Well, I got a look at the book today (only a week before the release, but whatever). There has been a poop-ton of new stuff, and the return of Plague Priests/Lords.

New stuff:
Doomwheel: Chariot-sized thing, shoots Warp Lightning at enemies within 12 inches, is a pain to put together.

Vermin Lord: Rat-Demon thing, with a stat-board of 8 almost all the way across. Level 4 mage also. This thing is amazing.

Plague Priests/Lords: Returning from old editions with a new rule set. Didn't look into these guys much.

Hell-Pit Demon Rat or something of that sort: basically another demon rat with crazy stats, and on a 4+ after he loses all 6 wounds, he doesn't actually die, and on a 6 on that roll he regains a few wounds. I think this is a new monster-type deal.


Upgrades:
Screaming Bell, besides an amazing new model, gets buffed, even though it was already amazing.

Stormvermin get some stuff, cant remember off the top of my head.

Plague Rats/Monks get some sort of buff, can't remember again.




Just wanted to share this with youo guys a week or two before the release!

That Vermin Lord sounds incredible. Do you think Skaven will be the new daemon or dark elf powered army?

:ph43r: the Hell beast sounds scary as all get go...

I hope that they are just especially adept at beating the demons and dark evles. They need to be a paper to their rock if you know what I mean :P

There's much more info out there at the minute if you go look for it. The vermin lord @ 500points and he does not have 8's across the board (or even close?! WS8 and initiative maybe sure. but S and T were in the 5-6 range as you'd expect as was wounds).

Hell pit abomination regen and stubborn (Ld 8), with very good giant style attacks and random 3d6 movement. Looks pretty good.

Doomwheel shoots lighting at the closest unit, friend or foe, not just enemies.

There's nothing in the detailed previews I've read so far that's worried me overly, esp there doesn't seem to be the stupid magic items we've seen in all current new books. but hey - they might have missed thigns.

Whats the fluff on the vermin lord? is he some type of daemon?

Skaven are just chaos ratmen. They worship something that is very close to an incarnation of nurgle. So daemon high ends (especially since one of their magic items is just a daemon in a staff) seem plausible.

Not sure on the fluff though I think I remember a recent rumour of his rules including the phrase "counts as a daemon" or similar (so cause fear 5+ ward etc.). Could be wrong though.

Thanks for the extra info Nethrag, I just kinda skimmed through the book real quick to see what's new. And what was it that had 8's across the board??? There was something about a Lord, eight wounds, S8, T8, and so-on and so forth....


@waghi and Era Vulgaris- I think that the Skaven might be on a level with WoC, meaning that while it can be abused and used to demolish stuff, the book can also make some fun lists to use against friends.

From the rumours it look to be a very fun army that can be competitive in a lot of ways. The Screaming Bell and Plague Furnace both make their units unbreakable, so those could give a solid core to your army (core, not Core). The SAD units have been nerfed a little, but everything else seems to have been buffed. I'm looking forward to the army very much.

Plague Furnace??? :blink:

It's a new bell like warmachine, similar to the bell, built from the same kit, but it's swinging a giant plague censer instead of the bell, and it's manned by a plague priest. Impact hits, Toughness tests, unbreakable, MR (2), all in all sounds like a great thing to have.

And now both plague priests and engineers can be lvl 2 mages, and there's two spell lists (Spells of Ruin and Spells of Pestilence), so all in all it looks like a neat book.

I'm not happy about Unbreakable abounding.... Its gonna get abused out the wazoo, and I hope I'm not the only one who can see that. STubborn LD 10 would still have been strong but nowhere near as bad as Unbreakable.

Bell + 3 furnaces in 4 huge Unbreakable blocks of rats... thats gonna be a great game to play :rolleyes:


Other than that I don't think the Skaven book sounds too bad from everything I've seen so far...

One bell and one furnace with characters and good pusher units will cost about 1000 points, I don't know if any more would be a good investment.

1000 pts includes 6 levels of magic, the benefits of both the bell and the furnace, a combat character, and two 25 wound unbreakable units. Not saying it's a no-brainer, but starting from there, skaven certainly can afford the tools to properly put those two unbreakable units to good use.

