Rat Droppings - Post HomeCon

As noted below we had HomeCon over the weekend and I took my standard 2400 point Skaven army:

Grey Seer with 4+ Wd, Skalm, Earthing Rod

BSB with Storm Banner

Lvl 1 Priest on Furnace with Scroll

Lvl 1 Warlock with Doomrocket and Condensor

2x Engineers

2x 25 Clanrats with Shields – Full Command

1x 20 Clanrats with Shields – Full Command

3x 39 Slaves with Muso

26 Plague Monks with Full Command and Banner of the Underempire

2x 6 Gutter Runners with Poison and Slings

HPA with Spikes

Catapult

Cannon

This army really suits my playstyle and lets me compete in all phases of the game. I’ll generally play an aggressive magic gamecentred around trying to either eliminate units or reduce them to numbers where first my slaves and then my clanrats can deal with them.


After going through a phase of using Lore of Plague, I have gone back to Lore of Ruin. The reason for this is that LoR has Scorch which has 24” range and 10 to cast versus Plague with 18” range and 13 to cast. I’m not convinced one way or the other though. I really miss “Wither” when I go with Ruin though.

Over the weekend my games were:

Round 1 – Ben Wadsworth (WoC) – Battleline [20-0]

Round 2 – Sam Whitt (WoC) – Dawn Attack [8-12]

Round 3 – Tom Dunn (Daemons) – Battle for the Pass [11-9]

Round 4 – Joel van de Ven-Long (Empire) – Blood & Glory [12-8]

Round 5 – Glen Burfield (WoC) – Meeting Engagement [18-2]

Round 6 – Jack Dunn (Empire) – Battleline [14-6]

Rather than go through them game by game I thought I’d just pick through the highlights/observations from my viewpoint:

• Grey Seer – pretty much my Rat of the Tourney. In the game versus Sam, he miscast with an “11” result Turn One. My take on this is that I’ll use the Earthing Rod to re-roll as I need a Level 4 rather than a possible Level 1. He got sucked into the warp and this made it very difficult. I clawed points back but not enough. The same happened versus Jack but this time the Rod changed it to a 7. I think the reasoning is sound but sometimes it will bite you in the ass. If it occurs late in the game, I generally take the Level reduction. The Seer made a nuisance of himself all weekend through a mix of Scorch and Curse of the Horned Rat.

• Gutter Runners – always good contributors one unit really let themselves down versus the Daemons. A full unit charged a Herald of Tzeentch in the flank and over three rounds of combat were beaten and broken. They are great for clearing out warmachines but a smart opponent means that this happens at best on Turn 2. This alone argues for the inclusion of the Storm Banner. Their biggest drawback is the Ld 7…..as a result I am thinking of bumping up to nine in the units. This also gives more certainty on their shooting vs. warmachine.

• My Warp Lightning Cannon had a nightmare. I’m struggling to think of any enemy he killed. At one stage he rolled 6 “Misfire” dice in a row – and besides blowing himself up three times - he also accounted for my Furnace versus the Daemons (single shot) and my Warlock Engineer versus Jack’s Empire. I think the Dunn boys may have slipped something into his cheese. Nothing I can do tactically to improve his shooting but I think I’ll be painting a blindfold on him!

• Slaves – these guys very rarely let me down. They are a great unit to plug a gap a hole until you can work out a solution – or more lightly get out of dodge. I have seen that there is a trend to take champs and that might be something I investigate. Challenging out where possible may preserve ranks – situational, but worth looking at.

• Plague Monks – To Furnace or not? Here is something to consider. I am wondering whether there might be a case to take the points spent on the Furnace and redeploy as extra Monks with Plague Banner. Forty Monks in Horde formation is potential 51 attacks re-rolling to hit re-rolling to wound. Against WoC marauders that’s 29 dead Marauders before they get to strike. Not even Flagellants would like them I suspect.

• Warlock Engineer – fought off Empire Captain on Pegasus who assaulted him in a building before being shot in the head by the wayward Warplightning cannon. As always his Doomrocket varied between feast and famine.

• Clanrats – oh, and my army has three units of Clan Rats. These guys have only two functions – keep out of trouble and pick on the weak and infirm. A highlight this weekend was the one time a unit did something brave – charged by War Altar at the top of Turn Two they fought it to a stalemate over 10 rounds of combat – 4 left at the end!

So all in all a fun weekend with lots to think about. I stand by my pre-tourney comments that a WoC army without a Puppet is a lot less scary to Skaven (saying that my only loss was to no-puppet WoC). We had two nice BBQs and a lot of fun gaming with a good group of blokes.