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Hello! I haven´t played WHF for very long and the army i´m feilding is skaven. I´d like some tips on feilding the best army (1500p or lower) possible using the models i alredy have since i´m a little low on money right now. Thanks!

Armylist:
40 clanrats
20 nightrunners
2 ratogres+1 packmaster
1 Warpfirethrower
1 Poisoned Wind Mortar
1 Hellpit
1 screaming bell
1 greyseer
1 Queek headtaker
1 skaven warlord
1 warlock engineer

P.S Me and my friend thinks that when we play against eachother it´s okay to have one lord since we both have about 1500p armies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It would be super if it´s possible to make it work against woodelves since that´s what my friend is playing. :-)

You can't have a grey seer on screaming bell in a 1500 pts game. The bell and seer instantly cost 440 pts without any magic items added to the seer.

Weapons teams are ok and sometimes great but they always get destroyed against any army with any amount of shooting. I can imagine against warriors of chaos, beastmen, vampire counts and maybe a couple others they'd do really well but otherwise they'll just die to ranged fire and it's a 55 pts to 70 pts loss and is a total waste of time.

Some people use 2 rat ogres in a unit as sort of a war machine killer but I don't know why considering they're frenzied and would have to pass a test to see if they have to charge or not. Also for an 80+ pts units meant to do what they're trying to do I just don't see why people would do that.

If you take queek then you should take him for his specialty stormvermin and no other reason. He can take special bodyguard stormvermin which for skaven are pretty elite. I'd take a non-wizard warlock with a magic resistance (3) pendant to give them a 4+ ward save against magic that allows it though. Elite units need the protection.

The Hellpit abomination is fantastic. In more experienced games people know how to handle him though and they may take advantage of random movement by using fast units to move into his flank and forcing him to move straight forward into nothing.

If you use nightrunners I figure you might want to try the warp grinder loadout with them but it's a very tricky maneuver and you're probably just better using them to kill enemy chaff and re-director units.

You need a ton more clanrat/slave models. Use clanrats as a hero bunker and slaves to tie up the enemy.

Final thoughts are you have way too many lord choices for no reason. Fill out your core units before doing anything else. 40 clanrats and 20 nightrunners probably isn't even the minimum legal points % for your core units even with a weapon team or two added. You don't have much of an army from what I can see.

Are you and your friend planning to cater against each other's factions? If so I have plenty of advice for facing wood elves in particular. There's a thread floating around somewhere that should mention how to face them for many armies.

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I've played skaven for years but I think there are people better suited to telling you what to do considering I lose a lot these days but usually against better players or because my army hasn't been changed much in the longest time (money is also tough for me).

Thanks for the help though it still seems like i need to buy some more troops. Wich do troop do you think i should buy?

Slaves ... Slaves ... oh and Slaves !
first thing is that your Night Runners are in fact Gutter Runners, don't argue against that ... Night Runners are one of the worst choice in the whole book

Then the Skaven "Golden Rule":
For every 10 points in your army, you take one model
At least half of your models will be Slaves

It's true from 1500 to 2500 pts, above and below, it won't apply that much

You should register and have a look at "The Underempire", the Skaven web community (and probably one of the best "army-specific community" to be honest), lots of very good advice and pinned topics, quite active as well

I agree with flamingkillamajig in that you need less of some and more of others.

My advise would be add more clanrats. The Skaven's main strength is outnumbering the enemy, which can be good because you can use these to keep more powerful units away from objectives and characters you don't want to use to fight them.

Screaming Bell and Grey Seer costs too much for the amount of points you can take for Lords and Heroes. I'd say drop that. You'll have a lot of points to spend on other units and your Warlock Engineer serves pretty well as a magic user.

I always used night runners as a cheap archer unit, replacing the hand weapons with slings. A warp grinder can help to flank them.

A lot of Skaven special characters cost a LOT. (Lord Skrolk is especially ridiculous) I'd personally say drop Queek, but he might be of some use.

Hell Pit Abomination should be fun. I've never used one, but it's devastating potential as well as it's ability that gives it a chance to rise from the dead should be good for you and terrifying for your enemies.

I'll agree. You have waaay too many Lords units. I'd personally say drop everything, but keep the warlord and upgrade him. Same with the Warlock Engineer. If you can give the Warlock Engineer the Warp-Energy Condenser, it should help quite a bit in the magic phase.

Welcome back to WHFB and good luck!

I heard that large regimens with slavens equiped with slinga is really good also.

Mrmysticonvious skaven wrote:
I heard that large regimens with slavens equiped with slinga is really good also.

No. Skavenslaves exist to be LD10 tarpits. Keep them cheap.

Indeed, Slaves with slings and night runners (with anything) are wasted points and/or garbage
Giving shield to slaves is useful when the local comp gives a cap on unit sizes, otherwise, they're better naked

Quick overview of Skaven units:

All non-special characters: decent to excellent (Grey Seer and cheap engineers notably)
Screaming Bell: bad against warmachines, OK against others

Clanrats: OK
Slaves: probably best unit in the game
Night Runners: NO NO GOD NO !
Stormverins: very good (but keep in mind they're not really elite)
Giant Rats: excellent as minimum sized redirectors
Rat swarms: bad
Weapon Teams: overpriced to garbage

Rat Ogres: very bad (sadly)
Monks: OK (great with furnace)
Globadiers: too expensive
Jezzails: too expensive
Gutter Runners: Excellent
Censer bearers: not great, low Init kills them

Plague Catapult: mediocre
Cannon: awesome
Doomwheel: awesome
Abomination: awesome

I agree with most of what you say TanKoL but with some differences.

