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1000 point Tournament army
Topic Started: 18th January 2011 - 03:19 PM (548 Views)
childofdelight
Clanrat
Hey guys. I figured I would Post my army list here. I am not an avid fantasy player, in fact since I started picking up the skaven again last october, I have only played One game with the new fantasy edition and it was a proxy army.

Anyways there is an upcoming tournament at the nearest store in March. I am mostly using this as an excuse to get some stuff painted, and to be able to get some games in. I am not going to the tournament to actually win, because I doubt I will know enough about the army or the rules to be totally competitive. I just want to go and have fun, but I want my army to still be a viable list. I do plan to get some days in to play the army some if I can.

Anyways, here is the 1000 point list. This list is built around what models I already have and with only having to pick up a few things. Essentially all I have to aquire is the warmachine and two weapon teams. Also..building an army at this small point size is really difficult, there is alot I wanted to take and I had to shave some stuff.

Chieftan w/Warpstone Armor, Additional Hand Weapon and Poisoned attackes (92)
Warlock Engineer, lvl2 Wizard w/ warp energy condenser (120)
Clanrats x25, w/spears and shields, full command, ratling gun (200)
Storm Vermin x19 w/ full command, Banner of the Underempire, and Doomflayer (257)
Giant Rat Pack, 6 rats and 1 packmaster (36)
Plague Monks x20, Full command and Shroud of Dripping Death (195)
Plague Claw Catapult (100)

The total points costs comes up to 1000 points exactly. I wanted to include some slaves but right now it costs a bit much for me to aquire enough rats. I also have to paint everything, and decided 3 decent rat packs should be enough in this small size battle. Also two of my units have banners which help deal dmg back to the enemy. I also wanted to include a warmachine of some sort. I was leaning on the doomwheel but decided to go with a cheaper one. I went with the catapult over the cannon because I felt the ignores armor and leadership would be devestating as well. It also blends with the plague monk element that i am taking.

The engineer is mostly for some magic defense and magic offense. If I get luck and my enemy doesn't have a wizard, then i get a little bonus edge i guess. I also went with a ratling gun as a gun, because it was always fun and i could use a little defense ranged weaponry. Also in the past I have had better luck with it than I did the warpfire thrower or the new mortor. The doomflayer I opted for because it felt like a good offensive support weapon to my stormvermin. Both hit harder than normal rats and both are armored, so it seemed to be a nice fit. Figured I would try it out,plus the new model looks great.

My only real concern tho is the cannons minimum range. It has to be 12 inches from the enemy, so anything that gets within that range is going straight for it. Hopefully at this smaller points i wont have to worry to much about flyers or some warmachine hunters. I guess the giant rats could also help defend the catapult since i took them. THe only reason I took the rats was to fill points. Figured they fit in perfectly, i only have one unit of them anyways and they are quick and good at flanks and maybe even hitting up my own warmachines if I get lucky.

So any pointers or suggestions, tips or approval for such a small army. Like I said..I am trying to make due with most of the stuff I have already, plus I still have to paint just about everything in the list. I think I have the one unit of clan rats even remotely painted at this point.
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Olorin the Ancient
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Quote:
 
Chieftan w/Warpstone Armor, Additional Hand Weapon and Poisoned attackes (92)
Warlock Engineer, lvl2 Wizard w/ warp energy condenser (120)
Clanrats x25, w/spears and shields, full command, ratling gun (200)
Storm Vermin x19 w/ full command, Banner of the Underempire, and Doomflayer (257)
Giant Rat Pack, 6 rats and 1 packmaster (36)
Plague Monks x20, Full command and Shroud of Dripping Death (195)
Plague Claw Catapult (100)

I hesitate to comment since these are the figures you've got, but this is not, perhaps, an ideal tournament army. You've got too many elites for a 1000 pt Skaven army (you should really choose between the Stormvermin and the Plague Monks), you have low Leadership, your two magic banners are not worth the points cost at this level, and, most importantly, your units are too small. One of the biggest assets that Skaven generals have is the Strength in Numbers rule. Units of 20 are fine if you just want to pin an enemy down for a turn, but they won't win the game for you. So here are my suggestions.

First off, the good news: you have more giant rats than you think. If you examine your Plague Monk weapon sprues, you'll see that each of them comes with four giant rats, so that your box of 20 Plague Monks also contains 16 giant rats (though without bases). This means that you've actually got 22 giant rats, so if you have the Rat Ogres/Giant Rats box (which I'm guessing you do because you have exactly six giant rats), you can assemble all three packmasters and field a 25-strong unit with your 22 giant rats and 3 packmasters. So for 90 points, only 54 more than you were going to pay for that paper-thin unit of 6 rats (and no money!), you've got something that might actually hold an enemy unit up for a turn or two.

