriors? I'm assuming the skaven slaves are the worst of the worst, and the clanrats are a step above, with stormvermin above them.

Also, anyone have input on assassins? They're one of the big draws to the army that I feel.

It is a lot of models, but whereas you just bring vc models back you can't do that with skaven so it adds elements of tactical play. Stormvermin are the worst core choice. They are a combat unit in an army that doesn't want to get in combat. They are best taken in units of 20 with a warpfire thrower and the stormbanner as a character bunker. Clanrats are your bread and butter. They are best in units of 40-50 with shields, a standard and musician with either a poisoned wind mortar or a warpfire thrower. Slaves are your best core choice for their effectiveness. As if they stay in the ld bubble, you can fire into their combats. Or you can stick an engineer in there and run them up. They are best in units of 40-50 with a musician and shields. Assassins are overpriced. They can be effective though. The blade of double wounds (I cannot remember it's name) makes them fairly effective. But If you are taking them, you might as well go for snikch. But yeah, don't expect them to kill tooled up heroes/lords. wizards maybe but combat characters will destroy them.

Ok, so the whole idea with Skaven in general is to TARPIT ----> BLASTBLASTBLASTNUKEBLAST ---> WIN. And I'm assuming that list building revolves around taking as many warmachines as you can protect with whatever core you're taking, and the more the better.

Should any of those core units ever take spears? Or is it like skeletons where you want hand weapons and shields all day?

That's really too bad about those assassins... are Dark Elf assassins better?

I have put a lot fo thought int Skaven as it was one of the armies that I seriously considered playing before I decided that I'd stick to my Tomb Kings and Bretonnians.

However I was considering a Clan Skyre army list, with multiple units of Stormvermin and Clanrats each with a Ratling Gun team to rank up a few kills. Backed up with Doomwheel and Warp Lightning Cannons and Engineers I think that it could be pretty fun to play against, and as always could backfire massively

 Tangent wrote:

That's really too bad about those assassins... are Dark Elf assassins better?

I heard the words "Dark Elf". Hence I am summoned!!

Erm, well, Dark Elf assassins are really quite similar. I imagine they're better than Skaven ones, although I couldn't say for sure havign never seen their entry or anything. Still, I find Dark Elf assassins to have a similar downfall, they look failry good on paper, but they normally fail to kill any decent Heroes/Lords. They have a few perks though. With ASF and their Initiative, they'll pretty much always strike first and get re-rolls to hit. They have some decent gifts, I'd always take one that gives you +D3 Attacks, and if I'm hunting characters, Killing Blow, I'd then give them Dark Venom. So that gives them, in most cases, 4+D3 WS9 S4 ASF Attacks with Re-rolls to hit and Killing Blow, plus any wounds caused in a challenge are doubled for purposes of counting combat res. So, while it seems fairly epic on paper, they'll usually fail to kill any decent character, especially when you consider that most have a Ward Save, protecting them from Killing Blow. You have to be lucky. On top of that, you can usually kill the assasins back, since they have no save (at least not without reducing their combat effectiveness) and are T3 with only 2 Wounds. If anything, they're better at killing tough and relatively lighly armoured models. Tehy can instead take a poison which alters their strength to 1+the opponent's toughness (to a maximum of 6) and uses this to calculate armour save modifiers.

Skaven Assassins are more expensive, have worse stats, much poorer gear choices, but a 4+ "Dodge" Ward save...

I mean, I guess I get it - if assassins actually killed decent heroes/lords and were reasonably priced with no restrictions on taking them, they would be auto-includes in every army that had them. If you make them too expensive or something then no one will ever take them, so the only recourse is to decrease how powerful they are which basically defeats their purpose altogether.

Eh. If they managed to stick a wound or two on a character before they "die", that's good enough for me. Then the rank-and-file can finish the job.
Or a Miscast.

Skaven are tactically very different from Vampire Counts, so like others have said you don't have to worry there.

That said, if you still want to go for a less horde-ish style army, I'd suggest Stormvermin (not a bad unit, really) and Plague Monks, supported by small units of Slaves/Giant Rats to redirect charges, then some Gutter Runners to deliver surgically precise sling-bullets, and then an A-bomb to be himself.
Doomrockets, Warp Lightning Cannons, and the two main weapon teams (Mortars and Throwers) are also capable of preposterous destruction without being 50 models.

