Riff_Raff_Rascal

Hey ya'll, I just finished a game against a LOTFP list and wanted to just go all in on my favorite unit: Stormvermin. I have 80 and need them to see some action. I pulled out a win against a fully kitted out Deamon Prince of Khorne, a host of STD characters, a maxed out unit of Knights on horsey's and on foot. The stormvermin inspired the rest of the list but the 1000 ft strategy was winning the command point war and that I did: Tyrant of battle and Children of the Horned rat command abilities are so cheat-y face. I can vouch for the save stacking on the stormies doing the work; it was unfortunate I could never get the first charge the whole game, but a block of 30 took the brunt of ALL of his double-attacking knights. Death Frenzy was key I'll admit but I also didn't lose a whole unit during that second turn. I certainly had to play cagey and gave up all of the objectives for the first two rounds settling for battle tactics but I did the ol' swing around to the short side of the board to channel my opponents whole army into my synergy center. Ultimately, everyone's foot troops were all dead at the top of 4 and we had a fun and exciting Hero Hammer battle with our center-peices for the last two rounds. Hilariously my grey seer AND priest blew themselves up as well as my clawlord maxed out his attacks at 7 then spiked the Lord on Karkadrak... on the death frenzy. All in all, I had fun, much more fun than last week's debacle. I might swap out the lifeswarm for another screening unit and perhaps go for a prayer enchancement for Guidance or just another artifact enchancemet to grab a Liber Bubonicus. I never got Curse to go off but might not have mattered as much against STD units. Otherwise this list is a keeper.

@greg19190 Thanks greg. Painting more models helped me get over it.

Quick update: I got trounced by Soulblight. I'm a little salty. Savage gains was the scenario and I called the game at the bottom of 3 (09-27) 'cause I couldn't score any more points. My opponent didn't lose a single unit. I'm salty because I got to do everything I wanted the list to do. Vengorian Lord took an overclocked WLC to the face and the full assault of 3 overclocked rattling cannons, re-rolling all hits and warpstone sparked for +1 damage. This knucklehead survived. I even threw a Warp Sun of Skavenblight at it the next turn, nothing. Meanwhile I'm dying, and they're healing. Oh and Radakar and a Vampire Knight on Zombie Dragon were killing my dudes. Oh and to deal with that I had a Strike-First, Finest Hour'ed, Flaming Weapon'ed Deceiver that got roared and I couldn't re-roll the ones rolled to wound, which let those other knuckleheads survive. I felt that hero save stacking. I had built the list posted earlier to beat it. Just need to vent. I need a beer.

Hey rat-friends! I had a vision as of late where I wanted to give my opponent some surprise gifts this year. I needed to field a list where I pop out of the ground with nearly my whole army and provide my friends with the gift of warpstone fueled volleys to the face. Minimal table presence to start to throw my opponent off, keep 'em guessing if they should let me go first. Clanrats tunnel up with 3 weapon teams in tow, I skitterleap my arch-warlock up there and let it rip with 2 dmg gunners. Alternatively, I can teleport a plague priest and curse a tough target so those shots do MW's! If they let me go first or don't zone out my Gnawholes, I can send a WLC through and fire that as well (very spicy Unleash Hell! candidate on the crack-back since I'm so close to them now. The geminds are deceivingly good at mitigating the crack-back and most importantly will prevent inspiring presence if I choose to pepper-spray their troops. Meanwhile, I plan on having a flying, striking first Rat-ssassin. For added spice, I can bait my opponents charge with my 10 man squads of Stormvermin or Nightrunners and Warpfire them to death. I really wanted to spam some Skaven Assassins and more gutter runners to truly be off the table, alas, they are bad. The awkward part is plague priests make clan eshin really good with the curse prayer but mixing the clans is so taxing on the front end. Shame.

