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[flamingkillamajig]

So this is the thread where you can talk about waving your privates at traffic or at children or you know you could talk about something totally different.

Anyway i'm off to play starcraft 2. Have fun guys and i don't want to see links of porn in here .

Also for the strangest reason my constant farts at the moment are smelling like hard boiled eggs. It's pretty gross actually.

[Rook]

JESUS CHRIST!!! These colors are horrid.


Anyways I know nothing about the Scaven but intend to learn.

[flamingkillamajig]

Yeah the colors are bad. I'd like to learn how to fix them to something better. I'm sorry for the eye rape. Nice to have a new member. Welcome aboard Sir Rook. I shall knight thee.

Anyway i've been playing starcraft 2 and jesus i had an 8 game losing streak before breaking it with one game and then losing right after. I'm so fucking pissed i may very well take a break from the game for the rest of the day at least. I need to catch up on painting anyway.

The skaven are rat-men that intend to rule the world. The live in underground lairs and are spread throughout the old world worse than herpes. They are ridiculously numerous and outnumber almost everybody except for possibly the undead. The have arcane machinery with magic potency. Basically it's a race where the strongest and most cunning survive with backstabbing, sabotage, trickery and such happening everywhere. They are unknown to most of the world and rise up in great numbers which tend to be thought of as mutant uprisings. Basically the skaven have a malevolent god they consider warpstone and the horned rat sacred. Both are incredibly dangerous. Skaven are cowards but take courage in their numbers when they have them (low leadership but higher with more numbers) and well i don't know what else to say. They mutate beasts, have assassins and ninja skaven, they have interesting machines of war (almost all if not all powered by warpstone in some way) and plague skaven which are tougher and more resistant to disease and worship plague similar to nurgle.

Skavenslaves are either skaven enslaved in clan wars and such or the other races's people enslaved to skaven. They are food, fodder for the enemy or testing subjects for weapons and nobody cares if they die even the skaven. In fact in the old codex skaven were the only army to be allowed to shoot into their own units if it could hit the enemy too. Funny thing is a unit in melee can't take panic from shooting so you'd slowly whittle both your forces and your enemy's down as most skaven were expendable. Skavenslaves are still expendable in the newer codex but it's not as all encompassing as the last book was.

Go to the GW site and read up on it if you'd like to learn about it.

[The Envoy]

I used to play around with proboards a lot if you want a hand fixing or just general sprucing up of the place.

[flamingkillamajig]

I definitely need to fix this place up. I think it's the bright yellow currently that's bugging my eyes. I'd like a green color because of warpstone but meh i dunno. Normally skaven themselves work better with few light colors. The only light colors i've used on my skaven are white and orange pretty much and some yellow. Most of the colors are darker. Feel free to show your skaven if you're in the mood.

[The Envoy]

I'll have to dig up my pictures of them from photobucket. But right now, I don't have that many done. Need to get to work on them.

[flamingkillamajig]

I actually don't have my skaven in pictures but i can give you an idea of what i have.

I have:

1 plague furnace

12 plague censers

4 rat ogres (2 from island of blood)

several packmasters

3 warlock engineers

2 warlords/chieftains (island of blood leader and lord verminkin the 2nd in command but i use the banner on back dude as my 'battle standard bearer')

35 but soon to be 40 plague monks

85 clanrats

20 stormvermin

2 doom flayers (which i think suck btw or i just don't use them right)

1 warpfire thrower

1 poisoned wind mortar

1 doomwheel

1 hellpit abomination

As far as all of this goes i have to say the plague furnace, plague monks with plague banner, warpfire thrower, somewhat the poisoned wind mortar, the hellpit and 25-33% of the time the doomwheel are all very fun to use. The hellpit always makes its points back to my knowledge and as far as damage goes in one game against VC before the new army book i destroyed 900+ pts worth of stuff with him (a 250 pts model). He's insanely hard to kill and may even get back up.