I've been running a 2k list with only two decent sized units of clan rats (forty) the rest of my army is swarms, a grey seer, 13 gutter runners, warlord on rat ogre bone breaker, bsb, a couple of engineers and an a bomb and I'm yet to lose with it

...swarms? How're those working for you? I've had some success in the past, but only with small units.

Warpsolution wrote:
Eh. If they managed to stick a wound or two on a character before they "die", that's good enough for me. Then the rank-and-file can finish the job.
Or a Miscast.

Skaven are tactically very different from Vampire Counts, so like others have said you don't have to worry there.

That said, if you still want to go for a less horde-ish style army, I'd suggest Stormvermin (not a bad unit, really) and Plague Monks, supported by small units of Slaves/Giant Rats to redirect charges, then some Gutter Runners to deliver surgically precise sling-bullets, and then an A-bomb to be himself.
Doomrockets, Warp Lightning Cannons, and the two main weapon teams (Mortars and Throwers) are also capable of preposterous destruction without being 50 models.

I definitely like the Abomination and Gutter Runners models. What are the gutter runners good at?

Since war machines don't have armour, Gutter Runners with the Poison Attacks and slings upgrade can, with their Scout and/or Sneaky Infiltrators rule, take out war machines like little else.

Sounds pretty sweet, I like them already. I'm making a trade this weekend for the IoB Skaven set and will likely get some gutter runners and pick up Snikch.

Proper use of Dark Elf Assassins:

1) Give them Manbane and Rending Stars
2) Put them in a skirmishing unit.
3) March into range of the mournfang/demigryphs/solo characters/ monsters
4) Throw the stars
5) Attempt to dislodge the opponent's largest model from your eye socket, because he hates you now.

Putting assassins in combat units has all the problems described above. Using them to whittle down tough or heavily armored targets before getting into combat with them is imba.

/threadjack

Made that trade that I was referring to and also got the Skaven book in the mail.

Can you also do that with Skaven assassins, or is it dependent upon equipment that only DE have access to?

Manebane gives them S = their opponent's T +1, up to S6. Rending Stars give them +1 S and three shots. So he's got 3 shots, hitting and wounding on 2's, that probably negate armour.

Skaven can get Warpstone stars, for S5 multiple wound (d3) and multiple shots (3), I believe. They cost less (but the Assassin costs more) and are less effective.

Warpsolution wrote:
Since war machines don't have armour, Gutter Runners with the Poison Attacks and slings upgrade can, with their Scout and/or Sneaky Infiltrators rule, take out war machines like little else.

I actually originally tried using gutter runners for this exact reason but it failed for several reason. One reason is that usually the war machines are in the way back and even if you use them against monsters they usually have armor or regeneration. Also this is against one artillery unit and unless you sneak them in the back it won't really work. The other reason is the other way they're deployed takes too long. War machines are only really effective during the first 2 at tops 3 turns after which they've done their damage possibly for much of the game. That said it could still take down an altar of khaine maybe but i'd rather skitterleap a warlock engineer maybe and throw a brass orb at it or use cracks call on it. I also find the storm banner to be a total god send for the whole skaven army. Use it against every shooting army and even against armies with flyers. Another choice is to use the screaming bell's special ability to do d3 wounds to all toughness 7 models on the board which is effectively a good war machine killer and theoretically can do decent damage vs the necrosphinx and warsphinx.

I currently use gutter runners with poisoned slings myself but i also take smoke bombs and put them in forests or a building if i can help it to really annoy my enemies. I find it to be alright at killing elite elf units like swordmasters. Supposedly some say they take 40 swordmasters but unless they have lore of life with regrowth or even worse teclis (seriously tone him down GW and nerf him) bolstering them then it should take out quite a few of them. I also sometimes use it to draw out enemy cavalry or similar that chase after me and then use smoke bombs so they have a failed charge and have their flanks exposed. I once almost charged some mournfangs with my hellpit in their flank. Of course he was about an inch or two from making it and he didn't go that far to begin with.

My suggestions for this army? Well i do like the queek loadout myself but i figure you should also throw a warlock in with them and give him skavenbrew so that he can make queek's elite stormvermin have hatred, frenzy or death frenzy basically or it could fail on a 1 and kill some of your guys but usually it works. Also throwing death frenzy on your elite stormvermin isn't a bad idea if you have quite a few of them around. Also just because queek and his stormvermin can't be joined by a grey seer or push a screaming bell doesn't mean they can't benefit from one. A screaming bell can still give their unit buffs as the bell usually has a buff bubble of 12"-24" for the higher end rolls on it's chart. Of course because of leadership queek unfortunately is the general regardless of choice so you can't have an 18" large target leader. Oh well though as leadership 8 is usually better anyway even though 'strength in numbers' probably makes it unneeded.