My hopes and dreams for the game at large from the winter update will be bringing hordes back. A simple but eloquent change will be a reinforcement point refund or credit to certain horde armies: Skaven, Beastmen, Gitz. It may be hard to see but our faction has been hurt by the reinforcement rule in other ways outside of the lack of bodies. Some folks may have noticed our lack of hammer units. I still think we have some in the ways of Stormfiends and the new rat ogors but as soon as you spend a reinforcement point on them, you're missing out on 20+ more bodies. The opportunity cost is just too great. I've played this game long enough now to be nostalgic, and I miss the days of sticking it to the shooting armies by being a DPS check like giants are right now. I'm bringing over 200 wounds, shoot all you want.

Lets make the Doomwheel amazing: Cast Levitate on it, poke it with the Vial of the Fulminator artifact, Tokyo drift it across the enemy line with 4D6 x 2 movement causing mortal wounds er'where (including heroes because of the ability wording combined with fly). Charge for extra distance, get more MW's. Then shoot. If you're bold, you skitterleaped a hero towards the enemy so they're in range of giving it a warpstone spark for +1 damage and can issue a command to All-Out-Defense and had cast More-More-More Warp-power beforehand, . Had it landed on something weak for combat, they'll wrap it up on the pile in, it might survive and then you can roll on outta there on your next turn for more MWs. Like all things skaven, its unreliable, therefore competitive. I love it.

Frankly, I think all the fun stuff they're gonna get is decentralized and not on the warscrolls. At minimum we need updated 3.0 wording to to make nurgle a fun addition, as well as the small but powerful adjustment of unit sizes. Its more likely nurgle will get more benefit outta of us being allies. Like STD armies we have a unique position as allies because of keyword bingo overlap (nurgle) for abilities and what-not. That said, if they at minimum give Glotkin a 5+ ward, he becomes a playable ally/beast.

I call this one "Pestilens Brings Bowling Ball". could refer to my Warp Sun of Skvenblight or the very fast anvil/hammer allies. Theres a lot that can happen with this list but i believe i have a tool for every job. Enjoy. Allegiance: Skaventide - Grand Strategy: Hold the Line - Triumphs: LEADERS Chaos Lord on Karkadrak (225)** - Mark of Chaos: Nurgle - Allies Verminlord Corruptor (285) - General - Command Trait: Master of Magic - Artefact: Liber Bubonicus - Universal Spell Lore: Levitate Arch-Warlock (175)* - Lore of Warpvolt Galvanism: More-more-more Warp Power! Clawlord (105)** - Mighty Warlord Command Trait: Skilled Leader Plague Priest (85)** - Artefact: Blistrevous the Living Cyst - Universal Prayer Scripture: Curse UNITS 5 x Chaos Knights (170) - Cursed Lance - Mark of Chaos: Nurgle - Allies 10 x Stormvermin (110)* - Halberd 10 x Stormvermin (110)* - Halberd & Shield 10 x Night Runners (85)* 10 x Night Runners (85)* 1 x Warpfire Thrower (70)** 20 x Clanrats (130)* - Rusty Spear ARTILLERY Warplock Jezzails (290)* ENDLESS SPELLS & INVOCATIONS Purple Sun of Shyish (70) CORE BATTALIONS *Battle Regiment **Warlord ADDITIONAL ENHANCEMENTS Artefact TOTAL: 1995/2000 WOUNDS: 127 LEADERS: 5/6 BATTLELINES: 3 (3+) BEHEMOTHS: 1/4 ARTILLERY: 1/4 ARTEFACTS: 2/1 ENDLESS SPELLS & INVOCATIONS: 1/3 ALLIES: 395/400 REINFORCED UNITS: 1/4 DROPS: 7

Also I just discovered picking generic command traits for clawlords. why? maybe i want command points on a 5+

@Skreech Verminking Mind linking which FAQ you're referring to? I re-read both of those spells and technically doesnt say "up to D3 different targets" so now im curious. Ive never used them that way.

I made quite a few using Blue Stuff from Green Stuff World. Made a mold of the Acolyte holding a grenade from the skaven mortar team. If you want nearly no converting making your own mold is the way to go, especially in mass. The trick is simply finding a base model that's chunky and solid. It might actually be worth to spend the pretty penny for one GW acolyte (metal), it'll take really well to mold making. Or find a single resin print online from Esty of a knock-off version. I should say I later switched to some silicon molds (picks up detail better) for similar projects but it would be a great thing to add to your hobby repertoire.

