Skaven Rumours

[fatolaf]

Not sure about it, loved Eric's source though, Rat Ogres T6...Now that's what I'm talking about....

Again lets see what is in the book..

Shame you can't see the bell in this piccy..

[Funkadelic Erik]

Not sure about it,

In a "thats broken" or "I don't think it will be like that" way?

Knowing how GW are now, expect the worst.


The bottom of that bell looks like a deathroller.

[fatolaf]

In a "thats broken" or "I don't think it will be like that" way?

As in seems a bit poo way, like WoC was, meaning everyone will gear the lists around the uberspell....

[maelzch]

Also looks like slaves are auto-destroyed if they break... but cause wounds to nearby units.

...taking it all with a pinch of salt until i see it myself.

I'd take this with a bag of salt meself, the Skaven slaves felling, doing hits and destroyed is the same as that in the 'Dwarfs of Chaos' Indy GT book for rabble.

hmm...

[fatolaf]

More Rat rumours, a lot confirming what we have heard before....

I had a good look at the book today. Some of it is fun, some of it is also good, and some things still just aren't very good at all.

The Good:

-Clanrats have a good price point

-Giant rats are good: cheap, fast and a fair number of attacks

-Slaves are, as always, cheap and expendable

-Plague monks with the Plague Furnance. This thing, like most of the new war machines, is flat out off in crazy town. impact hits, toughness tests, more toughness tests for the plague priest censer (yes, you test twice), crew attacks, then crazy swinging ball attacks. And oh yeah, a spray attack for those times you don't make it into close combat...
Just guard the unit's flanks. You lose a lot if this thing gets outmanuevered

-Plague censers

-Jezzails

- the new weapon teams. The spiky ball o' death does a rather ridiculous number of hits- d3 impact + artillery die all at S4. Plus its very, very hard to kill, with a serious armor save and a ward save
The poison wind mortar is essentially a mobile stone thrower that wounds on a 5 up, and is part of the core choices.

-Plague priests are murdering spellcasting killing machines of pure rage. And the wither spell is just....

- The abomination is a savage killer with a giant pile of attacks and impact hits, and sometimes, even yet more attacks. It is the first warhammer monster I've seen that can go on an absolute unit-killing rampage and be rather certain about charging fully ranked up infantry blocks and winning easily.

-The doomwheel. Yet more impact hits (high elves will hate skaven armies), plus shooting that happens even in combat. And impact hits and shooting hits even when it doesn't charge (and is still in CC)

The things that are sort of like chariots aren't actually chariots. Impact hits and various goodness without the badness or exploding

Some very fun misfire charts

The pretty good-
lightning cannons blast templates from cannons? Um, good?
and plague catapults- Large blasts templates that ignore armor saves makes many fantasy armies cry. The strength is low, but if there is a way to combine this with Wither reliably, people will cry tears of burning pus.

The iffy
Stormvermin are... reasonable

Night runners are pricey distractions. They can set up for an outflank easily, but have very little ability to do anything but die

Plague monks by themselves, still a bit pricy for 3 str 3 attacks

- Poison wind globadiers they're competing with things that are just better in the special slots. But at least they're better than gutter runners or rat ogres. And they can have a mortar team trailing along behind them. Oh, and each unit champ can just have a death globe.

- the other weapon teams. Compared to the other two, they just are kinda meh

-grey seers. Like the special characters, expensive. With the screaming bell, ridiculously expensive.

rat swarms. Good price for current edition swarm rules, but they don't take up a core slot and the rare units are *fun* and half the special units are good.

The Bad
Eshin and Moulder things overall (with the exception of the Hellpit abomination). Gutter runners are still very over priced, rat ogres dropped a bit in points, but don't have nearly enough in the way of offense or defense.

The magic items. As in, what happened? I didn't expect a lot of armor, but... 3 talismans? A handful of other stuff. Yes, some things are spread out by clan, but most of this stuff isn't all that impressive, and you just can't kit out all that many characters effectively.

Assassins. Still bad, so sad.

The 13th spell. Please, I can do math. This isn't happening, barring some bizarre fluke, and I'm not throwing all my dice on a fluke. You can't actually get this spell off reliably- you have to sell your soul to get irresistible force without getting a miscast.

Vermintide is still in, and essentially unchanged. Boo.

Verminlord. Pricey, mediocre, can't join anything and can't be the general.


Anyway, expect to see a lot of Plague armies, war machine armies and mixed plague and war machine armies.

Also, expect high elf players to absolutely hate you with the burning hatred of a thousand suns. You can easily have 6-10 things that do impact attacks, toughness tests or *both* and therefor happen before ASF.

Oh, yeah, and with mainstay gone expect some wacky things. Don't be terribly surprised when people drop a large plague monk unit with a plague furnace is being orbited by 2-3 Plague Censer units with LD 8 and stubborn. With clan rat units and spiky balls of death guarding the monks' flanks and multiple doomwheels rampaging about the battlefield.

