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.

Like the title suggests, is it possible to win with skaven with no rare options?
every list I see has a doomwheel, or a WLC, or HPA....I know those things are good, but don't they get boring?
Could I win without them?

Thanks
Austin

You seem to be asking a lot of questions lately.

I suppose it's possible but it's hard enough playing skaven as it is currently. The abomination is our only durable close combat damage dealing unit that's worth a d*mn. If you want to go into end times i suppose you could do stormfiends for melee heavy rares but that's about it.

I'm thinking this would be hard since our core is good but doesn't do much damage and our specials suck but rares are really potent. The book is showing its age though in a big way (just looking at our FAQ's size is embarrassing).

A rule i find with skaven is our units come in two flavors. It's either durable, has good morale and ranks but does little to no damage (basically a damage sponge) or it has crappy leadership, does great damage, falls to a stiff breeze and is possibly frenzied. For all the people that complain about skaven they don't know that very important rule. If you kill our fragile damage dealers (which is easy) then we can only hold you for a little while till we die.

-------

So yeah i'm curious what i should tell you to use as i'm not the best skaven player by a long shot and not using rares is like shooting yourself in both feet with our large FAQ being the equivalent to being held together by scotch tape, rubber bands, glue and bubble gum.

It is possible. But it drastically weakens your army. Without rates you have no way of reliably dealing with armour.

I currently like 3 Stormfriends with rattling cannons and a cannon.

As above, yes, you can do it but you're fighting an uphill battle that was already somewhat of an uphill battle to begin with.

Like TDA said, you have to find something to deal with heavy armor, and high toughness as well.

Magic will help you do some of the heavy lifting, so you can do multiple L1 Warlocks, Plague priests etc. to help with combat and do some blasting/hexing.

Stormvermin with all the fixins (Razor Standard, Skaven Brew) with at least 1 Warlord would be good.

Plague Monks with a Plague Furnace is also a solid choice.

Generally, you'll need to choke the enemy with slaves, more so than a normal Skaven force. You need to lock units down and flank them with your harder hitting stuff to have a chance, this means the enemy can't have a chance to engage and hold up your actual combat units.

I'd also go at least 2 large units of gutter runners with poison slings, since you won't have WLC's or Doomwheels to knock out big tough stuff like warmachines, monsters, steam tanks etc. Think like 10-15 strong units and maybe kitted out with champions rocking magic items.

Playing Skaven without rares is like playing Vampire Counts without lords.

Could you do it? Sure. Should you? Not if you want to win games.

Sure you might get bored playing those units all the time. But are you bored yet? No. I'm going to go ahead and assume you're just starting the army otherwise you'd know this answer for yourself, so why not wait until you've got a lot of experience with the army before you start neutering your list in the interests of diversity of play?

I don't actually have any of the rare choices in my force yet.
Lots of bodies, but that's about it..
I want to start playing soon.

Thanks
Austin

It's totally playable. If you give us a rundown on your models we can give you ideas about types of lists.

Another thing I would consider is weapon teams. If you go weapon team heavy you can cover a lot of bases, albeit not super reliably, but it would be pretty entertaining either way.

If you have no rares, then suggest your opponent does without as well!

Huey11 wrote:
If you have no rares, then suggest your opponent does without as well!

Not really a balanced solution. Some books, like wood elves, don't need the rare section to be filthy.

 More Dakka wrote:
It's totally playable. If you give us a rundown on your models we can give you ideas about types of lists.

Another thing I would consider is weapon teams. If you go weapon team heavy you can cover a lot of bases, albeit not super reliably, but it would be pretty entertaining either way.

I've heard jezzails with weapons teams tends to work but jezzails get pretty expensive (even worse than blood knights) so you might want to convert some. It's far easier to get rares as they cost about 33 USD to 58 or so USD whereas with jezzails you buy 3 for 52 USD and you can amass them and it won't take up many points but nobody in real life would pay that much for 21 jezzails and 6 stormfiends would probably handle the job much better and cost less money. As far as weapons teams go against any army with good ranged weapons in small amounts they tend to get owned (like against wood elves). Against melee armies like vampire counts, warriors of chaos and daemons they tend to be decent. They may also be ok vs lizardmen since lizardmen have very short ranged weapons though terradons may be a problem.

You also might want to use some plague furnaces but i'm not sure. Lords and heroes may become a bigger hitter for you then anything else if you don't use rares.

Still not sold on Jezzails, and that's before the price tag (just a normal box of Clanrats+Kroot rifles with their arms is a good, cheap alternative for 10 crews).

