Skaven

How to beat those cowardly High Elves?

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Doug
Warrior
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Skaven

Post by Doug »

Hi to all
In about ten days I am going to be playing a skaven army. I have never had to to do battle with them and as such I do not have a clue as to how to handle them. Could any one give some hints about to playing against them. ;) I am thinking about going magic heavy. 2200 points. I don't know anything about my opponents army. Please Help!!!
Douglas
Thenick18
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Post by Thenick18 »

Wrong forum... this is druchii discussion, try posting in the warhammer fantasy forum
Ungorlucky
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Post by Ungorlucky »

The only tip I could give is to take plenty of RXBs
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Dalamar
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Post by Dalamar »

You will need 2 things:
Something to shave off his ranks since they add to his LD
1) massed crossbow fire
2) Lore of Fire

Something to deal with his machines
1) Lore of Metal
2) Rending Stars Assassin

Something to deal with his characters
1) Lore of Death
2) lots of suicidal harpies

If he has a grey seer, you can expect the dreaded 13th spell cast every turn... or you can build an army with no infantry at all and render that spell useless.
7th edition army book:
Games Played: 213
Games Won: 114 (54%)
Games Drawn: 33 (15%)
Games Lost: 66 (31%)

8th Edition army book W/D/L:
Druchii: 36/4/16
Doug
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Location: HOT HOT Florida

Post by Doug »

Thank you for the info
Doug
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Tethlis
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Post by Tethlis »

Several things to remember:

We beat their regular troops (clanrats, Slaves) with virtually everything we have. The goal of a Skaven player is to either use those to slow down and occupy our best troops, making us kill them while they yield no victory points, or to overwhelm our lines and attack our vulnerable units while occupying our best troops tied up.

Generally, I focus my Core on trying to counter their Core, plus one or two-hard hitters for support (Cold One Chariots are great for this). Basically these units, like Spearmen, Corsairs or crossbowmen formed up for combat, can help manage crowd control while the elite of my army focuses on the bigger threats.

Generally speaking the bigger threats are as follows:

-Plague Furnace: A big contraption pushed by plague monks. This unit will toss out many, many attacks, plus force Toughness tests which ignore armor, making it very dangerous for low Toughness Elven units. Soften the Furnace up with shooting, then finish it off, because the Plague Monks are Unbreakable while it's alive. The Screaming Bell operates in a similar fashion, but is less combat-oriented and more geared toward support. It can be dealt with in a similar fashion, but also has a 4+ Ward Save, so shooting will be less effective.

-Hell Pit Abomination: A nightmare Chaos Spawn. 3D6 Movement in a random direction can make it very fast, and you can't declare any charge reaction other than "hold", making it hard to defend against. It averages about 12 Strength 6 hits a turn (not attacks, but hits) and has good Toughness and Regeneration so you do not want to fight this thing if it can be avoided. Good Initiative means it's hard to counter with Pit of Shades or Purple Sun too. Your best bet is to soften it with shooting, then hit it with Black Guard, Witch Elves, or some other unit with high Initiative and great killing power. Flaming Attacks are useful here.

-Doomwheel: This is a pretty specialized unit. It also follows random movement, and hits like a chariot with impact hits in close combat, but has a shooting attack that automatically zaps the closest target (friend or foe) with three shots whose Strength is equal to an artillery dice and does D6 wounds. These shots are fired every turn, including firing into combat, so the Doomwheel usually tries to get as close as possible to your biggest, most valuable multi-wound model (dragon, Hydra, chariots, Cauldron of Blood) and then blows them away with high-strength shots. This can be easily countered by keeping a disposable unit as close to the Doomwheel as possible until you can shoot it down or break it in close combat.

-Shooting: Warplightning Cannons behave similarly to regular cannons, but with a blast template where the shot finally lands, so hunt these down. Jezzails fire a big S6 armor piercing shot, but are expensive and inaccurate. Weapon teams can be deadly, but are vulnerable to crossbows, so make a point of taking them out before getting too close to Skaven. Any of these units can be charged and fought in combat, but watch out for stand-and-shoot reactions.