The bad news is that you've got to buy more clanrats. You can buy the cheap Island of Blood ones on eBay (they look great, and you buy only ones with spears and shields), or you can get the more versatile Skaven box sets where half of them have armor and half do not, allowing for 10 clanrats and 10 Skavenslaves from a box of 20. Harrying units of 20-25 are great, but you'll need at least one unit of 40+ Skaven to win games. This will allow you to use the extra ranks to improve your leadership.

Speaking of which, you should definitely spend the 20 points to change your general from a chieftain to a warlord. This will improve your Ld from 6 to 7, which is crucial (not to mention giving you a general with 3 wounds instead of 2).

Also, consider a Battle Standard Bearer. A Skaven chieftain BSB with a regular standard and a shield will run you 72 points, and will do you far more good than buying the Banner of the Under Empire and the Shroud of Dripping Death. If you have to sacrifice one or even both weapons team, so be it; though I must admit I love the look of the Doomflayer, and would sooner keep that than the Ratling Gun (pity for me that I own four Ratling guns and no Doomflayer!).
- Olorin the Ancient
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childofdelight
Clanrat
Thanks for the Info. It will definitly come into play now that I have to add 200 points to my list. I also have another unit of clan rats but only 17 slaves right now. Also both my clan rats can be 29 and 30 respectively. They started out as the island of blood box sets. Now that I have to go to 1200 points, I will probably be adding in the extra clan rats and a BSB, and upgrading to a warlord as you suggested. I will also see about grabbing another box of rats to bolster my slaves to at least 37.

As for the extra giant rats, I really don't think I have any spare rats. I can go looking thru my bits and see what else I can muster, but those bits are rather old, and I had the plaguemonks since the lustria campaign book came out and I don't have alot of skaven bits lieing around, just the bits from the one box of clan rats I picked up and the stormvermin right now. But thanks for pointing out you were sure I had extra rats.

The only other stuff I have not included in this list is 5 rat ogres, 3 packmasters(one being a master moulder from the island of blood), a converted chieftan with a BSB that i think i mentioned, and the remaining clan rats, and start of slaves that I mentioned, the two weapon teams that came with Island of Blood, and 1 extra stormvermin.
Looks Like i have to rework my list today anyways because today the store posted the official information for the tournament and it went from 1000 pts to 1200 pts.
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childofdelight
Clanrat
Ok.. I did a little retweaking of the army list. I took your thoughts to heart, but I couldn't find room to upgrade to a warlord. I really wanted to, but I was having a hard time deciding where to spend my points. I did however drop that small giant rat unit and the plague monks.

So my new list for 1200 points is as follows(minus the points)
-Chieftan with two hand weapons, warpstone armor and poison attacks
-Stormvermin x19, full command, banner of the underempire, and doomflayer weapon team
-Warlock Engineer with energy condenser and lvl 2 wizard
-Clanrats x25, spears and shields, full command, Ratling gun
-Clanrats x30, swords and shields, full command, Mortar
-Slaves x32, musician
-Warp-lightning Cannon
-Doomwheel

It comes to exactly 1200 points. I looked into trying to squeeze in a battlestandard bearer and bringing those units up to 30+, but I was tight on points. I also wanted to include more hitting stuff that would help draw some attention off the rats. I still think I will outnumber most everyone else, and I do have 4 blocked units. Again the idea isn't necessarily win the tournament but to have fun, learn to play and still be somewhat competitive. I guess I could swap that chieftan to a bsb for now and make the engineer my army general, but I want my army general to be able to support my blocks. In larger games I will definitely use a BSB its just I don't want to put so many points into alot of characters at this small level. Even tho the expensive characters would give me less models to paint, I much rather have more rats like this with a few machines of war to support them.
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Olorin the Ancient
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I was intrigued by the problem--small lists are always hard to make--so I entered your list into Army Builder to price it out. You said this came to exactly 1200 points, so there seems to be a points discrepancy. Here's how it worked out:


Quote:
 
1200 Pts - Skaven Roster
Total Roster Cost: 1176

Chieftain (1#, 92 pts)
. . 1 Chieftain + Extra Hand Weapon
. . . . 1 Warpstone Armor
. . . . 1 Poisoned Attacks

Warlock Engineer (1#, 120 pts)
. . 1 Warlock Engineer + Level 2 Wizard
. . . . 1 Warp-Energy Condenser

Stormvermin (20#, 238 pts)
. . 18 Stormvermin + Musician + Standard Bearer
. . . . 1 Fangleader,
. . . . 1 Banner of the Under-Empire
. . . . 1 Doom-Flayer Weapon Team