I think their point cost is just a bit too high for BS3, you're hitting on 5s, if they did D3 wounds, game changer, but at 1 each I just don't see them being worth it.

If you don't have any rare you can totally play still. Don't expect it to be easy tho lol

Depends what models you have though because I could play a pretty decent no rare list if I had too but it wouldn't be as potent as a list with rares.

I could go double plague furnace with 40 or 50 monks each and then bring queek and take 60 or 80 of his stormvermin and your regular other stuff like slaves and the like.

You can play without rates and I encourage you to play whenever you have enough models to make a list. It doesn't have to be the best list but you start to learn the army at least

As some have said, it can be done but it isn't easy.
Skaven have plenty of options to deal with armor and toughness, rares are just better at it.
Jezzails have a hard time hitting with bs 3 but their s6 -4 to save can make short work of small high toughness high armor units.
Poison wind globes ignore armor and wound on a 4+
Plague censer bearers are an expensive glass cannon but the plague ignores armor.
Another option that goes against the mind set of the average player is take less slaves and run multiple small units of clan rats with warp fire throwers, rattling guns and poison wind mortars.

I'm working on scratch building a Warp lightning cannon right now, out of defiler bits and some wires and sprue I have sitting around.

Thanks
Austin

 Redbad wrote:
Like the title suggests, is it possible to win with skaven with no rare options?
every list I see has a doomwheel, or a WLC, or HPA....I know those things are good, but don't they get boring?
Could I win without them?

Thanks
Austin

If it feels boring try some of the new options. I wish i could give some great advice and i've played skaven for like 5+ years. Skaven haven't done much with the vermin lord yet or the stormfiends. Stormfiends have like 5 weapon types and a 6th type which can tunnel which should give some options. Same goes for the vermin lords and their ability to move to the side of a unit of monstrous infantry or cavalry really quick and cast cracks call. Some of the vermin lord options also have some nice abilities.

If things get boring you could try the 30-40 night runner with warp grinder team route (you can only take one unit of them with a warp grinder but it should be ok vs a gun-line if you charge it with the runners when they come in). Also as insane as it is you can use the doom flayer. Most people agree it sucks but if you take several and guard it then it tends to survive more light enemy fire than anything else and holding an enemy down with a ton of guys while other units come in is something skaven excel at. Sure the doom flayer isn't great and can mishap but if you have 3 or so charging the same unit it can start to add up both with impact hits and general attacks. Just don't charge the front of an enemy unit with em as hitting them in the flank or rear is what skaven are all about being backstabbers (we like giving it up the butt ).

Our specials tend to not be very good but a few units of 5 model gutter runners are pretty good with poisoned slings. Not entirely sure how you could handle a daemon prince without rares but i'm guessing jezzails even if it's expensive. Another choice here is some magic.

I've heard jezzails are good esp. in a tower if you get the item for the 'folding fortress' but to buy so many jezzails isn't easy if the money isn't there.

So yeah my suggestion here is if you don't use rares try seeing about lord and hero choices. I've heard good things about warlords on bonebreakers and such. Just let the heroes do the damage while the slaves and such die en mass for the glorious overlord!

Huey11 wrote:
If you have no rares, then suggest your opponent does without as well!

Sadly the skaven book is still back in the old 7th edition books as one of only 2 armies still there. It's showing it's age by being heavily FAQ'd. End times has helped but stormfiends are still rares.

If you want an idea of how things were back then there were armies with several very lacking roles. For instance in the previous high elf book shooting was even less prevalent to my knowledge. This is also back when ogres leadbelchers were the extent of their shooting and mournfangs and moving cannons for them didn't exist. They used to be fairly light on armor.

Skaven still having an old book have pretty much no mounts unless you consider the few we don't have a model for and as such our armor is also fairly poor. We want to be a shooting army but with the price of jezzails it doesn't happen. Also with the increase of shooting in plenty of armies things like weapons teams being so easily killed by light shooting makes things infinitely more difficult (esp. since warpfire throwers are artillery dice plus template range, ratling guns are 18" range and in general most things just shoot them to death before we get to shoot even with slave screens as they probably have higher ground they can shoot over with). I mean usually for an opponent to get hit by weapons teams now they either have to suck or have a melee army. It wouldn't be so bad to have ratling guns but they'd need to guard your cannons and jezzails would need to bring the enemy there. Also considering shot for shot if i was to fight wood elf shooting with my own i'd usually lose (30" bows they can move and fire with and trueflight would mean no negative modifiers).

