3D6" From Rage Quit

[TkaiC]

So at the start of the day, I needed 40 Skaven Slaves to get a unit ticked off...



Is what I've done come 10 o'clock (hampered by some annoying breaks for Christmas shopping...)

A little bit of the detail:





I have to say the Gnoblars are great fun, really full of character, but one of the worst kits I've had from GW.  Mold lines all over the place and some quite poor detailing on some of the guys. There's a marked contrast in the quality of the cast on the box of Gnoblar fighters and the couple of Scraplauncher crew models I picked up from Ebay, the latter are far crisper and more detailed.

Still, it just means I need to paint on the details that are missing...practice, practice, practice!  A further 16 are cleaned and assembled, as are the rats that'll join them.  Lots to paint tomorrow...think this may be another missed deadline!

[cunningmatt]

Good work, they look fun - yeah some of the older moulds are terrible (e.g. Chaos Marauders) with great big mould lines. Fingers crossed for the remaining 32 tomorrow!

[TkaiC]

Well, if I'd been in charge of wardrobe for the 300, there'd have been a massive shortage and everyone would've had to fight the Persians in just their pants.  Oh, wait, that was the wardrobe. 

I tried to get 40 of these chaps done last weekend but, unfortunately, real life intervened.  I've just washed the next batch of 8 (I find for rank and file types 8 at a time works well, enough to get plenty done, few enough to control the boredom)...my phone's camera is rubbish and Mrs T is at work so can't use hers - apologies for the blurry group shot:



Obviously still awaiting basing and a further 12 reinforcements (I've done 4 previously) to bring them up to strength (40).  The yellow will make them stand out from the rest of the army, my aim is to have a different main colour for some 'specialist' regiments (gnoblar/slaves will be yellow, flagellant/slaves are going to be white/cream, stormvermin purple, plague monks green) all seasoned through with some grey/black clanrats to tie the army together.  Unfortunately I've already painted 2 weapons teams (mortar and warpfire) in the yellow scheme, so they're due a repaint into a shade of grey.

In other news, Santa was good to me and popped these little chaps in my stocking:



The Doomflayer is one of those 'could be amazing' Skaven contraptions - D3 impact hits (S4) and then an artillery dice worth of hits at S4 Armour Piercing.  Unfortunately it's at I3, so suffers from the same problems my Plague Monks have had in recent battles, 3 is just too low an initiative when you've got no armour!  That and the usual unforgiving black-powder style misfire chart and it could all go wrong very quickly!  Fortunately the baby Doomwheel has a 3+ armour save from the front, plus a 4+ ward if it's close to its parent unit.  Downside is the 1 wound...55pts for a tiny chariot that's one of my favourite models though?  All shades of win.

Sneaking in beside the 'flayer is everyone's favourite Assassin, Deathmaster Snikch.  Fabulous model, brilliant rules (he's invisible!  He's a killing machine!  He's, ah, quite expensive.  boo) and definitely a test piece for a good paint job.  Also in the selection was a Skaven Warlord, I've already painted up one of these as my BSB, but it's my favourite of the Warlord models, he just looks a bit weatherbeaten and rugged to me, in a "if Strider was a rat..." kind of way.

Anyroad, hope everyone had a great Christmas, next weekend I'm going to finish the Slave block and then switch over to the Darklight Maskerade for some 40k painting...

[cunningmatt]

Good stuff, good stuff... well bar the camera work - have you been smearing Vaseline on the lens?!

As anyone who has ever played me will confirm, I know nothing about tactics so I can't really add anything to your discussion but 55 points for something fun always sounds good to me. And based on the first 24 days of the month you may have guessed I'm a Special Character fiend!

[The Trampoline]

Good stuff, good stuff... well bar the camera work - have you been smearing Vaseline on the lens?!

Like watching the Web Planet...

