New to AoS, thinking about skaven

[Sunspear]

I have watched a few batreps, read a few articles and looked at the models. I really like the verminus, but from what I have read they aren't in a great place right now. 

Im totally new to this so any advise would be appreciated. I'm not a hyper competitive player, I would just like something that would be fun to play and have a chance of winning and making for a good game 

[Bjarni St.]

If you're looking at Verminus (Clans and Storms) as the core of your army I'd recommend not getting too caught up on maintaining Verminus allegiance and rather looking at a generic Chaos army with a focus on Skaven. There are decent (if not top tier) synergies and nice models to work with within that brief. While pan-Skaven armies only have synergies generally within their Clans, there is still a good selection of individually strong units to fill most niches.

[Cerlin]

If you are thinking skaven, go general chaos with a Grey Seer. The magic range and command ability make him useful each turn. 

I have built a verminus heavy skaven army recently and I like it. It is not OP in the current meta but does well enough. I like 4 rat ogres, chaos sorcerer on mount, arch warlock, and warplock engineer as supplimental troops. I also have 2 poison wind launchers and 2 warpfire throwers. All that on top of 100 clan rats and 20 stormvermin.

 I built my army to be melee and magic heavy. Jezzails and stormfields are looking like good supliments.

The army is 50% win loss and they were all close. 

The surprising part for me has been the mobility and magic power.

The arch warlock is also a huge champ.

It is not top tier army but it is fun and feels very skaven-like.

[Sunspear]

Thanks for the advice, so just going with a pure skaven army isn't  viable? 

Could I use a verminlord in a verminus army? What about the death runners from the silver tower? 

Just curious, I'm wanting to find out about models I like. 

[Cerlin]

Well, it is. Every model in my army besides one is skaven. Verminus will use chaos abilities, so you may as well do chaos allegiance.

An all skaven army has a lot of tricks.

[Nikobot]

Verminlord Warbringer or Verminking are good combined with a verminus list and both can deal the hurt 1-on-1.

A lot of synergies have been lost since GH17 so there isn't too much trickiness you can do, but Stormvermin still hit hard and clanrats aren't bad mainstays.
Supplementing them with warpfire throwers, ratling cannons or poison wind globes bolsters their chances in wearing down an enemy in close combat.

Pure skaven is ok, but its not going to be top tier. It just doesn't have all the synergies that come with having battalions, lots of characters/command abilities, spells/artefacts to combine that some armies have particularly the ones with proper battletomes.

 

[Mayple]

2 hours ago, Sunspear said:

Thanks for the advice, so just going with a pure skaven army isn't  viable? 

Could I use a verminlord in a verminus army? What about the death runners from the silver tower? 

Just curious, I'm wanting to find out about models I like. 

The verminlord warbringer is great at increasing the hitting power of your clanrats and stormvermin, and get some extra oomph out of a doomed unit through the spell it has. It is also one of the more hard hitting combat units the skaven have available besides stormfiends. Note that it's command ability affects MODELS within 13'', while Skreet Verminking's ability affects UNITS within 13''. 

Arch-warlock is another notable rat you want to try and include in almost any list. Just a great guy all around. Warlock-engineer works well as a sidekick to this, as the two of them can drop a lot of mortal wwounds between them.

Grey seer and Screaming bell are great all-around generals to a Skaven army. The grey seer as a general makes your units more 'tanky' (a -lot- of models tend to flee due to low bravery) - while the screaming bell increases mobility with some added benefits. 

Warlords are a trap. They're great individually, but serve no purpose when several are on the field. Better to bring in other skaven heroes to utilize their fantastic spells, prayers, and buffs to their fullest. Warlord on Brood Horror hits as hard(ish) as a Verminlord Warbringer, while being a bit less tanky, so if you want a warlord that can break apart enemies, this is your guy. 

 

Verminus NEEDS to be supplemented by some form of artillery. Unless you're going for a Warpgnaw Verminlord deepstrike. Whether you go for Plagueclaws, Poison wind mortars (3 of these for the same cost as Plagueclaw) or Warplightning cannons is entirely up to your preference.

