8th Ed. 1k Lizardmen vs Skaven

[The Hunted]

Hey everybody,

It has been quite a long time since I posted, but I'm trying to get back...Uni is killing me, but that will not stop me!

I had a battle today vs my friends' Skaven army. We played a small battle, read further to see what happened! One more note: My opponent has a habit of rolling above average, pretty much always. His leadership tests are also rolled high most of the time

My list:

Scar-vet General, CO, LA, Sh, BBoC
Scar-vet BSB, enchanted shield, luckstone

24 SW-St-Mu
21 SW-St-Mu-Spears
10 skirmishers
6 chameleon skinks
1 Salamander + extra handler
(might be off by a model or so)

The skaven list:

Warplock Engineer, Lvl 2, Doomrocket. (Spells: Warp lightning and Crack's call)
Chieftain BSB- gear unkown (nothing much)

30 Clanrats-St-Mu
30 Clanrats-St-Mu
----Warpfire thrower
25 Clanrats St-Mu
----Poisoned Wind Mortar

HPA (!!)

So, he had lots of ranks, allways unpredictable Skaven shooting and a Hell Pit Abomination.
I had my standard list for 1k, but swapped some equipment so my General had a flaming weapon.
By lack of real terrain, we played with 3 pieces, which were all 100m Stone collums (Impassable, blocks LOS). In real life, they would be used as candles

Deployment looked something like this:

------PWM-------------WFT
----------CL1----HPA -CL2-------Cl3
--Ch-IMP-----imp--------IMP
----------Sp----SW--Skirm----
----------------------Sala

So my spears were facing off vs 25 Clanrats (with warplock engineer) and a Poisoned wind mortar.
My SW, skirmishers and Salamander faced the HPA, 2 units of rats and the Warpfire thrower.
The chameleons scouted to my left, to get behind his lines and fire away!

He took the first turn.

Turn 1:
General advance across the field.
I dispell warp lightning, crack's call kills 3 spears.
Shooting fails.

My saurii also advance a bit, my general making sure he can sui-charge the HPA if it needs to come to that. My chameleons move behind his lines to fire at his HPA, my skirmishers sacrifice themselves for a 'shoot&sac'. Salamander moves up for a shot.
No magic!
Shooting puts 2 wounds on the HPA (because that's average when needing 4+ on 6 dice:| )

Turn 2:
He charges my skirmishers with his CL2 and HPA, with stand and shoot they put another 2 wounds on the terrible beast! (2 to go..). Otherwise he advances his CL1 and CL3, his warplock engineer bailes out of the unit to try and fry the chameleons behind his unit.
Magic: He IF warp lightning, rolls a 1 to hit, wounds his own engineer with his own spell and miscasts into another wound! Therefore he kills his own engineer, which panics of CL1 (to my left). They retreat to behind my chameleons skinks, and flee off the board next turn.
So instead of killing my chameleons, he blew up his own warplock engineer and fled off a unit of clanrats->win!

Combat: he destroys my poor skirmishers, and overruns a bit.

I charge his HPA with both my saurus units.
Sala goes to fry his CL3
Shooting: Chameleons shoot off his Poisoned wind mortar, Sala fries 11 clanrats but they hold.
Combat: HPA 'feeds', killing 7 Saurii and putting a wound on my General. My General then puts a flaming[/b] wound on it, and my BSB finishes it off.

Now, here is where my friend makes a HUGE mistake. The HPA is 'too horrible to die', meaning it can come back to life on a roll (needing a 6). BUT, this is impossible when he has taking a flaming wound....naturally, he did not read that part and rolls a 6! It comes back with 2 wounds.
My Saurii units overrun into CL2 (with the BSB).

The HPA comes back on the battlefield, facing the flank of my spears.

Turn 3:

He charges his HPA in the flank of my spears, and CL3 to their front.
He has no other movement left. (HPA+CL3 in combat with spears, CL2+BSB in combat with SW+my BSB)
Shooting: warp-fire thrower kills 3 skink handlers...but the Sala lives!
Combat: By this point I was pretty dissapointed. I did everything right, but that stupid HPA came back to life and kill my spears. There was absolutely nothing I could do about this, so I wasn't a happy bunny. The HPA kills about 10 of my spearmen (including stomp), I kill a batch of clanrats back. Everything holds.