[fatolaf]

The doom flayer can be an amazing addition to your army , can really help your slave blocks win combat with all their static CR. combo charge with a slave block and just make sure the flayer is clipping the edge of the unit that is being attacked.
Very few return hits combined with your good frontal armour save means it should survive.
Even better if you get 2 

[cunningmatt]

Even better if you get 2 

You'll have to wait until next Christmas for that! 

[TkaiC]

Right, have (a) done some painting and (b) borrowed a non soft focus camera so without further ado, here's a hodge podge of a unit:



A mix of gnoblars, IoB clan rats, giant rats and some quite big rats.



I had a bit of a hobby sort out and, amongst the various sprues I have, found the plague monk ones with a number of extra rats attached.  A quick dig around for bases and a painting spree later and - ta dah - 16 rodents of unusual size.  And of course they need a packmaster...even if he is pocket sized!



There are a further 10 old school metal giant rats undercoated and due a painting this afternoon.  This takes me to 26.  I think there are a few in my box at the club (hopefully 4!).  Throw in a couple of rat swarm bases and suddenly it's a 40 strong unit - win!  Giant rats have an average stat line (S3, T3, I4) but are dirt cheap (3pts!) and fight in an extra rank even when charging.  So my unit of 40, deployed as a horde, throw out, oh yeah, 40 attacks.  Coming in at 144pts (with 3 packmasters) that's a bit of a bargain, particularly if you factor in that their fast movement gives them a decent chance of flank charge goodness.  Now...the list I'm working towards doesn't have any giant rats in it (other lists may do though!) but the other bonus is they can just be chucked into any old unit to fill out the ranks of the painted.  I'm a big fan of giving the units (particularly slaves) different height profiles, leading to a more chaotic overall look.  Maybe I need a couple of rats on stilts for this...

One thing I've *massively* struggled with before is the humble rat dart.  For anyone not familiar with the phrase, it's a tiny unit, consisting of 5 rats and their handler, generally arranged like so:

XX
0X
XX

With the handler as the 0.  It costs 23pts and is the cheapest chaff/march block/redirect/speedbump unit in the Skaven arsenal, barring Warlock Engineers.  The big problem I have with it is that, unlike Slave blocks (which do the same jobs and at minimum strength still only cost 40pts) these pesky critters cause panic as they flee and with a Leadership of 5, they tend to flee pretty quickly.  They're far more manouverable than the Slave option though and I think it's time I tried to use the tactic more extensively.  Skaven are very much a counter punching army and it's daft to not take advantage of their best blocking option.  Just need to keep that Genearl/BSB unit nearby!

[cunningmatt]

Good work there with the unit, and the multi-purpose unit fillers (TM).

Was worried the Gnoblars wouldn't work, but am pleased to be proved wrong. Matching their clothes in with the Slave clothes brings a consistant look to disorder. Ponder over the metaphysics of that if you will!

[TkaiC]

Not a Battle Report

Quick update about last night's games:

1) vs Sami's Light spam Empire...boo to Light spam.  Magic ruled the game (Sami killed my BSB/Warlord/Stormvermin bunker over 2 turns of banishment whilst Cracks Call took off a War Altar/War Priest and panicked off the Astronimacan (is that what's it called?  The Weather Machine thingy, looks pretty)) and it came down to last turn (un)lucky rolls to give Sami an 11-9 win.

2) vs Glenn's Ogres...boo to Ogres.  The Hellpit happily ate lots, everyone else died horribly.  Horribly!

Ok, not exactly a deeply insightful tactical analysis I know (that'll be posted later, possibly) but my two trial games have highlighted 3 big flaws of my current list:

1) Relying on dispel dice is not enough.  I need anti-magic in the list
2) The Storm Vermin bunker (esp. with General/BSB in there) is too expensive to just sit in front of gunlines/magic.  It needs to get into combat swiftly.
3) I don't have enough chaff/deployment drops to control who faces up against who (potentially I do, just over-committed my general, silly Tom)

Full update and tweaked lists later!