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7th Ed. Greetings From the Under Empire!

Possibly we might see some jungle swarms coming back. I was pondering on ways to try to control/limit the manuerability of the doom wheel and was looking through the LM book when I read that the jungle swarms are skirmishers. My thoughts were to place the swarms pretty much across from the DW and move as spread out as possible in an attempt to position them in between the wheel and our more ... useful units.
The other point being, if the doom wheel runs into the swarm or the swarm manages to charge the wheel. with the swarms being unbreakable (yes I know they are swarms and with crumble if they lose combat) they can keep the wheel out of causing a lot of mischief.
The swarms might even be viable against the abomination. I haven't yet read through the skaven book so I'm only using things I have read on the net as a resource so until I read the book I'm not to sure of my thoughts.
 
I recently had a game against the new skaven, and I tried something new this time. A 10 man Saurus unit!.. It works great! It can hold up clanrats with ease, especially if the is a BSB nearby, and eventually it will also break some clanrats. That way you'll be able to field more units and it will be harder for the Skaven player to "out-unit" you.

IMO skinks, skirmish or cohorts, are worthless against flanks of the clanrats. Even if your saurus unit gets charged by something (it will) Skavens don't really kill them, they just stand along with thier ranks and outnumber and hope you don't kill enough of them to win. Skinks will just give the rats something that they can actually kill.

Anyway, 10 Saurus warriors are only 110 points, since you won't need anything on them. They won't need spears since you really need them to survive in combat.

So, think of this it you want. I like a unit of these guys to do whatever they need to do. Sure they are slow, but if they block the way to something more juicy, then they'll end up in combat a some point :jimlad:

Of course 10 guys won't win the battle for you, but they can be throw in so many places to lock up rats so thier numbers won't count that much.

About the Doomwheel I don't know what to say. The whole battle it did nothing but running off the table.

Maybe another thing against skaven is not to max out characters, but to keep them as cheap as possibly to field more units.

A weakness my friend pointet out was that the Skaven characters are more expensive now, that might have an effect on how many units they can bring.
 
Black Death said:
Cold One Cavalry is very good. However, Skaven now have access to reliable high strength shooting AND low strength shooting that ignores armor saves. In addition, in my game today I was able to bait this unit with a block of my own. The Cold One's wiped out a unit of my Plague Monks which included a wizard, but they were also wiped out from a counter-charge costing him more points than what my monks were worth.

I think the cavalry would have to be very very well guarded in order to be used effectively.
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Maybe it is just me, but I tend to move my CO riders on the flank of my army along side my skink skrimishers.
I've never had anything good happen to them when they're not on the flank and flank charging things...

Cheers!
 
Don't expect less units on the table. Although Characters did get a little more expensive, Clanrats magically got cheaper, costing only 4.5 points a piece with shields (I normally field 120 Clanrats so that gives me an extra 60 points.

In regards to the Doomwheel. It needs to be feared and considered a top priority.... When it works. It fires 3 lightning bolts per turn that multiply into D6 wounds(at variable strength) so it's able to blast stegadons to hell. Swarms are an interesting idea, however, you'll need alot of them to hold up against the lightning which will fire every Skaven shooting phase even if its in combat. Also, it can charge through difficult terrain with very minimal chance of injuring itself. So a good Skaven general will have it parked on the other side of a forest or something, and eat the small hits from driving through terrain in order to make an unexpected charge.

The HPA is much much nastier if it ever makes it into combat AND has a 1 in 6 chance to come back to life after you kill it! Flaming attacks are a must to stop it from regenerating and it should be shot as much as possible before it gets across the table.


I think the MSU strategy with Saurus is very interesting and certainly viable. However, its important not to overestimate your troops. Yes, they're really nasty in combat for basic infantry, but expecting them to hold their own against Clanrat blocks is unrealistic. 5 Saurus will hit on 4s, wound on 3s, with a 5+ save to the rats. True, you probably wont lose any to attacks back, but that's not enough to break the static 5 CR especially since I assume you're not bringing a banner with the smaller units.

Flanking skinks may not be as outrageous as they first seem. Certainly they will offer a few easy kills for the rats, but you're stripping them of ALL their power. You'll knock out our rank bonus, giving you a +1 for flanking and Clanrats -3 rank bonus. Skinks squish easily, but I don't think my rats could kill 4 of them. As an extra bonus, the leadership bonus doesn't apply to Skaven if they are flanked, so our leadership goes from 8-10 (w/ general) down to 5-7.