I charge my Sala into his Warpfire thrower, but it gets killed off. My chameleons then proceed to shoot it down.
Combat:
HPA destroys the R&F saurus, my general then comes back into base contact with it and does its job by killing it. Again. While it shouldn't have been alive...
my BSB and his Saurus do their job against the clanrats again, felling 5 of their number.

My general flees from combat, but gets away.
His clanrats+BSB also break, but I catch them!

Turn 4:
His clanrats charge my fleeing General, who tries to get away but fails.

We call it here, because I could not catch his other clanrats anymore.

I win the game, but I should have massacred him. The HPA just chewed through my saurus spears like there was no tomorrow. I expected this, therefore I shot some wounds off of it, so my General (with flaming attacks) and BSB could finish it off. That plan worked fantastically!
If it hadn't come back to life, I would chew through his remaining clanrats and kill them off. Wiping him off the board...with the HPA alive it was very tense!

He got unlucky with his warplock engineer, but had tremendous 'luck' with his HPA.
My luck was normal as always, my dice rolls below average except for 1 round where my saurii went berserk (they always do that!).

Final report:

General: fantastic, with his flaming attacks made sure the HPA could not rampage on.
BSB: Solid, killed lots of rats and helped kill of the HPA.

Spears: unfortunately got 'killed' by a reanimated HPA. Still did their job by holding on to the bitter end, slaying some clanrats in the process.
Saurus Warriors: Nearly untouched, and with the BSB chewed through clanrats. Solid!
Skirmishers: put 3 wounds on the HPA, and blocked a unit of clanrats and the HPA. This meant I could charge, instead of receiving the charge.
Chameleons: The warplock engineer blew himself up when targetting them, taking the clanrat unit with them! Also took a wound of the HPA and destroying both weapon teams.
Salamander: Killed of lots of rats, didn't panic them and got killed in a foolish attempt by me. Still good!

Overall, I was a bit grumpy when his HPA came back to life...but very happy knowing I killed it twice and still won without tailoring my list (a whole lot).

Thanks for reading!

The Hunted

 

[Arli]

Grats on the win. Those HPAs are a real pain in the butt!

 

[The Hunted]

Thanks Arli,

Honestly, I expected the darn thing to be much worse! Its quite 'shootable' with skinks, which is awesome. If you get it down to 1-2 wounds, a scar-vet can deal with it. Which was the original plan. Still a large pain in the backside, but not as worse as I thought

The Hunted

 

[Arli]

I fought one a few weeks ago that I killed, then it came right back with full wounds and proceeded to beat and overun the unit of TG/slann that it fought. It was a low points game with no bsb and I rolled like 11 on the combat rez roll.

 

[Vallek]

I'll say congratulations on your win.. but it kinda looks like your friend uses his high rolls as a crutch. His deployment isn't very good and the fact he fielded ALL clanrats and not a single unit of slaves means he doesn't understand how to use the verminous horde to it's full potential.

First of all, the HPA is NOT a "front and center" monster. The thing is brutal but does the most damage by running up the flank then sweeping across the field. Coming right up the middle makes it far too vulnerable to shooting, a matter you exploited well. In this low point of a game I'd MUCH rather field two warp lightning cannons over one HPA and that can be done for nearly 60 points less.

Secondly, if he had fielded a fat block of slaves instead of one of those units of clanrats he could have locked into either of your saurus units, tarpitted you, then moved his warpfire thrower up along side and roasted your saurus. Slaves literally half the point cost of clanrats.. so you are talking double the wounds. AND it only costs half a point to give them shields, so a parry save to help mitigate some of the losses. Slaves have the expendable special rule which means the owning player can shoot into CC containing slaves and with the new template rules the hits wouldn't be randomized, anything touching the template takes the hit. I've used the slave/warpfire thrower combo tons in the past, It's great for locking down just about anything by feeding it more wounds then they can possibly swallow in one or two turns for a miniscule amount of points.

Finally, his general choice was a foolish one. The warlock engineer is cool and has some pretty fun toys, but he is comparable to a skink priest. With only a leadership of 5 he doesn't bring much of a leadership bubble to the field. I would probably have gone chieftain or plague priest for the 6 leadership, and the plague priest's spells are better, in my opinion.

 

[The Hunted]

I'll say congratulations on your win.. but it kinda looks like your friend uses his high rolls as a crutch. His deployment isn't very good and the fact he fielded ALL clanrats and not a single unit of slaves means he doesn't understand how to use the verminous horde to it's full potential.

