Demoralized WFB Player

[Erik Setzer]

I would like some "community advice" on how to deal with an issue that threatens to lead me to burnout with Warhammer before 9th edition even comes out.

Lately the armies on the table have had a big shift. It's happened in 40K and WFB, but it seems worse with WFB, probably because of army structure. Armies are getting designed to be more "beatstick." And the games are facilitating this big time.

I find myself unable to deal with those kind of armies. A couple army styles that have been the worst to deal with are Chaos Warriors with everything having Mark of Nurgle (for the -1 to hit), and combined Elf armies. (One player has an Elf army with a big block of Phoenix Guard escorting a Cauldron of Blood, with a Mage packed in the unit to try to boost their save to 3+, and with the Core Units being Wood Elf archers with magic arrows, plus a few assorted odds and ends.)

Saturday was the latest match in dealing with one of these style armies. It was 2500 points, Chaos Warriors versus Skaven.

His force was (IIRC):

2 Chimeras
2 Chariots, MoN
3 Bloodcrushers
~25-30 Warriors, MoN
Two Chaos Sorcerors, Chaos Lord on Palanquin with all kinds of boosts
All the characters were in the unit, which was five-wide, so with the 2x2 Palanquin and a command, it meant the Sorcerors were in the second rank, and weren't in immediate danger, but could cast spells outward.

My army was (trying to use some of the new ET stuff):

Verminlord Warpseer
Grey Seer
40 Clanrats with spear and shield, mortar
25 Stormvermin with shield, flamethrower (all I have right now)
6 Rat Ogres with 2 Packmasters
3 Stormfiends with ratling guns
3 Stormfiends with shock fists (no armor save)
Warp Lightning Cannon
3 Rat Swarms

Now, granted, some of my dice rolls weren't great, but it was just morale-shattering when I'd do something like, say, fire 37 shots at the Bloodcrushers to see only two wounds get through their armor. The Chariots just crushed the Stormfiends with impact hits, and I couldn't hit back well because of Mark of Nurgle, and he threw in a Chimera with each Chariot hitting the Stormfiends. Sniped my Grey Seer with a spell. Easily crushed my infantry because even my "elite" Core Units are a joke next to Chaos Warriors, much less Bloodcrushers.

I think I killed one Bloodcrusher, wounded both chariots and one of the Chimeras, and killed maybe five Warriors. He did more kills when one Wizard miscast and blew up. My entire army was wiped out in three turns. Three turns. That's it. Just hammering everything I have out there, to no effect, while everything hitting back just blew through my army.

That's what a lot of WFB games are turning into. I think a large part of the problem is the disparity in Core Units, where some armies have amazing Core Units but others are weak and feel like 25% being spent on filler units that might slow down a unit for a turn or two before being wiped out, leaving you just 75% to spend on stuff that could be effective. You need ridiculous counters for some of this stuff, like major top-of-their-lore spells to get past the 3+ ward save that Phoenix Guard end up with. Death star units just mow through stuff even worse than Thunderwolf Cavalry.

I actually like the individuals who play these armies, but I can't keep playing these games like that, and I think they'll get offended if I ask them to stop bringing the pain all the time (plus there's always excuses). I don't like building that kind of army, and anything else I send against them just gets ground up in a one-sided match that feels awful to play through. So what can I do, other than just resigning myself to only playing one or two people, or just giving up on WFB like some other people have?

[Khastarax]

Are wizards allowed to cast from 2nd rank? Not so at home in 8th rules, but that would be ridiculous imho.

But yeah, power creep, trying to keep making the hardest armys is something of all times. For me, in a game that s to big to really balance, it comes down to the player(s). The game should bring fun for two, you know that with certain army's it will be fun for one. Losing to a better player is fine, bad dice day? fine as well, but playing against these power armys is not something I do for fun... These army's belong in a tournament/ tournament meta imho. I would rather not play an army like that, but rather spend my precious hobby time playing someone more like-minded as myself..., where all the participants can have fun.

Playing these powerhouses is perfectly ok as long as you expect it and agree to play with army's like that. Don't see what's wrong in having an understanding in gaming society so that two metas can coexist by checking before the battle what the intentions are and to which camp each player belongs to, if it doesn't match, then no biggy and find each a different opponent. Tabling people in turn 3 is can only be fun for a winning player too...

