Clan Pestilens questions

I'm planning on making a clan pestilens warband and I was wondering what peoples opinions were on it. To me it seems fair in comparison with regular skaven but I have a few questions. Sorry in advance if these have been discussed before or I'm missing something.

Why is this warband only allowed a maximum of 15 models? Skaven for me are the hordiest race in mordheim and yet lizardmen are allowed more models than them, and with Ld 7 they aren't going to last long. This doesn't seem right.

Why do monk initiates have only T2 and S2? I understand they are not night runners and over all the warband is more powerful than regular skaven but even with advances the monk initiates won't get very powerful I'd be tempted to drop them and hope I get LGT early.

I understand they wouldn't have access to most of the 'normal' skaven skills but why not tail fighting?

Any comments appreciated

Concerning the smaller amount warriors allowed, I'd say its because getting plague-loving ratmen together is harder than getting normal ones. That is, plague-monks arent as plentiful as gutter runners.

My brother has thought of playing this warband, but we havent gotten around to it, and I do think the one in TC were in need of some fixes. I will have to look into it again

My Group the guy who won the first round played Clan Pestilens.

The warband doesn't start off that dangerous, but as it gets exp it gets dangerous.

It has a lot of Offensive Strength, the models would inflict a lot of wounds, but it couldn't take many. So if he controlled the charges, and kept you from shooting him up then he would usually win pretty easily. If you could control the charges, and thin him out with some good shooting then you usually won.

The strength of the warband was the special flails. They were pretty dangerous, he had one guy with a strength of 4 with the flails, 3 attacks, and frenzy. So if he charged he had 6 strength 6 attacks. If you survived that then you could usually take him out in the attack backs, but more likely than not you were going down hard.

Thanks guys,

@ Opheliate Yeah that was what I thought but with giant rats I'm not sure.

@ Rudeboy It does seem to be very offensive but those flails seem just as dangerous to the guys using them. 6 S6 attacks? That seems insane!

Any more help would be great

Hey Kiwi,
I'm the guy in Rudeboy's campaign that plays Clan Pestilens. The Censers are really dangerous, to everybody, and it wasn't just the Strength bump or the double attacks from being frenzied, it was also the toughness tests from every hit. I maxed one Plague Monk out at 4 Attack and Strength 4 with 2 Wounds and he had, the skills Black Hunger, Censer Bearer, Rotten Body and Contagious.
So When you put it all together it went like this:

Use Black Hunger to get +1 Attack and +d3 Movement, charge their biggest/baddest guy, get 10 Attacks (4 A, +1 from Black Hunger x2 from Frenzy) at Strength 6 (4 S +2 from censer in 1st round of combat), for each hit (statistically should be 5) they and you have to take a toughness test (again they should fail a third of these) you only fail on 6s since you have Rotten Body, since you have 2 wound this shouldn't kill you the first time (Note: Rabbit's Foot is Reeeaaally good here) for each failure they take a wound this often kills them right there, but if not then you process the S 6 hits, which will certainly finish the job. Now you will have to suck the S 3 hits from the Black Hunger but you would not have burned that unless they had a really big guy, and even then your Toughness 4 helps a lot. Now the guy you charged IS dead (if not then the dice were wrong) if you are charged in retaliation it will likely be by henchmen and likely everyone they can get on you. Which is fine since if they fail to take you down you get to split an absurd number of S6 hits (since it is a new 1st round of combat +2 S again) on there guys. Now if you were not charged or (as in the case I am sighting from) you killed the henchmen you can then charge the next hero and kill him. At this point your guy will likely have been overcome from the vapors (failed too many toughness tests) but you will have wrecked a savage mess on their warband and you don't really care that your guy went down cause he just got like 5xp and doesn't have to roll for injury cause that is a the other upside of the Rotten Body Skill.

All in all it is a wonderful swirling tempest of death and disease.

On a side note the Contagious skill is too funny, it often puts the best faces on your opponent when they realize their hero got taken down anyway after killing your guy!

Oh and the reason that they are limited to 15 guys is that their toughness is better than the regular skaven, though you do lose a Movement, but the Toughness is way worth it.

The worst part of Clan Pestilens is the lack of any good ranged weapons. All you got is slings.

Hmm. I had always assumed the T2 was a typo...

The biggest problem with Krashlandon's Plauge Monk from Hell is that Frenzy is broken. Any experienced character with Frenzy is going to be deadly.

Kiwi: "...but even with advances the monk initiates won't get very powerful I'd be tempted to drop them and hope I get LGT early."

With me, that's generally the case with any warband with "youngblood" types.

Also, shouldn't that extra attack from Black Hunger be tacked on after the basic Attack stat is doubled? So it should be 9 attacks...not that it's much safer to deal with

The wording of black hunger says that the bonuses are "added to your profile". Its the only case I'm familiar with where frenzy would double the bonus.

I drop the Monk Initiates for LGT ASAP. The plague novices are really pretty decent and they are cheap and plentiful. My group plays that you can hire and fire warriors during the "Hire New Recruits" step of the post battle sequence, which works well for divesting yourself of the "youngblood" placeholders. Just remember that if you do fire anybody at this point they take their equipment with them. Which is another reason I don't buy the Monk Initiates anything more than slings, which is a good idea actually seeing as their BS is the only thing above a 2.

@toemass
That was my reading as well.

Anyway you slice it you don't want your heroes in Melee with a Pleague Priest.

Everywhere I look, warbads are divided into two categories: "official" and "unofficial", but no where is the clan pestilens skaven mentioned, so what categories are they in?

I know they are from TC 29...

Unofficial.