• The forum software have been upgraded to the latest version.

    If you notice anything that looks off, or does not work, please let us know.

    For more information, click here.

7th Ed. Ideas on how to deal with the new Skaven?

M
Jungle Swarm

mpeburky

New Member
Messages
2
Likes Received
0
Trophy Points
0
Hi, just joined here so forgive me if this has already been asked, but I couldn't see this brought up in detail anywhere.

What would be the best way to deal with the new Skaven army for a Lizardmen player? I've played them once before, in a 2v2 battle (2 lizardmen vs skaven and empire), but I mostly dealt with the Empire player. I used a salamander to route his slaves unit, but that was it.

My current ideas are: the lores of death or fire. Anything that does low strength but a high number of attacks, area of effect spells or Leadership reducing spells really.
EotG is useful for it's terror, the possible 5+ ward save against shooting and of course the burning alignment attack.
I imagine saurus cav would be useful for the fear checks and the fact that they have no cavalry to counter and terradons to remove their heavy weapons. I'm not sure where I stand with skinks becuase although their poison is very useful, the Skaven's infantry are as fast as them.

My fears are: my saurus being outflanked and panicing because they're outnumbered, important units such as the EotG is a bullet magnet for their heavy weapons and going down very early on and my heroes being sniped.

Does anyone have any ideas on how best to deal with them?

Many thanks
 
skaven can't really snipe, anything they have that could get your hero in a unit allows a "Lo,S!". the weapon teams will chew through your saurus while teh doomwheel or abomination gets your stegadon.
on the other hand their Ld isn't that good and a flank charge on any infantry of theirs will make it break reducing its Ld by 3 just becuase they lose ranks. the DW and HPA can be dealt with with a lot of high S attacks or things that cause multile wounds, also skinks (the DW has a 4+ armor save and the HPA regen, so a lot of poison attacks will kill those 2 things in a turn or 2). also template spells, lots of hit spells will decimate their ranks and reduce their Ld for those terror checks. be weary of the plague furnace aswell, as with T6 W6 it will be hard to take down but its downside is that it must be pushed by T4 no armor/ward/regen unit that when reduced to 5 or less models is immobile and its also frenzied, so terradons will be basically leading that unit wherever you want it to be (i suggest forrests or other difficult terrain).
his weapon teams have a 5+ heavy armor save and a 4+ ward if within 3" of the parent unit, skinks can handle those pretty well, but be carefull as they can stand and shoot.
their magic is quite potent aswell, as at least 2 spells cause T tests wich will kill skinks fast. crack's call draws a line from teh caster in any direction 4D6" and cuases I tests to all touched (those that fail are dead, no saves, no regen), saurus will fall.

also if he takes a grey seer be carefull with casting spells, as a 5-6 misscast will allow him to turn 4D6 infantry into clanrats.


basicaly you want to flank charge him and make him test for terror a lot. ohh, they have ltittle that ignores armor, mostly those T tests, but iwht T4 on CoC's it shouldn't be a problem, so cavalry is deadly to them, and they will try to get rid of them ASAP.
 
Sweet! I didn't even have to ask this. My buddy is starting a Skaven army, and I'm starting a Lizardmen army, so this is good stuff for me.

So, Terradons and Salamanders are good? I like those, so that's more good news for me.
 
Sallies and the Lore of Death are great starts. Use the spell that reduces Ld by 3 and roast them with the sallies (remember, any unit hit by the salamnder's ranged attack must take a panic check if any unsaved wounds are caused, no matter the size or US. It means that unit of 30 clanrats that got it's Ld nuked to 2 and took 1 wound from the sallie now needs to roll snake-eyes or they leg it.

The LoD Ld lowering spell coupled with salamnders is only 1 way of taking care of skaven infantry, the other is sending stegs up, or even a lone Slaan with the Terror causing discipline and the Ethereal discipline. Skaven magic can be brutal, so it's also advised taking the magic resistance discipline or sticking the Slaan into a unit of temple guard all the same. If you find you can handle his seers, then running an ethereal, terror causing slaan into the Skaven battle-line is a nice and fun way of doing things, even if they pass their Ld checks (you can make sure the more elite ones don't pass by reducing their Ld with the Lore of Death before in your previous turn) chances are high that they have no magical weapons with which to hurt you. If they do, then regeneration is also a nice way to handle things.

All that said, a unit or two of saurus cavalry can also instill fear into the heart of the Skaven, along with Kroxigors. Stegadons also do well causing terror.

