A petition to get our Skaven Clawpacks back and some updated rules

[Kugane]

As many of you are aware, the Generals Handbook 2017 was not kind to Skaven. We lost a lot of key heroes, we lost Sayl, but we also lost our Clawpacks.

Right now the issue I mostly struggle with are battleshock tests for large units of Clanrats as well as the fact that Clanrats are not a battleline option for most Clans, even though I personally feel they should be a universal battleline for every Skaven Clan. 

For Clan Verminus the battleshock issue could be (partially) solved by getting our clawpack back.

I have now started a petition to try and get this to GW's attention and would be glad if some of you agree with the changes I proposed in the petition to please sign it and/or share it with other Skaven players. Perhaps if we get enough attention Skaven could get some much needed support back :), even if it were only the clawpacks.

The link to the petition is:

https://www.change.org/p/games-workshop-skaven-rules-clawpacks-and-clanrats-battleline-for-all-factions-needed

(If this breaks any forum rules, I apologize and will remove links ASAP, I couldn't find any rule that says it isn't allowed.)

[Lucio]

This really won't help, as responsive as GW have become to us on a day to day basis, product planning takes 12 to 24 months start to finish.

Hopefully though, the Legion of Death book will be the model for groups like Skaven where they splintered the factions a little too far

[Nikobot]

As good as Legions of Nagash may be for Death and its current state, I don't think its the solution for everything. Death was viewed as not making much sense to anyone.
Death needed a serious fix, and Legions works pretty well for Death. It still has scope for niche factions to come through in the future, but right now no new units or expansion. It feels more like a fix for the here and now.

My view is I don't think I'd want a combined Skaven book if I'm not getting any new units. I think all the Skaven factions could benefit with some rules to help them mesh together in a combined army, but the flavour of Pestilens and Skryre at least has shown me they deserve their own faction, new units and rules. If they get all those things then fine, but we are yet to see what's next for Death after Legions.

[Kugane]

The thing is that we already had the rules for Clawpacks, they were a part of the game until GHB2017 hit, so it wouldn't be a huge production time investment involved. It could simply be dropped into a white dwarf for example as a legal option. By doing so they could implement it in as little as a month.

Clawpacks especially wouldn't fix all issues for Skaven, but it would be a good step in the right direction.

[Ferrus65]

Petition signed and shared. May the Horned Rat be with us

[Killax]

Signed and shared. Left no comment. Age of Sigmar can become a great game if more logic is applied.

Skaven clans, Chaos herds and Everchosen/StD should not have to work with ally restrictions amongst themselves. It makes no sence really.

[Malakithe]

Skaven really need a Legion of Nagash style book. The clan based allegiance system would easily work with the style of battletome

[Kugane]

14 hours ago, Malakithe said:

Skaven really need a Legion of Nagash style book. The clan based allegiance system would easily work with the style of battletome

Indeed, just the wait every time, lol. I guess money-wise its much better to put out 1 battletome every few months to make sure people get hyped over a single army and buy buy buy buy, but the wait for some of these updates... >< I wish they'd hire 2 or 3 more teams to work on some battletomes for destruction and skaven.

[Nikobot]

I guess I am posting this to see what people think a likely scenario will be for how they deal with Skaven

Interestingly, we have 2 different templates of battletome released / releasing now

- Legions of Nagash - big all-encompassing tome for an entire alliance with multiple allegiances, that was once a single army in WHFB and then splintered into 6 factions in AOS. When you omit FEC, Death has about as many units as Skaven.

- Daughters of Khaine - smaller battletome (from what we know) and 1 of 5 factions making up the old Dark Elves, now called Exiles, being :

• Scourge Privateers, Kharybdiss, Scourgerunner Chariot, Corsairs, and the Fleetmaster.
• Daughters of Khaine, Witch Elves, Doomfire Warlocks, and the Cauldron of Blood and Bloodwrack Shrine.
• Darkling Covens, Black Guard, Dreadspears, Darkshards, Bleakswords, and Sorceresses.
• Shadowblades, Dark Elf Assassins and Dark Riders.
• Order Serpentis, Cold One (now called Drakespawn) Riders and Chariots, the Dreadlord on Dragon, and the War Hydra.

Having not taken the LoN approach, I guess in time we will see if there are any connections remaining across the old Dark Elves that are represented by rules that allow DoK to mesh with other Exiles e.g. relaxed allies rules, some over-arching Exiles allegiance etc. Narrative reasons may not allow that (they may have distanced themselves), but its really a general question that can apply to armies such as DoK, Kharadron etc that are/were once part of a larger army and were splintered. Do they get a middle-ground allegiance or ruleset that allows them to integrate better? something in between a Grand Alliance and a small-faction allegiance like Kharadron?

I feel any 3 of the armies, Death, Skaven or Dark Elves could/can work well with a Legions of Nagash style battletome done the right way, but could also work with properly done individual tomes with some common rulesets.

There are of course considerations for development and release of model ranges. Its nice to dream up a whole bunch of new units etc but that takes time to develop, possibly part of the reason we did not see any new models in LoN? I think Death players may feel a little hard-done by with no new units released.

Overall, I think its just a case of timing. What I think we will see is further Death factions released down the track like an expanded FEC and others that introduce new units e.g. Deathcast Eternals. 

Exiles may have a larger battletome release that covers, a group of their splintered factions to follow DoK.

That's also what I think we may see with Skaven, an LoN style tome covering Verminus, Moulder, Eshin etc this would include some sort of ruleset to bring in any Skaven under a Skaven allegiance of sorts,  as well as their own Clan allegiances and possibly mixed allegiances? 
Shadowvermin - mixed verminus / eshin army that has rules to make clanrats sneakier etc
Verminus beasts - mixed verminus / moulder army that has rules for clanrats fighting alongside rat ogres etc

Then 2 separate tomes for Skryre and Pestilens, who have transcended a bit in the narrative, Pestilens really on their own zealous tangent, always have been somewhat, and Skryre being somewhat more numerous in units and having established a standalone presence already. I expect these 2 would get more new models and more rules than a combined tome as well.

Anyway, just a guess of sorts, happy for anything that brings some new units and new rules