Gwendar

OBR - Forcing the Hand - GhyranMy List OBR List T1As usual, going off memory so I don't take up time by note-taking, IE things may be a bit wrong but the ending score is correct. He wins on drops and takes T1 Typical T1 for us both of moving up and onto the objectives. Jezzails have nothing to shoot at and no spells are really worth casting. 3-3 deployment T2He wins the roll off and makes me go first. He makes the primary objective the bottom left. I string out the Clanrats a bit more to get ready for the inevitable Stalker charge while shifting everything else up a bit more, being wary of him getting a double turn. The Jezzails still have no targets aside from some Mortek guard, which just heal back to full on his turn. He moves the Stalkers and Zantdos up and charges them into the bottom Clanrats, killing all of them with 48 damage. 6-6 beginning of T2 T3I win priority. He makes the bottom left objective primary. I get MMMWP off on the Acolytes but fail Death Frenzy (which has been a very common theme) on the SV who move up a bit but stay out of charge range from the Mortek. The Jezzails shoot off Zantdos while the Acolytes kill all but 2 Stalkers (only 19 damage went through). The Bombardier then overcharges and does another 9 damage to the Stalkers to finish them off. His turn has the middle Mortek move up towards the Acolytes while his top ones move back to negate any Clanrat charges. 9-9 end of my T3 T4He wins priority. He charges the Acolytes with the Mortek and kills them all I fail Death Frenzy, but I decide I need to act and charge them into the Mortek that killed the Acolytes anyway.. out of 30 wounds done, they took only 3 damage. They then swung back and killed ~15 SV. We roll off for T5 and he wins, and at this point I call the game; the Mortek will easily finish off the SV and I will have no hammers left (aside from Jezzails) to contest anything. 13-11 OBR Major Victory Overall Thoughts Things obviously didn't go too well here. I really feel that this hinged on that last priority roll; had I gotten it and been able to kill off those Mortek (which they probably would have since they don't get RR's in shooting) then I could have threatened the top objective with the SV and 40 Clanrats. I probably could've been a bit more aggressive, but overall I can't say it wouldn't changed the outcome too much. Honestly it just made me wish I still had my OBR as these were the kinds of lists I took anyway and thoroughly enjoyed them. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Seraphon - Better Part of Valour - Ulgu Seraphon List - *Note that the Dread Saurians have inconsistent points changes listed and show as 420 in the latest FAQs which is the old value (pre-tome). The TO ruled that for this tournament he would allow them to be used at 420 points instead of 510 until it is clarified as it appears to be a typo in the FAQ. T1He wins on drops and has me go first. I get off Death Frenzy and Mystic Shield and shoot 6 wounds off the right Dread Saurian with the Jezzails. I decide to stay put. He manages to get both Dread Saurians in (with the right one getting enough via the 3d6 charge) and the left kills 10 Clanrats while the right kills around 10 SV. Due to how he charged the SV, I could only get ~5 in combat and they only did a small amount damage. middle of his T1 T2He wins the roll off and takes the turn. He moves up his Bastiladon on the right and his general Stegadon towards the left Clanrats. Combat has ~10 more SV die who do only ~2 wounds back while he also kills another 10 Clanrats. I burn the middle objective so I can start trying to contest his middle. I roll a 12 for the Bell and bring in a Warpgnaw. I do however fail to get off Death Frenzy but MMMWP goes off. The Warpgnaw moves into charge range of the right Dread Saurian while I make sure all the Acolytes can shoot into the left Dread Saurian. 6 Jezzails take the Bastiladon down to 3 wounds after doing 8 MW's and the other 3 take a couple off the Dread Saurian.. unfortunately the Acolytes fail to kill the left Dread Saurian by just 2 wounds (he basically negated an extra 17 damage from the Warpspark due to reducing all damage taken by 1). Warpgnaw charges in and takes the right Dread Saurian down to 5.. SV continue to do next to nothing due to limited pile in. 2-0 T3He wins priority. He shoots 6 Clanrats off with the Sunfire Thrower Stegadon and then charges in to kill the rest. Meanwhile the Warpgnaw does just enough damage to finish the right Dread Saurian. I go in with the remaining 10 Acolytes in range but only 1 gets through, leaving the last Dread Saurian on 1 wound. He then burns his left objective. We call the game there as I mathematically can't win with only 1 1/4 Battleline left. 4-2 Seraphon Major Victory end of T3 Overall Thoughts Obviously things didn't go too great. This battleplan combined with Ulgu (all terrain is overgrown) was atrocious. The Jezzails couldn't shoot at much of anything worthwhile due to having no sightlines, meanwhile the only thing that could cap objectives was the Clanrats and SV.. and they had to stay on the objectives to keep them. I'd try playing it again but.. I really was not a fan of it at all. Other than that I probably could've yet again played a bit more aggressively, but my biggest issue obviously was having the SV bunched up and allowing the Dread Saurian to charge in a way that they couldn't hit back. I couldn't retreat and charge them back in or else I would've reset the counter for VP's on that objective... so they were just stuck there. Had I ended combat with both of them sooner this would've been a bit different as they kept in place and unable to move really.

