I've been playing Skaven since around 3rd edition of WHFB, and could probably contribute something here.
Never been a super competitive or tournament player though, more like friendly games over a few pints of beer.
I've accumulated enough models over the years to field quite a variety of army compositions, so I've been able to try quite different lists. Here's some random thoughts on units and their use from this skaven general:
- Slaves are the backbone of any and all skaven armies. No matter what your fluff, game plan or army roster is, slaves, slaves, slaves will save the day. Or at least die valiantly for a good cause. I have at times even managed to get them into combat when playing against someone who knows how worthless it is to waste ammo or power dice at a slave block, and it's surprising how much they can do with a well-timed flank charge or just with a few above-average die rolls against smaller units.
When building an army list, I usually start with at least 2-3 blocks of 20 slaves with no command or equipment before I even start to think what kind of army am I building. That's a ridiculously low amount of points for something for the enemy to shoot at while the rest of your army marches or attempts to recover of all the wonderful tools of war exploding on their faces. Also gives advantage in deployment, as you're probably fielding more units than most opponents anyway, you can use these cheap throwaway slave blocks before committing your more relevant units. (although for this I usually use minimium-size 1 packmaster+giant rats or 1 rat ogre units because they go to cover my flanks regardless of what my opponent deploys and where).
- Skaven traditionally have no artillery, and for some reason I'm personally not a huge fan of warp-lightning cannons (and even less of the plagueclaw catapult). Must be because I'm an oldbeard and these are fancy new additions in the later armybooks. However skaven have these wonderful things called warlock engineers which function as your shooting units, artillery and comic relief, depending on how you choose to roll the dice. I usually just take the signature warplightning spell for them and some cheap one-off magic item (dispel scroll, doom rocket) and plop them into some big clanrat unit for protection. I don't intend to bring clanrats into melee anyway unless it's a "guaranteed" victory after one combat round.
- Rat ogres. Awesome fluff, awesome models, cute as hell, but... mostly worthless on the field of battle compared to their points cost. Low toughness with no armor save make them die in droves to just about any kind of missile fire (or probably even heavy snow falling from the sky) before they get in to melee, and to accommodate this you would need to have a big unit of them. And that is expensive, risky and clumsy. In an army which already has hordes of models getting in each other's way. I sooo much would want to like and play rat ogres more, but every time I've tried more than one or two as a distraction-flanking blip, it has ended in disaster.
- Grey seers and screaming bells. A bit the same problem as with rat ogres above. Cool units, way too expensive and vulnerable to field, at least in a 2000-2500pt range which I most of the time play. On the other hand, the two skaven magic lores are mostly awesome in the amount of wanton destruction and hilarious potential for backfiring. Still, I'd go with lvl 2 warlock engineers instead of a grey seer most of the time, because skaven have a tendency of blowing up due to friendly warmachines, getting shot, maimed or burned easily by enemies, or just plain running away at the first impact of things not going just as planned.
- Doomwheels. hands down my favorite unit in the armybook, and not just because of the awesome (old) minis and fluff. Wildly random in its effectiveness and almost as hazardous to your own army as to the enemy, this unit is pretty much the reason I started (and kept on) playing skaven in the first place. Vulnerable to massed light missile fire, which may make for entertaining out of control rolls during the first few turns of the game.
- Hellpit Abominations are awesome, but a bit boring in my opinion. Still, they do give a much needed oomph to the otherwise melee-pathetic ratmen.
- Except for the plague censer bearers. These are the hammer of many of the lists I play, just because they do hit anything they manage to charge like a... hammer. Sure, they're expensive-ish and die in droves to magic missiles or templates and any kind of concentrated conventional missile fire. But that's why you have all those Doomwheels and abominations and whatnot to distract your opponent from firing at these sneaky religious warpstone fume-addicted religious nuts. Work best in units of max 10 models strong, or even less if you're confident your opponent will not be fielding much missile troops (or that you'll be able to protect this unit from them), due to having the tendency of getting in each other's way and killing themselves with the fog of death. Add a plague priest (which is overpriced in my opinion though), to grant the unit even further maiming capacity.
Pure murder against most elf and human armies due to wounds on failed T-tests with no armor save, in addition to actually being fairly decent in melee. Low initiative (for a skaven) is a bit problematic against elves though.
- Things I've tried to get to work but which I find horribly bad in what they do compared to their points cost:
- Assassins (too pricey, seems to me like it's supposed to be some kind of hero-killer, but in my experience gets beaten up by most other armies' heroes)
- Night runners (can't see the point with these really, except with a warp-grinder weapon team. Which makes them random, expensive, and still doing rear-sneaky-attacking worse than a pack of 5 gutter runners)
- Warplock jezzails (costly, have trouble hitting anything smaller than a great dragon, and has a distinct lack of causing multiple wounds. Also difficult (and expensive) to protect against fast cavalry / flyers / ambushers coming to hunt them down).
- Poisoned wind globadiers (expensive, super short range, very situational, only usable really if you are 8" from a heavily armored target like a knight unit, which usually sounds like a bad place to be for most skaven units anyway)
- Doom-flayer weapon teams (Never got these to work. And besides, with options like the ratling gun on the poisoned wind mortar, why would you ever take this instead?)
Naturally, I in no mean to say the above is the ultimate truth of anything. Just observations from personal experience.
What do you think? As playing as or against skaven? Do you have different opinions?
Would we get some sort of conversation up and running from this wall of random text I apparently spawned?
Edit: typos and stuff