I don't expect to see a lot of bells. Its good, and has a lot of neat stuff, but the plague furnance is _great_ and the cost ratio (including the requisite characters) is roughly 3:5

[Blue Moon]

Well that analysis is a little worrying. It sounds as if although many of the army's unique qualities and rules are still there, and perhaps the flavour of the army too, it does sound that it like most recently released army lists has the ability to be abused to create overpowered horrible cheesy lists!

[Funkadelic Erik]

Thats alright, it'll be on a par with the other tough books then. And, to be honest, I never had any doubt that Skaven were going to be nails - they were in Sixth.

[Funkadelic Erik]

Hell Pit Abomination
- more like a meld of many different creatures than one single big thing (drawing in the army book supposedly looks like a heap of skaven fused to several bigger creatures)
- Large Target, Terror, Regneration
- Stubborn (on Ld 8)
- Strength, Toughness and Wounds like a Giant
- slightly more expensive than a Giant
- special rule Shambling Horror, moves 3D6" and on a triple something interesting might happen
- special rule Too Horrible To Die means you have to roll a D6 after killing it, on a 1-3 it's actually dead, on a 4-5 it dies but you get D3 rat swarms and on a 6 it comes back to life with D6 Wounds
- special rule Warpstone Spikes gives it random attacks (equal chance of either S6 hits on all models in contact with no armour save causing D3 wounds / 3D6 attacks and any unit that suffers casualties is at -1 to hit the Abomination / all models in contact must pass In-tests or be slain outright and one unit in contact take 2D6 S6 hits)
- no model for the time being
- does NOT tunnel
- can get an upgrade to give it Magic Resistance and magical attacks



Thats right - it may not actually die if you kill it.



Ikit Claw :
M5 WS5 BS3 S5 T4 W3 I3 A2 LD7
Level 3 caster, chooses from Lore of Ruin, may switch 1 Spell for Warplightning
Exoskelleton : magic armour, 3+ AS, 5+ Ward Save. It states that it enhances his strengh (without it it would be S2). It comes with a Warpfirethrower which has one use only, but can reroll the artillery dice.
Stormdemon : Helbard which allows no AS. Can cast Black Warplightning as a bound spell (Powerlevel 5).
The black Warplightning does Artillery dice hits. If a misfire happens roll 1D6 :
1-2 : Ikit and all models in base to base contact take a S5 hit
3-5 : Ikit can cast no more spells during this magic phase
6 : Overload, Ikit generates D3 Power dice

Queek Headtaker
Same profile as normal warlord except for WS 7 and 6 attacks.
Can upgrade a unit of Stormvermin to his personal guard, giving them +1 WS and +1 S (+4 ppm)
Cannot join units with casters and the other way around.
Gets +1 to hit and to wound in a Challenge, must always accept them.
Dwarf Gauger and Handweapon :additional Attacks already in profile, all attacks allow no AS and Dwarfs are wounded on 2+
Warpstonearmour : 3+ AS, if a save is passed, the attacker gets a S5 hit (the normal Warpstonearmour in the magic item section is the same for 30 Points, but just S4 hits).

Skrolk
M5 WS6 BS4 S4 T5 W3 I6 A4 LD7
Level 3 caster, chooses from Lore of Plaque, may switch 1 Spell for Pestilence breath (translation ?)
Has Frenzy and may change Plaque Monks to core, but not sure about that...
All models in btb contact get -1 to hit, Clan Pestilence Units are immune to this effect tho.
Staff of coruption : Flail, after to hit rolls, a model which is hit one or more times must pass a single T test or is slain immediatly (no saves of any kind allowed !!). If it survives, go on with the normal to wound rolls and so on.
Liber Bubonicus : Bound Spell (Powerlevel 6). Chose a Unit in 24", then throw 1D6 :
1 : nothing happens
2-4 : every model in the unit gets a S1 hit, no AS allowed
5-6 : every model in the unit gets a S2 hit, no AS allowed

Deathmaster Snikch :
M6 WS8 BS6 S4 T4 W2 I10 A6 LD8
He may start the game hidden in a unit, be deployed like a scout or enter the battlefield like Dwarfen Miners from an Tableedge. He also has a 4+ Ward save, and nobody may use his LD and he always strikes first. These exact rules are the same for every Assasin, so now we come to were Snikch is special :
He has 3 weeping blades (bonus attacks already included in profile), which have Armour piercing and do D3 wounds.
If any unit wants to target him for magic, shooting or charges, they have to roll a 4+ to do so. If they dont pass, they may declare another target and ignore Snikch in all ways.

[Mike]

Saw the spru's for the new Clanrats & the doomwheel on saturday at kingston GW...

I dribbled... alot.  Gorgeous.. though the doom wheel is going to make me cry its got so many bits!

He also confirmed that the Battalion box will have new clanrats, rat Ogres, Giant rats & packmasters, monks.

Basically the old batallion box... but with new clanrats... all 40 of them!

[Funkadelic Erik]

There are pictures of the Bell and Cauldron (is that right?) floating around. Impressive, to say the least.