Gwendar

Yeah, I think 2 tanks and 4 artillery pieces is good enough for me. I still want some semblance of a frontline. But as far as I know it should work since they have the proper keyword.

@Ratzinkaiser I find them to be completely useless. Had their movement been a set amount and maybe on top of that roll 2 dice to run it would be fine since their damage output is mediocre at best, even when you take the mortal wounds into consideration. I mean, look at slaanesh seekers with their movement and damage output. Overall, it's the random movement that really kills them for me, on top of rolling doubles when "running" which allows your opponent to drive it right back into you. Which unlike endless spells, you have no control over.

Not particularly, I guess because he seems more capable in CC and fits in nicely enough thematically, but 2 steam tanks would probably do well enough with the extra ranged damage. I don't care much for standard cannons and volley guns unreliability to even shoot is scary, so with this I get the benefit of the ordinators +1 to hit for all war machines which helps even more if I get extra shots from Greywater allegiance.

Planning a few future armies, and I really, really love gunlines/artillery. I've been jumping between using Free Peoples allegiance, but then I limit myself greatly on war machines which is primarily what I want. I've come up with the below list that hopefully works out well enough semi-competitively, locally at least. I'm not looking to sweep tourneys with it of course. Is it worth it to drop the Ordinator for another 20 guard? With the amount of artillery, he seems almost required, but that 20 guard could fill in gaps in the gun line. Speaking of gun lines, without the benefit of great companies, is it better to just put the handgunners in a block of 30 over 3x10? Allegiance: Order Greywater FastnessLeadersFreeguild General On Griffon (260)- General- Shield & Greathammer- Trait: Strategic Genius- Artefact: Phoenix StoneFreeguild General (100)- Stately War BannerLord-Ordinator (140)Battleline20 x Freeguild Guard (160)- Swords and Shields20 x Freeguild Guard (160)- Swords and Shields10 x Freeguild Handgunners (100) - Long Rifle10 x Freeguild Handgunners (100) - Long Rifle10 x Freeguild Handgunners (100) - Long RifleWar MachinesHelstorm Rocket Battery (180)Helstorm Rocket Battery (180)Steam Tank (260)Celestar Ballista (100)Celestar Ballista (100)Total: 1940 / 2000

Never too many stormfiends! I run the same setup on my 9 and I've always found having 2 units was never enough. Even with 3x3 you have enough points to take the usual setup of wizards and other toys along with 80 clanrats or 40 Gutter Runners in my case. The damage output is too good to not bring that many from my experience.

I've asked before, but how do people feel about gyrobombers/copters for mobility capping units/MW output from bombs? I could see how they're frail, but 160 for 2 seems decent enough to fill out an army.

I get what you all are saying and I would love if that is case, but I'm just not sure that was intentional, who knows. I feel that after they saw sparks being used effectively with multihit weapons like ratling guns in ghb18, that is the reasoning they re-worded it in a FAQ, although maybe poorly; to prevent a ton of extra damage going through due to how you can choose when you use a spark when it comes to increasing damage. EX: 4 attacks, only 1 hit and it was a 6. Roll a d6, get a 4, roll 4 wounds and all 4 wound. Disregarding saves, lets say 8 damage inflicted from the 4 wound rolls that got through. You are saying that because those 4 came from 1 attack, that the damage should now be 12 with a spark, rather than (what I assume) 9, correct? I remain skeptical. I've sent them an email for some clarification, so we will see.

Sounds like an email to the rules team is in order of no one is certain. I really doubt that's intentional since shock gauntlets can already be quite insane, who knows. I use the exact same setup and go between either a cannon or 15 Gutter Runners and do quite well with either. The lack of bodies for objectives can be troublesome but that's what the GR's are there for. When stormfiends can do so much damage though, it isn't uncommon to completely wipe a unit early on and then catch up/exceed on victory points.

I don't know, I feel they faq'd it for a reason as it worked exceptionally well with ratling guns and shock gauntlets respectively. I believe one successful attack means just one hit/wound/save roll. Not d6 worth being part of one "attack" as they are all separate hit\wounds\saves and it's only considered a successful attack when damage is allocated after saves. I mean, don't get me wrong I hope I'm not correct but that's what makes sense to me.