Thanks, glad people are enjoying them 😉 1. I think they're good but I'm not super crazy about them; I still really think they need to be closer to 360. The issue I'm having is that I can almost never get the Clawlord in range to give them +1 attack unless he charges as well, but I've made a few long charges with them which puts them out of range. Even with 2 attacks they're pretty solid, but at that point they're actually doing less than 40 Monks on average. I just don't know that I can justify that extra 100 points to maybe get them to do another 7 damage on average over monks.. and I can bring 80 of them for only 60 more points compared to a Clawlord + SV. In my OBR game, 27 of them got 30 wounds through and they only took 3 damage after saves so... the -1 rend doesn't always tend to help as much as some make out. 2. I would still take them at 25-30 if I could, but since they're maxed out at 20 now I have no choice.. and I think they still work fine. They 1-shot those Skeletons no problem, but only did 19 damage to a unit of 6 Stalkers in my OBR game thanks to rolling a bunch of 1-2's on damage so they can be swingy. They absolutely need to stand behind some Clanrats until you can open up and let them go into something, being as fragile as they are however you gotta make sure they won't get charged or shot right back. These first 2 games were perfect for them since I have no threat of them getting shot\MW'd off the board. 3. I only take all-comers lists so no, I wouldn't change anything to tailor against a specific matchup; hell I don't even adapt to my local meta 😅. Bottom line is that we just aren't super great against long range MW's\shooting due to the ability to shoot off these heroes (hence why I've suggested Skaven have the 40k rule to not allow heroes to be targeted at all unless they're the nearest model). Losing those Engineers would kill a 6 Stormfiend list, but when I'm only running 200 points of Acolytes it isn't as big of a hit if I lose them. Unbuffed Acolytes can put out more damage than unbuffed Fiends unless you charge them into something. Of course.. the last list I proposed is running 2x20 with 4 DW's just for the hell of it. If I can get MMMWP and Deranged on 2 different units then it's pretty great. The objective with that list is that it can be very aggressive or passive depending on the matchup.

Had my game today with OBR, but lost and it really just came down to a single priority roll. I'll post a short batrep tomorrow with my last game once that's done. Anyway, I have a ladder tournament starting next week and I decided to instead run the following. I think I'll take another small break from Skaven and play more Tzeentch\Fyreslayers for a bit (maybe just a month or so). I figured I would just use something ridiculous for this last tournament with them for a bit 😉:

New batrep time from the TTS tournament this weekend. I have another game today vs OBR and I'll have another tomorrow.. I'll try to do batreps on those as well but depends how I'm feeling. Let me know your thoughts, I always appreciate some good conversation on these games.

