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Slaves question; Should they all be rats?
Topic Started: 16th November 2009 - 11:09 PM (1,131 Views)
Lidef Ostrac
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From Frissia with love
Ratarsed
Nov 19 2009, 03:01 AM
Fluff/background wise slaves should all be Skaven. Whilst the rat-men do indeed enslave other races, they would not be used to fight their wars. As soon as they were given the opportunity they would flee the battlefield, not fight for their opressors. And can you imagine what a unit of human slaves would do when sent into battle against an Empire army?
Skaven slaves on the otherhand have no where to run to, and would be the only slaves you could trust to obey your commands and not try and escape at the first opportunity.

Game-wise slave units can be made up of all sorts of models and no one would mind, so long as they looked the part.

Ratarsed

The new army book fluff sais that clan mors actually captured many many night goblin tribes, and had them fighting in the skaven-orc-dwarf war for karak 8 peaks

c'mon skaven are a race who want to enslave all of the surface-dwellers... so why not drive them forward

imagine you're an empire soldier captured and held underground for a few months, so mentally broken you just wanna die... not to mention the "concerned rats" rule

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Warlord Snickers
Stormvermin
Truth, plus skaven slaves are also forced to mine warpstone and the mineral could drive them mad. I actually converted my PCBs from goblin fanatics to tie in that very concept with the slaves. One is even a plague priest who consumed some of the warpstone by accident and the GHR spoke to him! Skaven rock.
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Ratarsed
Grey Seer
Lidef Ostrac
Nov 19 2009, 07:24 AM
The new army book fluff sais that clan mors actually captured many many night goblin tribes, and had them fighting in the skaven-orc-dwarf war for karak 8 peaks

I don't recall reading this :unsure:

Quote:
 
imagine you're an empire soldier captured and held underground for a few months, so mentally broken you just wanna die... not to mention the "concerned rats" rule

Exactly, if you just want to die why even put up a fight, and as soon as you are given a weapon why not turn on your captors and try and take one of them with you?

I see no cornered man-slave, or cornered Night goblin rule. I see only cornered RATS rule

Ratarsed
(who will never use non skaven slaves and as such will conquer all :bow: )
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onions
Clanrat
I love the thought of Empire militia combusting after losing a combat!
so...she was made of chimps?
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I_ated_Warpstone
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Ratarsed
Nov 19 2009, 10:11 AM
I see no cornered man-slave, or cornered Night goblin rule. I see only cornered RATS rule

Ratarsed
(who will never use non skaven slaves and as such will conquer all :bow: )

I do, however, see modeling night goblins chained to a bomb like device that Skaven overlords can detonate upon seeing the worthless goblins break. All it really takes is a bit of thinking outside the box to rationalize the rules for different models.

And to suggest that Skaven can't break lesser races to force them to march to the fore of their army is honestly insulting to the many Grey Seers who's own specialty it is to bring the lesser races to heel.

TL;DR - Just because you can't justify non skaven being skaven slaves doesn't mean that you should discourage others from doing that.
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krosanreaper
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Death Master Casey
The issue of not using other races slaves as fighters, that's why you don't see elf things and dwarf things(at least often), they are strong willed and would rather fight their captors. Goblin things fight each other all the time and are used to being treated badly, man things come from all walks of life and peasants are again already in a bad spot, skinks I'm less sure how good they would be as slaves.
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Ratarsed
Grey Seer
I_ated_Warpstone
Nov 19 2009, 10:26 AM
TL;DR - Just because you can't justify non skaven being skaven slaves doesn't mean that you should discourage others from doing that.

Am I not then allowed to express my opinion on the subject? :(

Ratarsed
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Warlord Snickers
Stormvermin
Rat, you are going beyond expressing an opinion to be more pushy on the subject.
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Midnight_Fox
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Warlord Kan'ok'tichek, Daimyo of Clan Nezumi
Ratarsed
Nov 19 2009, 10:11 AM

Exactly, if you just want to die why even put up a fight, and as soon as you are given a weapon why not turn on your captors and try and take one of them with you?

Why didn't real life slaves ever turn around and beat the few(2-3) people keeping watch over them in history?

If you break someone's will, they WILL do what you tell them to.
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Discomite
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Clanrat
I am in the camp of using only Skaven as slaves to fight. I just think Skaven, being the paranoid and scheming bunch that they are, would not trust any other creature, no matter how broken, to fight against that creature's own kind or ally.

Skaven spend their lives looking over their shoulders. They would not risk a slave rebellion on the battlefield more than they already do. Skaven slaves don't fight just because they are broken and whipped forward. They have the burning hatred for all things non-Skaven too. The warlords know this and take advantage of this as much as they can. The slaves of races would be used for terrible back-breaking labor, isolated from their own, or as subject of experimentation or for food.

Just my thoughts. I still like to see what other Skaven players have done to convert other races to be slaves, and I would still play with (against? mwahaha) players who have these kinds of slaves. More stories illustrating the conquest (skaven) But I won't do that with my own army unless I have some cool fluff to back it up.
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Swissdictator
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Steampunk Engineer
Well I might split the difference. Grab the Skull Pass Night Gobbos, drill out the face, and stick any extra skaven heads I have in there. That and maybe similar with Zombies (A little greenstuff to cover bones very thinly... so they look boney, but not having exposed bones) with Skaven heads. No tails, because my slaves will have had their tails clipped just to be cruel!

So they will have skaven heads, but look wildly different enough to be clear that they are NOT clan rats. That was always my issue with Skaven before, the same figures for clanrats and slaves. Even more annoying when clanrats also didn't have spears (which I prefer as I love the look).
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Morgoth
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The Ancient Evil

Those slaves, you do not trust to fight, can just be meat-shields against shooting.
You can also make the unit mixed. The skaven slaves will most certainy kick, bite, beat the lesser races forward. If a skaven in any way can find some lower ranking, he WILL abuse it.
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Bibamus
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Grey Seer
regarding skaven no ttrusting anything but another rat as a slave in combat. i am under the impresion that skaven do not consider slaves anything but.... well things that die for them, i don't think there's any trust involved.
regarding slaves fleeing off to the other side. you can use goblin v. epmire, dwarves, elves, etc; humans v orks, ogres, skaven, etc. you get the point. as long as you dont use humans v humans the fluff should not be a problem. just say that the slaves think they have more chances with the skaven (due to promise of release) than the army they are fighting wich is sure to kill them.
ohh, and i thought of having a unit of 19 skeletons and a vampire/liche priest as the champions since 2 of my local oponents play TK/VC :D
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Kariko83
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The lurker in the shadows
The first problem with the rational of only trusting skaven slaves to fight in combat is the assumption that they would trust other skaven to begin with. Skaven are an insidious and paranoid bunch so trust is something that really doesnt ever happen with them, just read the fluff for Queek and Gnawdell's relationship.
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jonadaya
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Clanrat
I have a Clan Pestilens‎ army with 84 skinks :P
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