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About this blog

A blog dedicated to following the development, both hobby and competitive play, of Aiden Nicol's Clan Pestilens army, as well as other Skaven related content. Aiden is a hobbyist and active tournament player in Wellington, New Zealand.

Entries in this blog

Warscroll Spotlight: Verminlord Corruptor

Striding above the lesser rats as they charge screaming into battle is a monster the skaven fear more than any other. Verminlords are the truest incarnation of the Horned Rat, be they ascended champions rewarded for excellence, shards of the Horned Rat given form and function, or the hideous Lord Skreech Verminking, an abomination formed from the essence of the entire original Council of Thirteen. These entities lead the skaven, from the front and from the shadows, and of their number none are f
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Warscroll Spotlight: Plagueclaw Catapult

Skaven armies are famous for two things; the collosal numbers they slap on the table and the ramshackle war machines they drag behind them. The Plagueclaw is one such machine. You may be more familiar with this weapon of war from seeing it shoehorned into a Maggotkin list, or spamming them to win Mortal Empires in Total War Warhammer (I have no regrets, Mazdamundi had it coming). It isn't often fielded in any chaos list not of Pestilens or Nurgle, a distinction that seperates it from the Warp Li
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Warscroll Spotlight: Plague Censer Bearers

Most armies have their dedicated elite infantry, and from the Freeguild Greatswords to the Kharadron Grundstock Thunderers they bear an infamous reputation on the battlefield.  Each of the Skaven Clans have their own as well, and those fielded by the Clans Pestilens are known as Plague Censer Bearers. Swinging High The standout strengths of the Censer Bearers are evident. Unlike Plague Monks their weapon range is 2 inches, meaning they can actually swing over the top of themselves when
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Warscroll Spotlight: Lord Skreech Verminking

Something a little different this time, we're reaching out of the pestilent pond and talking about the model that literally made me want to play Skaven as an army (Pre AOS even), the dreaded lord of all Verminlords, Skreech the Verminking. Royal Introductions Skreech is the skaven named character that does a little bit of everything. He has a solid combat profile, he has a toolkit of abilities that let him recieve a small buff of yur choice each turn based on each skaven clan that swit
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Useful Idiots: The Ally Choices of Clan Pestilens

In this blog entry I'd like to explain the best options we have for ally choices when running the Clan Pestilens alleigance. As a Skaven army, we can ally with all the other Skaven factions (Clans Verminus, Eshin, Skryre, Moulder and the Masterclan) as well as Nurgle Daemons. Obviously covering every single model we can ally in is a bit fruitless, so I'll just be talking the best options for matched play. Clanrats (Clan Verminus) Oh Clanrats, don't you ever go changing on me. These guy
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Tournament Tactics: Reminder Sheet

When I first started playing tournaments I would usually finish on a comfortable 4 or 5 Major Defeats. This was happening to me because I wasn't just a new player, I was a bad player. Losing doesn't make you bad, but losing consistently and not taking steps to improve does. My first step to improving was to read my warscrolls. Not just read, but really dig in and memorize them (Clan Pestilens has about 6 warscrolls, so no excuse not to really). From there I constructed a small phase by phase flo
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Tournament Lists for Pestilens in AoS2

Gidday Skaven enthusiasts, I'm headed to a tournament in two weeks time and submitted my list last night, and I'd like to write a little about what has changed in AoS2 and how it affects our ist building. What's Changed for the Better? Realm Artefacts: These have been a total game changer, over 50 artifacts drawn from multiple realms to enhance lists or build lists around. Standouts for other factions like Lens of Refraction and Aetherial Amulet have already begun to change the game.
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Skaven Matchups: Updated for AOS2

Here's the 2018 Matchups list as i see it, I'll be updating as the year unfolds.   Idoneth Deepkin - Neutral Look man I dunno. This army is just weird. We wreck their infantry with sickening ease but the eels are annoying. Their magic is good and the Ishraan Rites are pretty non interactive. The big turtle thing goes down like a sack of cheap seafood but they never take it so it's irrelevant. Stay away from the shipwrecks, kill the support heroes. And on the High Tide they'll wrec
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Skaven in AOS2 - Mixed Skaven

Welcome to Age of Sigmar second edition people. Lets kick off the first blog post for this edition with how mixed skaven measures up thanks to the chages to Grand Alliance: Chaos rules. Allegiance Ability The GA: Chaos allegiance ability is nothing too overpowered, par the course for the Grand Alliances. "Unbridled Malice" is a slight rework of the old ability they had, in this edition you roll a dice for a unit when you select it to fight in the combat phase if that unit is within 12
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Skaven Elites: Premier Skaven Troop Choices

Skaven Elites Premier Troops of the Skaven Clans     Across the 5 Great Clans of the Skaven, there are a variety of powerful and varied units that when combined allow a Skaven army to manage itself against various threats. Among these units, each clan has an “elite unit”, a costly and specialized warscroll that best represents the strength of the clan they hail from.   Stormvermin Specialization: Damage Focused Support Infantry  
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Repainting the Rats

no big blog post today, just a progress shot. I've repainted 40 so far. Here's a comparison between when they were first painted two years ago and a finished repaint.
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Rats in need of Makeover

decided to touch up my rats after a year of neglect. The rat on the left is from when I had a spurt of inspiration months ago, and the other one is from when I first started playing. These lads are in need of a little tender loving care to get them up to the standard the New Zealand scene often displays.
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Pre-Tournament Post: ChariCon