Legion of Night - The Blades Edge - AqshyMy List LoN List T1 As usual, going off memory so I don't take up time by note-taking, IE things may be a bit wrong but the ending score is correct. Also, yeah.. I need to take a picture at the end of each round instead of just "whenever I remember to take one". I win on drops and allow him to take T1. Boring T1 as expected; he moves everything forward and buffs up the right unit of Skeletons. On my turn, I largely do the same but don't bother with MMMWP and Death Frenzy fails to go off on a 3. I do as much as I can to negate the 2x10 Hexwraiths he has waiting in deepstrike. The Jezzails shoot off the right-side Necromancer. 3-3 beggining of T1 T2 I win the roll off, but allow him to go first. For this new battleplan, whoever is going second get's to remove an objective, so I removed his central objective to coax that unit of Skeletons forward into my Stormvermin. He wades forward a bit, but fails to get off any spells aside from Mystic Shield on the Vampire Lord. He brings the Hexwraiths in on both sides (would've been nice if I took a picture to show that, eh?) but only the left side manages to charge into the 40 Clanrats. Combat has ~8-10 Clanrats die and they swing back to kill 2. My turn, Acolytes get MMMWP but I fail Death Frenzy again on a 5. I retreat the left Clanrats out and charge back in to make sure only 2 of the Hexwraiths can actually get in combat. The Jezzails shuffle to the left while the SV shuffle up a bit more but try to stay out of charge range of the middle skeletons in case he get's priority. The Acolytes shoot into the 40 Skeletons to the left and do around ~41 wounds, killing all of them while the Jezzails shoot off ~2 more Hexwraiths. 6-6 beginning of T2 T3 I win the roll off again via tie and decide to take it. He removes my central objective. I don't bother with MMMWP but I fail Death Frenzy again.. however I can't wait another turn to get the SV into combat and the Skeletons may charge them anyway. Left Clanrats retreat and I get 1 onto his left objective. I don't buff the Acolytes with Deranged Inventor so they only manage to shoot off 2 more Hexwraiths while I instead give it to the Jezzails who take out the left side Necromancer and 2 more Hexwraiths after shuffling to the left some more. I get the SV within 6" of the middle Skeletons and make a 10" charge to get ~24 into combat with them while the left Clanrats charge back into the remaining 2 Hexwraiths to keep them getting to my Acolytes. Combat has the SV kill all 40 of the Skeletons but they just barely miss killing the Vampire Lord who has 1 remaining wound. For his turn, he fails his spells again but he brings back the left unit of Skeletons on the same side. The right Skeletons and Hexwraiths charge the 40 Clanrats while the Knight of Shrouds charges into the left Clanrats. Only ~4 Clanrats die on the left and I lose 14 from the right but use my 1 CP to negate BS. 9-9 Middle of my T3 T4 I win the roll off via tie again and take it. He removes my left objective. Death Frenzy finally decides to go off but I don't bother with MMMWP again. Shuffle the Acolytes and Jezzails up a bit and get the SV within a 7" charge of the right Skeletons, meanwhile both Clanrats units retreat and reform (with the left unit running to get 5 on his objective to take it back from him). Acolytes finish off the remaining 2 Hexwraiths while the Jezzails do 10 MW's to the Knights of Shrouds, killing him. The SV roll a 12" charge and I get all but ~10 into combat while the right Clanrats charge the Hexwraights again to put more bodies on my right objective and ensure only 1 Hexwraith can swing into combat. I'm out of range for the +1 attack, but the SV still manage to kill all ~27 Skeletons as well as the Vampire Lord, so he removes the unit as the rest will BS off. He has no spells left, so he moves the left Skeletons to cover his objective and charges them into the remaining Clanrats while resurrecting another Skeleton unit on the right side, however he fails the charge with them into the SV. Skeletons kill all but 2 Clanrats but the Bell is in range to keep them alive and in combat in case he gets a double turn. 12-10 end of my T4 T5 I get the roll off again and take it. He removes my right objective. MMMWP goes off and I don't bother trying to get DF off on the Acolytes. The Acolytes run up and kill ~half the Skeletons (lots of damage 1 rolls this time) while 5 of the Jezzails (buffed with Deranged Inventor) take the Wight King down to 1 wound remaining; he just barely made the two 6+'s that he needed. I decide to try and charge in the Bell as I have nothing on the left objective and with the remaining Skeletons BSing off the board after combat would end, he calls the game there as I will control it for another 2 points. 14-10 Skaven Major Victory end of game Overall Thoughts I definitely love this list after my first game with it, but I definitely made deployment errors. The Jezzails had slim pickings for heroes as he made sure he didn't put down his Wight King until after I put the Jezzails down. They were still able to do their job with the 2 Necromancers, but not putting them by the Gnawhole to potentially teleport them or at least have them in range of more heroes hurt me. That said, he told me if I had deployed them there he would've brought down the Hexwraiths T1 anyway to negate that. The only thing I'm currently iffy about is the Bell.. I haven't used it in probably 8+ months and I can't say I miss it. All it managed to do was roll for the MW's which never did anything at all due to my inability to roll 4+'s; even if I did it wouldn't have mattered against anything but his heroes who were either dead from Jezzails or out of range of it. I know it's meant to be utility and really is just there for the BS, but it seems to have a very difficult time keeping up with the SV who it's mostly for. Of course, I don't know that I would replace it with anything until I've had my other 2 games, but there isn't anything I would consider replacing it with except for Thanquol. If I dropped at least 1 Bombardier down to an Engineer then I would have enough after taking the Jezzails to 6. That's a tough call for me as 9 ups the consistency factor, but I would have a more reliable Death Frenzy cast as well as more anti-horde, which isn't super needed with Acolytes and SV already in. Anyway, thanks for reading, I may have another today and tomorrow so check back.

