AoS 2 - Clan Skyre Discussion

[Zinnar]

Just now, 5kaven5lave said:

You can take any Masterclan hero as general and keep your allegiance. Happy days. A two spell caster with a great spell lore for 120 points is a massive bargain. Could do Thanquol for 400 too. 

This makes me feel a bit better, since I'm pretty sure all Verminlords are "Masterclan", right?

Also, seen it around, but is it true that you can always ally with "skaventide" models? If so, easy way to get a cheap clanrat screen without breaking Skryre, which is all I really want....

[5kaven5lave]

1 minute ago, Zinnar said:

This makes me feel a bit better, since I'm pretty sure all Verminlords are "Masterclan", right?

Also, seen it around, but is it true that you can always ally with "skaventide" models? If so, easy way to get a cheap clanrat screen without breaking Skryre, which is all I really want....

Only one or two of Verminlords are unfortunately, check Warscrolls on the app. Also, I really don’t think the Clanrats thing is happening, it seems pretty much certain now. It’s a shame, but that’s how it looks. 

[Zinnar]

3 minutes ago, 5kaven5lave said:

Only one or two of Verminlords are unfortunately, check Warscrolls on the app. Also, I really don’t think the Clanrats thing is happening, it seems pretty much certain now. It’s a shame, but that’s how it looks. 

Warpseer is Masterclan, as is a Screaming Bell though, and I was interested in both of those specifically for my Skryre army. The Warpseer more than the bell, but I wouldn't mind the Bell either.

 

Edit: Lord Skreech, Warpseer, and Warpgnaw are all Masterclan. If they can be your general without breaking allegiance, that's something at least. Same with Thanquol.

Edited February 10, 2019 by Zinnar

[Kirjava13]

31 minutes ago, 5kaven5lave said:

They do have a role, I guess it’d just be skulking around somewhere near artillery pieces or something. 

Their range surely isn't conducive to that? A couple of small units to stop (or more likely just delay!) deep strikers/appear-out-of-nowhere-ers around the WLCs, sure, but I'm trying to think of ways to buff them up and get them doing tremendous-great damage. A warpstone spark for sure, are there any other ways we have to stack to-hit and to-wound rolls?

[Kirjava13]

28 minutes ago, Zinnar said:

Edit: Lord Skreech, Warpseer, and Warpgnaw are all Masterclan. If they can be your general without breaking allegiance, that's something at least. Same with Thanquol.

I can still use my Warpgnaw but have to make him my general, hmm? Who in their right minds would let a Warpgnaw Verminlord be a general? They cray-cray, more than in a usual Skaven way!

[Zinnar]

1 minute ago, Kirjava13 said:

Their range surely isn't conducive to that? A couple of small units to stop (or more likely just delay!) deep strikers/appear-out-of-nowhere-ers around the WLCs, sure, but I'm trying to think of ways to buff them up and get them doing tremendous-great damage. A warpstone spark for sure, are there any other ways we have to stack to-hit and to-wound rolls?

More-more warp power from the Skryre spell lores lets you reroll hits and wounds at the cost of d3 mortals.

 

The gascloud battalion lets you reroll hits of 1.

 

I'm curious about this as well, I have 20 acolytes that I'd like to push as far as I can. Running and shooting is actually nice, since the few times I've actually gotten them in range to use the guns, they work surprisingly well even without buffs.

 

How do we make acolytes great???

[tolstedt]

38 minutes ago, 5kaven5lave said:

Only one or two of Verminlords are unfortunately, check Warscrolls on the app. Also, I really don’t think the Clanrats thing is happening, it seems pretty much certain now. It’s a shame, but that’s how it looks. 

It's really poor design that you can't get clanrats as allies in skryre.

[Zinnar]

"I want to use Clanrats as battleline for Skryre!" I said, naively.

 

The monkey's paw curled and here we are.

 

It is just bonkers to me- every other faction that has the ability to unlock conditional battleline choices within the faction locks it to your general....but still lets the default battleline apply, so you can mix and match.

All I want is a unit of 40 clanrats, and two units of stormfiends to be my battleline choices. Why this is impossible is beyond me. It makes sense in terms of fluff, and it wouldn't be any more overpowered than other armies. Hell, this is literally how the Legions allegiances work in the Nagash book.

[Kirjava13]

It is dumb as rocks and while I'll work around it, I am not going to be reconciled to it any time soon. 

It should have been Clanrats as generic battleline, and then a Plague Priest (is there a higher level for Pestilens? I don't pay much attention to the sickos) unlocks Plague Monks; Arch Warlock unlocks Acolytes and/or Stormfriends; Deathrunner (RIP) unlocks Gutter Runners; Master Moulder unlocks Rat Ogors; Clawlord unlocks Stormvermin.