[vonDietdrich]

This is pretty much what 40k and Fantasy have become since they opened the floodgates to list-building 'whatever you want', unfortunately. It hit 40k first, so I kept playing Fantasy a bit, but as the End Times winds down it's thoroughly changed Fantasy as well. Having to say 'hey, can you not do that, it's ridiculous' is getting less acceptable since it's clearly written in the core rules that players can now build armies how 'you want to', without being restricted by things like politeness or sanity.

Skaven, Empire, O&G and other armies that traditionally rely on weight of infantry are really lambasted by the sudden focus on a few big models, because they've never played that way. Other factions (Chaos, Elves, Undead) already focused on this playstyle, and the changes have really favored them because they get to pick the best of all possible options for their faction in each category. Combinations that would be manageable by themselves are suddenly ridiculous because the writers never really envisioned them all being thrown together (or if they did, they're irresponsible).

As far as your list goes, it seems like your Skaven are tailored to killing large numbers of weak infantry. Your list is /really/ small for a Skaven army, although I don't blame you. I wouldn't want to assemble or cart around hundreds of dudes either. That does put a limitation on the more traditional super-swarm Skaven tactics, though. You're not going to match the 'small, elite' armies model for model, so you want to outnumber them 3:1 or better if at all possible.

You've got a huge amount of options when dealing with a horde of enemies, but the game is getting away from big blocks of infantry and more towards smaller groups of superelite models. You don't have any unit-crackers, or dedicated flankers. In that regard, you don't have either component of a successful elite-killing list... the hammer or the anvil (at least not for a 2500 point game). The other big problem with the new list-building is that it's turned large games totally on their heads. Whereas you used to be able to scale a core force from 1000 points all the way up to 2000+ by just adding support units and upgrading characters, you now pretty much have to sit down with 2500 points fresh and design a list totally from the ground up.

Skaven are also pretty screwed because they didn't get a merger with any other factions.. which is unfortunate.

So what to do? Double or triple your list's model count, drop some of the expensive dudes for more infantry. The key here is 'weight of wounds', he took 3 turns to blow through your 80 models. If you've got 250 models, as obnoxious as that is, he's not going to kill them all in the space of a game. You don't really need the gatling Stormfiends, though the powerfists are cool for flanking into models with good saves. Unfortunately you're probably going to have to buy a whole new army's worth of models (assuming that your listed army is the majority of your collection). The second step is putting together some serious firepower from the options available to you. I'm not familiar with Skaven, but combing through their artifact selection for really good items and loading up a few characters as 'hero killers' is probably a good idea.

Finally, your list has a bit of everything, which is fine when not faced with super-concentrated 'powergaming' combos, but it doesn't work against the stuff you've mentioned. The name of the game is redundancy: not only do you need a swarm of screaming meat shields to field charges and tie up blocks that covers up the board, you need several large units of beaters to whap your opponents on the flanks until they die. For Rat Ogres, at least 9, preferably 12 or more. If you could swing 24, that'd be fantastic (I'm not familiar with the points per model but that sounds do-able). The basic plan would be to run your bricks of expendable clanrats into the dude, tie him down indefinitely in melee, then attack his flanks and rear while he's busy with smaller and more maneuverable flankers.

I quit, when faced with that situation, though. Not about to drop money for a brand new core book and an entire army to go with it because an edition change is totally altering how lists are built. I got ET: Nagash hardcover on the sheer novelty of WFB plot advancement and being a Vampire Counts player, but as I've seen the ET play out I've gotten steadily less excited and more irritated with it.

Maybe if the rules come full circle in an edition or two I'll start playing again. We'll see.

[Erik Setzer]

Some notes on my Skaven list:

First point, a good chunk of my Skaven were in a plastic case I'd left in a vehicle with my brother, who hasn't yet responded to my text message to him pointing that out so he could hopefully come by and drop them off. That limited what I could do.