Or you know, have GW learn to actually point things differently for different armies.

even with Ghyrstrike this guy would still only get out 5-10 damage before being bracketed to doing 1-2 damage a swing half the time. Before GHB2020 I largely had given up on him in my lists, now he's definitely not got a place. GW really needs to figure out they role they're meant to play or justify why they cost what they do.. because I would love to take the Warpseer every single day of the week if it was priced closer to the 280 that it used to be (if I remember correctly).

Oh absolutely not. I mean, the Deceiver barely has a chance to kill a 5 wound hero on average, but he fits more towards killing bigger things, without the output to do it. SoJ is what made the Corruptor good in melee but now that it's gone.. not really. Same with the Warpgnaw with Ghyrstrike, without that he's severely hampered. Your suggestions could probably be enough to not justify a points increase, although I wouldn't trust GW to not do that anyway. Bottom line is that they just seem to be made as support pieces, but even then only 2 (3 if you're pure Pestilens) are really worth bringing in my opinion and even those are up in the air when you take their cost into consideration for just that 1 role. I expect more out of a greater demon, but it seems that Tzeentch (for magic) and Slaanesh (for combat) won out in their respective departments.

I mean yeah, but at the same time they had way too many choices before and there was maybe 1-2 good ones per realm anyway. Many armies didn't even bother with their own artifacts and always chose one of those, which is what they didn't want. Of course that hurts those armies because their artifacts aren't exactly great by comparison, but ah well. I would still say it's a net positive since now I don't have to worry about 2-3+ save ethereal monsters running around 😉 The mortars are.. odd. They were clearly in the pictures for our tome yet didn't show up. The issue with all those sculpts was that they came from IoB\SoD and were all mixed sprues with (now squatted) High Elves. I would assume it wasn't worth producing any of those Skaven models if they knew the High Elves would be squatted in a year anyway and they had to do them both together unless they re-made those molds. I really do miss those Mortars.. that was back in the day the Warpspark would double their damage to 12 and they were cheap enough to always take 3-4 of them as long range guns 😅

Yeah, it's a shame because I bought a Warpgnaw about a month ago but now he'll never see the table. A potential alternative so he isn't totally useless is the Incandescent Rageblade from Aqshy. Gives exploding 6's to hit which could work with the MW's on 6's I think? Other than that maybe Brooding Blade or Blade of Corruption but.. yeah, no option will equal the damage potential of SoJ unless you take the Corruptor in Legion of Chaos Ascendant to get the Fourfold Blade. A Warpgnaw would probably be the better option now (even without Ghyrstrike) but in doing that you lose an anti-horde spell. If you're bringing Thanquol though, that probably won't matter.

If your local meta spams Lumineth, Seraphon or Tzeentch then.. nah, probably not going to go great. Against anything else and I still think it's "okay". It still suffers from the fact we only get the +1 to cast from the Gnawhole which are spread around the table. I would definitely say Thanquol is more of an auto-include in that setup now, especially if you're taking WLV. I honestly think the 2 biggest hits to my magic based list is losing SoJ and only having 3 Endless Spells allowed in a list. Without SoJ for the Corruptor and the Warpgnaw also losing Ghyrstrike as an alternative, it kind of gets rid of that 6" deepstrike hero\horde assassin that was integral to the list. Only having a max of 3 Endless Spells kill it a bit as well. That said.. yeah, an AW on a Balewind with CWL and his innate WLS is still a fun combo. Bingo 😉

I also didn't want to build or transport 100 models worth of the stuff but.. here we are, with that as the best option.. or more Flamers but less bodies.

