Let's Chat: Spiteclaw's Swarm

[Changer]

So I went to Grand Clash 2 at Warhammer World on Saturday.  I came 7th, with 3 wins and 1 loss, and top Skaven player at the event.  I also managed to snag a Best Warband nomination but unfortunately didn't win that.

Here's the deck I took.

My first match was against Orruks.  He had Great Concussion to stop me from scoring on objectives, but that was about it.  I managed to get all 6 relics out in both of the rounds we had, and scored +26 glory over the two games.  I will note that I only managed to get 6 relics out in the second game because I successfully scored Miraculous Escape when Hakka wiffed his attack.  Without that score immediately the match would have gone to 3 rounds.

My second match was also against Orruks.  This guy had no Great Concussion or Earthquake, so I happily danced around him and sat on a few objectives.  I again managed to get all 6 relics out in both games and scored a +20 glory over the match.

My third match was against Skaven.  The first round I was fortunate to get three objectives and managed to score early on.  His Skritch went on the offensive but I stuck to my guns and kept drawing power cards to get what I needed.  I didn't managed to get the relics out in this round, but a combination of supremacy, Tactical Supremacy 1-2, and Our Only Way Out gave me what I needed.  In the second round I only managed to place 2 objectives, but I scuppered his plans early on by playing Shifting Shards after the first activation and moving an objective in his territory into a blocked hex.  He still managed to score Supremacy against me by moving closer to me, but this then allowed me to counter, kill a couple of rats, and get enough glory to get the relics out and score 12 in the final three activations.

My final match was against Farstriders.  I'd never even seen these on the board before so didn't really know how to counter them.  The first round wasn't too bad; I got 3 objectives, got 5 glory and spoils of battle, then played Hidden Paths to get Skritch well out of the way and pulled glory from the relics.  In the second round I only got 2 objectives down, and my opponent countered my placement meaning I had to put an objective much closer to the centre line that I wanted.  In this round I didn't manage to pull ploys in any decent order, and my force was picked apart, scoring only 3 glory all round.  The final round in this match went even worse.  I went first, he then played Hidden Paths to put one of the guys next to Skritch, then attacked him causing 2 damage.  In the next activation he then shot Skirtch and played Trap! killing him instantly.  It went downhill from there, with his killing or pushing rat after rat, and I only managed to score a total of 6.  However, due to the high score in the first round, I still ended up with a total glory difference for the match of +1.

 

So that's it.  I think the deck is fairly effective, although quite boring to play with (and probably against).  The fact that I'm just sat there pulling power cards and hoping that my opponent doesn't counter me shows the main downside to the deck.  In all four matches, I didn't come across anything that targeted my rats, so Misdirection was wasted.  It's still a very handy card though.  With how well Relics did throughout the event, I think we'll see more people running cards such as Shattershard and Frozen In Time, which means Misdirection, and maybe Forceful Denial will come into their own. 

[Kirjava13]

17 hours ago, Sleboda said:

TBH, Skaven should not have much of an issue vs most folks. Orruks are indeed the Easy Button of Shadespire so far, but still.

What happened to you?

I played cagey the first round, jumped on some objectives and tried to avoid fighting, but by the second round he was in range, at which point he just annihilated me in one charge. There was some horrific card combo he did, don't ask me what, but it ensured that I was basically sat the other side of the table not doing anything for quite some time. Skritch was dead before the end of round 2, along with Krrk, and I gave up. I didn't roll a single crit all game, and the only damage done to the Orruks was when he used that Shardstorm (is that the name?) card to inspire all his guys. My deck is probably not optimal, but I should have been able to do something. As it was, I ended up drawing all upgrade cards then Mulligan'd into another all-upgrade hand. It was a miserable experience. 

The second wasn't much better- I was able to get some ploys, and even bring someone back this time! But the dice weren't on my side again, and a momentary brain shutdown led to me thinking one of my cards applied to enemies instead of friends, and the resulting stupid charge cost me Krrk. It was all downhill from there.

[Red_Zeke]

@Changer Thanks for the summary! No one has tried trotting out the Katophrane Relics here.  Do you typically stack them on Skritch, or a guy you can reschedule back?  I guess Skritch's special res ability gives you more actions you can take when you're at the draw cards (4+ ?) phase of the relics.

[Red_Zeke]

40 minutes ago, Kirjava13 said:

 As it was, I ended up drawing all upgrade cards then Mulligan'd into another all-upgrade hand. It was a miserable experience. 

That kind of explains an awful lot. Presuming you have a 20 card power deck, the odds of that particular draw are... .0005% ?

If it's any consolation, I've found that very small adjustments to a deck or playstyle can result in some big shifts. If you can stop that snowball from forming early, the game stays close a lot longer.

[Sleboda]

17 minutes ago, Red_Zeke said:

I've found that very small adjustments to a deck or playstyle can result in some big shifts

Word.

[Changer]

1 hour ago, Red_Zeke said:

@Changer Thanks for the summary! No one has tried trotting out the Katophrane Relics here.  Do you typically stack them on Skritch, or a guy you can reschedule back?  I guess Skritch's special res ability gives you more actions you can take when you're at the draw cards (4+ ?) phase of the relics.

Typically everything went on Skritch. If nothing else, rerolling defence or attack dice is pretty nice with someone you want to keep alive, and who has the best basic attack in the swarm.

[Anthony225]

Has anyone tried an aggressive Skritch build? I'm thinking some objective based objectives such as

supremacy,

superior tactician,

our only way out,

complete victory,

and various other smaller glory count objectives, I like a lot of immediately scored singles.