First of all, the HPA is NOT a "front and center" monster. The thing is brutal but does the most damage by running up the flank then sweeping across the field. Coming right up the middle makes it far too vulnerable to shooting, a matter you exploited well. In this low point of a game I'd MUCH rather field two warp lightning cannons over one HPA and that can be done for nearly 60 points less.

Secondly, if he had fielded a fat block of slaves instead of one of those units of clanrats he could have locked into either of your saurus units, tarpitted you, then moved his warpfire thrower up along side and roasted your saurus. Slaves literally half the point cost of clanrats.. so you are talking double the wounds. AND it only costs half a point to give them shields, so a parry save to help mitigate some of the losses. Slaves have the expendable special rule which means the owning player can shoot into CC containing slaves and with the new template rules the hits wouldn't be randomized, anything touching the template takes the hit. I've used the slave/warpfire thrower combo tons in the past, It's great for locking down just about anything by feeding it more wounds then they can possibly swallow in one or two turns for a miniscule amount of points.

Finally, his general choice was a foolish one. The warlock engineer is cool and has some pretty fun toys, but he is comparable to a skink priest. With only a leadership of 5 he doesn't bring much of a leadership bubble to the field. I would probably have gone chieftain or plague priest for the 6 leadership, and the plague priest's spells are better, in my opinion.

Thanks for the reply and the explanation .

My friends' list was far from optimal. He hasn't played 10 games with his Skaven so far, so he doesn't know the ins&outs of the army yet. In fact, he is quite happy to learn what his units can do to me.
The HPA is indeed more of a flank buster, then a center-smasher. In this case though, if he would deploy it on the flank, I would shoot it even more with my chameleons and my skirmishers and sui-charge the General when it's left at 1 wound. My blocks would then take his blocks head-on, a battle I know I will win (even with a CL unit in the flank of my BSB's unit).
So the choice of centering his HPA wasn't too bad, but, as you indeed stated, it is better in general to avoid the center somewhat.

Double WLC+Warp-fire thrower+Slaves is a scary combo, what's even better for him is that this also works vs Brets, Empire, Dwarves and O&G (the other armies in our playgroup). So I will point this out to him the next time we play.
The additional shooting fits his playing style, as he is by nature a defensive player. He prefers to sit back and react to my actions, then to take the initiative himself.
I find it more fun to attack, but I think my best tactics are used when I need to defend. I really don't care

This was only my 2nd or so game vs Skaven, so I also don't know every tactic they can employ. Do you have an example for an army list (long/short)...to provide some guidance for him. He's not a forum-guy, but I know he will appreciate it! (and I will too )

Sorry about the lenghty post, I ramble too much as usual ^^

The Hunted

 

[Vallek]

Sure, I actually recently played a 1000 point game with my Skaven versus Ogre Kingdoms and this is the list I used.

General: Warlord - Warlitter, Enchanted Shield, Talisman of Preservation, Blade of Corruption, Other Tricksters Shard. (For those of you counting, that is a 2+ AS, 4+ ward skaven with 4 attacks at strength 5 that have multiple wound 2 special rules and 4 attacks at strength 4 from the mount that still allows for an LoS roll when in a unit and any model in base contact must reroll successful ward saves. This guy eats heroes and lords for breakfast.)

Chieftain - BSB, Banner of Eternal Flame (excellent all purpose banner for cheap)

25 Clan Rats - Shields and Hand Weapon, Musician, Standard, Warpfire Thrower
36 Slaves - Shields, Musician
35 Slaves - Shields, Musician
5 Giant Rats w/ 1 Packmaster (called a "rat dart", have your friend look up how to use them)
5 Giant Rats w/ 1 Packmaster
5 Gutter Runners - Poisoned Attacks, Slings (works similarly to our chamo skinks)
2 Warp Lightning Cannons

Total: 1000 points

That unit of 36 slaves only costs 92 points and utterly locked down an Iron Guts unit for the entire game. 6 extra ranks grants them a huge leadership and with a BSB nearby he just couldn't break them. They can't hit for crap but thats not their job. Once the slaves have a unit locked you unleash ranged hell.

 

[The Hunted]

Sure, I actually recently played a 1000 point game with my Skaven versus Ogre Kingdoms and this is the list I used.