I knew the army I'd be facing, so I was trying to go for stuff that could hurt it. The Verminlord isn't shabby in combat and I could throw the 13th spell at him and snuff out a bunch of those Warriors if I got a solid roll. At worst, I could throw Warp Lightning. The Grey Seer would use Plague spells to buff my units to make it easier to wound his guys, or throw plague spells at the enemy, as they often ignore armor. The Ratling Gun Stormfiends should have done a solid job against just about anything with all those shots at a good strength and -3 to armor, but my opponent rolled ridiculously well. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have wasted them shooting at the Bloodcrushers but rather just rained death on the Warriors, who wouldn't have much save left. The ones with shockfists are S6 with no armor save allowed in combat, so they should have also done a solid job against the Warriors... instead they got hit by a Chariot that did an insane number of impact hits. The Rat Ogres were meant to hit the Bloodcrushers with the Stormvermin, in theory could have been enough to do some damage. The Warpfire Thrower team would have hit a Chimera to remove its regen save for a phase, but blew up right off the bat, taking nine Stormvermin with it. The mortar was also meant to be useful for hitting heavily armored infantry, as it ignores armor. Warp Lightning Cannon also ignores armor. Basically, I had a lot of stuff that ignored armor, or seriously downgraded it... and then I had Core Units that, regardless of number, were just sacrificial rats in the face of Chaos Warriors, especially with the Mark of Nurgle making me hit on 5's at best while they were hitting on 3's. Having to hit on 5's, wound on 5's, then see a 3+ armor save... It's ridiculous. You lose combat, break, get overrun. Rinse and repeat.

Rat Ogres are 40 points each, so 24 is 960 points... not to mention monetary cost. Stormfiends are better at dealing out actual damage, so I needed some of those. In retrospect, I might have taken the mortars (small blast, no armor saves, wound on 4+) instead of the Ratling Guns. The point there was to try to take stuff that could actually get through their Toughness and armor. Heck, I dropped over $400 on upgrades for my Skaven army to be better capable of dealing with Chaos Warriors, but it seems like that's still not really happening. And the concept of tying them up with massive units just doesn't work when they can slaughter a LOT of rats before you even get to strike, and, as noted above, you're hitting on 5's at best, wound on 5's, they get 3+ or 4+ armor. Reality is you'll lose combat, and probably not have enough ranks left to get the best combat res.

[Kaptain Badrukk]

Morning Eric,
Thought I'd throw my hat in the ring.
I've been playing a lot of End Times with Skaven lately (just expanding to 4K atm actually) and I hate to see a fellow rat-man suffer!
1: Model Count.
VonDeitrich has already mentioned this but I'll talk about it anyway. Thematically Skaven are all about numbers, and my experience over the last decade or so of WFB (and to an extent 40k) has been that when you play an army "to type" it functions pretty well. Thusly I take a minimum of 2 units (normally hordes) of 50 Clan Rats and at least 1 Horde of Storm Vermin (also normally 50) at 2000pts.
2: Tar-Pits
Skaven are ALL ABOUT disposable minions. Fat Blocks of slaves (nice and deep, save 5 wide ten-15 deep) can tie up a death-star for multiple turns, allowing you to get into the flanks, or just shoot the tar outta it (since who cares about slaves).
3: Fire Support.
Skaven aren't much chops in combat. It's mostly about tying up the enemy and winning on static combat res. Hordes of Stormvermin led by Lords, plague monk hordes, and Rat-ogres with Skweel Gnawtooth aside.
Nurgle doesn't help much against shooting. A 4/3+ Ward save is scary, but less so than a 5+ save followed by a 4/3+ save.
And as good as a death-star is, it'll still lose the game with no support.
So take some guns! 1x Warp Lightening cannon good, 3x Warp Lightening cannon GREAT! Plus the look of sheer terror on an opponents face when you put three down is priceless. A couple of high strength, d6 wound, no armour save blasts will be GOOD! Also don't discount the plague claw or the humble plague wind mortar. Both are capable of messing up a unit.
4: Weapon Teams
The warpfire thrower is a beast. Decent strength, great armour pen, and stand and shoot. I use mine as charge re-directors, or as speed bumps for charging cavalry, whittling down a powerhouse with a sheet of warp-flame before they hit me.
5: Force multiplication.
Grey seers, and verminlords are all well and good. They certainly pack magical punch. But where the Skaven excel is cheap characters. 50pt lvl 1 wizards, cheap LD buffs from heros and Lords that cost peanuts tooled up (comparatively). A BSB is a must. But also consider things like a cheap hero with Crown of Command and Ironcurse who avoids challenges and makes a nice big block of infantry stubborn.
6. Core Detachments
Ok, so we didn't get mixed-lists, but we did get two of these. The Queek one's pretty good, but if you want to use End Times stuff I recommend Thaquol's Uprising. The 6" Unbreakable bubble from Thanquol plus the whole thing filling your core is pretty neat, and being able to cast a D6+14 Warp Lightening blast is AMAZING!
In Conclusion
While a lot of this may seem a touch unhelpful, especially if you're looking for ways to win with the models in your collection, but it's what I've got.
The truth of the matter is that the current edition does make writing powerful lists moderately easier than last time, but it's not that much easier. The real issue is that it tempts us to invest too many points in big-cost characters. Too many points invested in characters at 2k can really hurt any player, especially Skaven. But as an aging player it's ALWAYS been easy to do ridiculous things with an army list. However in WFB if you know your list well, and play it to design, the list writing stage of the game need not be the winning point. That said, make sub-optimal choices for competitive play and tournaments and you're going to suffer.