How are you getting an extra 6 damage by using a spark? Even if you roll a 6 and turn 1 attack into d6 extra hits, the wording for sparks still seem to imply you can only add 1 damage of a single successful attack. I don't think getting a bunch of extra generated hits necessarily means you get +1 damage for each of those, if that makes sense.

You're playing Skryre, take what you can get? Nah, I understand. I don't do gautfyre anymore. I did it in a local tourney a few months back and no one was happy, even though 2 of the games came pretty close. But MW's are definitely what keep you competitve. Also @RaritanAnon How have the monks been doing? I'm going to be trying 40 Gutter Runners and I wonder how their combat performances compare. I think I'll prefer 3 grinders; doomflayers just aren't consistent enough (same as ratling guns) to make me like them.

Warpfire throwers are great, assuming you can drill them up with gautfyre or can place them behind a screen of some sort, I wouldn't convert mine unless you take the ends off to put on stormfiends for more projectors. On the stormfiend subject, I agree and it's why I've decided to chop off the ratling gun bits off my stormfiends and replace them with grinderfists. I rarely pull more than ~3 wounds after saves with ratling guns meanwhile having 1 unit of 3 grinderfists has the possibility of doing ~10 and with so many people using cogs nowadays, there's a good chance you can get +2 to charge.

Had a quick 1k game yesterday against my own Ironjawz (buddy is still getting his Seraphon built/painted). Played battle for the Pass, which I find works really well for smaller games. My list: Allegiance: SkryreArch Warlock (140)- GeneralWarlock Engineer (100)3 x Stormfiends (290) - 3 Shock Gauntlets3 x Stormfiends (290) - 3 Proxied Ratling Guns (I really didn't want to use Warpfire on him, but that was a mistake)15 x Gutter Runners (180)- Allies His list: Allegiance: IronjawzOrruk Megaboss (140)- GeneralOrruk Weirdnob Shaman (120)5 x Orruk Brutes (180)- 1x Gore Choppas5 x Orruk Brutes (180)- 1x Gore Choppas3 x Orruk Gore Gruntas (140)Ironfist (180)Chronomantic Cogs (60) Rd1: We play this scenario lengthways at 1k rather than the normal wide deployment. Unfortunately, I went first which means the Gutter Runners had to come out right away and he left his gore-grunta unit in the backline to keep them off his objective, which they did exceptionally well. Gutter Runner shooting took a couple of wounds off his Megaboss and a unit of brutes, everything else moved onward to the objectives. His turn, he charged my Gutter Runners and proceeded to kill most of them, and I rolled like garbage with the remaining few I had left, did a couple wounds which he saved. After battleshock, I only had 1 left which he proceeded to finish off with an arcane bolt to allow his gore-gruntas to move up. I'm down 1-3 Rd2: He gets the double, so everything gets moved onto the objectives which ends up giving him a pretty substantial lead in the end. My turn, I do some MW's with Warpstorm, but my Engineer decided to kill himself by rolling snake eyes on an empowered warp-lightning cast and my dice decided to roll a 6 on the self-inflicted roll, killing himself; joy. My left side stormfiends (ratling guns) kill 2 brutes and I then decide to charge in with both Stormfiend units. I get some payback as my right side stormfiends (shock gauntlets) charged his Brutes and absolutely deleted them doing 20 damage after saves. The look on my face after I rolled five 6's to hit...I actually felt bad after this and decided to just use clubbing blows from here on out, although I really shouldn't have. This game is very swingy, and I think he realizes that now (he is still somewhat new to the game). I'm down 4-8 Rd3: He wins roll off, charges in his gore-gruntas and to the left side stormfiends and ends up killing all of them after combat with me only killing 2 brutes. My turn I get Warpstorm off, however I rolled two 1's to damage his megaboss and gore-grunta unit, and only do 1 MW to his remaining brute on the left side. mystic shield on the stormfiends. Right side objective successfully capped, I charge his Megaboss and get him down to 3 wounds, he hits back exceptionally well and kills 1 1/2 stormfiends. I'm down 7-11 Rd4: He wins roll off again, charges his gore-gruntas into my arch-warlock, killing him and bringing me down to 1 stormfiend left with his megaboss ~2 wounds left. I call it there ending with a loss at 10-14 Takeaways: Hard to say honestly as I think most of my choices were based on him being a newer player and me not wanting to game anything too heavily. He's a co-worker that is just getting into it but has played some miniatures/wargames in the past so he thinks about the tactics of his play more than the average new player, so I probably should've just went all out like using warpfire instead of ratling guns, or continuing to use shock gauntlets after the brute unit deletion. He did say he wanted more of a challenge after all. If I had to give any criticism on my part, I probably should've put the Gutter Runners elsewhere. I depend on them too heavily to do anything relevant and after losing a few, they crumble to battleshock like any other Skaven unit since they are too far away for IP. I do still intend to try using 2x20 of them in the next 2k tourney, but I think for the next 1k game I may try dropping the engineer, throwing in a warp-grinder team + 40 clanrats.