Someone had also mentioned Chameleon skinks earlier. I'm not familiar with how that unit works exactly. I assume they are Scouting Skirmishers but do they have any extra advantages outside of that? They could potentially make outstanding Jezzail hunters. 7th ed. Jezzails are no longer Skirmishers so if you jump outside of their frontal arc of sight they wont be able to shoot at you!

I promise you that any Skaven general worth his whiskers will blast Cold One Cav to bits. Skirmisher screens will not work I'm afraid. The Warp-Lightning cannon alone fires like a normal cannon-ball now so you can guess the range. At the end of the "bounce" a small template is placed to represent an explosion and NO armor saves are allowed regardless of the strength on the shot. Jezzails on a hill would also make short work of these units. A seer on a Bell is considered a large target for casting Warp-Lightning (and all other spells). Lastly, one of our new spells Scorch lets up "place a small blast template anywhere within 24" doing str5 hits to anything touching it, no partials. My understanding is that Cold One Cav units are very expensive and generally have a hero and a standard to give them extra punch. You're typically going to lose a lot of victory points this way.
 
Chameleon skinks are just normal skinks that can scout. I think they have a slightly higher BS and everything is -1 to shoot at them. I threw them out there because it seems like with the storm banner and all the rats shooting, terradons might not be so viable against skaven. Unfortunately they're like... 12 points a piece...
 
Black Death said:
I think the MSU strategy with Saurus is very interesting and certainly viable. However, its important not to overestimate your troops. Yes, they're really nasty in combat for basic infantry, but expecting them to hold their own against Clanrat blocks is unrealistic. 5 Saurus will hit on 4s, wound on 3s, with a 5+ save to the rats. True, you probably wont lose any to attacks back, but that's not enough to break the static 5 CR especially since I assume you're not bringing a banner with the smaller units.
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I have played two games against the new skaven and I use a small saurus unit (12 with spears and mus) to great effect. I think you actually severely underestimate our basic infantry. A unit of 12 saurus within range of the slann BSB (ie Ld 9 with re-roll) can reliably hold off fully ranked stormvermin with warbanner for at least one turn, most likely 2-3 turns. Even if skaven get the charge the saurus will probably kill as many/more (as spears are better in this case, presuming you only need to hold for 1-2 turns in order to set up a flank charge). Lose by 5 CR and the saurus are 58.6% likely to hold. Lose by 4 two rounds in a row and the saurus are ~60% likely to hold for both rounds. Skaven's static CR can be expected to drop by a rank every 2 rounds of combat. As soon as something such as a stegadon, COR, or a salamander hit the flank the unit is toast (or even terradons really). The only ranked skaven unit that can reliably break saurus are a furnace toting bunch of plague monks (maybe the bell too - no idea what it does in combat yet). MSU saurus infantry aren't there to break the enemy, that job is for the flankers.
 
I think the MSU strategy with Saurus is very interesting and certainly viable. However, its important not to overestimate your troops. Yes, they're really nasty in combat for basic infantry, but expecting them to hold their own against Clanrat blocks is unrealistic. 5 Saurus will hit on 4s, wound on 3s, with a 5+ save to the rats. True, you probably wont lose any to attacks back, but that's not enough to break the static 5 CR especially since I assume you're not bringing a banner with the smaller units.
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Yeah for sure the Saurus won't break the rats, but they will hold them for a while so you wont get totally swarmed :) That was the point. And again, I just find these units better that 11 skinks and a krox, for almoste the same amount of points, even if the Saurus only move 4. And for sure you will benefit alot from a BSB to reroll the break tests.

Edit: I agree with Dumbledore!

anyway, a quick question: Can the Doomwheel re-enter the table as per the Loss of Control rule (the one where it takes hit from shooting) if it runs of the table from a misfire (scoring the "out of control" from the misfire chart) ?
We ruled that it could since we just had a friendly game, and anyway it keept doing it the whole game, so no harm was done. :D
 
If the Doomwheel flies off the board, it is placed on the board edge on the Skaven Player's next turn. It does not get to make a movement roll, but it can still shoot. (Skaven Army Book, page 67, paragraph 3)


It's not that I under-estimate Saurus, they're extremely deadly in combat especially against Skaven. However, to assume that your block of 12 Saurus will make it to combat in a advantageous position is very very unlikely. Saurus blocks are primary targets for Skaven shooting and magic for exactly this reason. Even with a MSU strategy the best you can hope for is to equal the amount of Skaven unit blocks and even that will be hard to do. My army comes pretty standard with 7 blocks of fully ranked troops for redirecting charges and flanking enemy units.

