# New Skaven toys



## Inquisitor Einar (Mar 6, 2009)

Ok, tonight, I witnessed some of the people hanging out at the local GW on 16+ Game night play dwarfs vs skaven, 1200 points or so.
I was standing with them, and commenting, since the new skaven codex is brand new and unknown and I had also read stuff in it ( since I'm planning an army of them )

The dwarfs got annihilated except for 3 cannoneers that somehow survived till the end of the battle, after their cannon had been shot by the doomwheel.

Units by the skaven used:
Clanrats, ratling guns, warlock engineers, gutterrunners, nightrunners doomwheel

I noticed several things, that have definitely changed the way skaven are played.

For one, the attached weaponteams, they're still move or fire, however, they can use the LoS of their accompanying unit, so you can put them behind it. This is quite usefull, as long as your clanrats don't run off.
They also gain a 4+ ward save when near them. very usefull for keeping them alive longer to be able to matter.

Ratling guns have become less usefull. The old ones gave hits, the new ones you have a range of 18" instead of the old 15", but you have to roll to hit now as well for the shots.

Warlock engineers, freaking awesome guys, very cheap hero if you want, can be upgraded for a lot of points to a level 2 wizard. Can also get some nice GunZ that are quite reliable.

Doomwheel, this thing is a freaking MONSTER, it's AWEsome, even discounting it's point cost, which is DIRT CHEAP for what it does. It's a lot of fun and runs down units like nobody's business. I think you can expect tourney armies to be fielding two of these in 2000 points.
The thing has a negligable armour save, but a shitload of wounds, and high toughness, it's not a chariot, so can't be instagibbed. It moves random speeds, which can be a bit of a downer, but it has a funny shooting attack with it's lightning bolts. Which can be really killy if you don't blow yourself up with it. When it hits the enemy, it's got impact hits, then a load of rats that are attacking you. Ensuring that most likely it will kill the first rank of whatever it drove into. It gets nastier on the second turn of combat. First off, the zzapping shooty attack just keeps going, not stopping wether it's engaged or not. So you get to shoot some people from the enemy unit with it.
Then at the start of CC phase, it 'Grinds' into the enemy causing auto hits to kill more guys, and then ofcourse the rats.
Did I mention it's also a terror causing enemy?

Gutterrunners are scary, they can now appear behind enemy lines on the second turn, and with their mega movement of 6(!) they can do horribly evil things to whatever is standing in the back. Add to this skirmishing slingers or star throwing poisoned killers and you got death written all over it. In hand to hand they have 2 hand weapons, so that makes for a nice number of attacks to send into an enemy cannoncrew or whatever.

Clanrats are freaking cheap, though they can now only have 1 attached weaponteam. There's 4 different kinds, the ratling gun, which has become a little less usefull, the warpfire thrower, which is the most expensive. A Mortar type thing that throws gas bombs into the enemy. This one is excellent for a unit of clanrats hanging back and chucking those over them, making the enemy unable to shoot them since the rats in front block view. At 6-24" range", that small blast template is thrown like a skullthrower, it can misfire, but the guys using it are well protected, and it wounds stuff on a 4+.
Finally the other cheap option is the doomflayer, it's some kind of cross between a weaponteam and a doomwheel. It has the same profile as a weaponteam, but a 3+ armour save, and it does grinding like attacks on the enemy ( artillery dice to roll howmany ), So it can be an interesting unit to send along with your stormvermin, and maybe even a second one with another clanrat unit on the other side.

Nightrunners indeed don't skirmish anymore, but they run like hell, also with movement 6(!), and an extra movement at the start of the game if you wish, before people have moved. More fun stuff is they also use 2 hand weapons, throwing stars, and can be upgraded with slings.

Those were the units I've seen 'in action'. 
A couple more things I've read in the codex:
The '13th spell', it's really as awesome as posted earlier here on the forum.
And while dangerous to attemp, 25+ is actually doable with some warp-tokens adding 1d6 extra to the attempt for each one eaten. It's a spell you'll probably only cast once, but if you've taken out your enemy scroll carrier, and any other means he has to directly deactivate the spell, it can be a killer.