Shoot/magic the hell out of them before they touch you where your average/poor saves will cause them to melt you in 1 round of combat. Shackles work great to slow them down a bit, WLC's (running 2 is best) will be the best at dealing with their buffing units. Important to get 3 wound on morathi per turn before they decide to transform her. I did well against them in my previous battle report, just spread out ranged damage to whittle down their numbers before they get to you and hope you get the double turn to do so. Finish off with close combat stormfiends.

@Origin I looked at it similarly to Slaanesh command abilities to pile in and attack twice, I see it as an advantage to be able to commit a bunch of shots to one target, and then depending on the outcome choose to shoot at the same target again, or have the freedom to shoot at another. I would much rather do that than have to commit two rounds of shooting at one target, potentially over killing it by a large margin. Who knows, maybe email the rules team and see what they think of it for certainty.

What @RaritanAnon said. I really only find them useful either in gautfyre or mixed skaven lists behind/within clanrats to screen since their range and makes them pretty vulnerable otherwise. I have used a ratling gun team as part of rattlegauge coven tax, it did alright, nothing too great. I'm going to try running 40 Gutter Runners next tourney at the end of September. The biggest issue with Skryre is body count, and when using gautfyre that isn't as big of a deal since your whole plan is to kill everything before it can score too many objective points. Like I've said before, I'm kind of turned off to skryre battalions (other than gautfyre, but I don't want to be that guy at local games) unless it's 2.5k+. I think if you drop warpfire and fit in more bodies you would do well, but at the same time having 1-2 warpfire throwers behind 40 clanrats works wonders..You just have to ensure it all gets there in one piece. Cogs can be your friend. Anyway, I plan on taking this: Allegiance: SkryreArch Warlock (140)- General- Trait: Masterful Scavenger Warlock Engineer (100)- Artefact: Vigordust Injector Warlock Engineer (100)3 x Stormfiends (290) - 3 Warpfire Projectors3 x Stormfiends (290) - 3 Shock Gauntlets (probably will proxy as doomflayers)3 x Stormfiends (290) - 1 Grinderfist, 2 Ratling Guns20 x Gutter Runners (200)- Allies20 x Gutter Runners (200)- AlliesWarp Lightning Cannon (180)Warp Lightning Cannon (180)Total: 1970 / 2000 I have a few variations on that, maybe trying double arkhspark by dropping 20 GR's, or dropping 20 GR's and an engineer to throw in 40 clanrats + a grinder team. I even considered dropping 20 GR's for 2 mortar's + a packmaster. Extra points all being filled with endless spells (probably balewind, I dislike most others) so it will definitely require some testing between all of these. I imagine the original will work out the best however; 2x20 GR's coming in from anywhere to shoot + charge is a great distraction to let the Stormfiends march up the board and anything the runners kill is a bonus. Or use them to pop up onto an objective first turn since they must come out your first movement phase unfortunately.

The thought of moving that many things around gives me anxiety, especially when I can't even stand moving my 126 model strong Eshin army around the table. I would love to get a real swarm going with Verminus, especially since it seems so many people are having pretty good luck with mixed Skaven as of 2.0, but man, that's a huge deterrent. Congrats on the victory, teleporting a priest with my deceiver to debuff a unit allows my 20 gutter runners to outright kill or severely cripple most things so I recommend a priest (even without a teleport) as often as possible.