Stegadons are still going to be a massive point sink against us and the more I think about it, the more I'm sure COR won't be able to earn their points back simply beacuse even if they do make it into a good combat and run down a unit of rats, that's only ~150 victory points, 250 with the standard. If someone can give a rough estimate of 5 COR + a hero, I'm pretty sure its going to be higher than that. Once the combat is over they'll either be in position for a flanking countercharge, or facing a wall of Skaven artillery.
 
personally, Id run the cav minimum size without a character or command, which is less than 200pts.

How much terrain do you play with Black Death? With 7 units Im presuming your using the old 2 wave tactic (slaves in first, followed up by a 2nd wave of clanrats) in which case the cav should be able to impact at least 2 units on the way through... Not that Im saying the cav are a must, but if they make it in Id say they have a decent chance of at least making back the points they're worth... If they make it past the shooting.

on the subject of weapons teams, what are we looking at stats wise? Toughness 3, 2 wounds, 4+ ward?
If thats the case, 3 Terradons dropping rocks will average 6 hits(each does D3 automatic hits), 4 wounds, fail 2 saves, no more weapon team (note this is averages!)
 
Just a quick question from a lurker: What is a MSU saurus unit?
Other than that, this is quite an interesting topic as I for a long time pondered playing Skaven instead of Lizardmen (the dinosaurs won me over though ^_^)
 
novatomato said:
Possibly we might see some jungle swarms coming back. I was pondering on ways to try to control/limit the manuerability of the doom wheel and was looking through the LM book when I read that the jungle swarms are skirmishers. My thoughts were to place the swarms pretty much across from the DW and move as spread out as possible in an attempt to position them in between the wheel and our more ... useful units.
The other point being, if the doom wheel runs into the swarm or the swarm manages to charge the wheel. with the swarms being unbreakable (yes I know they are swarms and with crumble if they lose combat) they can keep the wheel out of causing a lot of mischief.
The swarms might even be viable against the abomination. I haven't yet read through the skaven book so I'm only using things I have read on the net as a resource so until I read the book I'm not to sure of my thoughts.
Click to expand...

The doomwheel gets to shoot even in combat and causes d6 wounds per wound, it will eat swarms before combat even starts...

Black Death said:
I think the MSU strategy with Saurus is very interesting and certainly viable. However, its important not to overestimate your troops. Yes, they're really nasty in combat for basic infantry, but expecting them to hold their own against Clanrat blocks is unrealistic. 5 Saurus will hit on 4s, wound on 3s, with a 5+ save to the rats. True, you probably wont lose any to attacks back, but that's not enough to break the static 5 CR especially since I assume you're not bringing a banner with the smaller units.

I don't mean to make you sound uninformed, but I just thought I would check since you are a Skaven not LM player, take no offence. You know saurus have 2 attacks each and the vast majority of people take spears? A unit of 12 saurus (thats a rank, so you have 4 static CR not 5 too btw) will get, when charged, 24 s4 attacks. Assuming 4 die to shooting, that gets rid of the rank but still gives 16 s4 attacks.

Flanking skinks may not be as outrageous as they first seem. Certainly they will offer a few easy kills for the rats, but you're stripping them of ALL their power. You'll knock out our rank bonus, giving you a +1 for flanking and Clanrats -3 rank bonus. Skinks squish easily, but I don't think my rats could kill 4 of them. As an extra bonus, the leadership bonus doesn't apply to Skaven if they are flanked, so our leadership goes from 8-10 (w/ general) down to 5-7.

Flanking with skink skirmishers = bad, flanking with ranked skinks = very good, and yes even better against Skaven. Flank charges are the key big weakness of Skaven.

Someone had also mentioned Chameleon skinks earlier. I'm not familiar with how that unit works exactly. I assume they are Scouting Skirmishers but do they have any extra advantages outside of that? They could potentially make outstanding Jezzail hunters. 7th ed. Jezzails are no longer Skirmishers so if you jump outside of their frontal arc of sight they wont be able to shoot at you!

Scout, higher BS, -1 to hit them at all times.

I promise you that any Skaven general worth his whiskers will blast Cold One Cav to bits. Skirmisher screens will not work I'm afraid. The Warp-Lightning cannon alone fires like a normal cannon-ball now so you can guess the range. At the end of the "bounce" a small template is placed to represent an explosion and NO armor saves are allowed regardless of the strength on the shot. Jezzails on a hill would also make short work of these units. A seer on a Bell is considered a large target for casting Warp-Lightning (and all other spells). Lastly, one of our new spells Scorch lets up "place a small blast template anywhere within 24" doing str5 hits to anything touching it, no partials. My understanding is that Cold One Cav units are very expensive and generally have a hero and a standard to give them extra punch. You're typically going to lose a lot of victory points this way.

