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8th Ed. Help against Skaven?

Sealterbloind
Cold One

Sealterbloind

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So I'm going to play against Skaven the very first time and I have no idea what kind of list I should do or what units are good against them. All I know my opponent loves his Doomwheels and they're nasty, right? :D He also likes to use some spell (I don't remember the name) what eats big units or something...

My BF advised me to get a Slann aboard, but that's kinda all... If my memory serves me right those basic units don't hit so hard?

I was wondering is Skavenpelt Banner worth the price to take against them? And should I consider to take Tehenhauin in my army since he can give Hatred to some Skinks..?
 
Here are the things you are likely to face against when playing against skaven: doomwheels, cannons, hell pit abominations, a warlord with the felblade in a bunch of clan rats, and a level 4 with a bunch of storm vermin. And probably 2 buses of slaves (or so).

For doomwheels and aboms: They are weak to skirmishers. two groups of skirmishers can railroad them off the board pretty easily while whittling them down with poison shots. To do this, you need to surround them and place yourself as close as you can on the side, but out of their charge arc. They can't pivot toward you to charge you. This is actually the best time for blowpipes, since it gives you the extra shots and you can't stand and shoot against them anyway. The doomwheel's 3 shots will take out 3 skirmishers, but that's only 21 points killed off a turn (not a big deal). Just don't let them charge anything expensive, because they have a very good chance of wiping out expensive stuff.

For the cannons, don't bring an ethereal slann. The cannons are magic attacks and you don't want your general's survival to be dependent on a coin flip. Maybe bring a nice big skink cohort for him to hide in. Temple guard are nice (as always), but they are a juicy target.

Bring group wiping spells. Dwellers, Pit, and Fiery Convocation are all your friends. He's going to have a ton of stuff in just a couple of units, so these really get their money's worth.

Don't throw scar-vets against doomwheels or the felblade. Scar-vets DO NOT LIKE these guys.

Try to avoid getting tarpitted by the slaves if possible. It takes FOREVER to kill enough of these guys to get them to explode (they don't break, they just explode).

Salamanders are hilarious vs. skaven (unless you are the skaven player).

Expect a lot of his stuff to either wipe out a lot of your stuff, or wipe out a lot of his stuff. I never seem to beat skaven. They always seem to beat themselves.

A unit of terradons or rippers work well as cannon hunters. Bring two, keep them far apart. If the cannons try to take them out, that is one turn they aren't shooting at important things.

Prioritize dispelling skitterleap, especially early on. He may drop a character right next to your slann/TG unit (if you take one) and throw a brass orb, which is basically a thrown Purple Sun.

Finally, DON"T BRING YOUR TG UNIT CLOSE TO HIS GREY SEER. Dreaded 13th is a close range spell, and it will destroy you. You don't want to lose your slann to this, and if he wipes you out, he gets a brand new unit of clan rats.


Skaven are fun to play against. They have very clear strengths and weaknesses, and pretty much everything has a nasty miscast chance to make up for their absurd strengths. Hopefully this helps you out.
 
Wow, thanks alot! I think this will help me alot against them :) I put here my list when I get it ready ^^ I try to keep these things in mind when doing the list and playing against them :3
 
All very, very good tips!

Salamanders are an absolute winner here, as Skaven rely so heavily on a strong leadership bubble that you'll probably be able to line up shots which simply can't miss!

I've actually found a Blastadon to be a good investment in these games. Two games in a row, he has taken out a HPA with a single beam using my last spell dice. He also gives you another terror charge for when their general is smushed.

The Ripper Chief with Egg of Quango can do good work vs. any cannons. Give him a charmed shield and he should make it there.

Finally, if you're not so hot on manouvering, the standard 1+/1+/4+ GW Scarvet Cowboy will take out a doomwheel without the need for railroading.
 
While still feeling like a noob here, I can say that Fiery Convocation from High Magic will wreck a unit of rats (the smaller variety Clan Rats?).

I played against Skaven a while back and used this spell. Took a unit of 40 down to about 14 by the time they got to my Saurus Warriors as my oppo just couldn't dispel it :D

Unfortunately I found out he's sold his skaven as I'd like another go using salamanders as well as I didn't have them when we played originally.
 
So, I tried to keep in mind all the things you guys said and I managed to do a 2500pts list, please tell me what you think of it :)
-------------------------------

LORD

Slann Mage Priest
- BSB
- Skavenpelt Banner
- Becalming Cogitation
- Harmonic Convergence
- Focus of Mystery
- Channeling Staff

HERO

Skink Priest
- lvl 1
- Dispel Scroll

CORE

25 x Saurus Warrior
- full command

25 x Saurus Warrior
- full command

10 x Skink Skirmisher

10 x Skink Skirmisher

SPECIAL

26 x Temple Guard
- full command
- Jaquar Standard

3 x Ripperdactyl Riders

3 x Ripperdactyl Riders

RARE

3 x Salamander Hunting Pack

3 x Salamander Hunting Pack

------------------

So I thought of running my Slann with High Magic (and I love loremastery, so that's why I got the Focus of Mystery). Jaquar Standard I run since it have worked in my games pretty well. ^^ Skink Priest is there for the lore of Beasts signature and for the Scroll.~ Rippers are a new unit for me, and I haven't tried them yet, so I hope I can manage to do something useful with them :D

Please let me know if there's something I should change to get the list better :)
 
I'm thinging that this ought to be prety effective against Skaven.
(6 salies is going to be very effective)
 
The list looks quite workable. You will have to let us know how it goes.