 

Verminus is better than people give them credit for - which is neat, since we're currently lacking many of the neccessary features that make them ideal. I.E: We can only go up from here, but even at our current level, we are still able to go face to face against just about anything - our strategies define our victories. 

 

That's my two cents though I've been spewing forth the rat hordes for a few months now. 

[Sunspear]

Mayple- thanks for the detailed info. That makes me feel better about starting skaven, I usually go for models I like and it seems I may be able to build a decent army with them. 

Like I said, I am totally new to AoS and just recently started back into 40k after a couple of editions away. I have ordered the generals handbook so I'm sure that will help once i read through it 

[Mayple]

1 hour ago, Sunspear said:

Mayple- thanks for the detailed info. That makes me feel better about starting skaven, I usually go for models I like and it seems I may be able to build a decent army with them. 

Like I said, I am totally new to AoS and just recently started back into 40k after a couple of editions away. I have ordered the generals handbook so I'm sure that will help once i read through it 

You won't regret it!

[TheNotebookGM]

My closest AoS friend plays Skryre and it is brutal. Stormfiends are machines of terror. 

[Sunspear]

I really like the stormfiend models! 

[Twitch of Izalith]

I think picking the first 1000 points or so of an army based entirely on which models you like is a great idea!

You will be motivated to paint them and play games with them and as you learn the game and how your army works, you can collect the rest of the force with a better idea about what it needs to compete against the other armies and in each of the battleplans.

[Kramer]

I fully agree with @Twitch of Izalith. I've started armies with a list in mind and it never works just as you might expect. Maybe your regular opponents turn out to be very elite focused and a playstyle that hangs back turns out to be more your thing. Or he goes shooty, so you might want a lot of bodies, speed and trickery on the table. 

But all of those things, at least for me, never mattered if I didn't like the army & models enough to paint it. Just get the models you like the most within an alliance and start experimenting. Proxy some models or borrow them to figure out what you want. At least that's my general advice. 

More specific. 

11 hours ago, Sunspear said:

so just going with a pure skaven army isn't  viable? 

This, above, is BS if this: 

14 hours ago, Sunspear said:

m not a hyper competitive player, I would just like something that would be fun to play and have a chance of winning and making for a good game 

is your starting point. Skaven is not the first runner up for major tournaments but to have a fun and close game. Hell yes it a perfect army! It has everything! Big units, elite units, great shooting, Big *ss monsters, great heroes, also sucky heroes and units it has to be said . great synergy within factions & a huge selection of models. In a semi competitive match there is no reason to be without a chance. 

So in my opinion it's a great starting army, the only downside is the amount of models required to paint. And yes your army might improve by taking a Chaos Sorcerer Lord but for less points... the Arch-Warlock is also an amazing hero but with a different skill set.

The anecdotal evidence is a mate of mine who I borrowed my Skaven to last year for a couple of games, who started to buy his own models to keep pushing what I have in our tournaments. And all games against him have been great fun. Won some, lost some. And the more experience he gets the harder I have to push to get a win. Taking advantage of little pieces of luck, double turn/lucky charge/etc, has become a lot more defining than what list I bring against him. 

[Mayple]

An added note: Skaven are one of the most flexible armies in the game in regards to playstyle. Meaning that whatever way of play fits you like a glove, if you're into rats you will be able to accomodate it. 

So the whole 'Do you like them visually, then play them' works really well for the Skaven to support the point made by others above.

Also, fun fact: Skaven can out-magic tzeentch if you put your mind to it. Warpstone is one hell of a drug!

[tolstedt]

I love playing pestilens.  

The biggest strength of the pestilens is that you can lose any of your units and still function.  I love the comfort of high model count.  I run 130 monks.

[Sunspear]

Sounds like skaven will work fine for me then, thanks again for all the advise and info. 

I play guard in 40k and I wasn't really planning on another horde army but I do like the stormvermin and having some clanrats won't hurt I suspect.  I get the idea behind adding chaos elements but I'm a bit of a purist with most of my armies and I would like to keep it all skaven if possible. 

One other question, I have seen AoS models with square and round bases, do the models come with both?

[Killax]

Certainly go for it! 

