I dunno how.. but after 2 turns I stopped vs a friend of mine who used skaven list... I'm not going to give both lists but just a small idea... Me: 2nd gen slann in 20 TG 5x10 skinks 2 scouts 6 chams 2x3 krox 3 sallies vs lvl 4 wizard 3x lvl 1 wizards WL canon... the bell thing in a big block of rats... 6 jezzrails Plaguebearers The tunnelers and some other units i never really met in combat... To make things short... He started Turn 1 and after that 50% of my army was dead or Running.... I used Plaq of Protection of my slann instead of dominion cuz of the shooting.... anyway... He had like a total of 11 "candies" what he called warptokens.... in one magic fase he casted... 4 Warp lightings.... + bound item of warp lighting... =Sallie unit running... 2 skink units running... and 1 lvl 2 skink priest dead... I had 6 DD vs 7PD but he used his powertokens with every spell.... It just raped me... and I just can't believe it.... I didn't dispell anything cuz he rolled way too good and I didn't roll anything... And it wasn't over yet... but I used both my dispell scrolls As I knew both my wizards were gonna be dead... He could march with his warp lighting cannon and still fire it.. WTF... His WL Cannon just shot and killing my priest.. so 2 priests dead without ever doing anything... His jezzrails did 6 wounds on my krox... after that he rang his bell.. he rolled 13... meaning panic test on all my units... I failed 1/2.... = 2 more skink units running... only thing not running were my TG and 2 krox units while one was down to half... After that I did one turn to see what I could rally and see my magic... It wasn't much.. After his second turn of Crazy magic I just called the game and stopped.... As I'd seen his unit of plaguebears completly kill a unit of GraveGuards before in his former game and didn't want my slann unit get into it.... Is this really what Skaven can do ?? ... As I didn't believe it when I saw it... Was my first time playing them... and His first time too.. so I don't think he used it correctly... Any Comment apreciated
Skaven are sweet, despite them being our army's arch nemesis. As you said, he rolled well. If someone's rolling consistently well, it doesn't mean your army sucks, or that his is amazing. I was playing with my Ogres and rolled 4 misfires for Leadbelchers on my first turn. They all died. He didn't even take his turn yet and he had accumulated 200+ points. Poop happens. Your list is fine... assuming everyone was equipped well, that's a solid army.
It was the same list whith which I gave WoC a massive massacre... a WoC list only with knights and marauders... The Game befpre these skaven... By turn 2 half his army was dead cuz good rolling of Metal spells and good march blocking... but vs this heavy magic skaven army I felt like I had no chance at all... damn power stones... Can a lvl 4 skaven wizard rlly have 8 of those stones ? .... seems like this guy can do the same for like 2x less cost as our slann.... Powerwise then.. I kno no miscasts wards saves wounds ect.... but I mean power magic wise its insane...
Skaven do indeed have the potential to be rediculously powerful, and you faced such a list. He really should tone it down, if you posts it on any of the Skaven forums he will get flamed for being cheesy. Battles wil be just no fun at all, like you found out. That one does have the high potential for a few miscasts, which could turn the battle the other way, but who wants a game that relies on miscasts? Skaven can also be really powerful if they take lots of clanrats with ratling guns. Again, chance to kill themselves, but big chance to decimate your army. You didn't even face the worst they have to offer. There isn't really much I can advise. Keep your skinks protected, the only protection from WLC is to hide in a big unit and get look out sir, or stay out of it's range. Tell your friend that for the sake of fairness he should tone it down.
That many dice being cast is a great chance to either go great or.... 'splode. Try maybe the cube of darkness to stop the damage. The gunline is incredibly cheezy but even more destructive. But again the cannon, all of the power dice being thrown, and the tunnelers could just as easily destroyed themselves in a most spectacular fashion. Wait fot the new book and see how tiqtac'to works against the crews of those guns.