Basically what skaven need is a 9th edition book or just any new book. Make plastic jezzails for cheaper. 5 jezzails for 50 USD even would be acceptable and freaking jetpack skaven already (come on man!).

Most importantly they need to make skaven be decent outside of rares. I don't think any army is boxed into any one army choice as much as skaven.

i recently finished my 2000 point list with no rares

this is it

verminlord
level 2 plauge priest
level 2 warplock engineer

20 stormvermin full command banner of the under-empire w/halberds +shields
20 clanrats full command w/spears +shields warpfire thrower
30 clanrats full command w hand weapon + shields poisonwind mortar
30 skavenslaves command w/hand weapons + shield
40 skavenslaves command w/spears + shields
16 giant rats w/packmaster

20 plaugemonks full command extra hand weapon
4 rat ogres w/packmaster

so far i have lost 3 out of the 10 or so games i have played with it

its really not hard to win without rare choices at all i really like my list its fun to play and everyone i play against comments that its hard to kill everything i have no plans to change it if i did the only thing i would change is swap my vermin lord to a grey seer and 6 stormfiends just to see how it plays and add more bodies

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 Redbad wrote:
Like the title suggests, is it possible to win with skaven with no rare options?
every list I see has a doomwheel, or a WLC, or HPA....I know those things are good, but don't they get boring?
Could I win without them?

Thanks
Austin

If it feels boring try some of the new options. I wish i could give some great advice and i've played skaven for like 5+ years. Skaven haven't done much with the vermin lord yet or the stormfiends. Stormfiends have like 5 weapon types and a 6th type which can tunnel which should give some options. Same goes for the vermin lords and their ability to move to the side of a unit of monstrous infantry or cavalry really quick and cast cracks call. Some of the vermin lord options also have some nice abilities.

If things get boring you could try the 30-40 night runner with warp grinder team route (you can only take one unit of them with a warp grinder but it should be ok vs a gun-line if you charge it with the runners when they come in). Also as insane as it is you can use the doom flayer. Most people agree it sucks but if you take several and guard it then it tends to survive more light enemy fire than anything else and holding an enemy down with a ton of guys while other units come in is something skaven excel at. Sure the doom flayer isn't great and can mishap but if you have 3 or so charging the same unit it can start to add up both with impact hits and general attacks. Just don't charge the front of an enemy unit with em as hitting them in the flank or rear is what skaven are all about being backstabbers (we like giving it up the butt ).

Our specials tend to not be very good but a few units of 5 model gutter runners are pretty good with poisoned slings. Not entirely sure how you could handle a daemon prince without rares but i'm guessing jezzails even if it's expensive. Another choice here is some magic.

I've heard jezzails are good esp. in a tower if you get the item for the 'folding fortress' but to buy so many jezzails isn't easy if the money isn't there.

So yeah my suggestion here is if you don't use rares try seeing about lord and hero choices. I've heard good things about warlords on bonebreakers and such. Just let the heroes do the damage while the slaves and such die en mass for the glorious overlord!

Huey11 wrote:
If you have no rares, then suggest your opponent does without as well!

Sadly the skaven book is still back in the old 7th edition books as one of only 2 armies still there. It's showing it's age by being heavily FAQ'd. End times has helped but stormfiends are still rares.

If you want an idea of how things were back then there were armies with several very lacking roles. For instance in the previous high elf book shooting was even less prevalent to my knowledge. This is also back when ogres leadbelchers were the extent of their shooting and mournfangs and moving cannons for them didn't exist. They used to be fairly light on armor.

Skaven still having an old book have pretty much no mounts unless you consider the few we don't have a model for and as such our armor is also fairly poor. We want to be a shooting army but with the price of jezzails it doesn't happen. Also with the increase of shooting in plenty of armies things like weapons teams being so easily killed by light shooting makes things infinitely more difficult (esp. since warpfire throwers are artillery dice plus template range, ratling guns are 18" range and in general most things just shoot them to death before we get to shoot even with slave screens as they probably have higher ground they can shoot over with). I mean usually for an opponent to get hit by weapons teams now they either have to suck or have a melee army. It wouldn't be so bad to have ratling guns but they'd need to guard your cannons and jezzails would need to bring the enemy there. Also considering shot for shot if i was to fight wood elf shooting with my own i'd usually lose (30" bows they can move and fire with and trueflight would mean no negative modifiers).

Basically what skaven need is a 9th edition book or just any new book. Make plastic jezzails for cheaper. 5 jezzails for 50 USD even would be acceptable and freaking jetpack skaven already (come on man!).

Most importantly they need to make skaven be decent outside of rares. I don't think any army is boxed into any one army choice as much as skaven.