I think not all Skaven boxes have been repurposed for AoS yet, but most have. So the ones who come with the WFB boxes have square bases and the new ones have round bases. In general I'd say round bases are the way to go for them. Nothing wrong with picking either except that most Tournaments and the likes prefer round bases that suit the models.

Cheers,

[Twitch of Izalith]

1 hour ago, Sunspear said:

One other question, I have seen AoS models with square and round bases, do the models come with both?

Yeah some of the the kits will come with squares and some with rounds - its really annoying and a bit of a disgrace that GW are still pushing stuff out with bases designed for a game they don't support any more. particularly now we are well over 2 years in to AoS.

I have the same problem with my dark elves - almost all come with squares so you need to buy a pack of rounds/ ovals with them.

Technically the base is not part of the model in AoS - according to the core rules - but everyone, including GW tournaments have gone back to measuring from the base. I think anyone who makes a scene because you have square bases is really pushing the bounds of sportsmanship but then again many wargamers do appear to enjoy whining about anything that isn't exactly the way they want it so.....

Everything looks much better on rounds though so its worth getting them!

[Mayple]

Clanrats and stormvermin come with square bases. Personally, I circumvented that issue with shattered dominion bases, and just considered the cost as a 'part-of' whenever I get more clanrats/stormvermin.

Annoyingly, stormfiends come with square bases. It's difficult to aquire round bases at their size.

[bsharitt]

3 minutes ago, Mayple said:

Annoyingly, stormfiends come with square bases. It's difficult to aquire round bases at their size.

Wouldn't they be on 50mm or 60mm round bases? Those both come in packs of 3 for $5 on the GW webstore.

[Redking]

If you check ebay, you can find some large lots of round bases.  25mm for the clanrats, 32mm for the characters.  GW has a pack that has 20 32mm, 3 50mm (for rat ogres), and 5 oval cavalry (for weapon teams).  Also, look around for the Island of Blood/Spire of Dawn skaven stuff.  You can save a lot of money on the clanrats and some weapons teams.

[Dez]

Skaven are such an awesome army, I think you'll find yourself loving it. If you like the look of the army, you'll keep hobbying and building and painting. I say go with your first instinct. I wish I had done the same, it took me a few editions to finally get around to the army. I love them, and I've painted TONS just because I wanted to.

Some great advice in this thread, be sure to post your progress and any questions along the way!

[Kugane]

Skaven is not the best army around, but also not the worst. If your main aim in the long run is competitive play, you are probably better off going the stormcast route or something, or wait for the new malignant releases (which will likely be top tier).

At the moment since the GHB2017, Skaven is suffering some issues. Many things don't have synergy and the fact that these little rats will lose a lot of models to random battleshocks can sometimes be sad.

That being said - Skaven armies have huge numbers of models. To build a 2000 point army, unless you go the Skryre route, you are pretty much going to paint at least 60 to 100 clanrats, just to fulfill your battleline requirements. This takes quite some time if you don't plan to play with unpainted models.

In short, my personal pros and cons  that are purely for a beginner perspective just starting out in the hobby - not a hobbyist who already has an army and doing skaven on the side!

 

Pros:

-Skaven have amazing fluff

-Skaven's aesthetics are in my opinion the best in the entire warhammer range

-There is lots of room for various builds and tactics

-Not the best army, but very fun play style

 

Cons:

-Lots of stuff to paint, which can be offputting for beginners

-Added to the painting issue, while there are ways to speedpaint skaven, if you want to have them at a decent quality, because of the nature of the models, there are many tiny details to paint, which takes time.

-Synergy issues at the moment

-They lack bravery

-It will be unlikely to win you any tournaments if that is your thing

 

shameless sidenote: if you are located in europe and plan to start out with Skaven, I can probably hit you up with a starting army at a reasonable price! These ratmen have become an addiction where I impulse buy every new in box set I can find for conversions and have gotten TONS of spare clanrats, warlords and whatnot lying around new on sprue. Just PM me if you are interrested^^

[Dez]

@kugane Last count I had 300 unpainted Clan Rats alone...it is a definite rat infestation here

[Sunspear]

Dez- I just ordered some clan rats, I will probably paint up a few as soon as I get them.