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Hey guys!

I'm wanting to get into aos with an initial 1k army. I don't want something so powerful my friends don't want to play, but I don't want to just get walked all over.

The aim is to have fun! Can you help me decide? What are your thoughts on either army?

Thanks!

In terms of fun skaven. So much wacky stuff. And lots of different playstyles.

tneva82 wrote:
In terms of fun skaven. So much wacky stuff. And lots of different playstyles.

And they are visually more interesting than the maggotkin.

ccs wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
In terms of fun skaven. So much wacky stuff. And lots of different playstyles.

And they are visually more interesting than the maggotkin.

And more units to horde the board, even when they dont always win, its fun like the first one said.

I have had 4-5 armies in AoS, and I am building up a Skaven as we speak, mostly since they are so many ( horde army) they can sometimes win since they have the numbers and flood the table, or you get kicked in the ass by your enemy quickly, no safe way to win or lose sometimes.

But yes, Skaven have the most options of units over (i think) any other army in AoS roster.
If you wanna play for fun and maybe win sometimes, make sure to bring some Doomwheels or Warp Lightning Cannons or those kind of machines.. you will have a blast or blow up...



Since its sometime since this post was added, you maybe have a army done or went another way maybe?

And skaven doesn't even have to be horde if you don't want to go for horde. Moulder/Skyre can be pretty darn elite.

And with moulder you can make opponent pull his hair out of frustration when units keep coming back I remember fielding Archaon who spent almost whole game smacking down rat ogre unit after rat ogre unit as they kept coming back. Whack-a-mole game style.

Nurgle tends to field very tough units that are hard to kill and will take a lot of punishment. You might find them an easier entryway and have less pressure on you to build swarms of models which Skaven can tend to nudge you toward. The other upside is that Nurgle is pretty modern model wise so pretty much if not everything is plastic.



Skaven have a huge range of models and a wide variety of play styles from swarms of rats to elite armies with war engines and huge hulking monstrocities. Their model range is highly diverse but also somewhat scattershot. They've got models in metal, finecast, early plastics and modern plastics.
If you get into them I'd recommend hunting around on ebay for the old "Island of Blood" skaven models. They give you a few modern rat ogres which can be added to the current ones which are super old. You can still find some on sprue either alone or in sets with the rest of the models.




Lore/character wise both are fun armies. Skaven are insane rats just as likely to kill their enemy as each other as they attempt to rise up their own ranks; Nurgle have things like their hounds which are basically huge happy doggos who want to run around the battlefield and play with their new friends - their new friends just happen to rot away and die horrible deaths because of all the plagues and poxes that the hound has.




ALSOoooo you can do both.
Nurgle can ally with Clan Pestiliens from Skaven. So you can go to battle with plagued rats and nurgle warriors.

Some nurgle builds have a very low model count. How important is it to you to have a fully painted army, and what do you think your time / stamina will be with that?

30 model skaven army isnt impossible either if you want to go low count

Depends on your play style. Do you want hordes or elite? Skaven offer a fun game as things can work... or not. At the end of the day, you will need to drop a bunch of clan rats down so be prepared to paint a lot of bodies. If you go Maggotkin, you'll need a couple of Blightking units a unit of two of Plague Bearers, some Blight kings riding mosquitos, and a couple of heroes (a maggoth lord if you can find one!). If you go mortal heavy, you need 20 Blightkings, a wizard, a blightking hero, and Glottkin. If you want to swap out Glottkin for 2 maggots lords and a unit of nurglings, that works too. 20 blightkings makes a serious wall to get through and they're hard to get through.

boyd wrote:
Depends on your play style. Do you want hordes or elite? Skaven offer a fun game as things can work... or not. At the end of the day, you will need to drop a bunch of clan rats down so be prepared to paint a lot of bodies. If you go Maggotkin, you'll need a couple of Blightking units a unit of two of Plague Bearers, some Blight kings riding mosquitos, and a couple of heroes (a maggoth lord if you can find one!). If you go mortal heavy, you need 20 Blightkings, a wizard, a blightking hero, and Glottkin. If you want to swap out Glottkin for 2 maggots lords and a unit of nurglings, that works too. 20 blightkings makes a serious wall to get through and they're hard to get through.

31 models and no clanrat in sight

Allegiance: Skaven
- Grand Strategy: None Chosen
- Triumphs:

Leaders
Master Moulder (90)
Master Moulder (90)
Verminlord Warbringer (395)

Battleline
4 x Rat Ogors (280)
- Reinforced x 1
4 x Rat Ogors (280)
- Reinforced x 1
18 x Giant Rats (180)
- Reinforced x 2
2 x Rat Ogors (140)

Behemoths
Hell Pit Abomination (245)
Hell Pit Abomination (245)

Total: 1945 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 4 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 129
Drops: 9

You could go all Eshin and be rat-ninjas!

It depends on what kind of army you want to play, a horde with many weak, expendable units, or a somewhat elite army with quite tough units. One thing to note is that the Maggotkin have mostly new to relatively new models while a lot of the Skaven models are decades old and look very out-of-date.