Nikobot

No it can't anymore. Liber got Errata'ed to the following... ‘The bearer can use the Pestilent Prayers ability from the Plague Priest warscroll. If the bearer can already use the Pestilent Prayers ability, then it can use the Pestilent Prayers ability twice in your hero phase.’ And the Master of Rot and Ruin command trait only gives it rerolls as it has priest keyword.

done up with bandages? raggedy whip? skaven packmaster?

Short answer - a combined tome of some sort. But that can mean a lot of things and it just depends what we end up with as a final result. Possibilities include : Legions of Nagash style - creation of new overarching factions represented by allegiances that created new identities/styles of play for Death, but essentially all units were accessible to all factions. Also included some existing Keyword factions which may undergo development down the track like Soulblight. No new units. Beasts of Chaos - 1 big allegiance but greatly expanded rules, and Greatfrays to add flavour. No new units except Scenery/Spells. Gloomspite Gitz - combined select factions, a new blend of allegiance, possibly leave some out for later/forever. Lots of new units. This one is complete for a long time. The pros/cons make me ask these questions : How do GW deal with an aging model range? How many new models/units will you get if any? Once you get an update, how long before any part of Skaven gets attention again? Does support of an old model range without new units/models really do much for GW's goals and encourage them to further support Skaven? Ideal Scenario - they get 1 huge tome that includes a stack of allegiances including a combined Skaven, individual clans that work a lot better, and maybe even some new ones. Refresh of old models needing it and addition of lots of new units to all Skaven clans to make each clan work better than ever combined, and in its own right.... Likelihood? ... Not very. Its an aging model line requiring massive amounts of refreshing and poses a tough question on how to deal with it. GW are also very driven towards creating new things right now. They are doing away with old stereotypes and WHFB style armies and going for a more specialist feel across factions. For example, I think its great that we can run Skryre with just stormfiends and acolytes and crazy weapons... but so long as its a bit more viable rules-wise, and same for other clans. Skaven dont have to always be a horde of clanrats and a soup of clan flavour. I want to see more crazy build options that are viable. Realistic Hope - They do something like Legions of Nagash Loads of rules in a big fat book Allegiances for combined Skaven, allegiances for separate clans and a few over arching mega faction/allegiances like combined Verminus/Eshin and Combined Moulder/Skryre... start connecting the clans in other ways for new pathways to future refreshes. Overall make everything work A few model refreshes/new units... we got the Bombardier right? Scenery and Endless spells Basically accept the rest is old for now and provide the opportunity to re-visit the overarching mega-factions in a few books down the track and provide appropriate model refreshes and much heavier expansion into new units in a "Gloomspite Gitz style update". Breaking Skaven down into 2-3 groups makes it seem like its much more possible that they could be re-visited... whilst staying separated in 5-6 clans makes it seem impossible they would get that much attention... EVER. 1. Pestilens; 2. Verminus/Eshin; and 3. Skryre/Moulder. I personally would like the mega-faction refresh now, as I want to invest in a current and new model range, not something dated that i can just feel needs to be re-done, but the big combined book is probably better for Skaven right now. In saying that, anything including a single faction update would be most welcome like a Skryre book. Last point, Skaven represent some of GW's best fantasy IP, and turning them into Skaven soup and not expanding some of their incredibly colourful clans would be an absolute tragedy. Every clan provides a fantastic building block for a future tome.

You cannot get it to pray for its own prayers twice. You can get it to pray for its own "noxious prayers" once, and then have it pray for the plague priests "pestilent prayers" once as well. Pestilens Artefact Liber Bubonicus the bear to use "pestilent prayers" ability.