Are warp lightning cannons popular? I haven't faced one in ages. Certainly heavy cavalry are a primary target, my Dragon Princes never seem to have trouble reaching combat intact though.
Click to expand...

Dreadgrass said:
on the subject of weapons teams, what are we looking at stats wise? Toughness 3, 2 wounds, 4+ ward?
If thats the case, 3 Terradons dropping rocks will average 6 hits(each does D3 automatic hits), 4 wounds, fail 2 saves, no more weapon team (note this is averages!)
Click to expand...

They only have 1 wound each actually... I would prefer to use drop rocks on other things. Well, maybe the weap team is a good target to stop it shooting early.

Enigma said:
Just a quick question from a lurker: What is a MSU saurus unit?
Other than that, this is quite an interesting topic as I for a long time pondered playing Skaven instead of Lizardmen (the dinosaurs won me over though ^_^)
Click to expand...

MSU = multiple small units. Several units of 10-12 rather than one or two big units.

I agree this is a great topic, very insightful for both sides.

Black death, a rules question if I may? Feel free to not answer since I know this topic is more about tactics that rules and don't want to drag it off into an unrelated debate, it just may have come up on the Underempire. We are in possession of a nasty weapon that we believe is the bane of the screaming bell or plague catapult. The Blade of Realities, for every hit caused creates a ld test or the target dies outright. Of course the bell does not have a leadership value, and interestingly the rat ogre ringer is also suspiciously absent of leadership. Logic dictates that no stat means the test is failed automatically (RE: pit of shades vs warmachines, which have no initiative) so it looks like a single hit destroys the pretty machine and that unbreakableness, no?

In any case, the army book states that if the bell/catapult is destroyed, the rider fights on foot. I could not find what happens if the rider is killed first? Is the blade equally deadly just striking the rider down? You are looking at ~3 leadership test from the old blood BTW.
 
MSU tactics stands for Multiple Small Units. In regards to Saurus it would be similar to taking 2 units of 10 Saurus 5x2 instead of taking 1 units of 18 Saurus 6x3. This splits up your targets for enemy shooting and allows you much more manueverability in regards to flanking and attacking from multiple angles.

All Skaven weapons teams are now T3 with heavy armor and a 4+ ward save when within 3" of their parent unit. They still only have 1 wound. Terradons will be very effective against them. However, even though the Stormbanner is going to be FAQed to One Use Only, its still guaranteed to shut down at least one turn of flying. In addition, Skaven now have access to a spell that does the same thing as the Stormbanner. Terradons will be VERY effective in alot of ways, but is also easily countered so its important not to put all of your "rocks" in one basket so to speak.

I was also unaware that CORs could be bought for just under 200 points, I was thinking that they were more expensive than that. That makes them much better for breaking through a flank as long as they dont have a hero in with them. They are still going to be juicy and shootable targets for us so I would suggest bringing at least 2 if not 3 units of them to make sure you're going to be able to break through the Skaven lines.


As far as my general battle strategy, I tend to checkerboard my slaves and clanrats. The slaves will march ahead of the clanrats and turn about 45 degrees exposing their flanks to the enemy's front. I'll leave the clanrats far enough behind them that an overrun won't hit them and just leave it at that. If the slaves get charged, the enemy will be at an awkward angle and in position for a flanking countercharge. If they don't charge the slaves then my wizards and artillery continue to pound them!
 
Please feel free to ask about rules clarifications, but I'm going to make one request (more of a demand really). Do not attempt to argue against any responses I give to you. I will answer all questions RAW. If the interpretations of the rules is not clear, I will present a very brief summary of both sides and leave it for you to decide.

The Skaven book has some fantastic fluff in it and is very pleasant to read. Unfortunately, it is suspected that Jeremy Vetock is a 40k player who has never laid eyes on a Fantasy game. There are MANY mucky rule conflicts in the new book because of all the special rules and exceptions the Skaven get.'


To answer your question about the Screaming Bell:

The bell is described as being "like a monstrous mount" (I'll double check my rulebook tomorrow morning to be certain)

It is not a monstrous mount, just similar to one.

One can assume that because the bell is a mount, it's rider's leadership is used when taking a test against the Blade of Realities. Simple enough.

Problems start occuring when the Grey Seer is killed. Normally monstrous mounts are ejected from their unit and take their berserk roll to see what happens. This would make no sense for the unit pushing the unit to leave the bell behind where it cannot move and no longer be Unbreakable. Furthermore, the rules state that the bell can never be voluntarily removed from the unit (this case would be an involuntary ejection i think?).

