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I've bought a few Skaven for modelling/painting purposes (IoB and a batallion,) so I don't actually have the rulebook, but I would like to make them properly in case I decide to change over from 40k.
(I'm an oldschool fantasy player, and got dragged into the hobby again after a 15 year hiatus, but they dragged me into 40k.)

So questions are:
In my clanrat units, are the upgrades all or none? Is a unit with spears a unit where they all wield spears (excepting the musician and banner bearer) or would you run first two ranks spears and the rest without or something like that?
second; can a claw leader take a spear? The island of blood box comes with 2 units of clanrats, one with spears and one without, but both claw leaders wave swords about. (the only two swords in the box, incidentally.)

It is all or none for upgrades (and it's fine if a few dudes don't have spears in a spear unit)
shields are fine on ClanRats (and even decent on slaves sometimes) while spears are crap
So build them mainly with Hand Weapons with a few spears in for the good looks
first ranks don't benefits from spears anyway, so who cares?

I would advise you to build as many "crappy looking" clanrats (no/few armour, rags ...) from the battalion as slaves without shields, this way you'll be able to mix them with "crappy looking" shield bearing IoB rats for a big Slave unit

TanKoL wrote:
It is all or none for upgrades (and it's fine if a few dudes don't have spears in a spear unit)
shields are fine on ClanRats (and even decent on slaves sometimes) while spears are crap
So build them mainly with Hand Weapons with a few spears in for the good looks
first ranks don't benefits from spears anyway, so who cares?

I would advise you to build as many "crappy looking" clanrats (no/few armour, rags ...) from the battalion as slaves without shields, this way you'll be able to mix them with "crappy looking" shield bearing IoB rats for a big Slave unit

Thanks for the tip!

Just to be very clear here, Slaves might be the best Core unit in the whole game
Dirt cheap and you can shoot into their CC, Yes please!

There is only 1 unit that can mix and match options(maneaters), everyone else is all or nothing.

But WYSIWYG is generally much looser in Fantasy. Normally only most of the unit needs to be armed correctly.

In fact, most official Command models(champ, banner, and musician) don't have the same equipment as the rest of the unit, but they are always considered to be identical.

Well, there's sorta ways to mix and match. But it's usually through the addition of other troop types. Like you can give magic items to some unit champs. And you can have kroxigor mixed with skinks. And I think skaven have some mixed unit types and whatever items you give to like the rat handler don't go to the rat of course. But that's not really the same.

Even most tournaments require that about more than half the unit have the right equipment.

I don't know about half. Though I've seen that. I think you can get away with having the front lines of a unit being modelled how they are carrying. This makes it so you can have both if you should choose to change since you remove from the rear when taking casualties. And honestly, who looks at the back of a unit to see how it is armed?

Half seems to be a common cutoff point for WYSIWYG in Fantasy.

What I would personally do is have the front rank correct and have the rest be mostly correct. like maybe 60-70% correctly armed at the very least.

If your cut off is 60-70% you can't ever reverse them and there's no point in not making them 100%. Unless you keep large numbers of duplicates.

I.e., if you regularly want to use Halberds on your troops and regularly want to use GW on your same troops, if they are 50/50 you can swap them without buying new models by just switching who is in front.

At the moment I am going for 40% in the two setups I want most and 20% in a third (for my Warriors).
Means I can always get the front row and a few extra in the correct setup.

Some weapon choices in some units look so much alike it doesn't really matter
WoC with Halberds and GW look very much the same
Skaven Clanrats spears and handweapons look like a chittering horde either way

Others are more obvious, like Dwarfs with GW or (of course) about anyone with 2HW

Our area does the 1st 2 ranks equipped correct.

The main rule of thumb is is to look at it from the other side of the table, take a quick look at it and ask can "I tell what the unit is and how its equipped?"

For my marauders, I wanted it to look like an unruly horde, so have the weapons as mixed as possible behind the front rank / models behind the command group.

For friendly games around here it's pretty loose where sometimes whole armies are proxied. For the tourneys the requirement is that half have to be correct.