Dealing with doomwheels and abominations, however, is different. Abominations MUST be posioned down, it's the easiest way of doing things on top of using the burning blade of chotek or lore of fire and hoping for the best. Doomwheels can be killed through the static saurus combat res forcing it to flee andbeing chased down or otherwise rolling off the board.
 
Khakorlot said:
Sallies and the Lore of Death are great starts. Use the spell that reduces Ld by 3 and roast them with the sallies (remember, any unit hit by the salamnder's ranged attack must take a panic check if any unsaved wounds are caused, no matter the size or US. It means that unit of 30 clanrats that got it's Ld nuked to 2 and took 1 wound from the sallie now needs to roll snake-eyes or they leg it.
Click to expand...

Generally not. Remember skaven get extra leadership for ranks, and that can be added to generals leadership if he is nearby, so they will be at least 5 even with the spell. Still very helpful though.

I suggest you check out this thread. It is crammed with very useful stuff concerning LM vs Skaven.
 
a few things to correct:
- as it has been said Clan Rats have a base Ld of 5+ current rank bonus or the generals Ld + current rank bonus, so they would probably have Ld 7 with said spell.. still nasty
- skaven mostly have Ld 10 arround a grey seer so falling terror tests is not that easy
- ethereal slann won't help much since half the skaven army has magical atacks (allmost all the shooting and plague censor bearers/hellpit abomination wich are the best CC units)
- magic resistance will help but only so much, if you have a lone slann and he gets crack's call off at it he is dead. its not a targeted spell and it makes you take an I test or die. also scroch (small emplate, S5 flaming hit) isn't targeted either
 
My buddy have come to the conclusion that you can pretty much smash Saurus warriors into almost anything they have that comes in big blocks. He is starting up his Skaven army.
 
I have only played one game against the new Skaven and it was a win for me :D for the following reasons.

1. Lore of Death - minus to their leadership really hurt my opponent regardless of his rank bonuses. Lore of Fire can be pretty good too, so I'm told but I haven't seen it in use yet.
2. Salamanders - absolutely owned several of his units - slaves ran the moment I BBQ them.
3. Terradons led his furnace around the table for two turns :bored:
4.My Skinks, Salamanders and Cold Ones destroyed his left flank and the game was mine from that point on. Take their flanks away and Skaven are pretty much goners.
5. Their A-Bomb is a goner once you wound it with a flaming attack, no roll on their "I might be back table". Once you have achieved that, poison that @#&%! to death
6. My skink priests zapped his doom wheel to pieces with uranon's Thunder Bolt and Forked Lightning by turn three.
7. Impact hits by my Steggie and the burning configuration of the EOTG worked very well. Terror and Fear are your friends, use them well.
8. The more he spends on Characters the less units he has, so if he boasts of his uber general or wizard just smile and say thankyou to yourself as thier army wont' be as big as it should be.
9. Most importantly, make sure you have prayed to the Dice Gods as I did that day :D
 
Played the new skaven a while back and agrees with whats already mentioned. Salamanders are great as a well placed shot can easily force 2-3 LD tests in a horde army. Terradons are good aswell, but hardly the best way to handle certain weapon teams, as they get to stand and shoot. Poison or magic is a better way to deal with weapon teams, a single D6 S4 and its gone unless you are unlucky. The best weapon teams also have the Move or Fire rule, so if he gets a weapon team into position, take it out for all that is holy. Warpfires hurts.... Move or Fire does however make the teams easy to read and force them to be vurnarable for 1 round before getting any shots off, just make sure you dont move into range of a weapon team with something fragile.

Lore of Death is imo a suboptimal choice as Skaven have effectivly LD10, making Doom and Darkness worse than against most other armies, and most other spell are pretty avarage. Fire on the other hand provides you with excellent destructive spells and putting a flaming wound in the abomb is almost cruical to ensure it stays down once its been buried in blowpipe darts, and the only other way to put flaming wounds into an abomb is salamanders, which are useless as they need over 12 rounds of shooting to put a wound in it (and Chotec isnt really an option as you DONT want to be in CC with that beast). With Burning heads and 2x single salamanders you can easily force 4-5 panic tests per turn (and any panic can cause more panic if they flee thru their own units), more if he places his units too close to each other. Wall of Fire is great too as it scales with unit size, cast it on a unit that will get the choice of either eating a flank charge from a steg/coc unit/saurus unit and he will either stay and die, or turn and die.