And then having some push/movement ploys/upgrades, but concentrating on offensive ones. incredible strength, great strength, hungering skaven, daemonic weapon, shadeglass dagger, light armour, expendable, twist the knife , etc.

Has anyone tried something like this?

[Skulltula]

11 minutes ago, Anthony225 said:

Has anyone tried an aggressive Skritch build? I'm thinking some objective based objectives such as

supremacy,

superior tactician,

our only way out,

complete victory,

and various other smaller glory count objectives, I like a lot of immediately scored singles.

And then having some push/movement ploys/upgrades, but concentrating on offensive ones. incredible strength, great strength, hungering skaven, daemonic weapon, shadeglass dagger, light armour, expendable, twist the knife , etc.

Has anyone tried something like this?

Yes. One of the UK players has been playing aggro Skaven more or less since their release and has good results with it. He also maintains a blog:

https://canyourollacrit.com/2018/05/14/grand-clash-round-up-2/#more-359

[Kugane]

On 4/30/2018 at 10:14 AM, Changer said:

So I went to Grand Clash 2 at Warhammer World on Saturday.  I came 7th, with 3 wins and 1 loss, and top Skaven player at the event.  I also managed to snag a Best Warband nomination but unfortunately didn't win that.

Here's the deck I took.

My first match was against Orruks.  He had Great Concussion to stop me from scoring on objectives, but that was about it.  I managed to get all 6 relics out in both of the rounds we had, and scored +26 glory over the two games.  I will note that I only managed to get 6 relics out in the second game because I successfully scored Miraculous Escape when Hakka wiffed his attack.  Without that score immediately the match would have gone to 3 rounds.

My second match was also against Orruks.  This guy had no Great Concussion or Earthquake, so I happily danced around him and sat on a few objectives.  I again managed to get all 6 relics out in both games and scored a +20 glory over the match.

My third match was against Skaven.  The first round I was fortunate to get three objectives and managed to score early on.  His Skritch went on the offensive but I stuck to my guns and kept drawing power cards to get what I needed.  I didn't managed to get the relics out in this round, but a combination of supremacy, Tactical Supremacy 1-2, and Our Only Way Out gave me what I needed.  In the second round I only managed to place 2 objectives, but I scuppered his plans early on by playing Shifting Shards after the first activation and moving an objective in his territory into a blocked hex.  He still managed to score Supremacy against me by moving closer to me, but this then allowed me to counter, kill a couple of rats, and get enough glory to get the relics out and score 12 in the final three activations.

My final match was against Farstriders.  I'd never even seen these on the board before so didn't really know how to counter them.  The first round wasn't too bad; I got 3 objectives, got 5 glory and spoils of battle, then played Hidden Paths to get Skritch well out of the way and pulled glory from the relics.  In the second round I only got 2 objectives down, and my opponent countered my placement meaning I had to put an objective much closer to the centre line that I wanted.  In this round I didn't manage to pull ploys in any decent order, and my force was picked apart, scoring only 3 glory all round.  The final round in this match went even worse.  I went first, he then played Hidden Paths to put one of the guys next to Skritch, then attacked him causing 2 damage.  In the next activation he then shot Skirtch and played Trap! killing him instantly.  It went downhill from there, with his killing or pushing rat after rat, and I only managed to score a total of 6.  However, due to the high score in the first round, I still ended up with a total glory difference for the match of +1.

 

So that's it.  I think the deck is fairly effective, although quite boring to play with (and probably against).  The fact that I'm just sat there pulling power cards and hoping that my opponent doesn't counter me shows the main downside to the deck.  In all four matches, I didn't come across anything that targeted my rats, so Misdirection was wasted.  It's still a very handy card though.  With how well Relics did throughout the event, I think we'll see more people running cards such as Shattershard and Frozen In Time, which means Misdirection, and maybe Forceful Denial will come into their own. 

Any chance on a full list?

[Kugane]

Lots of new goodies for Skaven! Some nice "choose" cards to inspire stuff as well. Quite happy with the new release.

[Anthony225]

Riiiiise....

anyway, I was wondering if anybody had the thought to use Squig hoppers as a conversion (stand in) for Skaven? The new loonboss on Giant Cave Squig from the new AoS boxset coming out looks perfect for a Skritch. And the rest of the Squig hopper models will work great for the other 4 models. 1 “armoured” Squig hopper for Krrk and then normal ones for the other 3 fighters.

questions: is Skaven at least “ok” in regards to competitiveness? I wouldn’t want to spend time/$ if they are just not that good. 

Also, is it tournament legal to have completely different models? Assuming of course it’s easiest enough to tell what models are what and also that they are 100% GW.

[riddlesworth]

As long as its easy to tell what the models are (there's a company out there that does printed name plates for bases, for example). I know John Rees (canyourollacrit) converted skinks for his scaven warband.

 

Scaven can still go competitively. Skritch is still one of the best models in the game - easy inspire condition, threat range only matched by farstrider, jagathra and ahnslaine, single upgrade away from one shotting everyone except for gurzag, mollog and inspired fjul, single upgrade away from 3 defence dice (and therefore 50/50 crit defences). The other scaven are fast, so you can play objectives if you want, but there's enough passive objectives to plex a flex control/aggro even with the BAR list in play. Martyred, Calculated risk, cover ground, change of tactics, escalation, shining example, fired up etc.

 

The ideal situation is Skritch with acrobatic, great strength and awakened weapon. You get those on him, he's a ****** terror with range 2.