-Magic: Here's a nasty threat, as Dalamar mentioned. Skaven have two different lores, both of which are fairly nasty. They have some decent unit buffs (make a unit frenzied, give them poison attacks) but also some big unit-destroying spells. Plague forces every model to take a Toughness test, which basically guarantees it kills half of a unit of Elves. Dreaded 13th basically instant-destroys a unit, and can create a unit of Clanrats from the casualties if it "overkills" the unit it targets, Scorch and a non-nonsense, very nasty S4 blast template which is quite dangerous for us. Be aware of the spells your opponent has rolled, and hunt down Greyseers as quickly as possible.
There is no escape from Chaos. It marks us all.


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A18no
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Post by A18no »

The best way to kill skaven, is just to deny them rank bonus. That way, the best unit will have max Ld7. So even if they are steadfast, they could easely break.

Big unit of dark riders, small unit of corsair or any elite unit could make the trick

Good luck!
Outbreak
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Post by Outbreak »

I'm new to the dark elves but I play skaven aswell. As a skaven player the things that would seem to be a good idea against me would be

- lvl2 with lore of fire to take down/wound an abomination early, i've had mine die to single fire spells a couple of times or something like cold one knights with a flaming banner to run straight at it

- hydra will munch through most things in the skaven army

- if your opponent takes rat ogres, weapon teams, jezzails they can be very easy points for your shooting/harpies/dark riders to pick up. Rat ogres for me always seem rendered usless after a good volley of shooting takes out my 2 pack masters and their stupid on ld5.

- In their magic phase be aware of items his characters may have, a common tactic is skitter leaping (teleport spell) a cheap engineer to behindyour line who will carry brass orbs (inititave test or die) or a doom rocket (large template explosion).
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Ichiyo1821
Highborn
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Post by Ichiyo1821 »

Tethlis wrote:Several things to remember:

We beat their regular troops (clanrats, Slaves) with virtually everything we have. The goal of a Skaven player is to either use those to slow down and occupy our best troops, making us kill them while they yield no victory points, or to overwhelm our lines and attack our vulnerable units while occupying our best troops tied up.

Generally, I focus my Core on trying to counter their Core, plus one or two-hard hitters for support (Cold One Chariots are great for this). Basically these units, like Spearmen, Corsairs or crossbowmen formed up for combat, can help manage crowd control while the elite of my army focuses on the bigger threats.

Generally speaking the bigger threats are as follows:

-Plague Furnace: A big contraption pushed by plague monks. This unit will toss out many, many attacks, plus force Toughness tests which ignore armor, making it very dangerous for low Toughness Elven units. Soften the Furnace up with shooting, then finish it off, because the Plague Monks are Unbreakable while it's alive. The Screaming Bell operates in a similar fashion, but is less combat-oriented and more geared toward support. It can be dealt with in a similar fashion, but also has a 4+ Ward Save, so shooting will be less effective.

-Hell Pit Abomination: A nightmare Chaos Spawn. 3D6 Movement in a random direction can make it very fast, and you can't declare any charge reaction other than "hold", making it hard to defend against. It averages about 12 Strength 6 hits a turn (not attacks, but hits) and has good Toughness and Regeneration so you do not want to fight this thing if it can be avoided. Good Initiative means it's hard to counter with Pit of Shades or Purple Sun too. Your best bet is to soften it with shooting, then hit it with Black Guard, Witch Elves, or some other unit with high Initiative and great killing power. Flaming Attacks are useful here.

-Doomwheel: This is a pretty specialized unit. It also follows random movement, and hits like a chariot with impact hits in close combat, but has a shooting attack that automatically zaps the closest target (friend or foe) with three shots whose Strength is equal to an artillery dice and does D6 wounds. These shots are fired every turn, including firing into combat, so the Doomwheel usually tries to get as close as possible to your biggest, most valuable multi-wound model (dragon, Hydra, chariots, Cauldron of Blood) and then blows them away with high-strength shots. This can be easily countered by keeping a disposable unit as close to the Doomwheel as possible until you can shoot it down or break it in close combat.

