Skin Wolves - underused?

[swarmofseals]

I've heard people mention that skin wolves can be good before, but I haven't seen them much in tournament lists. The reputation, as far as I could tell, is that they have good offense but are a bit of a "glass cannon". When I ran the numbers I was a bit surprised by what I found -- their offense is very strong (among the most efficient warscrolls that I've calculated), but their defensive efficiency is really not that bad either. They are 10 points per wound, so even though they have very little defense their cost remains efficient. Another knock against them is that they don't really synergize with much. This is true -- the only real options to buff them that I could find are the Chaos Sorcerer Lord and the Chaos Warshrine. The former seems solid, the latter not so much. That said, they do synergize rather well with the Chaos allegiance package. When Unpredictable Destruction triggers for them the results should be devastating, as they will get additional attacks on 4+ (right? or is it one of those strange abilities where the wording means that it only triggers on natural rolls?) Furthermore, Lord of War is fantastic on them for the same reason. To cap it off, Crown of Conquest is great for mitigating their main weakness (low enough bravery to be a liability even for 4 wound models).

To add on to all of this, they have respectable speed and pile in 6" (with the ability to move over models to pile in). 

I've gotta wonder if these guys are a somewhat hidden gem.

[Arkiham]

I think so, but as you said, you need to devote alot of resources to make them work well. 

Is it worth it?  Hmmm there is equal options which require less devotion to them. 

 

Throwing them in though is a screwball, kinda like the squigg army

[swarmofseals]

18 hours ago, Arkiham said:

I think so, but as you said, you need to devote alot of resources to make them work well. 

Is it worth it?  Hmmm there is equal options which require less devotion to them. 

 

Throwing them in though is a screwball, kinda like the squigg army

That's not quite what I meant. I think they are actually quite strong just on the merits of their own efficiency, and they happen to benefit a lot from some of the basic chaos synergies. Without any buffs at all they are pretty top-tier in terms of damage efficiency and medium to good in terms of defensive efficiency.

[Freejack02]

Yes, they are quite point efficient currently. The things I can see holding them back are 1) being Forgeworld models (and carrying a perceived stigma because of it, as well as being slightly more difficult to obtain) and 2) Only having Chaos Mortals allegiance. I've found that most Chaos players want to run a more specialized force, and having only Mortals allegiance significantly lessens the armies that would make great use of it. 

If they were to receive keyword support, I think they would rightly need a nerf across the board. 

[someone2040]

11 hours ago, Freejack02 said:

Yes, they are quite point efficient currently. The things I can see holding them back are 1) being Forgeworld models (and carrying a perceived stigma because of it, as well as being slightly more difficult to obtain) and 2) Only having Chaos Mortals allegiance. I've found that most Chaos players want to run a more specialized force, and having only Mortals allegiance significantly lessens the armies that would make great use of it. 

If they were to receive keyword support, I think they would rightly need a nerf across the board. 

The allegiance is basically a moot point, as MORTAL is just a racial keyword for anything 'human' inside the Chaos faction essentially.

If I were to say the main thing working against them in terms of keyword synergy, is GW is heavily moving towards the Chaos Mark keyword synergy. It looks like there'll be plenty of buffs for those, otherwise you're at the whims of what your own little sub-faction offers. And as Skin Wolves aren't actually a part of any sub-faction, they won't get anything outside regular buffs available to any unit.

 

But, back to can they stand alone. At an initial glance, they do look quite impressive.4 attacks, 3+, 4+, rend -1, damage 2 is a pretty impressive statline for 40 points each. Then you get additional attacks on a 5+ (Assumably, this is just poor writing for a 5 or more) and you get a minor bravery debuff to boot.

I'm unsure about the 6" pile-in usefulness though. Of course, piling in further should be useful to get the guys at the back closer. But what I'd really like are neat tricks, such as being able to pile in over the front line to get to characters and the like hiding behind the enemy unit.

And that's not very easily achievable due to the rules of piling in. Notable, you need to move closer to the closest enemy model than where you started from and you need to remain in coherency. So it's hard to jump over the backline while still adhering to those rules. Bit of a bummer really! I really like the idea of the Skin Wolves leaping over the guys in their way to get to the juicy morsels behind the lines.

 

Otherwise, bravery could definitely be a big issue. Even 1 dead Skin Wolf, and on a 5+ another one will run away (and on a 6, the entire unit). And they're not that tough with a 5+ save and only 4 wounds.

 

But I could definitely see a use for a pack or two of Skin Wolves. 

[Kaleb Daark]

^^^ this in a word.

 

In old fantasy the skin wolves and the war mammoth both had the option to be marked. 

This has been overlooked by Forgeworld in their Monstrous Arcanum compendium.  At least the War Mammoth gets the slaves to darkness keyword, but skinwolves just get the mortal keyword.

[Killax]

I think I like them but the prime reason I dont have them or will get them is the overlap that is there to other units. Skin Wolves do something different as say Skullreapers but in my theoretical opinion the difference isn't huge enough for me to be bothered to order them from FW's website.

I guess Im lazy like that. Though I believe more FW stuff might be underused. There can be an arguement made that Sayl should be in any Chaos player's collection, though I don't have him. Prime reason, it's FW stuff.