Another suggestion i have is to use a plague furnace. Those things are awesome though an enemy may try to take it out and you pretty much need at least 40 plague monks to use it. It can be decent against knights and helps even out the battle in your favor in other engagements.

The doomwheel is hit or miss but i find takes practice to master. You just have to figure in your mind what you need and where with it. It's usually a good outflanking unit but mostly vs monsters and maybe cavalry or skirmishers. The hellpit is also a great choice and good for it's points cost. It's only gotten back up once in my entire play time so it almost never happens but then i almost never play. Use the hellpit or doomwheel against skirmishers as well and fast moving units as they have random movement and can turn on the spot.

I agree completely with warp lightning cannons being good. I'd honestly use them for just about anything except taking out other war machine or monsters and i still might use it vs monsters that are toughness 5 or 6. My favorite use of them so far has been against ogres as it does d6 wounds to each model it hits and killed over 4 of them in one shot.

Like these guys have already said weapons teams are good but esp. the poisoned wind mortar and warpfire thrower. The mortar is good vs cavalry and warriors of chaos while the warpfire thrower is good against almost everything except knights and can even fry some chariots (like the corpse cart ).

I don't have any yet but i've been up in the air about jezzails. The idea has always appealed to me as has their range but poisoned wind mortars could probably handle the exact same thing just as well at a cheaper cost. That said 3 feet of range on a knight killing unit is nothing to scoff at.





So yeah to sum up everything i think gutter runners are alright but not as Warpsolution thinks but maybe i'm just not using them right. My reasoning is that usually all the war machine are behind a person's whole army so you have to risk taking out at most one war machine out of like 4 or more and kill your over-priced gutter runners in the process. Warp lightning cannons, warpfire throwers, the hellpit and maybe the doomwheel and poisoned wind mortar are all great. If i ever had enough rat ogres (use the island of blood kit btw) i would probably go for skweel gnawtooth (or however his name is spelled) to get boosts like poisoned attacks or regeneration. Jezzails might be alright but i dunno. One guy mentioned if you use them with a fozzrik's folding fortress you can deploy a building in your battle zone and then garrison them inside and have a 360 degree arc of sight and they'd be fairly hard to kill. That's mostly all i can think of though.

You could always be a huge jerk and go horde at some time anyway and take a skavenslave army. You don't seem to want to go horde though. Still skavenslave army with a cheap 15 pts warlock in each to give a leadership 8 skavenslave unit for every unit once 'strength in numbers' is factored in. Of course that'd cost a ton of money to do and you'd just basic paint the whole lot of em or keep them gray because it's too much trouble. Of course when a leader is put into that unit they do cause fear to non-slave units and can't be targeted by your shooting attacks anymore. It's dumb that skaven are like that now but i suppose it might make sense they only shoot at slaves now. Although poisoned wind globadiers don't seem to care about that too much.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

I don't have any yet but i've been up in the air about jezzails. The idea has always appealed to me as has their range but poisoned wind mortars could probably handle the exact same thing just as well at a cheaper cost. That said 3 feet of range on a knight killing unit is nothing to scoff at.

These guys have a big problem. Leadership. They don't get ranks, and base leadership means that they run, and keep running, panicking everything else on their way off the table.

I did have success with them in a heavy shooting skaven list.
Took Queek in a unit with banner of discipline, making him Ld9 before rank bonuses, and took lots of shooting.
Something like:
5x18 storm vermin with ratling guns. Supported with 2x lightning cannons, 2x doom wheels, and 15 jezzails in a folding fortress, 2 units of gutter runnings with poison slings, 2x engineers (level1's) with dispel scroll and rocket, both had pistols.

The tower helped tie down a flank, with 15 S6 shots spitting out each turn. Kept the Ld9 bubble in the tower, with the BSB, back up warlord (who bought the tower), and the engineers. Between warplightning cannons and normal shooting, the enemy was easily thinned down to the point when the smallers blocks could take them on.

It's a very gimicky idea, but people don't really know what to do against MSU skaven. They are so used to blocks of 50+ slaves, that small mobile units are a problem.

-Matt

Hm... thanks for all that. That was a big help.

I would also point out that even a unit of 5-6 Gutter Runners can make a big ol' difference by forcing your opponent to deploy differently. If you can get him to crowd his side of the table to insure no 'Runners are going to be popping up in the back, you've got an edge already.