AoS 2 - Skaventide Discussion

[MathV]

So noway 

13 minutes ago, umpac said:

If you warp grind them unto the battlefield you won't have the save prayer up. Its also wholly within 12" and cast on a 4+ so its pretty unreliable. Many armies has access to horde breaker spells which kills 20-30 guys alone, depending on the spell. Just looking at our own roster, which is far from the highest damaging roster in the game, a unit of Clawleader + Skavenbrew buffed Stormvermin put 56 wounds into 5+ save (44.44 if you use All out defense) which kills a unit of 60 Clanrats in 2 combat phases even with rally. Just looking at my recent Statshammer math I can see 30 great weapon Grave Guards with vamp lord buff does 50 dmg to clanrats with AOD, Witch Aelves with razor deal 68dmg. Low damage armies might struggle against that but there are plenty of stuff with enough damage to destroy 60 Clanrats in 2 combat phases.

 

You're capped at +1 to hit so they are hitting on 3s at best. 

So this would fail you say. I trust you more than me. I ll go conceptualize other types of lists then. 

[Skreech Verminking]

7 hours ago, umpac said:

If you warp grind them unto the battlefield you won't have the save prayer up. Its also wholly within 12" and cast on a 4+ so its pretty unreliable. Many armies has access to horde breaker spells which kills 20-30 guys alone, depending on the spell. Just looking at our own roster, which is far from the highest damaging roster in the game, a unit of Clawleader + Skavenbrew buffed Stormvermin put 56 wounds into 5+ save (44.44 if you use All out defense) which kills a unit of 60 Clanrats in 2 combat phases even with rally. Just looking at my recent Statshammer math I can see 30 great weapon Grave Guards with vamp lord buff does 50 dmg to clanrats with AOD, Witch Aelves with razor deal 68dmg. Low damage armies might struggle against that but there are plenty of stuff with enough damage to destroy 60 Clanrats in 2 combat phases.

 

You're capped at +1 to hit so they are hitting on 3s at best. 

Considering the current meta that may take over, I would actually guess that horde killing spells might not be taken as often as in aos 2.0.

With most armies going a more elite way (more monsters less horde units), those spells would become less effective, as for dok, they currently very likely won`t see any big blobs of witches with razor, since firstly morathy is currently unable t o take any spells from any lore, and secondly, most people will tend to relay on their unit of 15 bowsnakes, rather then witches to deal the damage, and against a unit of 60 clanrats, that isn`t going to be enough to kill them out straight.

with the gnawhole, the plague priest chanting gets better by one, which would mean, that he`ll be able  to cast the 6 up ward on a 3 rather then a 4.

7 hours ago, Cosmicsheep said:

 

 

I'll still be taking 30 stormvermin and 2 x 40 clanrats quite regularly 

Yeah, in some Matches I would so too.

7 hours ago, MathV said:

So noway 

So this would fail you say. I trust you more than me. I ll go conceptualize other types of lists then. 

It can work, just depends how your using the strategy. Unless you mean the prayer altogether on a warpgrinded unit.

[MathV]

1 hour ago, Skreech Verminking said:

It can work, just depends how your using the strategy. Unless you mean the prayer altogether on a warpgrinded unit.

Cool! 

So now I just have to buy and paint 100 more clarats.

[umpac]

9 hours ago, MathV said:

So noway 

So this would fail you say. I trust you more than me. I ll go conceptualize other types of lists then. 

Depends on what you mean by fail. Its certainly possible to win with such lists and match ups against low damage armies are in your favor, but there are plenty of bad match ups. Its not going to be the go-to meta build for Skaven, but if you want to play a Clanrat horde it might be viable (although probably not the most enjoyable list).

 

2 hours ago, Skreech Verminking said:

Considering the current meta that may take over, I would actually guess that horde killing spells might not be taken as often as in aos 2.0.

Disagree, there are still going to be plenty of 20+ units around, which is worth throwing horde breakers on. In fact even on 10-man units a 5+ horde breaker is as good as 1D6 MWs, which is solid damage from a single spell. Time will tell but I'm certainly keeping my horde breaking spells in my Seraphon list.

2 hours ago, Skreech Verminking said:

With most armies going a more elite way (more monsters less horde units), those spells would become less effective, as for dok, they currently very likely won`t see any big blobs of witches with razor, since firstly morathy is currently unable t o take any spells from any lore, and secondly, most people will tend to relay on their unit of 15 bowsnakes, rather then witches to deal the damage, and against a unit of 60 clanrats, that isn`t going to be enough to kill them out straight.