Someone at GW has a head injury.

Edited February 10, 2019 by Kirjava13

[Num]

I still don't see the problem, as even with the generic Skaventide we can still have the skryre command traits, artifacts, spell lore and battalions (from what I understood).
The only consequence is that instead of 40 clanrats (200pts) you need 60 (320pts) or more, so there is indeed a 120pts premium (2 poisoned wind mortars, one would say if salty :D).

But in the previous version, going chaos allegiance prevented us from using the allegiance abilities and artifacts.

It still seems OK to me

 

[sorokyl]

3 minutes ago, Num said:

I still don't see the problem, as even with the generic Skaventide we can still have the skryre command traits, artifacts, spell lore and battalions (from what I understood).
The only consequence is that instead of 40 clanrats (200pts) you need 60 (320pts) or more, so there is indeed a 120pts premium (2 poisoned wind mortars, one would say if salty :D).

But in the previous version, going chaos allegiance prevented us from using the allegiance abilities and artifacts.

It still seems OK to me

 

The problem is that 3x20 rats is a very poor battleline. Clan rats are really only great in groups of 40. So the skyre army really wants 1x40 or 2x40 clanrats, and the other battleline to be stormfiends..   3x20 clanrats is NOT going to be part of any reasonably competitive list. 

[Kirjava13]

It's also a minimum of £20 more, if you only have 40 Clanrats.

[Mayple]

39 minutes ago, sorokyl said:

3x20 clanrats is NOT going to be part of any reasonably competitive list. 

I'll have to disagree with you there. The ability to take such an amount (or bigger) of clanrats is greatly beneficial to a Skryre line-up. 3x20 clanrats allows Skryre to build in ways they could never dream of before. 

If anything, I'm half-expecting this to be the new competitive norm for Skryre. 

[sorokyl]

7 minutes ago, Mayple said:

I'll have to disagree with you there. The ability to take such an amount (or bigger) of clanrats is greatly beneficial to a Skryre line-up. 3x20 clanrats allows Skryre to build in ways they could never dream of before. 

If anything, I'm half-expecting this to be the new competitive norm for Skryre. 

I think you misunderstood. I am saying better than 3x20 is 2x40. But you must take a minimum of 3 separate units of clan rats, which is not ideal. We want the flexibility to run 1 or 2 units of clan rats, which we do not have. 

[Zuriaxis]

2 hours ago, 5kaven5lave said:

Only one or two of Verminlords are unfortunately, check Warscrolls on the app. Also, I really don’t think the Clanrats thing is happening, it seems pretty much certain now. It’s a shame, but that’s how it looks. 

Hold up, is Skaventide meaning general Skaven or an alternate pick/subset of Skaven? Because if Clanrats and Stormvermin are battleline for Skaventide armies then Skryre should be able to take them no problem. Let's seek some clarification on this before we rip our fur out in understandable frustration.

[Kirjava13]

36 minutes ago, Zuriaxis said:

Hold up, is Skaventide meaning general Skaven or an alternate pick/subset of Skaven? Because if Clanrats and Stormvermin are battleline for Skaventide armies then Skryre should be able to take them no problem. Let's seek some clarification on this before we rip our fur out in understandable frustration.

To make Acolytes and Stormfiends battleline, you must be 100% Skryre (excepting the option to have a Masterclan general). As such, you cannot take any Clanrats. The alternative is to just go regular Skaventide, in which case you will need a minimum of 60 Clanrats (3x20) at 2000 points. This is extremely irritating because it invalidates some armies, ensuring a Skryre player either needs to buy more Clanrats or go without them altogether.

[Mayple]

39 minutes ago, sorokyl said:

I think you misunderstood. I am saying better than 3x20 is 2x40. But you must take a minimum of 3 separate units of clan rats, which is not ideal. We want the flexibility to run 1 or 2 units of clan rats, which we do not have. 

Oh, yeah. That makes sense

I'll still hold that 3x20 is a competitive choice, but I agree with what you're saying. 

[Riff_Raff_Rascal]

Can we take a moment to appreciate how much fun the new Doomwheel is? 

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a "normal move" occur in any of the following: movement phase, charge phase, piling in? Is that not 3 chances to trigger the mortal wound engine? Even if its 'stuck' in combat, can't you declare it moves 3'' inches into then out of the same space as the nearest model to get a trigger?

I'm pretty sure this thing can do all sorts of shenanigans now. 

[Baron Wastelands]

5 hours ago, Kirjava13 said:

To make Acolytes and Stormfiends battleline, you must be 100% Skryre (excepting the option to have a Masterclan general). As such, you cannot take any Clanrats. The alternative is to just go regular Skaventide, in which case you will need a minimum of 60 Clanrats (3x20) at 2000 points. This is extremely irritating because it invalidates some armies, ensuring a Skryre player either needs to buy more Clanrats or go without them altogether.