When playing with other armies there are really 2 things I fear more than anything else in the skaven list; Doomwheel and Abominations. With mass poison skinks can deal with these monsters VERY easily, a unit of 12 skinks does 2 wounds / turn which hurts a lot when stacked. Their magic is pretty nasty aswell, better bring som scrolls or Becalming Cogitation.

Things to really watch out for in the skaven list:

1. Abombs, they HAVE to be killed or they wreck havoc

2. Doomwheels, not only are they amazing in CC, if they get into a position where they your stegadon is its closest target, bye bye steggie ! That zapp attack HURTS !

3. Weapon Teams, especially the warpfire. Hitting everything it touches and S5 is amazing, but cant move and fire, use it to take them out when they take a firing position. Dont be too eager to engage it in melee, they get a stand and shoot reaction so use skirmishers on Ratling guns (-2 to hit means he only hits on 6s, not too bad) and flyers from afar against the Warplightning since it has pretty short range.

4. Magic, Warplightning spam hurts, especially with the condenser. Cracks Call can also instagib both stegs and slanns, and I dont even want to talk about scorch....

5. Furnaces and Screaming bells. Both are huge unbreakable killing machines, so if you cant kill them completly, dont even touch them. You should also count on staying in combat for a long while if you engage it.

6. Slaves. Not a huge threat but still becomes quite nasty when used in numbers. A unit of 20-30 slaves costs pretty much nothing, can explode which hurts skinks very badly, and redirect and harass very well. When you meet 4+ of these units its hard to handle them all (for both you and the skaven player !)

7. The shooting phase. Several useful artillery pieces. The catapult is fairly useless against LM as both skinks and sauruses are bad targets. The cannon on the other hand can easily take down a steg, and its shots are magic so it can kill an ethereal slann with ease. Jezzail eats sauruses, especially CoC, and can hurt stegadons easily. Ratling guns are not what they used to be but their random element means that they can still fire up to 21-27 handgun shots (rolling 1234566 then 2-5 on misfire and scatter in the right direction isnt exactly likley to happend tho....). Its effeciency is pretty much the same as a unit of 10 handgunners, hardly a huge threat and carries a high risk of misfire when using 3+ dice.
 
Good stuff. This is all really useful information. I was thinking about the wall of fire as well, but I didn't think about forcing them to turn to prevent a flank charge after they have had it cast on them.
 
weapon teams may be move or fire but you don't have to put them out in the open unitll you have a good position. hidden behind the parent units they can't be seen and once the parent unit moves out of the way the ycan fire if place correctly. they also have a 5+ armor save (heavy armor) and a 4+ ward when in 3" of the parent unit.
warplightning isn't what it used to be :( even with the condenser its 4-8 hits with a chance to roll a 1 and fry the engineer. its howling warpgale you should be worried about. even 1 can be deadly to skinks and they can stack. -1 to hit means that skinks will rarely get a chance to fire multiple shots unless they are within 6" of the enemy after they move. being within 6" of a skaven means they will probably get charged the next turn.
the plague furnace only has 6 wounds with no save. skinks can take care of it with poison, its a large target and can betargeted separately. same story with the bell, but that 1 has a 4+ ward. remember to randomis hits aswell.
don't underestimate slaves, taken in units of 21 with a musician they are quite deadly. they explode when they break, the redirect charges and if they flee from shooting they hang arround the back of the battlefield to capture table quarters, theres nothing these guys can't do. they won't kill much, but rats shoot them when in combat.
dont fear the cannon, be happy its not an abomination or doomwheel. it needs line of sight now, its guess range and it has 1 chance to missfire and another chance to be S0. if the enemy is lucky to get the template (at the end of the beam) at S6+ over a unit of saurus or TG you are pretty uch screwed, but that requires insane amount of luck, skill has nothing to do with it.
and ratling guns are crap now (read: not overpowered), because of that all other weapon teams are better. S5 flame template D3 wounds, D3 impact hits with art dice automatic S4 hits or small template guess weapon, allways wound on 5+ (4+ under the hole), no armor save, move AND fire (it doesn't even need line of sight, but if fired like this it scatters double)
 
Thanks for all this guys. So far I can see he has plague monks, Screaming Bell and a Doom wheel. I'm sure he has Clan rats and slaves. It's been 3 weeks though, and I do know how much his army has grown. I think I'll take him on tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes.