10 Witch elves with brew, cetechism and razor dish out 34-42 wounds by themselves depending on sub faction. Obviously they need to succeed 3 different rolls for that to happened so their damage is often more around the 20 mark, still scary. I would certainly be taking mindrazor in DoK, especially since lists were already including Medusas, but it might be less of an auto-include. 15 snakes firing in both hero and shooting phase is ~25dmg to 4+ save (30 if you don't have the CP for AOD) which together with the rest of the army should have very little trouble focusing down 60 clanrats in a turn.

 

2 hours ago, Skreech Verminking said:

with the gnawhole, the plague priest chanting gets better by one, which would mean, that he`ll be able  to cast the 6 up ward on a 3 rather then a 4.

While true, the Gnawholes are placed wholly within 8" of the board edges and the priest has to then be within 1" of the Gnawhole and still be positioned so 60 clanrats are all wholly within 12". Gnawholes giving +1 to prayers is certainly neat now that priests are better but with short range prayers like Bless its not something reliable, especially on huge Clanrat blobs.

[Skreech Verminking]

11 hours ago, umpac said:

Depends on what you mean by fail. Its certainly possible to win with such lists and match ups against low damage armies are in your favor, but there are plenty of bad match ups. Its not going to be the go-to meta build for Skaven, but if you want to play a Clanrat horde it might be viable (although probably not the most enjoyable list).

 

Disagree, there are still going to be plenty of 20+ units around, which is worth throwing horde breakers on. In fact even on 10-man units a 5+ horde breaker is as good as 1D6 MWs, which is solid damage from a single spell. Time will tell but I'm certainly keeping my horde breaking spells in my Seraphon list.

10 Witch elves with brew, cetechism and razor dish out 34-42 wounds by themselves depending on sub faction. Obviously they need to succeed 3 different rolls for that to happened so their damage is often more around the 20 mark, still scary. I would certainly be taking mindrazor in DoK, especially since lists were already including Medusas, but it might be less of an auto-include. 15 snakes firing in both hero and shooting phase is ~25dmg to 4+ save (30 if you don't have the CP for AOD) which together with the rest of the army should have very little trouble focusing down 60 clanrats in a turn.

 

While true, the Gnawholes are placed wholly within 8" of the board edges and the priest has to then be within 1" of the Gnawhole and still be positioned so 60 clanrats are all wholly within 12". Gnawholes giving +1 to prayers is certainly neat now that priests are better but with short range prayers like Bless its not something reliable, especially on huge Clanrat blobs.

Well it always depends how the armies will be build. Only time can tell, till then <i would just try anything out.

as a Bonus you guys can‘t miss with skaven, greatest army-faction in the game, not even dead toad-thing and his lizard-thing worshippers can best-win against the skaven, Nobody is better then us-us.

Yes-yes fear-fear the vermintide

[Umjammerlama]

Skaven FAQ is up. 
 

https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/xgLwF4tb9UpQuiyj.pdf

[Yes-yes warpstone]

Gnawholes got a big change! 😬

[Shirtripper]

1 hour ago, Umjammerlama said:

Skaven FAQ is up. 
 

https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/xgLwF4tb9UpQuiyj.pdf

Verminlord Warpseer got hit woth a bat pretty hard, but at least he still produces command points and gets a defensive buff, though losing the save re-rolls is tough.

Given what happened to most of everyone else's faction terrain, gnawholes came out relatively unscathed.

Strength in numbers is 100% the biggest change. Not sure how to analyze that.

[DocKeule]

Why do they first say they write all changes in magenta and the don't do it?

So Skaven units can't move across the Vermintide endless spell and now take damage from that as well? So the second one I won't use. 

[umpac]

29 minutes ago, DocKeule said:

Why do they first say they write all changes in magenta and the don't do it?

So Skaven units can't move across the Vermintide endless spell and now take damage from that as well? So the second one I won't use. 

Everyone can move across endless spells now. The loss of dmg immunity for skaven units is big though, seems like an oversight.

[Umjammerlama]

40 minutes ago, DocKeule said:

Why do they first say they write all changes in magenta and the don't do it?

So Skaven units can't move across the Vermintide endless spell and now take damage from that as well? So the second one I won't use. 

In WHF Battles, vermintide use to damage both friendly and enemy troops. 
 

I guess returning to the good old days. 

Edited July 2, 2021 by Umjammerlama

[Riff_Raff_Rascal]

For those who need a re-cap of the big changes

-Strength In Numbers now subtracts 1 to the battleshock roll for every 10 models and wont make the roll negative so there's still a chance of losing lots of models

-Warpseer Verminlord got the nerf bat for his defenses, no longer re-rolls save and gets a static +1 save. Also a slightly less exciting, but still reliable Great Manipulators trait for CP's.