@Riff_Raff_Rascal They aren't as popular as Ratlings and Warpfires for a reason, because they often don't get any job done and just waste points. Ratling 18" range overcharge vs 4+ armor = ave 2.33w, 5+ = 2.92w, 6+ 3.50w 9" range overcharge vs 4+ armor = ave 3.11w, 5+ 3.89w, 6+ = 4.67w Mortar Target 10+ models vs 4+ armor = ave 0.97w, 5+/6+ = ave 1.17w Target 20+ models vs 4+ armor = ave 1.67w, 5+/6+ = ave 2.00w If a target has less than 20 models, then 5 mortars might do 5 wounds a turn. If a target has more than 20 models, then its probably shooting at non-elites anyway. Warpfire throwers rightfully scare the poop out anything elite or heroic near your combat lines, and most of the time deliver. There definitely was a use-case when you could drop a Warpstone Spark on them and double your damage, but that's gone now. The numbers don't fill me with awe. Appreciate the idea of the threat bubble, but need luck to effect an actual result away from psychology.

Well hopefully we get an announcement about the skaven battletome and expansion today and they save LVO to show off the 35 new plastic kits we are getting

Its also the fact that Skaven has an option NOT to field a minimum of 100+ models. This is their chance to get on the table with the same number of troops as Stormcast, Sylvaneth, KO etc. a lot of players these days do want that option. An interesting perspective for discussion. Can't deny that would be a threat bubble people will take notice of and clearly some opponents will adjust tactics at the thought of what some hot dice could do to an expensive unit should it get within range. That has a value all to its own. I believe as they stand, they are slightly over-costed and you rely on the Skryre command trait and formally Skryre Sparks to get some decent output. Love that they don't need LOS but that is best used for sniping a hiding hero and well, good luck landing 1 on a hero, possibly with an additional -1. They just do nothing too much of the time to be worth it at current points OR in small quantities and without luck. Ratlings and Warpfire are the only teams that do anything currently. Grinders too, but they are utility. Doomflayer and mortar need help. I think they need a tweak, some ideas : Drop in points to 40-50, 40 may be a touch low, 45-50pts Make them wound on a 3+ and leave them at 60-70pts Change their range to 28" and change their overcharge to fire 2 quick shots at shortened 22" range, instead of overcharge increasing range. Access to new buffs synergising really well with them and making them worth it. God knows if they make Sparks Damage Buff worth it again they could be back with vengeance Wonder if we will get ability to group weapons teams into units of 1-3 or 1-5, or provide them as detachments to Verminus again.

Let's see if anything pops today, Saturday in the UK. That's the usual announcement time of the week right

It doesn't seem like lots of thought went into their allegiance abilities towards the end... Sparks went from doing double damage - virtually exclusive use on mortars or grinderfists for 1a, and proved hardly game changing then to +1 damage for a short time - ratling guns with potential output of 7-9w average, didnt really get to try but again, wasnt going to change the world then to +1 damage one attack only ever... best use case? only if you need 1 more wound to kill Nagash (exaggerated, but or other hero/finish off unit etc) otherwise don't even bother, not worth the d3 mortal wounds risk seems like they weren't too focused and it was just temporary measures...

Lucky skryre don't have any CA's and so don't need any CPs! Also lucky there's maybe only 1 artefact worth taking! I think you're right, it will probably get something of an overhaul. Maybe covens will be better, but standalone and Clans Skryre will become a mega battalion... or maybe covens will end up like temples and bestow a CA similar to their current effect.