I intend to use skinks against his screaming bell. It's unbreakable, but I'll still want to be putting down some serious hurting on this unit early on. I have in excess of 60 skinks, but will probably use only 30 or so. Short range repeating shorts, ouch. But will they be able to persue me if my skinks flee while the bell is still in their unit?
 
Ten things to keep in mind versus skaven:

1. Charging the bell is worth it, but you better hit it hard.
2. A stegadon with a giant bow is your best friend against the furnace.
3. Low level magic missiles are great for killing weapon teams.
4. Any skaven rare has both a chance of single-handedly shattering your army or doing nothing the entire game without your interference.
5. Night runners and assassins are both overpriced and arguably crap. Gutter runners are awesome.
6. Saurus cavalry will give any ranked skaven unit a hard time. A 5+ unit of them have a good shot at breaking anything not pushing a bell or furnace with a flank charge.
7. The furnace is often better to lead than to fight.
8. Your big stuff will hate crack's call, your small stuff will hate vermin tide, and everything in your army will hate the plague and wither spells.
9. Jezzails get that 4+ in combat too, unlike before
10. Everything else people have said.
 
the bell moves as the unit as long as it has 5 more more models pushing it. so it can pursuse/overun 2D6 as any other skaven unit
 
Am I reading this correctly that the doom wheel moves in a random direction each time? Wouldn't this lack of direction render it farely useless since it can run into its own units or fry them with its weapon?

What am I missing?
 
It doesnt move in a random direction, it has a random move value of 3D6 but the skaven player still decides where it moves, just not how far.

On topic: The skaven has 4 really powerful units: Furnace, Bell, Abomination and Doomwheel. Skink mass poison is an amazing counter for all these units, a unit of 12 skinks does 4-5 wounds to the Furnace or Doomwheel, 2-2.5 to a Bell or Abomb. 3 units of skinks can take down every major threat in the skaven army, leaving them wtihout any stubborn or unbreakable units. Mass poison is the best weapon BY FAR against skaven, far far superior to magic or giant bows.
 
Currently my gaming buddy has been playing mostly skaven. Poison against the furnace or bell works great. From my experiences, the best way to take out a doom wheel is to charge it with a JSoD. 4 strength 7 attacks against a doom wheel really hurts. I haven't played against an abomination though, so I can't help with that.
 
Bibamus said:
basicaly you want to flank charge him and make him test for terror a lot.
Click to expand...

FYI you only check terror once per game

but my advice, this is coming from someone who has never seen skaven being played but you did mention low ld and the need for many atks how about skinkigor units? lots of atks good rank bonus and fear whats not to like

EDIT: also if you plan taking tehenhauin then the skinks get rerolls landing more atks
 
clanrats will eat your skinks and will probably win combat unless you have at least 3 korxigors in that unit... and even then its close.

regarding skinks... only the furnace is unarmored. the bell has a 4+ ward, abomb has regen (4+) and doomwheel has 4+ armor save, but poison should take them out indeed
 
I played a 2k Skaven army last week, we only had 90 minutes and I was coming down hard off the caffeine after a day at uni so I decided to use it as a probing game, nothing more.

Here is what I learnt:

An abomination is a royal pain in the backside - Charged my EOTG with its randomized movement, left it with 1 wound, thank all things green for my amazing dice rolling ability that saved it.

Don't charge a furnace - CoC charged the furnace, spent 5 minutes of me having to take Toughness tests and him taking all of his random tests. I took out about 14 skaven but it's unbreakable so got no where fast with that.

Doomwheel's lightning killed my scar-vet outright. Its randomized movement sent it towards my SV giving it the range to kill him...

When playing against an army featuring a doomwheel and an abomination it may be wise to simply deploy your core force as close to your edge as possible and sit there. Wait for their randomized movement to bring them away from the rest and then surgically remove them from play in some manner. They are hard hitting units but need to be supported really.

Don't bother attempting to force panic tests - 25% loss from magic on one unit - LD8 leadershp test - Passed - Would not have caused the rest to panic anyway...

In regards to their spell "Something the 13th" 25+ casting value - Simply aim for becalming cogitation on whichever seer has that spell. In the words of my skaven opponent, "the only way to really get that off is irresistable force" - No 6's, no IF.

Overall I think the skaven rules don't fit the skaven lore, skaven are supposed to be cowardly and spineless but their stat-lines don't represent that.

It was a good game though, ended in a draw.

-Eagle
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top