-For Pestilens players, Liber Bubonicus loses the additional prayer and instead gives you another instance of re-rolling prayers. A boon in my book, as you'll be fishing for 6's anyways, you are incentivized to spread out your buffs and ultimately each prayer is more reliable since you're capped at one prayer per hero in the core rules.

-Vermintide Endless spell: Longer casting range, and rightfully so, as it now affects ALL units making moves around it at 3". Remember the core rules allow everyone to walk across it now, so I imagine we are incentivized to be more aggressive with it, and let it run loose. Ironically, quality of life issues may occur as you'll be rolling lots of dice for little payout because of your better control of endless spells in general. Not the end of the world.

-Bell of Doom: Now has random movement 2D6" and has a -1 Bravery aura for enemy units WW in addition to all of its normal stuff.

-Warp Lightning Vortex: First of all, this spell still needs to be unmade. I don't care how good it is, its just a bad play experience for all players. This change was subtle AND ridiculous. Anyways, the already logistical nightmare of setting this up gets way harder as now each vortex model must also be 1" from ALL models, invocations and endless spells. Just to give you an idea, the base size is 40mm (~1.5") and then add 2" of dead space and you have to find a circular area for each model that's essentially a 90 mm base (3.5" diamater). Uggghh. Ok, rant over.

-Gnawhole: Further set-up restrictions in addition to its normal stuff. No more clustering them on an edge as now they must be more than 18" of each other. Movement now happens at END OF MOVEMENT phase, which standardizes this with most everything in the game. The damage effect to enemies changed to needing 6's now (still forgettable ability). Most importantly and very impactful, it gains Impassable. Huddling around gnawholes at the start of the match will far more clunky. I recommend drawing out some new formations for deployment as you wont be able to move over them now. 

There's plenty of other tiny changes, and I'm sure I missed some little nuance, but these were what I thought impacted us the most on a 13,000 ft view. I wasn't considering points, they are what they are. Everything else, seemed either intuitive, in line with where the core rules were going, or cleared up core rules altogether. 

[Coyote]

Explain like I’m 5 - Thanquol can bring 4 Warpfire throwers but doesn’t roll 4 dice for each model?

[Cosmicsheep]

1 minute ago, Coyote said:

Explain like I’m 5 - Thanquol can bring 4 Warpfire throwers but doesn’t roll 4 dice for each model?

Isn’t this from the old FAQ. Someone thought that you could roll 4 dice for each weapon i.e. 16 dice per model.

[Bregor]

4 minutes ago, Coyote said:

Explain like I’m 5 - Thanquol can bring 4 Warpfire throwers but doesn’t roll 4 dice for each model?

The way the question is phrased, they wanted to be able to roll 16 dice per model - 4 attacks, with 4 dice for each attack. The answer is no, you only get 4 dice per model like you'd think would happen. 

[mmimzie]

It seems war ringer+claw lord command ability are confirmed to stack. Sense the war ringer just command himself to apply his aura. 

 

So you can have 60 rats all with +1 attack, reroll 1s, with double death frenzy.  Still very potent. Could potentially be more potent with curse, skaven brew, and other rat stimulants.  Is attacking still compulsory? So if you charge Archy he has to kill all the rat and get himself slaughtered? 

[Cosmicsheep]

Jezzails got a 5+ save instead of 6+. I wish they’d got 3 wounds instead, same as grinder and fire thrower teams. Never understood why they were different.

[Coyote]

@Cosmicsheep @Bregor 

Thanks, no change to that then.

[Bregor]

1 minute ago, Coyote said:

@Cosmicsheep @Bregor 

Thanks, no change to that then.

Yeah, I think some of the things you see in these FAQs aren't actually new changes, they just have to be reprinted because these are now the only valid FAQs for the battletomes/core rules (i.e. not written on top of the old FAQs). So, they have to re-answer some of the old questions.

[Cosmicsheep]

Yeah, it’s mostly seems to be rewording for 3.0 language. Particularly prayer rolls and the move towards +1 rather than rerolls etc

Excited by gnawhole change though, before it was pretty obvious which units were going to go through. We can be even more sneaky now 🤣

[umpac]

16 minutes ago, Cosmicsheep said:

Excited by gnawhole change though, before it was pretty obvious which units were going to go through. We can be even more sneaky now

Yeah on the plus side its easy to spend a cp to run a unit into range of the gnawhole to teleport which makes it more flexible. You can also run a hero into range, which could be great since you don't risk your designated gnawhole hero getting sniped and leaving your teleport target stranded at the back of your board. You don't need to plan ahead as much and can react for the situation on the board by running up to gnawholes and teleporting in the same turn.