-Shooting: Warplightning Cannons behave similarly to regular cannons, but with a blast template where the shot finally lands, so hunt these down. Jezzails fire a big S6 armor piercing shot, but are expensive and inaccurate. Weapon teams can be deadly, but are vulnerable to crossbows, so make a point of taking them out before getting too close to Skaven. Any of these units can be charged and fought in combat, but watch out for stand-and-shoot reactions.

-Magic: Here's a nasty threat, as Dalamar mentioned. Skaven have two different lores, both of which are fairly nasty. They have some decent unit buffs (make a unit frenzied, give them poison attacks) but also some big unit-destroying spells. Plague forces every model to take a Toughness test, which basically guarantees it kills half of a unit of Elves. Dreaded 13th basically instant-destroys a unit, and can create a unit of Clanrats from the casualties if it "overkills" the unit it targets, Scorch and a non-nonsense, very nasty S4 blast template which is quite dangerous for us. Be aware of the spells your opponent has rolled, and hunt down Greyseers as quickly as possible.


Just would like to add to what Tethlis has said. Most players get intimidated by the sheer number of troops Skaven has but to be honest any of our Core troops are a match to any unit he tosses on the table except for HPA, Doomwheel and Plague Censer Bearers and even PCS backfire sometimes. Against Skaven it is crucial to have atleast two units that can take out their warmachines as they can really put a hurting on you. Skaven warmachines however do tend to blow up A LOT so don't lose hope even if you get hit by a lot of them. If you are a magic shooting army prime targets (should you need to shoot or take em out that is) would be Doomwheels, HPA, Storm Vermin more likelly to have the BSB, Rat Ogres (but really this unit can either be hard or soft depending on your list) and avoid letting the PCS near your elite troops. Spells as Tethlis has mentioned that hurt us are Plague and 13th DS as it can wipe out entire units. Should you need to take out the Screaming Bell or Furnace, ignore the clan rats pushing it and got blow the Seer but preferably the Bell first as the rats lose their unbreakable once it's dead but be prepared should the Seer Skitterleap.
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Thenick18
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Post by Thenick18 »

Hahahaha I read your statement completely wrong. By saying you were going to be playing skaven, I took it as you will be playing AS skaven. Sorry bud.
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Eolelfslayer
Dark Rider
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Post by Eolelfslayer »

The Skaven are, indeed, one of the foes i find more challenging, even now that i have more wins than loses against them.
Expect them to literally fill the battlefield. If you're up for a big battle on an avarage sized battlefield this could encumber or restrict his movement.
Expect many large sized units. As far as close combat is concerned a big unit of monks with the furnace can be a nuisance, but it makes for a costly unit. What i really, really dread is the hellpit abomination. This thing can ruin your spearman's day, well, actually it can ruin any unit's day. It's hard to kill and deals a crapload of high strenght attacks. If you send an hydra (or two) against it you'll just tie it for some rounds. High T and regenertion also makes it quite resistant to shooting. Personally i found the good old (and sometimes undervalued) bolt throwers (single shot, of course) can do the job, but you'll need concentration of fire. Skaven warmachines are difficult to rate, as sometimes they'll win the game for the skaven player, at other times they'll blow up or simply achieve very little. They are killy, usually of sturdy build but not exactly reliable. Magic can be nasty, but IMHO in 8th edition it is far too easy to invest lots of points in magic users and find they just cant cast, or happen to die horribly because of their own miscasts.
Of our own units I have found crossbowmen to be rather useful: they shoot a lot, and can whittle down even large units of poorly protected, low T skaven, then reform and fight them on par. Witch Elves, a unit i usually find pretty useless, can come handy here. While they really struggle to kill average to good infantry troops (dwarves, black orcs, chaos warriors) and invaribly get mercilessly cut down in return, they're rather at home when going against skaven like troops, even stormvermin (or high elves...are'nt they rats too?). Just dont expect them to live for a second turn of combat if you dont break the enemy, but usually they inflict enough wounds to make it. Chariots also usually buy their points back. Hope that helps!
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