It seems pretty cut and dry to me, but with GW's wording sometimes I can see how it could be confusing. I just look at it with rar: "A unit of sisters of the watch can attack twice in their shooting phase if they did not move in their movement phase" So, to me, this implies 2 rounds of shooting will all bonuses, including the leader ability to make "2 attacks rather than 1". This doubles a unit of 10's shooting from 11 shots with movement to 22 shots without movement, counting the leader getting one extra attack each time. Now, had the wording been something like: "A unit of sisters of the watch can make an additional attack in their shooting phase if they did not move in their movement phase" then I would see it as being 11 shots with movement, 21 without movement since it would not be an additional round of shooting and therefore the leader would only get "one additional attack" taking the leader from firing 4 shots, to 3.

I would agree. The wording just says they can attack twice, rather than something along the lines of "make an additional attack" and therefore should allow the leader to get 4 shots total as they are making another full shooting sequence.

Ah, you're right. I'm used to running arkhspark (no stormfiend requirement) and using 3 fiend units for my gautfyre so they come up together, my mistake. Overseer is a command trait, and only your general gets those, hence why I would make him general. You can still give the gautfyre engineer vigordust and someone else warp warp resonator or something since our traits/artifacts are mostly terrible. Although I guess it doesn't particularly matter much if you plan on keeping your Arch Warlock beside your mortar teams anyway, then he can still be general and use overseer. I think I need sleep.

@MagmaAs oldmanlee said it is illegal. A clan skryre battalion (another 80 pts) consists of 2-5 enginecovens and you must have an arch-warlock (another 140) which leave you with 180 points leftover. You could drop a warpfire team and add in 20 Gutter Runners or 40 Clanrats and have 50 left over for either a CP or and endless spell or two. Or drop a mortar and have 40 left over for some endless spells. Also, are you intending to tunnel up the grinderfist/doomflayer group away from the main group for any reason? Just remember that the gautfyre tunnels up within 8" of the grinder but doesn't have to roll to do so, it just does. The grinderfist needs a 3+ so it is entirely possible that you flub that and are missing a unit of stormfiends for a turn and you only get the re-roll 1 dice per the battalion ability in the hero phase, so they would not get it since grinderfists happens in the movement phase. Not to mention you won't have to tunnel up 9" away, so you can almost guarantee a charge. The only other thing I would add is that unless you only have certain weapon options built (or you aren't allowed proxies were you play), I would make all 3 of those stormfiends doomflayers if you want to tunnel them up with the gautfyre coven. Or, you know, give that group warpfire projectors instead. Clubbing blows still do quite well in combat. Also, since mortars are very hit or miss, I would recommend the engineer with the mortars to be the general and use overseer of destruction to give them re-rolls of 1 to hit.

@Magma Without a packmaster to buff the Shock Gauntlets to-hit (and thus their chance at generating d6 automatic hits), they generally don't do as well as doomflayers, especially on the charge since that gets the flayers down to 2 to hit on that turn. I usually just vigordust shock gauntlets in the absence of a packmaster, but if you plan to tunnel them up then that would be an issue. Even then it's better to packmaster+vigordust shock gauntlets for maximum deletion. The problem with tunneling them with grinderfists is you take a risk in not getting off that 9" charge unless you circumvent it with something like cogs (or a nearby hero to re-roll charge rolls for a CP). I would still try, but to stop rambling and answer the question: Yes, doomflayers are generally better unbuffed, shock gauntlets are better with at least +1 to hit (unless you're trying to take out a 2+ save hero or something) and grinders are good all-round option so it should do fine if you get the charge off after tunneling. As for the other question, if you're going for a gautfyre list you can struggle with objectives if you don't get the double turn and kill as much as possible before it runs off. I played it in scorched earth one time against DoK and only won by 1-2 points by leaving acolytes, an engineer and a cannon on my objectives, all of which got promptly deleted by 10 Khinerai as expected. If you can gauge from my above battle report, we really need bodies. Whether you use clanrats or gutter runners for that is your choice, but you really need something to sit on/screen/steal objectives and large bodies of 20-40+ wounds will do that for enough time to kill anything that is trying to move them. Or, you know, just hope you get a decent battle plan and kill everything with fire before it can capitalize on anything.