[The Envoy]

I don't have quite that much, just two IoB's, two Warp Lightning Cannons, and a Doomwheel so far. I need more sacrificial units and tarpits, because I don't need to win combats, I just need to hold up enemies long enough to make them worthless when it's over.

[flamingkillamajig]

That's fine. At least you get 2 potent weapons teams with each island of blood set. The warpfire thrower is my favorite. It's great as an ogres and esp. troll killer. It doesn't matter if they have regeneration as it goes straight through, it's strength 5 so it goes through 2 armor and it does d3 wounds when it wounds a model and it's a template weapon that jumps. It's great for weak enemy units like elves i'm sure. The poisoned wind mortar is a decent knight killer and armored unit killer. It's alright and sometimes it works really well but not always. I'd recommend of all the weapons teams you only ever use these two as ratling guns will spin around frequently according to the rules for it and doom flayers don't do much. If you want any of the other weapons teams just collect them. They're a total waste on the field till doom flayers can have more than +3 armor. They only get a +4 ward save against shooting too and you have to be right next to the parent unit you bought it with.

Doomwheel i'm unsure about but it can be great. The best part about random movement is even though you can't get terror reactions people can't take a shooting reaction against it and you can turn on the spot and then you roll 3d6 for movement. This allows you to hit any enemy units trying to shoot you in your back or flank. I still prefer the hellpit but that's just me. The reasoning is the doomwheel is fine but should it ever get charged it pretty much will die without question. The hellpit however is something you have to watch out for even if you charge it and it's pretty hard to kill. It's a very scary unit and i recommend any skaven player get it. Problem is you already have your 3 rare slots taken up for a game less than 3,000 pts so you'd need to take something out.

I don't actually use warp lightning cannons but recently after seeing the big skaven army that was 215 USD and was on offer for a limited time i got interested in them. Problem is it's a unit you want when you have mostly large units of expendable forces on the field. It goes through armor so it's good it's just the misfire results of most skaven units are insanely bad but this one takes the cake. There's about a half of a chance the warp lightning cannon will spin around if it misfires and shoot a strength 10 shot which is magical and end in a large blast somewhere. I've heard a story that you don't know fucked until you've seen a strength 10 blast spin around and strike you in the middle of your army. That and the variable strength have always kept me off from getting it previously but i might take one soon but probably not two. It could always hit the enemy but you never know. Then there's the plagueclaw catapult which sounds nice and accurate till you notice it's only a strength 2 large blast that goes through armor. That would be nice if most heavily armored things you wanted to kill weren't toughness 4 anyway (warriors of chaos, blood knights, black knights, chaos knights, etc.).

Normally i think clanrats suck even if you have a lot of them. Try taking a battle standard bearer near them and make sure a general plus ranks will give them leadership 10 and re-rollable with the battle standard. I mean i've thought at times i didn't need a BSB with leadership 10 until some high elf player took 20 or so swordmasters at them. I killed a bunch of swordmasters and the casualties though more and winning him the combat were a waste. I had leadership 10 and i failed leadership by rolling a 12. I then roll double 1's to run away and being skaven my scurry away is +1". I didn't get away as you might have guessed. Over 500 pts of clanrats dead in an instant because of an insanely bad leadership and fleeing roll and this was like my 2nd last game too and the last serious one i played.

I don't know but maybe i look at combat the wrong way. I do know how to handle different armies and such but the way i figure is you want a unit that can take a lot of hits like the new crypt horrors which have toughness 5, 3 wounds and regeneration +5. Then you need another unit that either kills a lot or can negate all the enemy's ranks. It's hard to say really. If you have a tarpit they will often take a lot of casualties and if you have a unit which isn't steadfast also fighting the enemy (like a more elite unit) then they'll lose combat too without being stubborn. So the way i figure it is you want a killy unit and tank unit but endless meat shields are good too. You're probably gonna soften up the enemy with your army first and then mop them up with numbers. This is perfectly fine and your numbers would mean you can take a few bad misfires.

I'll let you know how to handle other armies in the skaven tactics thread if you'd like to know or at the very least a few armies. Unfortunately ogres have changed since i last played them as have quite a few others. I know how to deal with elf armies usually though which is quite a hard race for some groups to fight.