In response to that massive rat swarm idea, the next level to tar pit will come down to your generalship. From my own games, Ill run all of my MSU rat swarms side by side. Imagine columns of these suckers rank and file, only each column is a different unit. Essentially you've minimized the chargeable surface area to each one. You force an opponent to split their attacks because they are limited to their weapon range. In most scenarios, youll get a proc to respawn a model out of each msu unit and the master moulders can top off their health. This works best against enemy units of 5 or more. If they come at you with a monster, we can now use the re-deploy to shove a 60 point unit in their way instead. I call this the Bruce Lee. Be like water. If your opponent is a chalice be the chalice. If they are pest control, whelp, run away.

I recently updated my personal reference sheets for playing games. One less book to lug around. Feel free to grab this doc, its designed for 3 double-sided pages. Short of our warscrolls, it should be everything. Enjoy. Teachings of the Horned Rat.pdf

A fair question. Thats what I had assumed at first. Its worded in a flexible way. You get one free one AND THEN you get an additional one per Master Moulder, but only if you forgo the original Moulder Clan trait.

Skaven general's may want to take a look at my battle report with my friend. I'm going to be making an effort to keep all that writing out of the chat for now. Enjoy.

Hey ya'll. I've got a fun one for ya. Lets get started. First off we have the armies: First off is my friend's Orruk Warclans with a few units of Gloomspite friends. This was my opponent's 1st(?) game with 3.0 and was using their books for point values. So no hard feelings being at a 100 pt disadvantage here. Straight-forward list, the Savage Cabbage is gonna be unleashed and rush the board. This is why I love Destruction. Now for the Skaven. Things I wanted to try out with this list 1) Dare my opponent to chew threw 60 block of rats, intending to use Rally command ability every chance I get, early game Bless prayer on them, along with adding models back using Lifeswarm endless spell 2) Do damage with clanrats; using Curse Prayer to trigger MW's on the mountain of dice a block of 60 can do with Spears. Intend to run Thanquol AND Warbringer to warpflame overwatch, reach over the top with 3" range weapons but most importantly using Warbringer's CA to give out that now rarified re-roll 1's to hit and wound. 3) Fling a super healing mutated Hellpit at my opponent as a bully. Every turn, I want to heal D3 with the potential for lifeswarm support. Things that I will observe in general because of the new addition: 1) Command point hunger 2) Spread of points, i.e., is either player truly aware how close they are to winning, even if behind? The Set-up It was a little funky. We assumed hot-dog deployment as we were playing casual and the terrain we wanted split the board in half. Then another club member suggested we all play the Vice scenario as a club that day, it looked cool, so we tried it. I was the "defender" and chose to keep the terrain as it was and unintentionally created a wall for the now "hamburger"-style deployment (for ease of starting the bloody game). Unique rule we added was some lava terrain was "rough" terrain and -2 movement if you would move across any number of them. Deployment My opponent setup by front-loading his line (as you do with orruks) but most importantly planted a Macho Man Cabbage Savage on the side with my back-boarded Gnawhole (important later on). For myself, I made my Great Wall-o-Rats on the top part of the table backed by my hero monsters. I got tricksy and put a priest and HPA on my backboard to send through a Gnawhole (remembering in turn 1 that I didn't have to with the new rules). I also made a long-shot gamble by putting a -2 to be hit Clawlord exposed on the bottom of the table (Look out Sir and Shield of Distraction) with the hopes of attracting the Cabbage and stall for a turn. Ready to play. I beat my opponent in drops and let them take the first turn Turn 1: Orruks - Ferocious Advance // Skaven - Monstrous Takeover Orruks move forward. Duh. But wait! There's trickery. You're not gonna believe this but my friend took his Cabbage and ran backwards. Got all up into my Gnawhole ;). During charge phase, he crumbled it. Clever girl. Skaven wall up, and hug the terrain. In hindsight it was the most effective move to minimize strike-able real estate on my clanrats. Orruks have high attack density anyways but still helped. Super awkward scoring for secondary but moved HPA off of Gnawhole to score objective