I recently fought Skaven and lost barely because on turn 4 everything he had kept rolling 13's! Anyways, the secret to stopping them is to buff you Slann up with the usual Diadem, Dominion, Tepok group to give him one hell of a magic phase. TAKE THE LORE OF HEAVENS! You're guranteed two out of three when it comes to Forked Lightening, Uranon's Thunderbolt, and Comet. Pray you get comet. Bring the Cube of Darkness on a Mark of the Olds Ones Skink to MAKE SURE it works. If it does, then you'll shut down his magic phase instantly, keeping you alive for one turn and giving you extra power dice. As for the Screaming Bell, that thing is a bitch. Make one of your spells Steed of Shadows if you can, hiding behind or in terrain, get you Slann close enough to the JSoD you will want to have and use him to hurl the JSoD across the board into the Bell. MAKE SURE YOU'RE IN RANGE! If you are, the Screaming Bell, if you get past it's Ward save, blow's up instantly, not to mention you auto-hit. I blew the damn thing up turn 2, but I sadly lost because my Salamanders happily roasting his flanks Panic when his Bell got a 13. That's the only time I've lost to Skaven in the many times I've fought them. If you can, strike the Hell out of his unit with the Grey Seer. Skaven Leadership sucks, nail him with a Forked Lightening and Uranon's Thunder Bolt and you're good to go. Not to mention use about 4 dice not including the free di the Slann gets and you're basically guranteed to get off Comet. That spell can destroy an entire Skaven army in one blast, Jezzails, WLC, you name it.
Well... I said pritty much the same to him.... I just got battered because he had first turn.... Instead if I would've had first turn my magic could have killed some good stuff of him, could have shot his grey seer of his damn bell.. logically I should been able to... But that just depends on one dice roll... Anyway I didn't mention it but he had 2-3 ratling guns too.. he just never used em cuz I quit on turn 2 ...
I would also recomend using drain magic at a high level with the cube and that you can sometimes kill his first 2 magic phases which if your lucky means that you are stuck in by that point
With the new book I think Lizards might actually do worse against the skaven....without tepok spam the magic is hard to stop, though massing Engines will have a similar effect. I honestly think that massing engines will be the new cheese strategy for lizardmen, and it would certainly stop the rats as long as you can ward save the warp cannon and unleash the burning alignment in the middle of all his guys, the bell will lose a lot of it's effectiveness if you just kill all the guys around it....though the same is true of pretty much anything in this game. You might even take a formation of skink chiefs rolled into a pterodon unit and use them to backdoor his jezails and the warp lightning cannon. It would be pretty expensive, and hog up your hero slots, but a Slann with the new diadem, the dispel rod, the banner of making wizards stupid and the cogitation discipline can shut down magic really, really bad, bad enough to allow you to take 3 skink chiefs and mass them into a unit of pterodons. Just rice em up with some beatdown oriented magic items or spears and they'll be able to split up and kill weapon crews, or to mass together and take out blocks that don't have more then the usual combat rez.
Skaven aren't to scary are they? Sure they get some serious damage out put, but all the things causing it are very vunerable. A JSoD into the Bell and some terradons into the Engineers and Warp cannons and you should come out on top (of course, clever manouvering is required to get these things into those units but thats the game of warhammer).
The problem with Skaven is it's an army that depends on dice. All of their units are powerful, but at the same time have a really high chance at backfiring. Jezzails, Warp-Lightening Cannons, Screaming Bells, all are extremely effective but can easily turn in the opponents favour.
Skaven are perfect targets for the FSOD. Give him Sword of Might and bam. Alot of dead Skaven wizards. They really arn't that good. Scouting is very important.
I'd heavily agree with that. I almost won a game where my Chameleons and Skinks scouted in a lake by his deployment zone, worked extremely well.
I think that comet of cassandora against an army like the scaven would be vary effective, as the units would be packed together, and it would have a large chance of hitting.
What you have to worry about with sakven (6thed. since 7th hasn't been released yet for 'em) are ratlinguns which will cut down skinks and terridons like nobodies business. Also the stand and shoot against the FSoD if the engineer has a pistol. And then there's the fact that skaven love taking casualties and for that reason there are endless swarms of 'em. They can afford to lose a unit or two.