Clan Pestilens list

[msdos]

Hey guys, I recently started a second army (first one is ironjawz) and decided on skaven pestilens. I know, I know, they are not very competetive, but the rule of cool is most important I love the models and thought that a horde army would play a little differently than elite orruks. So I made a list for 1k matched play:

Allegiance: Chaos

Leaders
Plague Furnace (220)
- General
- Trait: Lord of War
- Artefact: Crown of Conquest

Battleline
30 x Plague Monks (210)
- Woe-stave
- Pestilens Battleline
30 x Plague Monks (210)
- Woe-stave
- Pestilens Battleline

War Machines
Plagueclaw (180)
- General
Plagueclaw (180)
- General

Total: 1000/2000
 

What do you guys think? Are units of 30 plague monks too big? I think of them as more objective grabbers/suicide monks. They run, die and cause mortal wounds. The plagueclaws are for pressure. They probably wont do much but d6 dmg and -2 rend and 31" range is a little scary. The furnace would buff monks, give them inspiring presence, so they wouldnt all run away  and move toward the enemy as fast as possible.

Though, i am considering splitting the monks into 3 groups of 20 and giving them 2x foetid blades.

Any advice greatly appreciated

[Naflem]

I've been playing with these guys for awhile.  I might consider splitting them into smaller groups, but even if I didn't I would arm them with the double swords.  Being able to reroll hits is massive, and the only time I'd think the sword and staff might be better is if you have a verminlord corruptor and making use of it's "one extra attack for all weapons" buff (because the sword and staff have to weapon profiles).  I see you don't have a corrupter, so I think you'll see a lot better results from the two swords. 

[generalchaos34]

20 hours ago, Naflem said:

I've been playing with these guys for awhile.  I might consider splitting them into smaller groups, but even if I didn't I would arm them with the double swords.  Being able to reroll hits is massive, and the only time I'd think the sword and staff might be better is if you have a verminlord corruptor and making use of it's "one extra attack for all weapons" buff (because the sword and staff have to weapon profiles).  I see you don't have a corrupter, so I think you'll see a lot better results from the two swords. 

 

I will second this, I have not run a ton of pestilens but I have found that 20+ units of them smashing into a unit will pretty much make ANYTHING die. Simply having them pop like zits and cause mortal wounds seems to be proficient enough they weren't already hitting with 75% of their attacks and then causing more mortal wounds on top of that. double swords all the way!

[msdos]

Thanks guys for the advice. Decided to go with double blades. Here is the first painted monk now just need to paint 59 more.

[Naflem]

Looks good!  I managed to get 70 painted over my playing, and I did a two color black and yellow thing on the robes which didn't do me any favors with simplicity, and then I decided I needed like 10-20 more so I got on ebay and came across an awesome deal for and got 55 for like 20-some bucks.  So now I've got all that bare plastic staring at me again (gonna convert some of those into censure bearers tho.)  

 

[James McPherson]

There are two instances when it's worth running woe staves I found, the main one is when you run a Pestilent Clawpack, this is a cool formation from the compendium skaven pdf which makes your units do DOUBLE DAMAGE on the to wound roll of a 6. What you do is make a large unit of say 30 with woe staves, give them lord of war (+1 to hit) and have a priest on hand with the +1 to wound prayer from Wither (meaning they do dbl damage on a 5+, or ideally stack it with 2 or 3 priests praying to wither to get it down even further to a 4+) also use the priests Plague Tome, to give re-rolls to wound. And also put the Verminlords command ability on them to give them +2 attacks. So they will be 6 attacks on the charge, so 180 attacks for 30, hitting on 3's and 4's, wounding on 2's with a re-roll and 4's do -1 rend and dbl damage. Also use the Contagion Banner at the same time, and you can roll an additional dice for every 4+ to wound you rolled and on another 4+ you can do a mortal wound. The wording is a bit grey , the second roll only says 'on the roll of another 6' but even if you play it as the lesser powered version it's still a really powerful way to get the most out of your units.

 

The other instance is where you want to take a large unit is for a bit of lasting power whilst still optimising the amount that can get into combat with the 2" reach. I find the units of 20 can only last one round of combat or shooting before they loose all their combat output. Plague Monks are great, but if they get into a protracted combat they will loose pretty quick, also because they don't have a save they drop like flies. You only really want to charge something that you know you can wipe out in one turn or at the very least cripple beyond retaliation, so if you think there's going to be a protracted combat suddenly you have no tools to deal with it. having the larger units of Monks above the size of 20 are useful because they can last an extra turn or so against that, and still can take a few more casualties to shooting. It's fine to take the double handed swords for this large unit of 30-40, but I find sometimes the extra reach helps when you do get a big charge off with all 30 into combat, it makes the difference between half of the unit not being able to reach, and half of them being redundant, and with the +2 attacks on them from 'Gouge Tear their Eyes' (Verminlords command ability) they are pretty nice.

 

The biggest drawback to the woe staves I find is speed of play, having to roll the attacks separately can add an extra 5-10 minutes to each combat phase, which over 5 turns is like 30min+ you are wasting.

[Brucimus]

Well I played against pestillens last night with my Bloodbound and got destroyed. 

If you want them to be incredibly durable add the glottkin to your 2000 point army. Making your plague monks have 2 wounds and +1 attack is evil. I couldn't deal with it.