In regard to the Blade of Realities specifically, there are no rules in the new book explaining what the hell happens to the Bell if the Grey Seer is killed. It is also unclear what happens if the unit and the seer are killed. The rules state that the bell makes the rider and the unit pushing it unbreakable, which implies that the bell itself is not unbreakable. There are no clarifications for how the bell functions sitting by itself in the middle of the playing field. It would be best to agree with your opponent beforehand how to handle these situations.
 
Black Death, as a Skaven player, do you have any suggestions for how to deal with the Bell/Furnace? I think all of us LM players jumped at the idea of destroying the Bell in one hit but it has to have another weakness. What in the Lizardmen list do you think Skaven is least prepared to deal with?
 
Blade of Realities instant kill aside, the bell and furnace are large targets. Pack your skirmishers with blowpipes, and remember your skink blocks can toss javelins in full ranks when facing em. So far as I can see the bell/furnace aren't immune to poison. You also have the potential to randomize and pick off a mage as well.

I'm thinking the flying Scar Vet could work decently for killing the grey seer, as the skaven player will at best have a unit champion to challenge the scar vet out with. But you could just charge and put the Scar-Vet on the side of the screaming bell without the champion, then just whack away with the great weapon. You can't challenge when fighting with the grey seer, or he'll hide up in his bell out of reach. The 4+ ward will be annoying though, as will the rat ogre manning the bell. Should be easy enough to pull off a charge, as the bell is a large target.
 
Also, regarding the Screaming Bell/ Furnace:

Do they count as Warmachines in any respect (affected by Commandment of Brass/ etc.)

Can the Grey seer be targeted seperate to the bell by shooting? if not are the shots randomised or does he hide behind the ratogre or something and cannot be hit?

Im thinking, as far as Skaven go, that'll be the biggest point sink to try and bring down...
 
Sigh... It feels against my insticts to reveal this, but here goes: Best way to deal with the Screaming Bell is to charge it head on with COR that have no champion. Allocate as many attacks as you can fit against the Grey Seer himself to kill him (presumably the Skaven general as well). After that I would recommend ignoring it to be honest. It has MR2 so spellcasting isn't a good option and I don't think Lizardmen have much in the ways of artillery fire. You bank almost 500 victory points for killing 3 wounds off a toughness 4 character with a 4+ ward save. You might be able to do this with Saurus as well: let the bell charge you and then allocate all spear attacks onto the Seer and not the bell. Its important to not have characters or champions because a smart Skaven player will actually challenge YOU with their seer in order to protect him.


Being a Skaven player, I won't even try and pretend I'm not head over heels in love with the furry buggers. Being the Master Race, Skaven really don't have anything at all to fear from the Lizardmen since its an easy massacre every time!

In all seriousness that's actually part of the reason why I wandered over to this forum. My personal experience with Lizardmen has been against poor generals who I'm sure haven't used them for their full potential. Generally speaking, I've always been grumbly with flying units and fast cav units that dance out of my arc of site shooting me. I don't know how effective Terradons are, but they would be pretty high on my list of things to blast.

Skaven really seem to have a little bit of everything available to them, so in an All-Comers list I feel pretty confident that I could deal with most of what Lizardmen have to offer, but I'm very open to hear what tricks and combinations the Lizardmen are capable of.
 
As I stated above, the Screaming Bell is nothing. Not a War Machine, not a Chariot, it is very frustrating and the source of much debate amongst out own. It is "like a monstrous mount". RAW, those spells would not affect it because it is not specifically listed as a war machine. However, since its not actually anything, this is a ruling that could be discussed before a battle or at your local gaming store.

Hits are randomized 1-5 Bell, 6 on the Seer. Since its a large target you must decide to shoot either the bell/seer or the unit pushing it but not both. Skinks would be effective with all of your blowpipe attacks, but shame on the Skaven general that allows that to happen. Skinks moving towards the bell will be prioritized and blocked with other units. Personally I usually charge them with ranked up slaves and am usually able to break them.

It is a HUGE point sink. You're looking at ~350 points for the Seer + gear, 200 for the bell, and 100 for being army general. If you can kill the Bell AND the Seer, you're getting 650 victory points. If you try the entire game to do this and don't succeed, you're getting massacred.

The unit is unbreakable and will fight down to the last rat. It's also a viable tactic to march across the board and have your bell and seer face the board edge. Sure you get a rear charge, but the unit will never flee and now the Seer is safe to cast spells from atop the bell until you slice your way through 30+ clanrats.
 
Can the Seer cast spells if he is in combat?

If not, you could just charge the Seer unit with some swarms or MSU saurus to keep him from beeing effective?
 
Ya he counts as a large target so will have LoS over the unit that charges him. warp Lightning is the only magic missile and that has been properly neutered this edition.
 
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