Stormfiends are amazing. 3 with rattling cannons reduce the eternity king to one wound in a phase.

 thedarkavenger wrote:

Huey11 wrote:
If you have no rares, then suggest your opponent does without as well!

Not really a balanced solution. Some books, like wood elves, don't need the rare section to be filthy.

I'm not even sure the Beastmen book has a Rares section, does it?

 streamdragon wrote:

 thedarkavenger wrote:

Huey11 wrote:
If you have no rares, then suggest your opponent does without as well!

Not really a balanced solution. Some books, like wood elves, don't need the rare section to be filthy.

I'm not even sure the Beastmen book has a Rares section, does it?

Having had a giant break 1000 points of an empire army, I'm inclined to say yes.

It all depends. I bring Warp Lighting canons, mainly to try and make up for my lack of shooting.

The problem Skaven face is the prevalence of gunlines in modern WHFB, something that no horde spam can counter. I had a game, 2.5K, against a Chaos Dwarf player. In total he brought 1 close combat unit and the rest of his pots wjent into shooting units and artillery. I was tabled by turn 3, when the 30 or so Skaven out of my 300+ army finally made it into close combat only to be butchered.

In all honesty the unique flavour of so many armies has been lost, leading to armies that can do almost everything. Dwarves have fast moving aircraft. Ogres have cavalry. The list goes on and with the exception of but one other army Skaven have been left in the dust.

 master of ordinance wrote:
It all depends. I bring Warp Lighting canons, mainly to try and make up for my lack of shooting.

The problem Skaven face is the prevalence of gunlines in modern WHFB, something that no horde spam can counter. I had a game, 2.5K, against a Chaos Dwarf player. In total he brought 1 close combat unit and the rest of his pots wjent into shooting units and artillery. I was tabled by turn 3, when the 30 or so Skaven out of my 300+ army finally made it into close combat only to be butchered.

In all honesty the unique flavour of so many armies has been lost, leading to armies that can do almost everything. Dwarves have fast moving aircraft. Ogres have cavalry. The list goes on and with the exception of but one other army Skaven have been left in the dust.

If only people could see it as you see then maybe we wouldn't get so many 'skaven are OP' opinions. It angers me to no end.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
It all depends. I bring Warp Lighting canons, mainly to try and make up for my lack of shooting.

The problem Skaven face is the prevalence of gunlines in modern WHFB, something that no horde spam can counter. I had a game, 2.5K, against a Chaos Dwarf player. In total he brought 1 close combat unit and the rest of his pots wjent into shooting units and artillery. I was tabled by turn 3, when the 30 or so Skaven out of my 300+ army finally made it into close combat only to be butchered.

In all honesty the unique flavour of so many armies has been lost, leading to armies that can do almost everything. Dwarves have fast moving aircraft. Ogres have cavalry. The list goes on and with the exception of but one other army Skaven have been left in the dust.

If only people could see it as you see then maybe we wouldn't get so many 'skaven are OP' opinions. It angers me to no end.

Stormfiends certainly don't help the arguement.

Every battle report of Nagash being shot off in one turn, Eternity King being reduced to 1 wound in a phase, tunneling behind a bret bus and shooting it dead to the man, warrior blocks disappearing.. all without a real counter considering they can shoot into those super expensive slave units that test on rerollable leadership 10.

Slaves weren't designed with steadfast in mind. Steadfast + SiN should have been errata'd as slaves get one or the other, and you would see more clanrats, less slaves, and less complaining.

If the guns are strength 5 and nagash is like toughness 7 how would they in any way hurt him? Nagash can summon more models up than he costs. This is all provided you can even get to him without him surrounding himself with mobs of undead. At that point the only hope you have are cannons and skaven cannons can't reliably hurt anything over toughness 6. This is why skaven would lose to being cannon sniped by other faction's cannons every single time.

End times is also fairly broken in many ways. Stormfiends do take up certain choices though. For once ratling cannon stormfiends have 4 wounds toughness 4 and light armor. Elves would laugh them away with arrows. Should they tunnel you can probably block where they come up with something. They can only come in on turn 2 and if you play it right as their opponent they should be deadly fairly soon after. Not to mention ratling cannon stormfiends have like 18" range to shoot with. Sure they can move and have quick to fire (but i don't think they can march. If they are outranged by guns they'll be dead pretty fast. It also only takes losing one to test on leadership 7. God help you if you don't have a BSB near em which is the case with the ones you send out with tunnel teams. So basically lose one to light fire and instantly there's a good chance they run away with pee streaming down their legs.