Ok so my points may be slightly off, I never bothered to think about them TBH.

But my point is large Unbreakable units do little to encourage me to engage with my opponent and will lead to stupid dull avoidance games.

At least with Daemons/VCs you can kill them with Combat Res, and Stubborn blocks of Temple Guard/Black Guard you have some potential to break them if you try hard enough. But I see very little incentive to wade into 25-30+ (and we all know they'll be huge units if the guys using it as his centre...) Unbreakable Rats...

How will it lead to a dull avoidance game? they are still at best either 3+ t3 creatures or t4 no armoured guys, plenty of stuff can run in there and butcher them by the handful.

Because only a stupid opponent will charge in a "punch" block into a centrally placed Unbreakable unit. That will lead to an immediate counter charge in the flank with the (most likely) subsequent loss of said "punch" unit.

Besides Black Guard I don't think any unit stand much of a chance of pulling that off.

I think the furnace and the bell are quite different in that regard. The furnace wants to be in combat, and has some protection for the unit with the pre-combat gas, while even with the bell being unbreakable....you still don't want your seer in combat.

well the plague furnace is very interesting because if you take a censor on the plague priest all models in base contact have to take 2 toughness tests with no armor saves allowed (one for the priest and one for the furnace). that makes it very powerful against the best units. if you can kill two models before combat even starts then they are less likely to beat the piss out of your unit.

There is a rare monster for the skaven that is going to be the cookie cutter choice for all skaven players M 3d6 w3 S6 T6 W6 A* the attacks this thing does is amazing rolls like a giant for its attack but all of its attacks do a Doo-Doo ton of damage. the one i remember best is it's 1-2 roll where it does one automatic hit with all models in base contact and it does d3 wounds. this monster also does D6 impact hits when it charges. oh yeah did i mention it's unbreakable?!?!?! comes back to life on a 5-6 releases d3 rat swarms on a 3-4 and actually dies on a 1-2. Oh i forgot if that's not good enough GW will thrown in regeneration. oh also it can have magic res 1 and magical attacks. all at the amazing price of 235 pts!!!!! oh dear god this model is amazing!!! i'm gonna have at least one in my skaven army.

the skaven army is gonna have lots of large models in their army i can guarantee you that, but there are soooo many good options for skaven that i hope not to see cookie cutter armies.

also storm vermin suck still they don't have any special abilities and they are 8 pts for ws 4 s3 t3 models with hvy armor shield and halberds. i doubt you will see anyone with those when clanrats with light armor and shields are 4 1/2 pts. yes they brought back 1/2 pt items

oh yeah skaven warlords can be mounted on rat ogres/massive rat/storm vermin palanquin.

and the screaming bell comes with a rat ogres with 4 S5 attacks.

jezzails are still 20 pts and no longer skirmish

and there are 2 new skryre weapon teams, one gives a unit the tunneling ability (so you can make a skaven army that doesn't deploy on the board at all!) and a globadier mortar guess up to 24, fires small template and causes a wound on a 5+ no armor saves. weapon teams got a decrease in pts and get a 4+ ward if within 3" of their parent unit.

hope this helps

Heard a few things different for the skaven book, but not that different. Abomination is a little different from what i heard, but it doesn't really matter in the long run. Main thing I see about skaven is they have given up on the combat res army style. Now it seems to be all about the toys. This is bad for the obvious reason that it is a whole lot less tactical army. Then again it really didn't work that well now because of the unbreakableness of VC and DoC. So I guess it had to be.

Of note 4+ ward on weapons teams really isn't useful except for against war machines. Against anything else the 1 wound pretty much negates the 4+ ward. It just keeps you from applying too much overkill when you shoot at it with a whole 10 man unit.

Taking a censer on the priest means 15 (!) tests on your monks, and only 4 or 5 on the enemy. I wouldn't do it.

I think the Abomination is T5, BTW. And with Regeneration.

Plague censer bearers are the big threat in the new book. They got an extra attack, lost restrictions and became a point cheaper. There's very little a decent unit of these won't steanroll through.

I think they are special selections now too. Which means they will be more common I am sure. Anyone know what the rules for jezzails are going to be. i know they lost skirmish, but what is their strength now and did they get any other rules?

