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Semi-competitive player (will go to events eventually so i need something that wins). I played Lizardmen in Fantasy, i see they are great here in every way but i'm tired of them. In 40k orks, so also tired of them...

I'd like to play Skaven but everyone says they're really horrible which is sad... They have 31 units, so much potential for fun collecting. Welp.

I like Chaos (slaves to darkness), seem to not have great variety of model classes. Same with Khorne. No flying units, no shooting. It's just advance across the board. Seems everything went into the AoS version of Space Marines ffs.

I read combining nurgle/deamon. You get nerfed with army combos but is there some setups worth it? Would bring model variety for sure... I could do that.

Share yer wisdom mates

Edit: I read a guy won a tournament using Skaven artillery behind other race. Do people at tournaments combine?

I don't think you'll have to wait much longer for skaven to get a new battletome. Same for slaves to Darkness, as both are rumoured to have one coming up this year.

Skaven right now are indeed not very strong. So look for something else if you want to have an instantly good army.

Beasts of chaos might be more up your ally. They have some shooting, magic, melee, monsters etc. It's a very well rounded faction I think. And they can use slaves to darkness as an allied force, so you could still scratch that itch if you want to.

Spent all day reading, checking forums, watching battle reports. I got a hang of things. Probably going to go again Lizardmen.

My friend tells me you lose important bonuses mixing 2 armies. How does that work? And it differenciates from mixing a foreign unit to say half an army?

Where would i see good lists, on paper or battle reports?

Thanks a lot guys really need this.

Your friend probably meant playing a Grand Alliance instead of a normal faction.

So here's the deal:

In AoS you pick a faction by picking one Keyword and building an army using only warscrolls with that Keyword. For example Seraphon is the Keyword for playing "lizardmen".

What we would consider factions in the classic sense are Keywords that come with Allegiance Abilities - a set of rules your army gains if all your warscrolls have this Keyword, such as access to additional artifacts and spells, faction terrain pieces, summoning and so on.

Typically, a Battletome is an "army book" for one such Keyword and lists the Keyword's Allegiance Abilities and all or at least most of the warscrolls with that Keyword.

The game also has four super-factions called Grand Alliances (Chaos, Order, Death, Destruction). Each of what we consider normal factions falls into one of the Grand Alliances (and all warscrolls also have a Grand Alliance Keyword) and each Grand Alliance has its own Allegiance Abilities, so you can use it as your faction. For example, you can play Grand Alliance Chaos and mix and match every Chaos model GW makes for AoS. However, Grand Alliances have much weaker Allegiance Abilities than more focused factions, and that is the cost you pay for mixing and matching.

In the case of Nurgle, your friend's advice does not count. All Nurgle units, mortals and daemons alike (okay, except Beastmen), fall under the <NURGLE> Allegiance and are a single faction by any defintion, although there are some synergies that mortals have only with eachother and daemons only with eachother, and mortals have two subgroups, Rotbringers (the fancy new fat dudes) and Slaves to Darkness (classic Marauders and Warriors). All the warscrolls for Daemons of Nurgle and Rotbringers are in Battletome: Maggotkin, while Slaves to Darkness don't have an up to date book yet, so you use warscrolls in the book Grand Alliance: Chaos. Oh, and Skaven Clan Pestilens also all have the Nurgle keyword, so you can put them in as well, but again, they won't benefit from all the synergies.

Finally, you can spend up to 25% of your points on units from other factions from the same Grand Alliance that are listed as valid allies for your faction without compromising your Allegiance Abilities.

Skaven are also weaker because they were one of the early armies to get a Battletome when GW had shattered many factions into subfactions. So Pestilens got a book, but none of the other Clans did. Now more recently since 2.0 launched GW has been changing a few things. Beasts of Chaos were a unified group of multiple subfactions brought back together again; whilst Goblins has shown a newer type of Battletome where several sub-armies are united under one Banner, but where you can still run a mono-subfaction army. So for goblins that would be something like a Troggoth Army.

The bonus there is that whilst you can run a pure sub-faction themed army; you can also run mixed with all the alliance bonuses and none of the allied unit limits*
Skaven "MIGHT" get such a battletome. I stress the word might ,we really don't know and we've no timescale to guess. We just know that both Flesheater Courts and Skaven are getting a double boxed set which historically has been used before Battletome/codex releases and to launch new models.
Both Flesheater and Skaven were early Battletomes so they are ripe to be updated since the 2.0 and a lot of AoS has matured rules and structure wise.



*1/4 of points and model count, but also limits mages since wizards can only take spells in the Battletome being used as the core of the army. So an allied wizard won't hae the right key-words to use the Battletome spells; so they only get what comes on their warscroll card. Of course they can also cast endless spells and if you're playing with Realm spells they can use them too.

additionally when pestilence got a book, it wasn't really a book in the traditional sense. It didn't have bonus rules or artefacts or spells or anything. It was just the pestilence warscrolls put into a book and then had art and lore added to it.

So the power level of pestilence is still pretty much the same as the rest of skaven... tier 3 or so for the most part because they do not as of yet have a modern book with the modern gadgets that the other modern books have.

Edit: Ok saw some videos on Skaven Clans, being Nurgle so can include others and got the whole thing.

Skaven have old models some metal. If they do release new ones i'll play them, the clan choice is great to make it more complex and expand your army. But having metal blisters of 3 clone units is just ridiculous, hope they do release the 2 faction box fixing some.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Last post, i'm curious

About Ork\Goblin army, i'd go for goblin moonclan (squigz&fanatics) then whatever best in orks.
How do they work, synergy wise? Are they usually played together? How strong are they?

The moonclan and ironjaws aren't allies with one another, so you'd end up losing out on the allegience abilities for the moonclan which are very, very powerful.

Gloomspite Gitz ally with: Bonesplitterz, Gitmob Grots, Greenskinz

The Gitmob Grots are basically fading away. I believe most of their models are already gone from the webstore. Bonesplitterz are often a powerful choice (savage orks). The Greenskinz are your basic orks but they too seem to be fading from regular sale.

The Moonclan in Gloomspite Gitz can be taken right alongside the trolls and squigs and spiders, so you already have that variety if you went that route.

If you really wanted to ally in some orks then the Bonesplitterz are probably your best bet.

AoS has it's streangh and weaknesses, much like WH Fantasy.

The two armies I find absolutly unique and visually stunning are the new goblins, and the sheet with holes for eyes nighthaunt ghosts. :-) My wote goes for any of those two. As a semi competetive player you can make work.

Both Gitmob Gobs and Greenskins are totally gone from the GW stores now - there's nothing left. Very odd choice to ally the faction to two factions that GW knew they were going to remove on the same day they launched the new Gloomspite Gitz battletome - unless that latter change was made before the tomes were printed.

I heard it can take months from when the book is finalised to when they have the books ready for sale on release date. Maybe it was a decision made by the studio not knowing what the product line manager was planning.

Dumb move either way.

That's not even the most egregious example of that kind of thing in AoS, the Cauldron of Blood is the source kit for every unnamed DoK hero and was sold out the day that book came out - and remained so for like a million years.