[Chronowraith]

I'm going to sound like a broken record but the Skaven list needs Slaves. Take a big block of slaves, use them to block enemy units and then fire into combat against the slaves with whatever you have (Warpfire Throwers, Plague Mortars, and Warp Lightning Cannons work best). Clanrats aren't much better than slaves. Use them to go after weak units where they might win through static combat resolution or to tie up middling units where slaves would melt away too quickly to be useful.

If no one quoted the "rule" for skaven, your goal should be roughly 1 model per 10 points. So in a 2500 point list you are aiming for 250 models. Now, this isn't hard and fast but I've rarely seen a successful Skaven army that drops below 1 model for every 20 points. Your list is 1 per 30 points. Even if you break down into wounds you are around 1:20.

Don't take rat swarms. Take minimum units of giant rats and rank them up 2x3. They make far better redirect units and march/charge blockers since they cost a whopping 24 points. I had them tie up a landship for 2 turns once.

Keep in mind true line of sight. If he has palanquins up front and sorcerors in the back, it might be hard for him to draw LoS. Chances are he can target his own unit or the palanquin characters but not much else. Admittedly several classes of spells don't require strict LoS but there is a reason people don't typically do this and the restrictions it places on casting are certainly in the mix.

I disagree that you need Storm Vermin. They are a flavor unit. use them if you like them. Storm Vermin won't hold up in combat as well as other elite or hard infantry choices. Keep in mind a storm vermin costs about as much as an Empire Swordsman and they are just as squishy. Against a big block of Chaos Warriors they will die. Not as quickly as slaves or clanrats but they will and unlike slaves you can't fire into a combat with stormvermin.

I mentioned it above and others mentioned it as well but Warpfire Throwers are your friend. Everyone sees "move or fire" in the description and they glaze over with the, "these aren't the droids your looking for" face but the point of these units is to lock a unit in combat with slaves and then pummel the unit with warpfire from the flanks. Just remember to protect them as weapon teams are not durable or reliable in the leadership department.

Your list seems to have too many flashy units. I haven't played with Storm Fiends yet but I can't imagine that you really need 6 of them AND 6 Rat Ogres. Either go with the 6 Rat Ogres or go with a few Storm Fiends. Or, don't take the Verminlord and take a Warlord instead with a couple engineers and beef up your ranked units. Just think, those 13 models comprise almost half your points. Again, the idea with Skaven is an attrition army. You trade your lower point value unit to tie up/destroy a higher point value unit.

[Erik Setzer]

It's worth repeating that a good chunk of my Skaven wasn't with me.

Also, the "disposable units" thing doesn't particularly work so well. It relies on still having more models than the other side (or at least ranks) and then making a Ld test, and if you fail the test, all those models run. It's atrociously boring to see units get thrown at the enemy knowing they have zero chance to do any harm to the other side's CORE Units. "Hold them up" isn't a good strategy.

I got the Stormfiends because they seem like they should be good against elite troops. For them to fail hardcore is not fun. If the opposing list wasn't gimmicked up, I think they could do fine.