@angrycontra lots of sense behind your views, I think a few different paths can work and people will just have personal preferences. I prefer Stormfiends costlier and better, I can see why other people might want them cheaper. My view is, Skryre is Skaven's elite weapons force, and the opportunity to be Skaven without being a horde. Also, with the sheer amount of damage that new armies can deal now, reducing the punch of stormfiends would put them further behind. Aside from warpfire throwers, they have gone from a 300pt unit to more of a 240-260pt unit to me right now. All the new units are surpassing them. 3x stormfiends vs 6x eels? 6x blight kings? 20 witch elves? We pay a price for their versatility, which is OK, but it seems specialising is what pays off in the meta. So hopefully they give us options to be able to do so, and get buffs and synergies. Currently, mortars are useless, ratlings don't do anything unless you have 6+ fiends but that's a LOT of commitment and on average mediocre @ only range 12" and hero-targetting got harder. The only sweet spot are warpfires or buffed shockfists. grinders are utility. Gautfyre should change, that's fine. I don't know why GW persists with implementing sensible rules like game-wide 9" distance when deep-striking, and then finding ways to break it. Sure have a few synergies that can pay off with easier deeps-trike charges, but stuff like Gavriel is just silly. Currently enginecovens might need to do a bit more to be their own battalion, but there are lots of opportunities to expand on them, I did like the uniqueness of their battalion and the fact you could choose a mixture of covens.

@Gwendar Skryre truly deserve the gloomspite gitz treatment (love and expansion) out of all the Skaven clans and there's a heap of things they could do with them, the imagination runs wild which is probably what makes it hard to guess haha! Whilst they don't need a "warp-tech college", it might be what they give them if they don't expand them much at this time. I think the "DoK temples/BoC Greatfrays" is something they use to bring variety without the addition of lots of new models. I don't see an issue with warpfire, the range is adequately short to limit its deadliness. It was more of a problem 12-18 months ago but with the new armies, they have even more dangerous tools and rules! WLC's may not change, they aren't cheap and with so many armies having deepstrike now, they need protection often. Doomwheels are terribad, even the points drop was immediately dismissed as inadequate. their rules are just bad. I realised that their PRIMARY weapon, the warp lighting has a worse weapons profile than a single Gloomspite fanatic! ugh. needs major overhaul. Overall, I'd like to see for Skryre (I don't know what new tome we are getting, but if it was Skryre) Acolytes - new plastic multi-kit Globadiers - same as now Warp-pistols - dual pistol wield, something like 12" range, 2a, 4+, 3+, -1, 1 dam, lightly armoured Mech-fists and razor saws - dangerous melee option in heavy armour, save 4+ Rocket-pack option, allow some sort of 12" fly move but hazardous for the above Stormfiends - kit is good basically the same, id like to see doomflayers, ratling guns and poison wind variants improved and overall cost adjusted up maybe a new rule to over-charge weapons a bit Doomwheel - kit is good total rules overhaul needed, total war version just flies, if that hits something its going to do a lot more damage than current! Doomwheel Hero - use current kit like Prince Vhordrai WLC - fine as is weapons teams - dont know what they will do with the kits, obviously some need an update, they might make a new multi-kit box to cover them all. or they may use the isle of blood warpfire/mortar... dont know Allow weapons teams to form units 1-5 warpfire - rules fine, points up depending on new allegiance/special rules ratling gun - rules fine, same as above poison wind mortar - ummm, probably only useful with points drop or with new buffs, but ok ish, possibly overcharge for better power? warp grinder - fine doomflayer - overhaul, this never sees daylight, increase wounds to 4-5w making this more of a unit, and more damage and point it appropriately Jezzails - not a weapon team i know.. hurt by new meta. not that good, probably ok as is provided they have buffs available and maybe points drop NEW warp-lighting weapons team... mini WLC?? short range, 12" hit 3 targets with warp lighting bolts like arch warlock spell NEW doom rocket weapons team, a big rocket that makes a might crater Giant Explosive Rats - new models plastic NEW giant rat variant that have been booby-trapped with explosives and run across the board on kamikaze runs, every combat phase they have a chance to detonate, but may not go off and may just get killed Arch-warlocks - model is great.. need plastic needs command ability which is all about overcharging and doing more damage! Warlock engineer - new models plastic needed need ability that buffs weapons teams aka lord ordinator aka empire engineer... they all get it, why not us? Warlock bombardier cant wait to see what he can do! Warlock enginemaster ability to buff the big tech, doomwheels/WLC Scenery piece - Warp Condenser Pylon central piece of scenery that buffs all skryre tech within range and enhances spellcasting Allegiance Ability Warpstone shards - fix shards, terribly nerfed the extra damage, expand it out so it does different effects on different units and think about it properly, nothing wrong with being able to buff a ratling gun to do +1 damage if it could mean it dies. the re-roll casts is good strength in numbers Skryre techgizmos - Every warlock gets to choose a techgizmo upgrade, which is a mini artefact, once per game use Battalions Clans Skryre battalion - good as is, but maybe less tax as Gwendar said, 0-X for certain units is better in some of the covens Introduce some new covens for variety also possible Stormfiend focused battalion - something to buff them Spellcasting focused battalion Schools/Laboratories of Tech - to give variation on army builds, each with a focus on different extremes Lab of extreme speed - buffs all mechanical to move faster inc stormfiends Lab of overwhelming explosiveness - various weapons special issue, more damage on wound roll of 6 Lab of artilleristic death - focus on long range weapons improvements New Spelldeck of warp energies - damage heavy New Artefacts Magic/casting focused Tech focused - buffs to units Weapons New TechGizmos list as per allegiance, things like re-roll 1s to hit on a units shooting weapons, once per game Add +1 MW caused to a warpfire weapon, once per game I think without too many new models you would have a very interesting faction, it would primarily become workable based around the expansion of acolytes and their variants i feel. the rest is just dialling up inherent Skryre flavour to an 11! anyway, this is just an imagination download just for fun

