Laststand

Consider inferno blades from ashqy. 6 to cast. +1 damage on melee weapons. Its v scary on a unit of 40 clanrats with death frenzy

Why are khorne bad? They have lots of units, multiple list builds, good synergy and powerful units. They hit like a train and spread MW like a crop sprayer. The last update got rid of some obviously ridiculous things but buffed others.

Question @SleeperAgent. What do you want to be able to do? I assume if you want to go skryre you will have at least one unit of stormfiends. 3 dont do much so it would have to be 6-9. Thatbleaves you with 2 battleline to find. Could you not convert 2xunits of 5 acolytes? (I agree with @mmimzie and @Skreech Verminking that they are amazing in decent numbers). 120 points for both of them and then you can do anything you want with the rest of the army. Or is it that you want 1 clanrat/giant rats unit as a screen but not 3? Personally i think the battleline restrictions are ok. They make things interesting and list building is always a feast of options.

They literally just put Skaven back together again to make them playable. It would be counter productive to split a 40 unit range into 4 or 5 new subfactions of 10 or less units each. Its a waste of design time to then create 4 sets of new units it can be spent on genuinely new factions or creating 2 new units and making every skaven player happy. LON is a slightly different story as it seems more unwieldy and has things that could easily be expanded and differentiated properly into well selling factions (soulblight).

I played 1500pts today v khorne and scored a win. Stars of the show were clan rats. 1 unit of 40 with spears buffed with death frenzy and inferno blades (from ashqy, cast on a 6, +1 damage to melee attacks) were on the receiving end of a bloodthirster charge. He killed 11 rats and they ate him alive in return. On a subsequent turn my second unit of 40 armed with blades charged 6 skullcrushers. Inferno blades was again key and the skullcrushers (+3 save and 5 wounds each) went the way of the bloodthirster (although it took 2 rounds of combat). 3 stormfiends i included did very little for the second time of asking but the screaming bell and warplightning cannon are as good as everyone knows they are. Skaven have a real feeling of synergy and power. They are also lots of fun. We both waited nervously to see if my cannon or the doomwheel would explode themselves and there was laughter when a vigourdust injector caused max mw to my unit.

Soul sucking? Could be another deepkin model.

They are really easy and quite fun to paint. I followed this and managed to paint 40 (2x batches of 20) in under 4 hours for the lot. It could have been faster but I faffed around with some details and added another colour. I have another 40 to do but it should go quickly too.

Somebody wants them as they sell bucketloads and if they didnt sell bucketloads they wouldnt make them. At the end of the day they are a business.

Should you not have to invest a big chunk of points for an army focusing deathstar unit?

Today I played my first two 1,000pt games with Skaven. (Having changed from my first AOS army which was stormcast) I used slightly different lists in each game as I'm trying out things to see how they might perform on a table rather than on paper. My opponent running Khorne was doing the same thing although he is a long time Khorne player and was focusing on the new rules. Both games were "battle for the pass". Apologies for the scrappy batrep. I didn't keep proper notes turn by turn. Game 1 Warlock engineer with vigordust injector and deranged inventor Grey Seer with death fenzy Clawlord with brutal fury 40xclanrats 20xclanrats 3 stormfiends (ratling cannon, warpfire,doomflayers) 2x Rat ogres V Mighty lord of khorne on juggernaught 2x Slaughterpriest Bloodsecrator 6x mighty skull crushers 20 Blood reavers My opponent let me go first so I buffed the 20 clanrats with death frenzy and gnash, gnaw then sent them through a gnawhole to claim the left hand objective. His skullcrushers were stuck going single file through two buildings and i had a 9" charge which would have locked them up for a big chunk of the game. I failed it and on his turn he stomped the clan rats flat. Things went much better on the right where the block of 40 tied up the objective nicely. I had expected great things from the stormfiends but I placed them badly to start and they took time to get in the game. Once they did, the ratling cannon did 90% of the work buffed with a warpspark and the injector. Things went back and forth and the clawlord got involved to kill the bloodsecrator who had come up far too close to me. At this point i was happily ahead on points. Ultimately however 2 things turned the game. First I had nothing that could live with the skull crushers. Their mw on the charge was brutal even when only 2 or 3 got in and 6 of them with +3 saves and buckets of attacks was to much to manage. They trampled the rat ogres and took my home objective. The second thing was summoning. 10 bloodletters appeared and wrecked 2 out of 3 stormfiends (who had just been bloodboiled for 5mw) and 5 flesh hounds arriving stopped a super sneaky move where my engineer hopped though a gnawhole and took his undefended home objective. It was a close game until the end when the summoning happened but I lost 13 -18. Game 2 was a disaster. I swapped out the stormfiends and engineer for a master Moulder and hellpit abomination. My opponent switched out his priests, bloodsecreator and half the reavers to take a combo of 2 skullcannons buffed by wrathmongers for extra shots. They decimated my clan rats helped by rolling double 6s for damage twice. The skull crushers crushed more skulls until they made the mistake of charging the hellpit abomination. They did 9mw on the charge and finished it off in combat but it came back to life with 2 wounds and killed half of them fighting at its worst profile! I had little left on the table by then other than a lone master Molder and 2 rat ogres and we called it not long after Conclusions Clan rats are actually really good. Lovely little tar pits. Stormfiends were ok but not amazing and certainly not 260pts worth. One game doesnt decide it and i love the models so i'll play them again. The temptation though is to take weapon teams instead. A master moulder is only worth the points if i am going to get a proper sized pack of rat ogres. Gnawholes give interesting table options but also tempt towards high risk strategies (not a bad thing with Skaven?) Skaven were super fun to play, more so than stormcast which I found too point and click. I am going to buy a HPA and the thanquol kit in the cupboard is next up for building. On to a proper army list and the next battles!

Maybe we are all looking in the wrong direction and its going to be a new Smaug model for the Lord of the Rings game.

Warp-cheese not silly carrots!

We need to push to get to 26!

Thanks for the advice. I think I am suffering from an embarrassment of riches and trying to cram too much cool stuff into a list which will end up leaving me with lots of minimum size units (which I already know is not great for Skaven). I will rethink!

Question from a new Skaven player. What is the best way to build clan rats? Spears for units of 40 but blades for units of 20?

What about idoneth deepkin and wanderers? They are elves.

I missed that. What did Kelly say?

There are at least 3 more chambers to release going by the battletome and the persistent theory of rogue (gone mad ones)

Interestingly enough these isnt currently a real cavalry army in the setting. Might be a nice space for a new race to fill at some point.

I think its likely that many of the older factions without a battletome will stay that way for a number of reasons. 1. Tightening up intellectual property (anyone can sell knights, only GW can sell stormcast, orks and elves changed to Orruks and aelves). 2. It makes no business sense to put huge amounts of work into a battletome and maybe 1 or 2 new models so that guy with 3,500pts of brettonians can play them again when you are in the business of selling models. Far better to launch a new faction or update something already supported (i.e. dark elves must largely disappear when malerion's shadow aelves arrive. Ironjawz and KO who need life support) What I can see happening is certain key factions like skaven, making a big comeback as they have wide appeal, great lore, a presence in the story thread of AOS and a ton of models that are either hard to collect or resin/metal. They, like grots have the potential to sell huge amounts of new and updated models. At some point there is also prob going to be an anti nagash death faction and that could mark tomb kings return, perhaps half flesh, half bones. We also have to remember that 2018 was battletome rapid fire for 40k and they could easily be planning the same for supported AOS factions this year.