I feel like rat swarms may have a use as re-directors and as a way to get to war machines on the flanks.

Some weapons teams are great but they get sniped out way too easily to be effective unless you play against a melee based army in which case they are pretty awesome if they don't blow up and you use them right (warpfire thrower mishap chart usually means dead warpfire thrower). If you were to use any against a wood elves player they'd all get sniped out before you could use them. This is pretty much fact of every game. All they would need is line of sight and if the enemy has a hill the best you can do is keep out of range though sadly 30" range and allowing to move and shoot doesn't help your weapon team survive.

I'm not sure I'd say monks with furnace are as great as some say. They're nice I suppose till the furnace gets blown up by cannonballs or any sort of war machines or decent ranged fire. It's even more vulnerable than the screaming bell which has a ward at least.

Rat ogres are ok but not great. They are expensive and losing all packmasters means that they have to test for stupidity. Add frenzy to all that and it means if you charge your enemy you have to pursue or overrun regardless of the results if you win. That said whatever unit you throw them against is usually a dead unit unless there are stupid shenanigans. Can't remember if they're any better with skweel. At that point though you're throwing quite a bit of points into them though. Poisoned attacks or regeneration might be worth it. An extra attack per guy would do less for you though.

Stormvermin aren't elite unless you take queek but I'm not sure if that's a good idea anymore. They become way too elite and honestly they'll still probably lose combat.

I haven't had any luck with globadiers myself. They're just way too slow to get to the enemies you want to kill and even if you could pin down a monster or cavalry with slave mass and fire into them you're still probably better off with something else. At that point you'll be getting very few kills though.

Clanrats are a command bunker unit. The only other reason to take is weapons teams and against any decent ranged opponent the weapons teams are useless. I usually go with a rule that if you can help it never put a wizard in a unit more expensive than clanrats. Clanrats are disposable while stormvermin and plague monks are less so. Whatever you do at least never put them in with queek's stormvermin that miscast would hurt those poor stormvermin and destroy that unit.

Jezzails might be ok but like others might state you have to put them on a hill or in a building for best results. Also sadly with buildings blocking line of sight and a limited line of sight (except in a building which has 360 degrees). The biggest issue is their leadership and the fact they'd probably run away really quick so people use them more in gun-line skaven. I think I heard it's best to keep them in small groups. Yes they'll probably panic but it'll just be that unit and chances are an enemy will waste a lot of shooting trying to kill such a small unit.

I'm unsure about censer bearers. I think their problem is they're skirmishers, their initiative is bad and they're just not that good though if you can use them in a charge with another unit they can give decent combat resolution against some slower units (though it still might not be enough). It's probably much better to just take plague priests instead and equip them with censers which don't cost against magic items limits and then give them ward saves and that should keep them ok. The rest of the unit is there to give you more ranks than your opponent. 5 wide is probably ok. Just displace one of the command unit models when you make way in close combat. Unless I'm doing something wrong it'd work. That way you get the hard hits, high initiative, the fog attacks from each censer and the unit that would get rid of enemy having steadfast. Still fairly bit a one hit deal though. Against elves it still wouldn't matter. That said this is entirely an idea worth playtesting rather than a surety. Still 12 str 6 attacks at initiative 5 with fog early on can be decent esp. on t5 dudes. It should scare the crap out of warriors of chaos even.

If you ever did take night runners I think warp solution mentioned they're better to eliminate chaff with if you have ranged weapons. The only other way to run them is one decent sized unit with a warp grinder.

I think you may have overheard me about slaves. Yes slaves are good in large groups to pin the enemy down. However they are alright with small units of 20 spread 10 wide with slings to scare off chaff. Take no more than 6 units of 20. All together that's 300 points which is still a sink. However it will be in core which isn't too bad. That said if you take them try to take them with the screaming bell so they're all at leadership 7 or 8. Musicians are also fairly cheap and you can swift reform the unit quite easily to allow them to shoot enemy chaff on the go. You can pretty much wall up your entire side of the board with slaves with slings and it has deterred some enemy chaff from even coming close to my lines even when I use cannons.

Gutter runners can be decent with poisoned slings. They're better than all of our other special units I figure. They have good leadership for skaven. That said they have inability to go through even the crappiest armor. Normally it's not too big of a deal but if you're shooting at something with regeneration or armor it tends to become noticed. Don't hope too high if your runners are facing an arachnarok i'll tell ya that. It had 8 wounds, toughness 6 and a 4+ armor save. Best cannon it or use the doomwheel or something.

Other than that I'd say the rares are all as TanKoL mentioned. They are fantastic except for the plagueclaw or at least in theory it's bad.

The only other thing worth mentioning is never use the doom flayer. I have a really weird idea that maybe I'd use it to get rid of enemy chaff meant to re-direct me but this is more just stupid theories at this point. The doom flayer is pretty useless. It's a fantastic looking model with a sweet name and story though but nothing that bad in game should cost more than other weapons teams.

I assume that 20 clanrats have hand weapons and 20 have spears (island of blood).
First off, either proxy or buy another box and field them as a 40 man horde block of hand weapons. your night runners are also gutter runners and use them as such.
In a 1500 point game a screaming bell is too much. queek should be proxied as a warlord/chieftain is low point games use your warlord as BSB chieftain a skaven army NEEDS this.
your poisoned wind mortar is one of your best weapons so attach it to your clan rat unit along with either a warlord or cheiftan for more leadership in your clanrats.
I strongly reccomend either another island of blood or a battalion. because with those you could get another block of clanrats, and with the batalion some higher toughness plague monks and about 36 giant rats (if you use the terrain rats on the monks).