[The Envoy]

I first started with Wood Elves back in 5th Ed. so I know the feeling about the changing metagame. It's even more aggravating now with the switch to 8th, which doesn't even allow my Elves to play the way I built them either.

I do find Warp Lightning cannons to be fantastic amounts of fun, though it's usually a good idea to take a pair, since one will inevitably blow up.

As for combat, sometimes attrition works really well, especially against elite armies like elves, and tarpits are wonderful against knights, who lose a lot of their advantages if they don't break you in the first round. After that you can usually win even if you take more wounds thanks to how combat res works. I do agree though, having a unit that can rip through enemy infantry, especially if you can set them up in a flank charge, is always always always a good idea.

[flamingkillamajig]

I generally use my plague censers for armored cavalry units and the same goes for the plague furnace with all the toughness tests they inflict with no armor saves. I'm sure it's true that plague and wither are great together (plague is a toughness test with no armor save or die and wither is -1 to toughness for good and stacks to my knowledge). The 13th spell is also good for small units and warriors of chaos. To be fair warriors of chaos needed some sort of thing to kill them off.

Something i will recommend to you is that magic with skaven can be fun. Usually plague and such are good but depending on the situation some spells are better against different races or particular armies. One good example is i love to use cloud of corruption against orcs and goblins when goblin armies take a lot of fanatics. You'll be surprised how effective it is against that. If the spell goes off everything in range even you own guys take hits possibly but less of a chance for plague monks. You may think this is bad but for singular units that are numerous enough like tons of fanatics it will kill a bunch of them and protect you from the most severe damage they have and thus letting you move through unscathed. This is providing the spell goes off though but it's extremely effective against the fanatics with the d6 strength 5 hits and no armor saves and hits a unit on a +2. Fanatics are a unit in a sense so they each take that many hits.

[The Envoy]

Magic in general is fun, except it tends to hate me when it comes to actually casting spells of any level. It's also nice they've kinda curbed it so that it doesn't take over everything. Got used to dealing with magic phases that could take upwards of half an hour, and accomplishing nothing.

[flamingkillamajig]

Cloud of Corruption is also a pretty good knight killer actually at d6 str 5 no armor hits per unit. The only thing i hate about that spell is if there are a lot of big units to kill and no flanking units and that it can kill your small weapons teams.

Also just a hint when you use warpfire throwers i tend to put mine to the sides of my units and then move my units forward but put a small space in between the warpfire thrower and both units. What this accomplishes is that when the units are over 6" from the warpfire thrower and your unit fights an enemy unit and one breaks and flees you are allowed to move the warpfire thrower on the spot and fire into the enemy unit next turn or similar. The deal about making sure it's 6" away is so that you won't take a panic check and you don't put it behind because the enemy unit will either run into your warpfire thrower and you can only hold rather than stand and shoot and your unit running through it would auto-panic it. Besides a warpfire thrower that's hard to see is also hard to hit with magic or shooting. Hell in my 2nd last game i hit 15 high elves and killed 13 of them (it wounds on 2's against elves and goes through their armor so 15 hits means most of them will die). They probably were spearmen or maybe sea guard but still it was fun to watch them burn up and they fled too from casualties and the auto panic from casualties of warpfire throwers. I really should take more of those. Sad thing is i also liked the idea of the ratling gun because it's a gatling gun with skaven crewing it but it's not as good as it used to be when it auto-hit in the previous army book.

[Trickstick]

The colours used to burn, then I took an arrow...

*Is pulled down by horde of scab-rats.*

...in the... eyaugh!

It actually looks ok now.

[flamingkillamajig]

Nice to have you aboard trickstick! This way even if i get banned from the IGMB i'll still have all you guys here .

Hey guys just a question. How close are we now to having the A-team or some group of hardened badasses? Rook can be Mr. T. Or wait Trickstick can be Mr. T because T is the first letter of his name. I pity tha fool.