Looks solid enough, I don't see many people trying gascloud+gautfyre. Most just do arkhspark with it. That said, you will most likely run into the same issue everyone does with gautfyre though; it has no staying power and is incredibly easy to counter-deploy against you to deny you MWing anything important down. Remember all of your MW capability only has an 8"range, so people will easily deny you that if they know what you are running. Once you pop up and let loose, if you don't get the double/roll enough MW's to really kill what needs to be killed, you're going to get smacked back much harder than you can hit 9/10 times. Not to mention your 3 mortars, 1 engineer and arch warlock will be vulnerable (or safe from the counter attack your gautfyre coven will receive, depends how you look at it) since they do not tunnel up with everything else. I've always felt if you're going to go gautfyre, go all out and use 3x3 stormfiends all with warpfire. Split the warpfire attacks accordingly with each unit of fiends and it works out nicely that way you minimize overkilling targets. That said, I am curious to see how this does so I say go for it and let us know. The mortars can be great for hordes but I've mostly stopped using them unless I'm using overseer, and even then they are unimpressive.

@Nikobot They sure didn't, and against DoK they were pulling about the same amount of wounds. I really just got lucky that he was playing them somewhat passively and the fact I got double turns to shoot them down. The issue against the dwarfs is they had just as much shooting, and honestly it was on par with/better than my own from my experience. Being able to outright kill my Arch-Warlock and take 11 wounds off a Warpseer even with his failed save re-rolls in the first turn? 9 jezzails can't come anywhere near that, even if you buff up their + to hit to make them do mortals on lower. I honestly just found them useful for whittling down different units instead of going all in on heros/monsters with them and even then there are things that do that better while being cheaper, like mortars w/ overseer and more WLC's. I've always felt the battalion taxes are too costly for what they do at 2k and really only worth at 2.5k, and I've come to realize that generally out-dropping your opponent isn't always a huge deal. However, there is something to be said about what a 2 Arkhspark list could do, and I may do some testing between it and another list I came up with after contemplating the above games. I may drop the Warpseer, throw in 1x20 and 1x10 gutter runners, a packmaster (I would field 3 units of stormfiends this time) and balewind + 2 WLC's instead of 1. Either that or drop the packmaster and balewind and go up to 2x20 Gutter Runners. Of course Clanrats will most likely be better, but I really dread the thought of painting 40 more of them. Not to mention unless I drop something important, I would be 50 points over with 2x40 + a grinder team. Something to think on I guess, but next tourney I will see what can be done with the Gutter Runners, 3x3 Stormfiends and 2 WLC's. Depending how well that works out I may give 2 Arkhsparks a try for 4 shots a turn.