For anything local I would always be bringing the Summoners list.. anything beyond that I would consider #2 as my local players are a bit on the casual side except for a handful of guys. Not to say I wouldn't run #1 in a tournament setting as I think it can potentially work pretty well there.. it just doesn't have the drop count or visual threat of 12 Flamers and 20 Pinks 😉. I'm playing Skaven anyway for the next 2 tournaments.. but definitely wanted to give these 2 lists a shot before the next ones start so all the advice is appreciated.

Nah, you just missed me being used to trying to keep big units together (Stormfiends for me) which is obviously irrelevant in a 1-drop setup with no single unit buffs 😉 I think after other discussion I'll probably go the Changehost route after all. Both lists have their merits and play pretty differently.. the Summoners one had a bigger question of Enlightened vs Skyfires.

I've decided to get back into Tzeentch.. although I'm trying to avoid Horror spam outside of maybe just running 1 unit of Pinks. Anyway, couple of ideas I've throw around with others with tournament settings in mind. GoS: Contemplated swapping Skyfires for Enlightened instead and using those 60 points leftover for another Endless Spell.. Pendulum or BW for the Changecaster or Blue Scribes maybe? That way I have more spellcasts on top of a high speed melee threat.. not that Skyfire's can't do decent in melee with the discs, but the Enlightened needing to go 2nd for the RR's is what worries me about using them. Conflag Shooting: Changehost or no Changehost... kind of the question I've been asking myself. I'm sure the answer is likely a resounding "Well yeah, always you idiot?" but I wasn't sure. If I did that I would obviously drop Kairos but wouldn't be able to squeeze in another 10 Pinks without being 1 under the minimum of 8 Daemons, not to mention I would be negating my only rule of not having more than 1 unit of Pinks.. guess I could just do more Flamers.. or split what I have into MSU's of 3 😉. But hey, that's why I'm asking here to see what you all think. I know there's been lots of list talk but I'm definitely looking at testing some stuff out on TTS for a couple months before anything is bought.

Oh I've got way too many, all with varying degrees of success, although it hasn't helped that I've been playing against Seraphon more than anything else which, no matter what is a horrific matchup unless he uses less magic\shooting based lists (he doesn't competitively). Submitted this as my list for the 2 TTS tournaments I spoke about this weekend\next week: I took it from Dan Brewer (which I made sure he was aware 😉) but I definitely have reservations about it since my version was Fiends and 6 Jezzails over the Acolytes and the Bell. I had another one knocking around in my head that uses the classic Fiends with Bridge with Monks for melee, which I still think is a wonderful choice against our good matchups (IE, anything that can't dispel it easily) but can be used quite well against the bully armies if you manage to get it off. Which, generally I could since I bring Thanquol in that list for that reason. The idea with the above is just to dampen the blow if the Engineers get taken out since Acolytes can still go after units of 10+ with pretty good effectiveness despite having no buffs. I think units of 6 Jezzails are just fine and have been running that with good success, but had nothing else worth 140 points I felt I could replace them with so kept the 9. I love Stormvermin, but I still feel they're too expensive since they're really 500 points due to needing that Clawlord for the extra attack. Regardless of that, I want to try them in a tournament since the last one with 80 Monks didn't go great for me. Monks still get most jobs done with the benefit of not needing support and being incredibly cheap. They're going to bounce off anything with a 3+ or better save though most of the time. Some have began running 2x20 Acolytes and 2-4 Doomwheels with\without Jezzails it seems to be working fairly well. We've never had the resilience to tank a double turn against us, so lists like that can generally play it back for a turn with Clanrat screens or run up with the Acolytes and Doomwheels and take stuff off and I'm very intrigued by these types of lists. Someone linked Doom & Darkness' latest batrep where he played against a Skaven player doing just that and it was great.. of course 1 bad priority roll and the Skaven player would've lost by T2.. such is the way of life for us though.