On the minus side it locks the hero to the gnawhole now. Before you could place a warlock within 6" of a gnawhole, throw MMMWP on  a unit of stormfiends, throw them down a gnawhole  to get into range of enemies then have the warlock run up the board into spark range for the shooting. Or have a Screaming Bell deployed within 6", use it to teleport something then have the Bell advance with the rest of the army.

Oh and as a side note, Bell of doom took a big hit by changing the range to wholly within 13", which is a massive difference, and went up a whopping 45pts. Don't see myself ever taking the Bell again, which is a shame because it was a nice alternative for when you couldn't fit a Screaming Bell or Warpseer into the list.

[Bregor]

There are two good changes from the Gnawhole rework, at least:

1) the Skitterleap->cast->Gnawhole shenanigans got a little bit easier, since if you can get Skitterleap to go off you don't have to teleport within range of the Gnawhole anymore - just make sure you can get back to one with a move (+ run if needed). Nice to have a bit extra reach there.

2) Gnawholes being impassible means it's a bit harder to block access to them now - opponents used to be able to park models inside of it, and then you didn't have a valid spot for your models to pop out. Now they either have to bring a larger unit to ring around it  (with new coherency rules, even) or leave one side open.

 

So that's nice.

[Cosmicsheep]

37 minutes ago, Bregor said:

There are two good changes from the Gnawhole rework,

Good points, hadn't thought of those. 

[Coyote]

Impassable also doesn’t break line of site, so we can shoot over it or use it as a protection that needs to be charged around.  Also, if we next to it they can’t pile in over it.

[fishwaffle2232]

10 hours ago, Bregor said:

There are two good changes from the Gnawhole rework, at least:

1) the Skitterleap->cast->Gnawhole shenanigans got a little bit easier, since if you can get Skitterleap to go off you don't have to teleport within range of the Gnawhole anymore - just make sure you can get back to one with a move (+ run if needed). Nice to have a bit extra reach there.

2) Gnawholes being impassible means it's a bit harder to block access to them now - opponents used to be able to park models inside of it, and then you didn't have a valid spot for your models to pop out. Now they either have to bring a larger unit to ring around it  (with new coherency rules, even) or leave one side open.

 

So that's nice.

I love this. 

The list i am planning on tryjng, for fun more than to be competitive, is this:

Thanquol (2:2 loadout. Might end up going melee, but want to test this a bit)

Skitterleap

Warlock bombadier

Mmmwp

Artefact: vigourdust injector

CA: overseer of destruction

Plague Priest

Heal

40,20,20 Clanrats

3x doomwheels (in alpha beast pack battalion)

3x rattling guns (deployed in 40 clanrats). 

1xgrinder team (for 40 clanrats)

WLV

Pts = 1985

 

The plan would be to take the one drop battalion and put everything except the doomwheels and grinder team (doesnt fit) into it. This makes the list 4 drop. 

Im hoping in most games this will give me turn 1. 

Doomwheels get D6 move before the game starts to close the distance and hopefully get in range to shoot and tag some objectives. 

Engineer can be skitterleaped and hopefully gets off WLV on enemy ranks. 

Grinder team deploys the 40 clanrats in front of enemy and rattling guns deployed. Engineer buffs them with overseer of destruction and gives them warpstone sparks. Overcharge them and hope for carnage. 

Could be a pretty hectic turn one and most of the army can blow itself up which is fun for both players.

At least you will win or lose quickly. 

 

Some general thoughts about skaven. 

Warpseer is probably our best monster now and will see a lot of play, even despite FAQ nerfs. Just brings so much to the table and is very tanky.

Thanquol is a boss with increased healing due with heroic recovery, his own heal and plague priest. With braziers he can be a real monster hunter, especially with flaming weapon, and he can be a real horde breaker with his warpfires. Im trying to find room for him in my lists.

I have always liked doomwheels and i think if MSU is the go, doomwheels should be rolling over more units. The extra D6 move from the battalion is also very nice, I dont really need an excuse to run these though. 

I like the WLV especially on the smaller tables. The changes to gnawholes also make delivering WLV to where we want it, a bit safer, as explained above. 

I think stormfiends are still our best unit for shooting, but im pretty happy to see that weapons teams offer an alternative build. I have a lot of lists around stormfiends, but this one seemed more fun and techy. 

Overall, im super excited for skaven in 3rd. I think we have some great building options, at least within skryre, and i think we will still be able to compete around middle tier, maybe some lists pushing into higher tier success. 

Edited July 3, 2021 by fishwaffle2232