2 games today, went 1-1. It was an interesting day with a lot learned. Any constructive criticism is great, so fire away. Sorry ahead of time for pics, I know they're not the best quality. My list: Allegiance: SkryreArch Warlock (140)- General- Trait: Masterful Scavenger - Artefact: Esoteric Warp Resonator Warlock Engineer (100)- Artefact: Vigordust Injector Warlock Engineer (100)Verminlord Warpseer (260)- Allies3 x Stormfiends (290) - 3 Warpfire Gauntlets5 x Skryre Acolytes (60)5 x Skryre Acolytes (60)9 x Warplock Jezzails (420)1 x Ratling Gun Weapon Team (80)Warp Lightning Cannon (180) Clan Skryre (80)Rattlegauge Warplock (70)Arkhspark Voltik (70) Balewind Vortex (40)Total: 1950 / 2000Extra Command Points: 2Allies: 260 / 400Wounds: 83 First up was DoK, Played Shifting Objectives in Hysh I tried to deploy in a way were I could whittle down the 3x20 units of witch aelves with shooting and banked on getting the double turn. I allow him to go first, he moves everything onto objectives and I fire away with hero phase/regular shooting mostly at the witch aelves, splitting a few shots off onto the cauldron to get it down a few notches along went to town unleashing spells and spreading out the damage as much as I could. 1st round I was down 5-1, but I crippled quite a few units with all of the shooting. Luckily, I get the double turn and I throw out more volleys of shots to whittle down everything else a bit more before it can charge me and melt this fragile army of mine. The entire game I could only ever put 1 wound on the cauldron per turn...Those ward saves are nice. I wipe out his right side after he takes out 1 1/2 stormfiends with a slaughter queen on foot; I don't think I will underestimate their damage output while buffed up again. Sat the Stormfiends on the objective until the next turn when I left some giant rats to sit on it. 2nd ends with me down 9-2. 3rd round is where it really went off. Khinerai come down and try to shoot the arch warlock off his perch, but that 2+ save is glorious and he only takes ~1 wound. Morathi transforms while she's at 3 wounds and attempts to do as much as possible in CC to make up for the fact that most of the witch aelves were deleted aside from 7 on the left side hitting my cannon and ~10 on the middle objective w/ a death hag being held up by giant rats. He moves a death hag onto the left objective while on my turn I blast the 7 aelves on my cannon off and take a few more chunks out of the heros. I end down 11-5. On 4th I get another double and finish off pretty much everything that's left with shooting, including poor Morathi; She never got to hit anything except for 5 giant rats that were biting her ankles and never got any spells off the entire game, arcane terrain is wonderful (along with having 5 unbinds). I tried to get Banishment off all game and either failed the cast (even with spark rerolls and +1) or it got unbound. This time I finally get it off and send his remaining death hag off the middle objective and to the corner of the table in time out. I get the Warpseer to charge the cauldron and finish it off while being within range of the objective for the major victory, ending 11-15 in my favor (counting of course for the 5th BR where I would've gained another 5). Takeaways: This one went a lot better than I thought it would. Luckily I got the double turn twice and was able to shoot down the aelves and most of them never got into combat with anything relevant thanks to the giant rat screen holding them up for another turn to get shot at. 7 witch aelves putting out 16 wounds was interesting, I can't wait to play against my girlfriends DoK. Had I not gotten the double turns, I think this easily would've swung the other way. If any of those witch aelves got in, I was probably done. Who knows, but this list is incredibly defensive and really has no forward momentum to do anything aggressively. Second up was Mixed Order Dwarves. Played Better Part of Valour in Aqshy Oh man, I knew I had no chance here. Right away I wanted to take this as a critique game against a more competitive list to see how I fared and learn as much as possible from a tournament player. I won the roll off, but decided to let him go first, knowing I was about to be hit in the face with 30 tunneling Vulkites. He puts everything within range of my wizards (I really should not have put them right up to the front, a mistake I often make) and lets loose in his shooting phase, killing my arch warlock and putting the Warpseer down to 1 wound. I shoot as much as I could, mostly focusing on the 30 vulkites that luckily failed their charge and taking the rest of the shots out on what I could. In the end, I panic and burn 2 of my objectives as I only had 5 acolytes on each, which automatically made the game a loss for me. 2nd/3rd Round, we decide to play it out and see what happens. The stormfiends take out some more Vulkites, I shoot some more at what is in range to whittle everything down. His 3 Endrinriggers leftover from original unit of 9 take out the cannon and I end up taking it down to 1 Endrin left. Long story short, I generate a bunch of rats that walk around a bit, I shoot some things and then we call it as I mathematically cannot win and the midget horde was closing in and I had no cannon left for those sweet MW's. Takeaways: We had a good talk. Thomas Lyons is an awesome dude and glad we have him around locally to help give out advice and teach people about more competitive oriented things, so I was all for getting as much as I could. All in all, I found that I do play very, very defensively with this list in particular. Outside of the shooting, it really has absolutely no momentum to push up with only 1 unit of Stormfiends. I think I have also decided to discontinue running a battalion at 2k and Jezzails. It honestly makes no sense to use them thanks to both Look out, Sir and the poor amount of wounds they put out in comparison to a cannon, which I can take 2 of for less points than 9 jezzails who averaged 2 MW's and 4 regular wounds before saves, generally less. This is not helped by the fact they cannot MW during the hero phase shooting (between 9-12 of them is the only way to run them in my opinion). Overall, it was a fun day and I learned a lot. This list is definitely not meant for competitive play so I think I will have to do a lot of reworking which I will post here for feedback. I'm up in the air about the warpseer. I love the giant rats as a screen and sitting on an objective, but that really isn't needed since once it tags I can move off it if it is not being threatened. I do wonder if it isn't better to just take 80 clan rats and a grinder or 40 gutter runners to hit objectives. I'm leaning more towards 2x20 Gutter Runners simply for the superior combat effectiveness, shooting and the fact I don't have to paint more clanrats.