At least you didn't play against the "60 Blightkings" meme-lists people are starting to run with their points drops 😅 Nice to see how it went for you overall. I never really considered the battalion so my quest is the same as Skreechs. I feel in this setup you'd be fine running Skavenbrew or Vigordust but having both isn't super worth that huge price tag on the battalion. I'll say that losing the realm artifacts is probably a net positive for us as everyone is losing their big Ethereal monsters (although, RIP Warpgnaw with Ghyrstrike). I'm mostly settled on my Acolytes\Fiends+Stormvermin\Monks+Jezzails lists, but seeing so many new options from everyone is refreshing. I would agree about our competitivity. I do overall think we're in a reasonable spot (sometimes it feels worse, however), but against some of the new power creep it's generally going to be incredibly hard or impossible to do well. Having that AW\Engineer get blown off the table right away instantly makes the Fiends do nothing which is why I've gravitated more towards Acolytes as the points difference takes away the sting if I lose the hero and they generally do better than Fiends without buffs.. but not by much. I usually prefer being the underdog so I'm fine with where we sit.. it's just that those bad play experience armies seem to be coming more numerous. Being the only local Skaven player, people know what my stuff can do and hyper focus heroes if able as the units tend to be subpar without them. I really feel a good change would be to only allow heroes to be targeted if they're the closest model like 40k, which I suggested before. Perhaps making it an army specific ability as I imagine most Skaven heroes are narratively surrounded by hordes of Clanrats anyway.

A few things I see wrong here, but if your goal is casual and not some kind of tournament list then ignore me 😉 Hoping to get the Brass Orb off on a 6+ and also to be in range of something that it wants to kill is a bit fleeting. More often than not it isn't going to work and thus it's a bit wasted.. but you don't have many options with what you're running. As for the Fiends, that's really the only threat you have in this list, except maybe for rolling well on the Doomwheels movement and shooting to kill a support hero. Once those Fiends (or the AW\Engineer) are gone, you have no hitting power whatsoever as they do next to no damage without buffs (around 4-5 times less damage, going from ~34 damage vs a 4+ save to ~8). You have a lot of points tied into Clawhorde and it isn't doing anything for you; I just don't think a few less drops, a CP and another Artifact is worth 180 points in any way. I would much rather have 40 Stormvermin or none at all as there really is no benefit to them in anything smaller than that. At that point you would be better off just using Clanrats. Any competitive list for us really needs to be running 2-4 threats. I do my best to include a long-range hero killing threat (6-9 Jezzails but the 2 Windlauncher Fiends can do this reasonably well too if buffed), something short\mid-range (Acolytes or Fiends) and something close range (Stormvermin or Monks). Doomwheel can work, but I think most of us will agree you need a minimum of 2 to pull anything off consistently. The advantage that we have as Skaven is that we can play relatively well in each phase.. although a lot of the stuff isn't magnificent on paper and rapidly falls off when going under 30 models or losing support heroes compared to other armies.

Sometimes I really do wonder if you're joking when you say things like that about a 200+ model list 😂

Right, I knew that.. I should stop responding when I first wake up with only 1 eye open and half a brain. I think what I meant (now with coffee) is that it wouldn't be entirely useful in that regard. I've played against 60 Crossbow + 30 Handgunners HH lists as well as 12 Salamander lists and no melee whatsoever.. so in those matchups I generally couldn't care less if DF gets unbound. Nah I get it, luckily TTS lets me test out a ton of lists.. and with all my tournaments getting cancelled this year anyway, I have plenty of time to test things before I buy and paint any physical models. It helps that a lot of these TTS tournaments have a large variety of armies and very good players to go against. I've come to terms that it's almost always going to be an auto-lose against a competent player of something heavily shooting\magic focused and that's fine; everyone has their good\bad matchups. I think we used to be fairly competent against almost anything, but we've mostly fallen in effectiveness to the newer hotness\meta, which is also fine. But having my local Seraphon player (who has played against my Skaven for almost 2 years) know that all he has to do is easily take out 2 Engineers that I can't protect because of Kroaks board-wide damage.. yeah, I don't stand a chance in wiping anything off the table at that point. While you don't need to table an opponent, you absolutely need to be able to play chess\checkers with them and trade threats in order to keep objectives your own. Without those Engineers, Fiends are doing about 4-5 times less damage which is insane and I don't know of many units in the game that suffer that heavily by losing a single buffing hero.. not to that extent. (Maybe Seraphon as quite a few units are bad on paper... except for Salamanders) So.. I don't know. I think if the Fiends were naturally hitting on 3's they would be far better. But if you did that, you should probably make MMMWP only RR 1's or just fails? Maybe if you do neither of these then they need a solid points drop since they're so horrific without that 110-160 point hero that is easily sniped? Or maybe we get introduced to a new mechanic; something like 40k where you can't even target a hero unless it's the closest model unless you have an ability that lets you ignore this (assuming that's still a thing in 40k.. I don't know since I don't keep up with it).