I wonder if enginecovens will be a building block for other skryre battalions in future? Possibly get some customizations when you select them... Or what could skryre get in the way of DoK temples? Tech-Laboratories? Tech-schools? Laboratory of extreme explosiveness Laboratory of extreme speed Laboratory of shooting deadliness Some ideas to give a whole army some flavor?

It all depends what type of build your going for but in short... 1. Anywhere from 3-9 stormfiends in 2k. Good unit. 2. 0-2 canons, good unit. Most reliable mw output at range. 3. Doomwheel is just not that great right now. Too random. Buuuut... I'll be expecting changes to make it more useful soon 4. 20-80 clanrats, arch warlock, warlocks, some weapons teams like warpfire throwers and rattling guns

I wonder if this has come up yet : - take a unit of 20x stabbas - hand of gork unit across board 9" from enemy - in the charge phase, deploy the 15x cunningly hidden fanatics within 3" of the stabba unit, but 6" away from enemy - make charge roll on 6+ hopefully crash in to as many juicy bits as possible and possibly shake hands

@Ratcliff Thanks for the report, interesting stuff. Agree wholeheartedly on plague monks. good insights, its how i view them when i run them too. Only thing I might disagree with is the corruptor being benched. I have had good success with them providing support and the +1 attack is welcomed. I like running 1x unit of 20 monks with swords/staves to be the target of his CA. If you run realm artefacts then sword of judgement is a game changer for the corruptor's utility. Interesting insights into night runners, i will have to experiment with them.

Awesome report Gwendar, really great read and thanks! Looking at the lists, i really thought you had em covered! If the cannons had a decent day, or you got the double turn as you said, it would have been messy for IJ. Like the list a lot, good idea bringing in some more meatshields.

Cool model! Looks like a fair bit of the existing skryre range.. got that doomwheel warlock crazed look about him fingers crossed for gloomspite-like love for skryre!

I'd bet money they aren't just going to release new models for the same existing units. That just doesn't seem to be what they are doing unless they are the "temporary fixer-upper" tomes like LoN and BoC, in which case no models get redone. The primary goal for AOS seems all about creating new factions and expanding existing forces with new units they see merit in doing so... away from WHFB. Happily agree Skaven probably will be a major release at some point, whether a LoN style tome happens in the interim is quite possible, but when they do the "real development" with them I highly doubt it will be to only release new models of the same units again only, there will be something new and creative to go with it. That's what is getting them points right now. Look and moonclan, quite a few new things to complement their old. Also I wouldn't be surprised at all if at least 1 Skaven clan gets its own book, Skryre and Pestilens already have GHB allegiances, Pestilens its own battletome (albeit 1st iteration thereof which wasnt even worthy of being called a tome) and enough lore and foundation to merit expansion. Look at Dwarves, already Fyreslayers and Kharadron have their own battletomes. Dark Elves got DoK. Eventually, something is going to change to Skaven as we know it.