Event Preparation: ChariCon Upper Hutt First event with "New Skaven"   This coming weekend the Wellington Region in New Zealand (The Capital Region, the Best Region, the Once-and-Future Region) is playing host to a new style of event called ChariCon. The astute among you will notice this word is a mash-up of the words "Charity" and "Convention", which believe it or not is no mere coincidence. 100% of the proceeds and revenue generated by registrations and various charity raffles a
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Notrious Hammer Tournament List

Hey guys, Aiden here again after my long hiatus learning how Microsoft Excel works and when it is or is not appropriate to assault office workers with a list write-up. Next weekend myself and the majority of Wellington’s die hard AOS scene will be competing in Notorious Hammer, a tournament set up by the members of the widely popular Notorious AOS Podcast (https://notoriousaos.podbean.com/). It’s also one of the last tournaments of the year that offer points contributing towards the 2018 Nationa
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Notorious Hammer Tournament

Notorious Hammer       Just got home from the Notorious Hammer event in Johnsonville, Wellington and I’m here to let everyone know how it went. The tournament went overall exceptionally well, big props to Shaun from Notorious AOS (https://notoriousaos.podbean.com/) for T.O’ing the event and running a tight ship. Once again, the New Zealand Warhammer scene is better for your efforts. Everyone had a great time and there was a great field present for 2 days of great games.
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Nervous Speculation: Part 3

Won't lie to you fellow ratkin I actually forgot that the warscrolls get revealed a week before the book itself due to how the retail website works so waking up here in NZ to all these changes was like Christmas. But the kind of Christmas where you're not sure if the gifts are cool or terrible. Without further ado, let us get stuck into the warscrolls and talk about what’s different, what’s better, and what’s worse. As ever, we still don’t have points so a lot of this is potentially subjective.
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Nervous Speculation: Part 2

Didn't expect to be back so soon, but GW is throwing spoilers at us hard and fast and you know i'll be there to catch them. Today's article centred on Skaventide Endless Spells, as well as the Gnawhole terrain feature. As always, I preface this saying we don't have the full picture, any of my predictions could be wrong here based entirely on what we get caster wise and what's big in your local meta. We also don't know the point costs of these (Gnawhole is terrain and therefore free) so that can
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Nervous Speculation: Part 1

Hey there fellow Acolytes, figured I might as well do some posts relating to the rules spoilers we will be getting leading up to the battletome. To preface this, it's important to acknowledge all rules we are shown are in a vacuum, we have no idea what other changes may be coming that supplement or affect these rules. But that being said, let's dive straight into it.  Kicking off strong. Now "Overwhelming Mass" is exactly the sort of thing I expected with a new Skaven book, it both rew
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Lore Post: The Roiling Horde

Acolytes of the Withered Word The Fecund Hordes of the Ashen Wastes     The Skaven Clans, and most particularly the teeming hordes of Clan Pestilens, are infamous for their Gnawholes, unstable tunnel-gates that run between the realms chiselled into being by the twisted claws and sorcery of the rat-men and guided by their insidious Verminlords. They can be seen dotting the realms, particularly great sites of battle during the Realmgate War, leaving warping and twisted
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Looking Back: My 2017 List

An important part of improving play is constantly working and innoavting your list, changing it as you learn new things about your army. This post is taking a look at the force I personally ran for the majority of the NZ AOS 2017 tournaments, and an overview of how it went. Here's the list. Allegiance: Skaven Pestilens Leaders Plague Furnace (200) Plague Priest with Plague Censer (80) Plague Priest with Plague Censer (80) Battleline 30 x Plague Monks (210) - Foetid Blades - Pestilens Bat
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Looking Back: 2018 NICon

Last weekend I took the rats to the North Island Convention (NICon) tournament in Napier, New Zealand. The event was a competitive matched play tournament utilizing scenarios made out of the Games Workshop Open War cards, so they were not like anything most competitive players were used to and made for interesting list building.  I myself took the usual list of Verminlord Corruptor, 2 Plague Furnaces, 3 Plague Priests, 2 units of 40 allied clanrats and filled the rest of my list with as many Pla
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Looking Back: 2017 Masters

The last tournament I attended in 2017 was the NZ Masters. Attended by just under 20 people (suck it 9th Age), it was a massive event attended by a host of extremely skilled players. I was there too. This is the list I ran for the event. Allegiance: Skaven Pestilens Leaders Verminlord Corruptor (220) Plague Furnace (200) Plague Priest with Plague Censer (80) Plague Priest with Plague Censer (80) Plague Priest with Plague Censer (80) Screaming Bell (200) Battleline 30 x Plague Monks (210)
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Disorganised Religion: Clan Pestilens Tactics

Today we're going to talk about the strategies available to the enterprising Clan Pestilens player and the tricks and tools of the disease trade. Some of these aren't exactly unique to Pestilens, but all of them are useful to them. The Prayers of a Righteous Rat Did you know you can cast the damage prayer on the Plague Priest scroll without an actual target? It targets an area, not a unit. Interesting info, but not really useful right? Wrong. Spam this turn 1 with no valid target and g
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Clan Pestilens: Matchups

Todays post is all about matchups, and how Pestilens fares in them. Now because of the nature of the army, matchups are more important than I would like to be honest, so it helps to know them. These are based primarily off experience, I haven't faced all the armies (popular ones at least) in the game so some of these will be experience and some will be educated comparisons. I'll grade them in advantage, major and minor. Blades of Khorne - Minor Advantage to Blades of Khorne A combat ba
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