Surely this is intentional design. The message for scryre is go elite or go horde. Given the tools Scryre (now) has in elite forces, being able to bolster with just one tarpit of clanrats, while ever so useful, is presumably considered a bit too powerful, especially given that skaven got a whole new way to mix and match.

[Kirjava13]

7 hours ago, Zinnar said:

How do we make acolytes great???

SO. This shouldn't actually be that difficult. 

Step 1: cast More-more Warp Power on the Acolytes in question. They can now reroll missed hits and wounds.
Step 2: target horde unit with more than 10 models. We are now 3+ 4+, rerolling misses.
Step 3: use a warpstone spark to add +1 to the Acolytes' damage. 3+ 4+ rerolling misses, rend 2 damage d3+1.

Now I'm not usually a mathhammer guy, so I may have got this wrong, but assuming 20 Acolytes, an armour save of 4+ and damage 3 (median average of d3+1), there is a 74% chance of doing between 15 and 27 damage. 

Whether this is worth the buffs for what would be a 240 point unit remains to be seen.

[Zinnar]

6 hours ago, Mayple said:

Oh, yeah. That makes sense

I'll still hold that 3x20 is a competitive choice, but I agree with what you're saying. 

I think the thing is, I ultimately agree with you. For Skryre, bolstering with a blob of acolytes and stormfiends, 3x20 clanrats will do work for just 360 points. They are just enough of an annoyance that you can't reasonably ignore them, and they should be enough of a speed bump that your stronger units can do their work.

 

But, I'm annoyed about the fact that this build comp (or more of an investment in Skaventide battleline) is necessary to get ANY clanrats.

 

Previously, we could even pull this off with allies points while playing pure Skryre since 3x20 fits in under the 400pt ally limit. I've even done it a few times, and it works well!

 

However, I found more use out of 1x40 Clanrats + 1x3 Stormfiends + 2x10 Acolytes and was hoping to be able to replicate this build with the new Battletome, which seems to be impossible. More importantly, the way the preview article was written (and indeed, the way the allegiance abilities function!) seemed to be setting us up for Battleline choices conditional on our general. Now, maybe this is too strong, in some cases. I could see that. But to prevent even allying in other clans seems really stupid, from both a fluff and crunch reason.

 

Now, if it turns out we can spend our ally points on other clans, then I'm satisfied. 

 

Come to think of it, who CAN Skaventide even ally with? Does anyone know?

[Zinnar]

I've been thinking about it, and trying to balance minimal investment for maximum reward for Skryre specifically....

 

How do we feel about 2x20 Clanrats and 1x10 Stormvermin? Will Stormvermin be a waste at 10? It's 20 points more than 3x20 Clanrats, but they have slightly better threat and survivability at the cost of fewer overall wounds on the table. 

[sorokyl]

@ZinnarThey can't ally with anyone..their allies list is "skaventide" (probably so people aren't confused/asking questions)

[Num]

5 hours ago, Zinnar said:

I've been thinking about it, and trying to balance minimal investment for maximum reward for Skryre specifically....

 

How do we feel about 2x20 Clanrats and 1x10 Stormvermin? Will Stormvermin be a waste at 10? It's 20 points more than 3x20 Clanrats, but they have slightly better threat and survivability at the cost of fewer overall wounds on the table. 

I'm not sure. I used to run them in groups of 10 to outnumber and kill heroes. But this doesn't work anymore, as they lost their +1 hit when outnumbering.

I guess that now we lost our shock stormfiends plus packmaster as the melee hammer, there may be other options to consider (with stormfiends switching to utility/toolbox).

perhaps with a master clan general in the list, casting the spell to pile in and attack once more when killed, it could be quite scary as a suicide squad...

[Russrmc]

10 hours ago, Riff_Raff_Rascal said:

Can we take a moment to appreciate how much fun the new Doomwheel is? 

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a "normal move" occur in any of the following: movement phase, charge phase, piling in? Is that not 3 chances to trigger the mortal wound engine? Even if its 'stuck' in combat, can't you declare it moves 3'' inches into then out of the same space as the nearest model to get a trigger?

I'm pretty sure this thing can do all sorts of shenanigans now. 

AoS faq defines normal moves as moves performed in the movement phase, and has a chart demonstrating the difference between this and charge and pile in. It also clarifies that whilst a normal move can include a run or a retreat, runs and retreats are not automatically covered by being normal moves (eg scurry away, cos it's in the combat phase)

Therefore, no shenanigans for you, sadly!