Hell Pit Abomination:
This thing is scary, very scary. Like the doomwheel, lots of wounds, lots of strength and toughness, even more attacks than the grinding doomwheel if you roll properly, Terror causing, and the funniest of all. It can come back from the dead.
Once you kill it, you roll on some kind of table, half the time, nothing happens, 1/3rd of the time, a bunch of giant rats spawn, and 1 in 6 times, it gets back up with 1d6 wound remaining.. how cool is that?

Another thing I noticed in the codex, nearly *ALL* units do not have a maximum size, you can indeed make units of 200+ or even more.
technicly, a 2000 point army can consist of 993 models, yes.. nearly a 1000 models in a 2000 point army. 1 warlock engineer without upgrades as general, and the rest as slaves who are cheaper than dirt.

And those cheap dirty slaves, you can still use them as positioning fodder for your shooting. While they got HORRIBLE leadership, you're allowed to fire units in combat with slaves, like in the old codex with all units.
Sadly you can't do this anymore with other units. Though poison wind globadiers can still throw their globes at anything I believe.

I'll do some more codex reading tomorrow, feeling very anxious to get my paws on my own, and start constructing an army of DOOOOM.
( I'm seriously considering, using something like 4-6 units of clanrats just so I can bring in 6 doomflayers and 2 doomwheels )


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## Khorothis (May 12, 2009)

I'm so happy I decided to start Skaven instead of 40K Daemons.  This good news made my day.


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## muldis (Mar 26, 2009)

New army book sounds great, been wanting to start a skaven army for a while now when i heard about the new book i held off, got to wait untill the new year before i can start, just hope i can last that long

might have to get a doomwheel to play around in the mean time thou  (just dont tell the mrs)


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## maddermax (May 12, 2008)

The fancy new toys certainly seem to be good, but, as always with skaven, they still need a bit of luck to be more devastating to the enemy than to yourself. I played a game just the other week against my friends skaven, using all the new changes we'd picked up from various souces. He didn't use many of the fancy new things, and he managed to fit a lot more units on the table than previously (a pretty scary number of guys actually), but they still have their failings - namely not being able to do enough damage in combat, especially against heavily armoured foes. Once you're passed their fancy gizmos, the basic units are still rather squishy on the inside. Still, I'll have to see how I fare against him once he has a few new fancy toys that he's getting for his guys. Should be fun.


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## bobss (May 18, 2008)

DE Dual Hydra lists? More like Skaven Dual Hellpit abomination lists:laugh:

Not a fan myself, though I dont care who they are as long as they take the crown away from daemons:so_happy:


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## Inquisitor Einar (Mar 6, 2009)

I can't wait to sink my grubby paws into the new codex and write me a scary little army.
I'm most certainly going to use at least one doomwheel.. or a Hell Pit abomination...

On another note: My codex has been shipped.. it will probably arrive on monday/tuesday for me


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## Kaleb Daark (Nov 1, 2009)

Must resist urge to play fantasy. The new minis look great and will be making an appearance in my DG army. Glad to hear they could be competative as well.


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## HandOfNephthys (Aug 18, 2009)

Kaleb Daark said:


> Must resist urge to play fantasy. The new minis look great and will be making an appearance in my DG army. Glad to hear they could be competative as well.


I Second That!
(And that was so close to being my username, Kaleb Daark.)
Welcome to Heresy!
I want to convert the skaven SO BAD!
maybe i can turn them into plaguebearers!


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## Orochi (Jan 28, 2009)

The Doomflayer?

I'm getting images of an evil looking Wheelbarrow....


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## Azkaellon (Jun 23, 2009)

you guys know skaven are small models right?


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## Kaleb Daark (Nov 1, 2009)

The models themselves are small but the heads are still large enough to use with power or terminator armour without to much trouble. Things like rat ogres and or bone ripper were "big mutants" or ogryn back in the day.


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## Inquisitor Einar (Mar 6, 2009)

Orochi said:


> The Doomflayer?
> 
> I'm getting images of an evil looking Wheelbarrow....


Well, the front armour is better than the sides or rear, so I'm thinking some kind of half barrel like thing with blades swinging all around at the front, and a pair of skaven crewing it behind it. Probably one pushing, while the other works the warp-generator thingamajig.


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## bobss (May 18, 2008)

For those that dont have a book the doomflyer is generally a massive globe with all manner of knives and pointy-stuff on it that spin around from the warpstone generator in it, Im making one but dont know quite how..


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