Hey I told him I was going to steal it from him 😉. I had something very similar I was throwing around in the discord but after seeing his rendition, I definitely prefered it. I've been big on 80 Monks but after seeing then bounce off 10 Wardens and do 3-4 damage I feel the need to do something with SV. Higher counts aren't an issue for me (and yes Skreech, we know you aren't content unless you have 180+ on the table) since playing this army for 3 years has kinda... Developed that fast play skill. Don't get me wrong, I still prefer Fiends.. however I've been really tiring of having both Engineers get sniped off the table with board wide spells and the like, rendering those 520 points useless. I'd be much more okay if that happened and only making 200 points useless... Even without them the Acolytes can still delete hordes rather well. And yeah.. overall I'm trying to dip away from magic when it comes to Skaven. As I've said before, we do better against Combat armies anyway who may not have strong magic so those aren't the armies I worry about unbinding things like Bridge or MMMWP. But I feel I have a better chance this way overall as Acolytes are less reliant on it compared to Fiends and I have Deranged as backup anyway, while the only thing I'm worried about is Death Frenzy. But if that's unbound by a magic/shooting based army, it won't really matter anyway since it only allows fighting back if they die via melee.

Well, what exactly is he there for? To buff the Clanrats with +1 attack? If so, yeah I'm not sure that's the best way to spend those points. Assuming you get 30 of them in with +1 attack, you're really only looking at 6-13 damage on average. At that point I would rather just bring another 20 Clanrats possibly. Obviously it isn't all about max damage.. but with the game being won on objectives, more bodies would suit you better most likely than giving 40 Clanrats a tiny bit more damage that will drastically drop once they go below 30.

As do I.. though a bit too much melee for my personal taste 😉 Thinking of giving one of these a run for the tournament coming up: Only 2 threats if you don't count the Warbringer.. but a Double DF on the SV will keep pretty much any combat focused army away. Naturally it may not fair as well against pure shooting\spellcasting but.. such is the way of Skaven life. This however would be a bit more balanced out and probably my top choice:

It is but.. doesn't really affect anything for us unless you were one of those people still running a Warpseer with Suspicious Stone. It still works with Verminous Valor coupled with Protection of the Horned Rat because the wounds are allocated first and then passed off onto another unit via Verminous Valor. Or so is the argument; it will need to be FAQ'd I'm sure to cease any differing of opinions. What's even funnier is KO now get to use WLV for even less points and they make better use of it 😉

Oh believe me, I don't care for their aesthetic either, especially with being old models. I'm almost exclusively competitive (as I'm sure everyone has figured out at this point 😅) so I tend to be a bit biased in that particular regard. I had a 15 minute game with Seraphon yesterday. He wiped my 2 Engineers off the table with the board-wide spell + run and shoot Bastilidons right away and I called the game as there was no way 6 Fiends would be able to kill\get in range of Kroak and his 5 Guard + Astrolith. Nor would they (or the 40 Monks I brought) be killing 2 Bastilidons and a Stegadon. One of the first times I really felt that there was literally no way to compete against a list, no matter what I ran. Now, all that said... I think the following has a lot of steam, but my above point about being challenged by the meta bullies still stands strong with it: I'm not sold on it, and I actually made a different variant that took out the Bell for 6 Jezzails and replaced Bridge with Bell of Doom to give me 3 threats. In this one, you're really only rocking 2 unless you count the Warbringer, but I wouldn't personally.