General: Warlord - Warlitter, Enchanted Shield, Talisman of Preservation, Blade of Corruption, Other Tricksters Shard. (For those of you counting, that is a 2+ AS, 4+ ward skaven with 4 attacks at strength 5 that have multiple wound 2 special rules and 4 attacks at strength 4 from the mount that still allows for an LoS roll when in a unit and any model in base contact must reroll successful ward saves. This guy eats heroes and lords for breakfast.)

Chieftain - BSB, Banner of Eternal Flame (excellent all purpose banner for cheap)

25 Clan Rats - Shields and Hand Weapon, Musician, Standard, Warpfire Thrower
36 Slaves - Shields, Musician
35 Slaves - Shields, Musician
5 Giant Rats w/ 1 Packmaster (called a "rat dart", have your friend look up how to use them)
5 Giant Rats w/ 1 Packmaster
5 Gutter Runners - Poisoned Attacks, Slings (works similarly to our chamo skinks)
2 Warp Lightning Cannons

Total: 1000 points

That unit of 36 slaves only costs 92 points and utterly locked down an Iron Guts unit for the entire game. 6 extra ranks grants them a huge leadership and with a BSB nearby he just couldn't break them. They can't hit for crap but thats not their job. Once the slaves have a unit locked you unleash ranged hell.

Somewhat late response, nonetheless: Thanks!

That warlord is a beast! I usually trust on my heroes to survive/kill, but with that guy around...ugh

All the rest is focused om holding me up and shooting me down. Though, the slaves are supposed to hold me up. But in my experience, my Saurii will just tear through them like there is no tomorrow...
Anyways, thanks for the list. I will read through some tactics on the skaven forum and will pass all the info on through my mate.
We'll see how it turns out!

The Hunted

 

[Vallek]

Slaves aren't trying to win, they are trying to set you up to lose... if that makes sense.

The unit locks into you from the front which can allow for a flank charge.. alternatively, you lock in with the clan rats then one of slave units flank charges you to deny rank bonus.

It is VERY hard for saurus warriors to match a unit of 36 so those slaves are going to get steadfast, leadership upped to 7 from the warlord, then a bonus for each additional rank means more often than not they are testing on leadership 10.

If just the slaves lock into you then you will be dealing with warplightning cannon fire and warpfire thrower fire. The warplightning cannons, unlike normal cannons, have a variable strength base on an artillery dice roll (whatever is rolled for the bounce is the strength of the shot, so 2, 4, 6, 8 or 10) AND unlike normal cannon at the end of the bounce it explodes into a small template. The warpfire thrower is strength 5 with -2 to save multiwound d3 flame template.

Any good Skaven player worth their salt knows that slaves are there for dying. Slaves don't win combat, slaves don't hold lines. They are cheap wounds meant to absorb punishment while the stronger units set up for counter charges or for artillery bombardment. It's 96 points to field 36 toughness 3 wounds you have to beat your way through.. you have to admit you're not doing that in 1-2 turns even with saurus warriors.

 

[The Hunted]

It does make sense actually.

With HW/S I will kill about 5 Slaves every round. With all the other combat modifiers, the slaves will lose..but then again they always do. I think I can make you test on a -3 pretty often, but that's quite doable (with re-roll even more).
And I can only keep up that momentum for 1-2 round probably, because then all of my saurus will be shot to pieces. Following problem is that I only have 2 blocks, and after 6 shooting rounds there will be very little left for my opponent to shoot. with 2 roadblock-slave units and a 'tough'(-ish) clanrat block...

The rat-darts and gutter runners can go after my skinks, so I cannot hunt down your war machines as easily as I would on any other given day.

I get it now . Thanks for all your input! I will have a hard time with this

The Hunted

 

[Vallek]

Naw, not as hard as you might think actually.

Send Chamo skinks after one of the warplightning cannons and if anything distract it.
Get a salamander unit to go after one of the units of slaves and try to widdle it down to a manageable size.
If he moves that warpfire thrower forward hammer it with skink shots.

Even if you can only efficiently take out one cannon and the warpfire thrower you have DRASTICALLY taken down his potential of winning. Now, if he learns to run block with the rat darts and defends his cannons well then you might have some issues. Until then just look for openings and exploit them.

Once you get up to around 1500 pts. just field a Slann and spam dwellers below. Skaven HATE dwellers below.

 

[The Hunted]

At least a harder time than vs 3 clanrat units, some weapon teams and a HPA . Which plays very straightforward, allowing me to adjust accordingly.

The Hunted

 

[Vallek]

Glad to have been help for you and your friend. Happy gaming!