Clanrats (26#, 200 pts)
. . 24 Clanrats + Musician + Standard Bearer
. . . . 1 Clawleader
. . . . 1 Ratling Gun Weapon Team

Clanrats (31#, 220 pts)
. . 29 Clanrats + Musician + Standard Bearer
. . . . 1 Clawleader
. . . . 1 Poisoned Wind Mortar Weapon Team

Skavenslaves (32#, 66 pts)
. . 32 Skavenslaves + Musician

Doomwheel (1#, 150 pts)
. . 1 Doomwheel

Warp-Lightning Cannon (1#, 90 pts)
. . 1 Warp-Lightning Cannon

MUTATED BY OLORIN THE ANCIENT TO REMOVE UPGRADE COSTS
- Olorin the Ancient
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childofdelight
Clanrat
Thanks for double checking the work...wow..i was doing everythign on paper and with a calculator to double check my points. I must have messed up on my points somewhere. I thought it might have been me calculating shields on the stormvermin but that leaves 5 points still if I ended up adding shields to them. Odd I am usually really good on math but with alot of changes back and forth and trying to retweak the list several times it must have messed my math up.

Cool...so If i add shields to the stormvermin since some are modeled that way anyways and it gives them extra armor against shooting. That gives me 5 points to add 2 more slaves. sweet, extra bodies for the slaughter.
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Olorin the Ancient
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Quote:
 
Cool...so If i add shields to the stormvermin since some are modeled that way anyways and it gives them extra armor against shooting. That gives me 5 points to add 2 more slaves. sweet, extra bodies for the slaughter.

Actually, I still think you're best off spending those 20 points upgrading your general from a Chieftain to a Warlord. For Skaven, a Leadership difference of one point is huge. Plus, you get the extra Wound, so your general can survive longer. To me, that's worth way more than giving your Stormvermin shields, especially since the Stormvermin come with two-handed weapons (halberds) and therefore only get half the benefits of shields anyway.

I love Army Builder: it makes it so easy to play around with different builds. It took me literally under a minute to put your list into the program--all I had to do was click. I've been using it for over five years, since it was at 2.0, but now, with version 3.3 (which has been out for less than a month), you can do all kinds of outputs; I was able to output your list to BBCode automatically.
- Olorin the Ancient
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childofdelight
Clanrat
why do you keep saying 20 points. You do realize that its 45 points difference for a chieftan to warlord. A chieftan is half the price base than a warlord. If it was 20 points then I would so do that instead of getting shields, but as it is, its a 45 point difference.
I guess I could drop the other 30 man clan rats down to 25 as well so I can get that warlord, it also means 5 less rats to paint.
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Olorin the Ancient
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Quote:
 
why do you keep saying 20 points. You do realize that its 45 points difference for a chieftan to warlord. A chieftan is half the price base than a warlord. If it was 20 points then I would so do that instead of getting shields, but as it is, its a 45 point difference.
I guess I could drop the other 30 man clan rats down to 25 as well so I can get that warlord, it also means 5 less rats to paint.

This is going to sound stupid of me, but actually I didn't know--I had 20 points stuck in my head for some reason! Pretty careless of me... I was probably comparing different configurations. (I never take a Chieftain as my General, only as a BSB.) In the end, it works out to 46 points difference, because the Warlord has to pay more to have a second hand weapon.

If it were me, I'd probably still upgrade to the Warlord, get rid of the Ratling Gun, and then put in more Skavenslaves to make up the difference; but then, I tend to have grandiose plans for how many figures I'm going to paint which almost never work out. So I start off planning for enormous numbers of figures, and then gradually readjust as the date approaches. Being realistic from the start may be best (though my way is probably more Skaven-like).

MUTATED BY OLORIN THE ANCIENT TO REMOVE UPGRADE COSTS
- Olorin the Ancient
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anthem0x
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Clan Eshin Musician

Olorin, you might not want to post full point costs and units. Might anger the great horned one.

Read This

Good advice, though.

Quote:
 
I looked into trying to squeeze in a battlestandard bearer and bringing those units up to 30+, but I was tight on points.


Leadership and CR are key to playing Skaven. Find any way to squeeze in your BSB and increase your leadership, even if you have to sacrifice something you feel is more important.

MUTATE: Accidentally quoted Olorin's entire post. Wouldn't do to repost all that, lol
Quote:
 
The early bird may get the worm, but it's the second mouse that gets the cheese.
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Olorin the Ancient
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Quote:
 
Olorin, you might not want to post full point costs and units. Might anger the great horned one.

My most abject and humble apologies to the Great Horned One. As anthem0x rightly pointed out (many thanks, by the way), the posting of upgrade costs is prohibited. It was not my intent to defy board policy. I have mutated my earlier post accordingly.
- Olorin the Ancient
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