Regarding the banner choices, I am wary of them, but honestly I don't have the experience to say if it is good or not. I have never run the skavenpelt banner against skaven, and I have never run the jaguar standard period. So take what I am about to say with that particular grain of salt.

I am not sure if the skavenpelt is going to help or hurt against skaven. Yes, your TG unit will have hatred against them, but everything is going to have hatred against the TG. So long as you keep winning, frenzy will help, but I think the skaven might end up benefiting more from it. I don't know, though, and I have no data to back this up. I just don't like the idea of giving my opponents ANY sort of advantage. If you try it and it does work out for you, please let me know.

Regarding the jaguar standard: you say you have run it and that it works well for you, and that is great. I have never used it because I figure that the TG are slow and thus they normally just get charged. How many times are you going to be charging with them? Maybe once a game? Is that worth the points for you? If so, great, definitely take it. I think you would get more value out of having the standard of discipline to make your TG stubborn on a 10, rather than a 9. You would then have 40 points to spend elsewhere, like on more rippers or something.


Anyway, I am definitely not the expert on using either of those. If it turns out that those banners are the best way to do lizards vs skaven, I'm definitely open to trying it myself. I am just hesitant about them, as mentioned above.
 
It's only hatred vs the BSB which isn't exactly possible in this case. My experience is that regular saurus warriors will murder clan rats and probably do alright against plague monks and storm vermins. The biggest issue is their numbers which can grind you down.
 
Yeah, well today we played, and it was pretty interesting... AND my dice rolls were bad -.-" We also had one of our friends watching the game (the only one who plays competitive and in tournaments) and he adviced my opponent and reminded him if he was going to forget something... But for some reason he didn't help me... I quess it's because I haven't played nearly as long as them and I'm the only girlplayer in our group...

Well whatever... He just saved my opponents ass a few times and it annoys me a bit -.-"

The Skavenplayer didn't have any cannons, but he had Doomwheel, Abomination, two Furnace in Plaque Monk hordes, two Stormvermin units, two Warpfirethrowers and a couple of characters.

First of all: I have no idea what he forgot from his list but he noticed it after we had been started our first turn, and for some reason our competitive friend here got the best idea to but an Abomination in the battlefield instead since it costed as much. Well, I agreed to it since I'm "the noob" in our group and this was a friendly game. Atleast I got to choose where in the table it went, and because of that he got in combat with it at the 5th turn. :')

Turns 1 and 2 went pretty smoothly, I got a full ammount of magic dices BUT my Slann was too far away to get some nice damage spells so I casted some Walk Between Worlds and other stuff I don't remember. Anyway, at the turn 3 things started to turn upside down and my dice rolls got bad, AND I threw IR with just three dices... With Slann... And a shitload of my TG flew away at that instant... My Slann remained unharmed tho, that's new! :'D Plus when I finally got in close combat with my TG, I forgot I had the Skavenpelt Banner there *facepalm* and there goes my Frenzy and Hatred! My Salamanders were eaten by Plaque Monks. One of the most annoying things were that our friend here reminded my opponent he had a Gleaming Pennant when he first failed his Ld and was going to run from my Saurus BUT with the reroll he passed and stayed there...

... But when the game ended to my defeat when Skavens ran over my Saurus block and killed also my Slann, my opponent noticed one of he's characters had a casting level AND Doomrocket, which made the list's point value more than 2500 and illegal :'D

Our tournament playing friend told that at turn 4 our game seemed like it was going to end at a draw, so I quess I didn't do everything wrong, but my dice rolls, few wrong moves and forgetting the Skavenpelt Banner were the biggest things in this game.
 
You didn't mention your skink, so i thought i'd ask - did you remember that you can cast your slanns spells through the skink priest?

It's a pretty important special rule they have, and it is one of the things that makes a Slann so dangerous. he can be on the other end of the table, but because of that one little skink priest, he is suddenly flinging powerful spells at a unit your opponent originally thought was safe.

Just something to keep in mind for another time.
 
Yes, I actually remembered it, but I remembered it wrong :'D I remembered it was within 12'' instead of the actual 24'', blaarrgh! No wonder I felt like something was wrong with that small range! But anyway, when I was going to get an advantage of it, I tried to cast first Walk Between Worlds so I could get my Skink Priest in that 12'' range, but my opponent dispelled it... And then I tried to cast Wyssan's to support my Saurus but failed with 5 dices... X/

It's such a shame that I started playing WH only like a year and a half before the new book came out, and I never used Skink Priests with the Slann with our 7th edition book, so I never got to use that ability to cast through a Priest ^^" Everything is still so new and I have a hard time remembering all our nice Special Rules like the Predatory Fighter or Fear, Immune to Psychology and Stubborn in TG when Slann sits there :/ I hope I'll start to remember all those details eventually >___<"
 
Hi Sealterbliond.

I haven't seen you since Itza Chaq Khanx a year ago. (Time for more fluff for him! )

I have no particular skaven advice but I say THE FLUFF FORUM NEEDS YOU! MORE ART, MORE FLUFF, MORE PROPHET OF DESTRUCTION!

Please?
 
Hi Bob!

Funny somebody still remembers me :'D I actually haven't got a chance to run my little boy in any games yet, but I was thinking of writing something based on how a game goes with him ;) I had a break from WH stuff when me and my BF moved to another city and didn't get to play so much, but now we have moved back and are back in the business again~ ^^

AND I actually have some new painted stuff, art and few other own SC waiting to get their fluff and models to get ready ^^ One of them is an Oldblood on Carno, so you can wait something epic ;P
 
If it is EPIC, I don't mind the wait.



Yes I do. MORE NOW, MORE NOW, MORE NOW!

Please?
 
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