in my territory with no teleport locations available. It is now out of position behind my wall. I tried to summon the Lifeswarm with Thanquol but retroactively reminded my opponent about Heroic Willpower. No problem, he won't roll a 10+? Right? RIP. No lifeswarm for now. Score: Orruks - 4 // Skaven - 4 Turn 2: Orruks - Monstrous Takeover // Skaven - Take it down Orruks win the roll off and choose to go first. Macho Man Cabbage Savage pulled a 180 and Mighty Destroy'ad all the way to my bottom corner held by my Warlord. The -2 to hit him held strong but not really as wound rolls for Cabbage were lackluster and he ate my stormvermin instead. Pack of Ardboyz are the first to hit the wall of clanrats. My opponent just couldn't make all of his units pull in range of the wall (to my dismay) and instead charged the unit into the area where my Warbringer was. His 3" reach weapon bomp'ed them on the head for 3d3+3 dmg. Clanrats died a bit. Ardboyz caught me off guard with a Violent Fury active (2 dmg per attack) and ultimately I still lost out to battleshock. Skaven time. Lifeswarm up and running and will remain healing clanrats for the rest of the game. I really needed to swing the HPA down to hit that Cabbage but ultimately failed due to poor movement rolls and failed long charge (using Triumph). Oof. I stick it out with my Warlord seeing that it would be better to risk another round of combat than retreat and give the Cabbage a buffet of choices to charge things. Chomp. Bye bye Clawlord and his entourage (note that in shooting phase I deployed warpfire thrower knowing stormvermin would also die). Up north I fared better finishing up the Ardboyz with green fire from Thanquol. Unfortunately, I needed the 3 Ardboyzs dead by my movement phase to get my glass cannon Warbringer onto the Cabbage. But guess who's still within 3" of an enemy? Derp. NOTE: Never before playing Skaven have I gotten Warbringer's Dreaded Death Frenzy and Death Frenzy to go off at the same time and this was the game. I incorrectly remembered 1.6.2 of the 3rd edition rules that AN effect may never allow a unit to fight more than once per phase and stopped short from piling in twice and attacking twice. After review, the stacked effects are still differently named effects and thus you can in fact pile in twice and attack twice. Score: Orruks - 9 // Skaven -5 Turn 3: Orruks - Bring it Down // Skaven - Ferocious Advance Orruks continue the first turn tradition. Orruks are really feeling the value of Heroic Recovery as the Cabbage fully healed. Target sighted: HPA is looking might tasty. Cabbage makes its charge into HPA handedly while up north 2 brute units and the megaboss make it into my wall. Funny stuff ensues. HPA gets dunked on. Triggers everything everywhere. Smashing and Bashing triggers, Megaboss cuts clanrats in half by popping the Destroyer artifact. Cabbage gets bigger. Orruks score secondary. However, we asked the HPA if it had died and it said "I did, but then I lived". Too Horrible to Die triggers and remains on the table at 1 wound. NOTE: The wording of Too Horrible to Die and AOS's stance on simultaneous triggers presents an interesting situation. Generally speaking, Age of Sigmar has the "First in, First out" approach to simultaneous triggers or abilities where the active player's stuff works first. Fortunately, this is explicit in rule 1.6.2. Too Horrible to Die references the model being slain for the first time and thus triggers, and because Skaven abilities are coming from the non-active player, only after the Orruks resolved their triggered effects, do I actually roll my die for the HPA to live. The only gray area is scoring secondaries as it is not an ability. For purposes of fun, ease of play, and intuitive rules, my opponent and I quickly moved past this point with confidence that we did everything right. Skaven's turn. Hero phase, from downtown comes a god roll on Pestilence!-Pestilence! prayer. Both units of Brutes and the Megaboss take 3 MWs. Neat. On movement, I strolled my non-stuck Warbringer on over with the intent to murder-slice the cabbage. Once again, I scored points in awkward fashion by running my clanrats, a plague priest and the warpfire thrower at each other to satisfy Ferocious Advance. Thats that. Thanquol is exposed at the moment but decides to do work with warpfire on the brutes. Other brutes take note. Moment of truth, with Finest Hour, Tyrant of Battle CA and Brutal Fury trait popped, the Warbringer scurries in, makes a good dent with the glaive, need to finish the Cabbage off, strikes with four attacks with the Spiked Fist, one wound roll left, I hit the nat 6 and Cabbage takes