To deploy more WLCs, I'd need to buy more. Ditto for any Plague Furnaces. And Slaves, because I might have some somewhere, but I don't recall, because "tar pitting" is just admitting you can't deal with a unit and praying it gets that unit bogged down. The idea of just holding a unit so you can fire at it? That's... depressing. And goes back to the core point of it being so lacking in fun that I might as well not play. But a lot of these ideas are along the lines of "buy even more models than you already have." And I just dropped over $400 adding a Verminlord, 9 Stormfiends, Thanquol, a Hellpit Abomination, and 20 Clanrats (to add to 20 from the core game box for a unit of 40). If I'm going to throw out hundreds more dollars, I can also get a tiny army of Warriors to just chew through other armies. Or just boost my Elves some. If you throw 40 models at a unit and you can't realistically expect it to do anything more than act as a speedbump possibly, that's a problem. (Oh, and given that all it took to break that unit, that had better Ld and fighting ability than Slaves, was a couple Chimeras and a Chariot, I'm not sure buying, assembling, and painting 100 Slaves is going to help much. That $150 or so and all that time would go better toward a bar tab.)

I can throw Clanrats into mixed units of different colors and call them Slaves and then just let my opponent destroy models so I can put them back up as fast as I got them out while I shoot into combat and hope I do some damage. Or I can just do something more interesting, like... go home and play a game on my Xbox.

At this point, my only hope is that 9th edition once again gets away from percentages. I have a similar problem with Undead, where all the Skeletons, Zombies, and even Ghouls that I have just hit Warriors or Elves and end up being mauled much faster than you'd think. Seeing 50 Skeletons evaporate in a couple of turns, at best, isn't fun, especially as that's still a nice chunk of the army doing nothing more than trying to be a speedbump and wasting points you could put toward effective units. And if I bother to play my Empire, at this point I'm resigned to just throwing all my Knights on the table, along with some extra stuff I'll need to buy. I've left my Orcs at the side because I've seen Chaos Warriors chew up 50 Savage Orcs like they're nothing. (I did, however, grab some Ogres, so I can mix those with the Orcs once Grimgor's army comes along, in the hopes that'll give me more options. I figure a core of Ogres with great weapons, backed by some Ogre tricks and Orc Boarboyz, artillery, Chariots, maybe Black Orcs, stuff like that, at least I'll feel like the Core Units are doing something.)

[Chronowraith]

Well, that's how Skaven operate. You can go and check the Underempire forum and they will tell you the same thing.

Skaven CAN'T deal with most other armies core units in a core versus core fashion. When you are pitting 4pt clanrats against Chaos Warriors the Chaos Warriors will always win unless you use the Skaven mantra - sneaky tricks. Tarpitting is completely in fitting with the Skaven background. The leaders send countless numbers in to die and while the foe is distracted, something goes BOOM!

Don't forget Steadfast and Skaven rely on keeping the army tightly clustered so everyone benefits from teh generals leadership. That's the only reason Screaming Bells are as common as they are. Having Slaves in 10 ranks with a base leadership of 7 (from the general) is amazing. They keep leadership 10 for 2-3 rounds of combat easily... plenty of time to sneak in with a flank charge or use your sneaky tricks to actually do some damage. Can you fail leadership? Yup. It happens. Just like people roll snake eyes on charges or irresistible force when using 2 magic dice. Luck happens. You can't plan for it, only make decisions that try and minimize the luck factor.

Wasting points? A unit of 50 slaves is 100 points. Let that sink in. A unit of 30 chaos warriors is considerably more (roughly 450 if memory serves). You could lose 200 slaves to those Chaos Warriors and they still won't have killed an equal amount of points. Skaven will not win by brute force. Period. They just aren't that type of army. If you want brute force that is what Orcs, Ogres, and Chaos are for.

As for money... clanrats/slaves from Isle of Blood are dirt cheap on eBay. I've seen them as low as 10 dollars for 20.

[Path Walker]

Your opponent was playing to the strengths of his army, you ignored the strengths of yours, skateboard have access to cheap huge units that's can hold up pretty much anything in the game for several turns, it's not ideal for how you want to play, but that's the game as it is right now and has been for the last few editions, people take huge units, 40 isn't a big unit for clan rats.

For 2500 you've got far too many toys and not enough core, skaven rely on core to hold the enemy in place to bring the sneaky stuff to bear. I'll repeat what every other poster has said: More rats.

[Houghten]

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Damn you, autocorrect!