1000 pts against Skaven - Escalation Campaign.

[Akkatha]

Hi Chaps, long time lurker. I've only just tried my hand at Warhammer, having joined a local store's escalation campaign. Games 1 and 2 at 500 and 750 points have gone pretty well, mostly through magical dominance, but at 1000 points theres some really scary stuff out there!

The Skaven player I'm playing is well versed in rat warfare and tends to favour huge amounts of slaves. Here's the list I've put together, I'd like your opinion on it and whether it can be tweaked. I'm lacking the models for a few units I'd love after reading about here (Crypt horrors and massive zombie hordes, I only own 50!) but I'm hoping this will still give a good game against him.

Master necromancer, lvl 3, Master of the dead, talisman of preservation (4++) Lore of Vampires

Tomb Banshee (love that mini terrorgeist scream attack for skaven. Good choice?)

Vampire, Lvl 2, Armour of Destiny, Lore of Vampires

5 Dire Wolves
5 Dire Wolves
20 Crypt Ghouls, champion
20 Skeleton warriors, full command
20 zombies, standard

Whilst theres nothing 'fun' in there, I feel like this is a numbers game and a war of attrition, so I've tried to get a load of troops. Plan is to bunker together and use invocation to raise large numbers of troops before taking a charge. The big problem I can see is war machines, as I have nothing to go hunt them!

Any opinions? Thanks!

 

[LordTobiothan]

Try to avoid only being in combat with slaves. He can shoot into combats with them and it will whittle your units and breaking them grants virtually no points. Not to mention they still beat zombies in combat.

 

[Akkatha]

Try to avoid only being in combat with slaves. He can shoot into combats with them and it will whittle your units and breaking them grants virtually no points. Not to mention they still beat zombies in combat.

Yes, this is something I've worried about. At 1000pts, he is likely to have more models to start with, and his don't crumble! My thoughts are that I need at least the 4 ranks in my units to even out the combat res scores as much as possible. I can't think of much else to take that can chew through rats though! Are they traditionally a tough match up for us? I'm still quite new to VC as an army, as I started playing Wood Elves, where a lot of match-up's were hard to just survive, let alone win!

 

[LordTobiothan]

Yeah skavens big weakness is forcing panic checks through non combat casualties, which we have none of. And our strength is cheap models built to sit around awhile, except there's are even cheaper with better stats so our benefit is reduced to healing. If your lucky, he wont have been able to take stormfiends yet.

Funny enough I also started in 7th with wood elves and moved to vampires. Went from all shooting to none of it. My regular opponent is skaven and my general strategy is put most of my points into vampires and hunt his machines with more than one unit. He gets denied basically half my points if he cant kill the characters and I send so much at the cannons it is hard to stop all of it. Then it becomes a game of can my vamps kill enough to make up for the rest of my army being nearly guaranteed death, and can i keep those characters away from the stormfiends.

In your case, if you sit back he will shoot you to death, if you don't he will tar pit your tar pit with slaves and still shoot you to death. This is a case of you simply needing him to be worse then you, there's no real tactic i can give that army vs a skaven slave and shoot army.

 

[Atrophus]

Will your store/league allow proxies?
If so drop the ghouls, they look good on paper, but you need a lot to achieve anything, 40+, 20 is too small.
Proxy them as skeletons, and add them to the other 20, that gives you a nice sized combat block.

That should give you a few extra points, what other models do you own?

 

[LordTobiothan]

Will your store/league allow proxies?
If so drop the ghouls, they look good on paper, but you need a lot to achieve anything, 40+, 20 is too small.
Proxy them as skeletons, and add them to the other 20, that gives you a nice sized combat block.

That should give you a few extra points, what other models do you own?

I'm not actually aware of the rules of an escalation league but i thought you keep the same army you had in previous battles and just add units or add too units as the points went up. Is that not the case? I could really help in these discussions more if i knew.

 

[Atrophus]

Some are some aren't from what I've seen.
Some insist on the same models, others just insist on the points increase and allow armies to change.
@Akkatha which sort is yours?

 

[Akkatha]

Cheers for the input folks.

I can indeed change out units as and when I like. We just thought running things as an escalation would give us chance to get things painted

I can do 40 odd skellies no problem. Is a bigger block that much better though? I suppose they at least get armour saves and a parry. I just wanted the ghouls as a unit that might be able to push out a chunk of combat damage rather than just try to grind.

As for things available to me :

roughly 50 skellies
40 zombies
20 ghouls
20 grave guard
10 Dire Wolves
10 Black Knights
5 Hexwraiths
3 Spirit Host
Corpse Cart
Terrorgeist
Assortment of characters!

On another note... how on earth do you get the motivation to paint hordes of zombies? I've done 40, I clearly need more and I just don't want to paint any more!

 

[Atrophus]

How about swapping your master necro and baby vamp for a vamp Lord? He'd be about the same points as those two combined, and a lot more dangerous and harder to kill.

It's not that 40 are better at fighting than 20, it just takes longer for them to die :tongue:
20 won't last long even against skaven.

 

[Akkatha]

Just wanted to update this post as I've just had that game against Skavem.

I didn't stand a chance! He brought almost 150 slaves with slings, a warp lightning cannon, a stone thrower thing and deadly characters including an assasin kitten out with the re-roll ward saves item and sword of anti-heroes.

How on earth do we get through a massive slave horde? I know at competitive level you get penalised for that many, but we're just playing with the books.

Ghouls were great though and consistently won their combats.

 

[LordTobiothan]

I assume you mean shields as slaves can't take slings. But no there's no way for you to push past a big enough slave unit. Either you find a way to ignore it or you get shot to pieces trying to fight it.

Be glad your friend hasn't discovered stormfiends yet.

 

[Akkatha]

Sadly Slaves do get slings, for half a point per model. So thats 2.5 points for a rat with stats like skellies, a shooting attack and big rank leadership bonuses. Not really sure if theres a way for vamps to deal with all those numbers! We're not playing end times stuff or models as a rule, so I can't even dip into tomb kings for a screaming skull catapult.

Either way the game is done and dusted, and it's on to the next opponent! 1250 points now. Time to work out what i want for the extra 250

 

[Atrophus]

How about 80 zombies and tarpit his tarpits :tongue:

You could up your ghouls to 40 for that and run a proper horde.

 

[Akkatha]

Zombies would be great, I just have to buy/build/paint them.... when i make that decision!

I took 30 zombies with my necromancer and banshee in them. He wiped them out by turn two. Both his warmachines hit every single time, and he dispelled both my invocations. What can you do eh? Smart player I guess!

 

[hairyjeff]

There is a quick way to paint z's. Buy some quick shade - it is a dip paint/glaze. base coat the models ( rotting flesh! great colour) and dip the models in the 'shade. then you just need to add a few details. It works well on skeletons , too. I managed 50 in a weekend.