a surprise hit for 7 damage! The exact amount. Macho Man Cabbage Savage is no more. Score: Orruks - 15 // Skaven - 9 Turn 4: Orruks - Savage Spearhead // Skaven - Conquer (One objective remains in center of board) Skaven double turn! I move to center with remaining clanrats to satisfy Conquer. I brace for impact from Megaboss against Thanquol by casting Arcane Bolt and wait for boss to charge me. Push forward with other monsters for flanking ma'neuv. A straight forward but anxious turn because of slim chance to at least tie the game. Orruks make their final push. Megaboss is at half health. Trolls finally participate, doing solid shots into clanrats. Ardboyzs doing 2 damage each because of Warchanter support. Oof. All battleline is wiped. Blocks grand strategy points. Megaboss takes 2 MWs on charge because of arcane bolt and whiffs a chunk of attacks, Thanquol has the derp-iest round of attacks but gets the job done. Score: Orruks - 19 // Skaven - 13 Turn 5: Orruks - <null> // Skaven - Savage Spearhead Skaven keep momentum. Priest lands another amazing Pestilence!-Pestilence prayer on remaining units. Thanquol warpfires the ****** out of the ardboyz. They are gone now. Priests move onto scenery to block Orruk Grand Strategy. Verminlord swings around, makes charge against trolls, and does solid work. HPA moves across the center line to barely eek out the secondary (random movement kept me sweating) Orruks can't score points. Warchanter stares at Thanquol. Out of spite, HPA heals the last of its wounds and is still alive. Final Score: Orruks - 19 // Skaven 18 Whelp. Good game. Things that occurred that I glazed over: Dreaded Death Frenzy and Death Frenzy consistently up. However clanrats were not rolling a lot of dice to take advantage. Curse prayer targets often weren't in combat. Rally CA on clanrats and Lifeswarm always bringing stuff back. Both players were command point starved, Orruks lost their general so it was felt mid-late game, and Skaven had to keep using rally. Of the 11 command abilities that Thanquol used, none of them were refunded with Masterclan trait. Not a single Inspiring Presence was used by either player. How did my experiments do? Clanrats didn't get their shot. I chalked it up as a mistake on my part to sandwich them between my monsters and the large amount of terrain. That said, it helped mitigate a great deal of damage by having small attackable real-estate. While curse prayer was used and not taken advantage of, HUGE stonks on Plague Priests Hellpit Abomination. What can I say? He's a survivor. Things that I learned from my first 3.0 game Gnawhole deployment will take more consideration now. The fact that Smash to Rubble is after movement means deploying them even mid-board makes them vulnerable to roaming monsters. However, Skaven no longer have to show commitment to teleporting through during deployment. We can place things a bit forward. If teleporting is blocked off like in this game, I'm not out of position. If they leave me the avenue, I can move and then teleport. Heroic Recovery is king. Focused fire will be even more important. In a broader sense, always remember that these things can be done in each players phase. I even made a reference sheet for the new rules but I kept failing to grasp how active I can be with these abilities. The monster abilities I think both players had a handle on (more fun I think). For those armies without magic, I'm excited for those who effectively use Heroic Willpower as a nice tool against that one spell that breaks effectiveness. Its something. Battleshock rolls are definitely a thing now. For skaven, we are certainly spoiled with battleshock mitigation, but do not rely on our updated Strength in Numbers ability. I purposely chose not to run any of our normal tools so that I got a true sense of what Rally and Lifeswarm can do for us. The numbers were promising. In total, lifeswarm brought back 16 models, and rally gave me a total of 19. Orruks just hit so hard. Ultimately I was losing 10-15 models to battleshock still. I was hoping Thanquol was going to refund at least one command point so that I could Inspiring Presence at least once. Oh well. Most importantly, choosing your secondaries each turn takes a lot more foresight than I had thought. Too many times did I have to awkwardly move things to make those points happen ultimately putting me out of position. This was particularly tough because of my castle strategy. Future me will have to plan it out by round. That said, the fact that I had more monsters than my opponent made the chance for a comeback extremely natural. Learn from my mistakes. Have fun out there.