I'd like the beasts of chaos unified treatment, but not if it's going to sell us short on some sort of new area of expansion, like broader skryre, or pestilens etc People keep mentioning unify skaven, but it feels like their unique IP could mean greater things than a simple unifying tome release. If that's a stepping stone then great, as it feels like there is no reason to make any part of skaven redundant. I think if they have an overarching allegiance then they might work out an interesting way to blend clans.

the wording is "set up the warp-grinder weapon team anywhere on the battlefield more than 9" from any enemy models, and if there is an accompanying unit, set it up anywhere within 3" of the warp-grinder weapon team and 9" from any enemy models. so to me it looks like the warp-grinder needs to be 9.1" or more and the acolytes need to be exactly 9" from an enemy (or atleast 1 model does)... :) overall, its just legacy poor wording that hasn't been addressed and it should be 9" or more as all new warscrolls of similar nature are along those lines so i think you can do it if you are game! I get what you are saying about gutter runners, and I hear about people using them for great results but i dont know how. they don't have that much bite and just die easily enough when something turns its attention to them. war machine sniping? i guess so... hero-sniping? probably only foot heroes are possible targets. im with you, i struggle with them. i find your 2nd list more flexible due to stormfiends and would probably run that. id run the rattleguage list if up against an elite / monster heavy / big-bad character heavy army, but if you dont know what you are likely to face then list#2 i imagine is safer

@Gwendar Thanks for the write-up, I thought it was great. You could provide more details and I'd enjoy the additional reading, but the current style with pics is just fine. Have you thought about using a grinder team to deploy a unit of acolytes to nuke a target after some magic/WLC mw's? 9" deploy and 9" range Haven't tried it yet myself but I thought its worth attempting 1 game I have suffered the incompetency of grinder-teams/fists so im firmly of the opinion they are a decent gamble and feel the same, torn on just deploying normally but it is a massive psychological tool to hit your enemy with. I thought both your lists were fine and sounds like you were just edged out each time. My Rattleguage experience is it is a delete button, and against those 2 lists it probably would have worked well but its expensive, so its quite a few eggs in 1 spot. Gutter runners havent worked for me, lots of people have said they are great, but they seem somewhat ineffective in my hands

Yeah I agree with you, it seems the unifying tome is probably the logical next step before any branch-off. I never really thought about them needing anything new like Skurvy as there was so much development potential with what they have, but you are right, that's as possible as anything! Clan Skurvy-Skryre take to the skies to do battle with KO? yes please.

Oh ye of little faith, and this from a Skaven player! I strongly disagree though, Skaven will "eventually" get separate tomes for 1 or more clans. You have dwarves, dark elves, wood elves which were all similar size armies as Skaven in terms of unit numbers. from that you got Kharadrons and Fyreslayers, DoK and Sylvaneth. All spin-off tomes that expanded the previous army. since then we have seen 2 unifying tomes which are starting to look like a great idea, and we got LoN and Nighthaunt. It seems to be very well received. In Skaven you have one of the few unique IP's GW have created and seem to be going down the path of protecting more and more. To me they are ripe for LoN-style unifying tome and then Nighthaunt-style sub-tomes that will expand the model/unit range. Lastly, the IP is just damn cool, everyone likes the rats even if they dont play them. Skryre are just that crazy-cool with soooo much scope for development. The same goes for the others, the fluff is just a good foundation.

It ran 10th due to comp/painting. Would have run a lot lower if just based on battle points. It went 3w-3L