Jezzails are essentially the same. Pavise is just a flaw 4+ save, not just against shooting, and they don't skirmish.

They won't be as popular, but I don't think they lost too much. I think about the new gutter runners the same way.

Biggest thing being that if they do not skirmish - they do not have 360 degree shooting - which means they can be over run much more easily (ambush, etc).

Anyone else think 2010 will be the year of the rat on the tournement scene?

Not really

Couple reasons

good lists take 300+ rats. Big investment of time and money there.

They also don't appear to be more powerful then daemons and will have some problems with the meat grinder units. There are too many units out there that can make up combat res in wounds and T3 rats are pretty fragile there. So they will have a hard time killing those unkillable units and thus scoring enough points to win.

Agreed. If they were fear causing, immune to psyche, ward saving, unbreakable, and maybe one or two other special rules for only double the points cost of a skaven warrior, then there would be some cause to see them in the top tier. :P

No...its gonna be the year of the beast!

I thought it was Year of the Tiger? Perhaps and Ind army will be released?

The abomination is great, but is only stubborn, not unbreakable. The when it dies thing is 1-3 dies, 4-5 swarms pop out, and 6 comes back to life with d6 wounds.

The SV are 6 points base, 7 with shields. I think they are a great lynchpin unit with heavy armour and shield, or a flanking element with their halberds. Their LD is higher too.

The new mortar is awesome! move and shoot with a guess weapon. Doesn't need LOS if the parent unit has LOS, but scatters twice as far if it uses that ability. Also I believe that the template doesn't use partials, just hits everything it touches, but that could be just the new Catapult they got.

Speaking of which, I think the new catapult isn't any good. 100 pts for a stone thrower weapon that uses a pie plate at str 2. Sure, you're going to hit a lot of guys with a pie plate and no partials, but str 2? blech. oh, it has no AS and d6 wounds...if it wounds

I've read that they are 7 points base. Still, I'm getting a box, I think they will be great bell pushers.

Move and shoot for the mortar? That doesn't sound right. Doesn't mean you are wrong, just that it doesn't seem right.

I agree though the plague catapult really doesn't look that good. Especially in light of the Abomination rare choice. That thing sounds nasty. Hard to get rid of and nasty in combat. I said it before though, nasty monster for skaven is good news fo us hopefully. Maybe our monsters will get an upgrade now. No more crappy shaggoth stats for a premium price tag.

The Mortar is strapped to the back of a skaven, and operated by the other member of the team. Most definately move and shoot.

Wouldn't say that - rattling guns are similar in model - but they are not move and shoot? Jazee's are similiar in model - but they are not move and shoot?

They may be similar models, but they don't say move and shoot in their profile. It's %100 move and shoot.

Gotcha - so they are more like the warp fire thrower (move and shoot)?

Warp fire throwers aren't move and shoot. They destroy entire units with a shot....but they aren't move and shoot.

Had a proper look through the book today. My god the abomination is horrific.

3d6 spawn movement is its only weakness.
T5 6W regen, after it dies at the end of the turn 1-3 dead, 4-5 rat swarms (D3?) 6 gets back up with d6 wounds.
Ld 8 stubborn.
Large target, terror

causes impact hits (d6 S6)
attacks
1-2. Every model in base contact takes an automatic S6 hit, (think it was no armour) each causes D3 wounds.
3-4. Gets 3d6 attacks, WS3, S6.
5-6. Every model in base contact takes an initiative test, if fails takes S6 hit. Also gets 2d6 automatic hits (S6)!

It's initiative 4, to be honest if your initiative isn't higher than that your going to lose the combat every time pretty much no matter what.

Armies will now be these and plague stuff everywhere. Toughness tests or die all over the place and plague censer bearers. Plague priests seem pretty solid as the new fighter/mages (if I was getting carried away I'd hope for my tzeentch wargor to still be fighter mages but prob not).

How slaves get to count towards minimum core is beyond me too. 120 points for all your core troops?!

The magic item selection however is extremely lack lustre compared to some recent books. Best/only proper ward save is 30points for a 5+ ward. How on earth they think that the pendant is only worth 5 more points than that I'll never know.