@BeerBoar Your points are valid. Your evidence is founded. Your logic sound. However.... You're in the skaven chat my friend. We treat rules like pirates treat booty. We break the rules and take as many rules as we can. May the the Great Horned One smite @BeerBoar for his competent words. That said, anyone following this silly line of conversation must adhere to the rules of friendly competition. Don't pull tricks like this on an unsuspecting opponent without telling them at the top of the match. This idea has a high chance for BPA (bad play experience). In this humble skaven player's opinion, while it is not a broken strategy and arguably thematic, it most certainly demands careful implementation because of its unintended interactions with rules.

@CoyoteMwaahhahahah. See-look with your eyes, the page in book-rules yes-yes. They can't move-slink! Any flesh-thing without wings to carry-fly them to safety is doomed! Stupid-short Gotrek is trapped-bound to our will! Surely be on council soon, wait-see. What if, no, yes-yes, we plant bomb on own troops!? All is safe. No blade-cut happen.

@Coyote I don't think anyone is gonna try to change your mind. They're great. And when they're not, they're outta the way and unimportant. Can I blow everyone's minds right now? Impassable rule, pretty neat. Units can't setup on them. Units can't move across them. But have you ever seen a gnawhole land on a unit, a la Wicked Witch of the East style? I thought not. Gnawbomb. Look it up. Let the gears start turning.

@DarkhanTheir shields along with similar abilities for other armies weren't FAQ'd. From now on, its serves essentially as a negate -1 rend. Remember you still add up all bonuses and negatives first before capping at +/- 1. Personally, shields are just a way the game makes it a disincentive to stack +1 save bonuses and as a consequence actually saves us a command point to send somewhere more exciting.

Very happy with all the bat-reps Im seeing. Exciting stuff. In the mean time Ive finished up all of my home-made gnawholes and endless spells including the vortex. Im most proud of the bell: enjoy.

My wisdom is simple: You dont have to play with all the layers to have fun. I force myself to teach new players so that I trick myself into doing so. Ultimately I get better at the fundamentals because of it. The concept of competitive play is foreign to me hence the advice. To each their own.

Here's what ya do. If some punk is dissing on yo fly girl, you just give 'em one of these: Cut it in half, one half is burrying down and the front is popping outta the ground on the two bases. Skaven-ize the rest.

I dont believe its an oversight. Jezzails changed because their save was affected by the cap. The Deceiver's ability is built-in redundancy. That said, your instinct about it being worse are halfway correct. Everyone has access to all out attack in shooting so its more common and easier to see stacking shooting bonuses. But there is inherent value in creating disincentives, your opponent still has to commit actions//resources and it may not be worth shooting The Lord.

@will pollock Quick thoughts: Anytime you have bells or warpseers, be confident in running MSU battleline. 10 man units of stormvermin are just as effective because of all out attack CA This list screams verminous melee, I say drop the warlock for another clawlord. Or swap HPA for a Warbringer somehow. Theres so much lords bring to the table now. I sense you will be aggressive and less reactive with your grinder. If so, swap your Inspired triumph for the re-roll charge so that unit can have fun. Swap spells with Bell and Seer on foot. Seer has better chance to cast Frenzy while bell can still play support by putting heroes where they need to go. Every instinct tells me not to make a squishy warlock your general. If its an archwarlock, now we're cookin'. The bell is a solid 2nd choice with your current list.