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Here's my dilemma. I want to find what magic banner, if any, would best be suited for a Skaven BSB. He'll only be carrying a shield. The options I'm looking at so far are:

Sacred Banner of the Horned Rat: this gives all enemy's within 12" a -1 to leadership and make enemy units in base contact re-roll any successful leadership checks.

The grand Banner of Clan Superiority: this adds D3 combat res vs the standard 1, as long as there are more ranks than the enemy.

The Shroud of Dripping Death: this makes all models in base contact take a S3 hit with no armour. Additionally any unit that pursues a unit that has this suffers D6+2 S3 hits with no armour.

These are what I'm looking at, but I'm open to all the other possible banners, except for the Razor Standard that belongs to the Stormvermin, or as I mentioned none at all. I would also love to hear your reasons.

Use the storm banner but only if there's no shooting in your army and you have a significant amount of large targets.

Yeah I've got doom wheel, warp lightning cannon, poisoned wind mortar, doom rocket, and gutter runners. So I think perhaps not.

Frankly, no magic banner is worth sacrificing the best possible defense on your BSB. Skaven more than most armies NEED that reroll to survive battle, because more often than not they're LOOSING.

Even if you've got your BSB bunkered down in a unit that (ideally) should never see combat... well, cannons, snipers, and death snipes still can pick them out, and assassination attempts with small chaff units or flying characters are not uncommon.

So invest in defenses, not a magic banner.

I wouldn't take a magic banner on your BSB. I never do its not worth it.
Bump him up with a talisman of preservation if your not using that on another character. That will give him some defense. I only put magic banners on stormvermin unit and my plague monk units I.e razor standard or stormbanner and then plague banner. No need for a magic banner on your BSB, points can be used elsewhere

I use a storm banner as well.

Keeps my bell alive a bit longer.

steristumpie wrote:
I use a storm banner as well.

Keeps my bell alive a bit longer.

Its not as nice when your list is mostly shooty.

But damn is it funny against dwarves

I use the Sacred banner of the Horned Rat. Mainly for fluff reasons.

The Stormbanner is amazing, regardless of how much shooting you have.
Grounding every Flier on the board? Amazing.
Trigger it on your opponent's turn to hamper their shooting. If it continues on to your turn, whatever. If it's still up on their next turn? Wicked.
But, really, it's just there for a turn or two. And that's all you need. Most of your shooting is close range. And hey, you can always shoot into your Slaves. Your opponent doesn't have that option.
Let your A-bomb get across the field. Let your Gutter Runners arrive.

...with all that said, though, don't put it on your BSB. Give him a 4+ Ward and a halberd. StIck the Stormbanner on your Stormvermin. Or your Plague Monks, if you have to.

Oh, and the Grand Banner of Clan Superiority is just terrible. Because it doesn't give you an extra +d3, it gives you +d3 instead of the usual +1 for a banner.
That means that 66% of the time, it's worse than the Warbanner, and the other 33% is when it's 1 better, if you outrank your opponent.

I think the BRB has better banners (Storm and Plague banners aside, and both of those should be on their respective units anyways).

I run a naked BSB in the 2nd rank of a Screaming Bell bus, so he's normally pretty safe, plus if you need it you can always ring the Bell to aim for the 24" re-roll moral/break anyways. Haven't taken a cannon ball through him yet, or been targeted by Death magic (but haven't faced an army that relies on it either so who knows).

Thanks for the input all. I'm finding the storm banner is an auto include most of the time.

The Storm Banner interferes with shooting doesn't it?

Code.... Army Book is across the room...

In an army where our fastest units are M6 or Random Movement (3D6), grounding fliers is huge.
...just not quite as huge as keeping the Hold Your Ground rule for as long as you can. So either huse your BSB safely in a bunker or in the second rank of a unit, or get yourselfa Ward save.

And yes, it does. -2 to BS shooting, other shooting requires a 4+ to fire each turn.