Skaven totally over powered?

Hi, I am sorry if this has been raised before but I have had a look and it doesn't seem to have been.

I am not a hugely experience mordhiem player, but I have played against a good few warbands including some unofficial ones which I have heard are considered over powered. I use skaven and have found that I am in a totally different league to other warbands. The Art of Silent Death skill turns my characters into fighters capable of killing even my friends vampire 1v1.

First off I have a question regarding the tail fighting rule, Can you wield a tail fighting weapon at the same time as fighting claws? If not this would weaken my characters a decent amount and could maybe make them balanced.

Secondly is there an unofficial, more balanced Skaven warband?

And thirdly if not does anyone have any suggestions on where to start in making one?

I am sorry to ask so many questions, I hope you can forgive me

Thanks in advance,
Skig

P.s I notice just now that i have set my primary warband to Beastmen which makes my claiming to mostly play skaven seem silly. This is beacuse my freinds told me they didn't want to play against my skaven anymore

Art of Silent Death is good but it still requires a skill advance and using Fighting Claws (assuming you want to get the most out of it) so the character will have no ranged ability which could land them in trouble sometimes.

Tail Fighting can be used with Fighting Claws as far as I know.

No idea about unofficial warbands but I don't have an issue with the basic one barring sling spam. There was a Clan Pestilens warband printed in one of the Town Cryers you might like to look at.

I dont think Skaven are OP. But somtimes its hard to face a Warband with 18 Slings (even after the nerf).

I know 2 unoffical Warbands. Heres one: http://mordheimer.com/warbands/experimental/assassin.htm

Thanks guys.

It's odd that you haven't experience the same problem as me. I found that even without slings (I actually never used them) that I got so many attacks so fast that I always won with minimal casualties. Perhaps i was just lucky

Anyway I shall look into these unofficial warbands.

Thanks
Skig

Skavens are very strong early in a campaign, but later on, when people can actually kill them, they rout way to easy with the low leadership - so it evens out

Da boyz never had any problems with the rats.

Save that one time with that nasty crit from a warpfire brace-o-pistols...

Could always self impose a limit say ... max 15 models or take at least 5 giant rats. The only core warband that really bugs me is Witch Hunters, who I think should be allowed 15 models (and to a lesser extent a bump in the price of Warhounds, but thats less important).

I have not really had that many problems with Skaven. The low leadership means that they will have problems with fear causers and rout tests early. This campaign cycle my friend who plays Skaven got very strong very quickly by slinging undead, but the undead player was over confident in his fear causing ability and didn't use terrain to protect himself from shooting.

I do enjoy playing the Clan Pestilens warband from TC#28.

@Figgy--I have problems with the Vermin Tide spell. 2D6 low strength hits still can take a T4 orc down even with 3 wounds... Add the warplock pistol... shudder.

Yeah Sling armed skaven are a pain in the rear that's for sure. Especially since I am beastmen fighting them. My high toughness normally saved me from too much hate but the potential for lucky rolls has totally wiped my band before.

We had two Skaven warbands in our last campaign, Sartosa 4: Dark Waters - one seemed unstoppable when they combined Art of Silent Death with Fighting Claws, but after 13 weeks of gaming (9 players played 55 games: an average of 4 games each week!) neither of the Skaven warbands won the campaign - in fact they came in 7th and 8th out of 9 warbands.

Skaven Overpowered? Definitely not! As a very experienced player, I’ve played them all and against them all. Every Warband has bonuses and penalties. I love Skaven, by far my most favorite.



There biggest bonuses are discovered early: Speed, Numbers, and Cheap. Speed, Skaven, as a group, are the fastest runners. Great for getting into HtH, and hopefully avoiding missile fire. Numbers, they can start with a full 6 Heroes for exploration. The more Shards, the more Gold. And having a max Band size of 20, by far makes Upkeep cheaper. Which brings me to Cheap. Verminkin can be dangerously hired and equipped for only 25 gold. Example: Verminkin 20gc, Mace 3gc, Sling 2 gc, and Free Dagger. Common Tactic: Run the Verminkin into HtH slinging as they go, if they can. Run the Verminkin to the Opponent in groups of 2 plus. Hit a single opponent with as many Skaven as possible. Hit first, Hit fast, Hit hard, Hit often, don’t let the enemy hit back.



The major Penalties, if anyone has played campaigns become apparent. The first is well noticed, the low Leadership. A Ld of 7, tends to run early. Verminkin with Ld of 5, don’t do well fighting along. And not well against Fear Causing Creatures. Which goes against the Hit First idea. The Skaven start out with strong stats, but if you play the long enough, their Stats seem to max out lower then other groups, besides Humans. Which brings me to another penalty, I’ve noticed, not regularly discussed. Why do Skaven get 20 members? Because of the lack of availability in Hired Swords and Dramatis Personae. Check out the average number Humans can Hire as opposed to Skavens. The number is staggeringly more toward the Humans. And if you’ve ever played a Campaign (average of 10 games or more) with a good sized group, you’ll see lots of HS and DP with a wide variety of Skills and Abilities. Personally, I’d have no problem dropping the Skavens Max size of 20 to 15, if I could hire all the same HS’s and DP’s the Humans could. The possibilities would be endless.

Shadowphx wrote:

Skaven Overpowered? Definitely not! As a very experienced player, I’ve played them all and against them all. Every Warband has bonuses and penalties. I love Skaven, by far my most favorite.



There biggest bonuses are discovered early: Speed, Numbers, and Cheap. Speed, Skaven, as a group, are the fastest runners. Great for getting into HtH, and hopefully avoiding missile fire. Numbers, they can start with a full 6 Heroes for exploration. The more Shards, the more Gold. And having a max Band size of 20, by far makes Upkeep cheaper. Which brings me to Cheap. Verminkin can be dangerously hired and equipped for only 25 gold. Example: Verminkin 20gc, Mace 3gc, Sling 2 gc, and Free Dagger. Common Tactic: Run the Verminkin into HtH slinging as they go, if they can. Run the Verminkin to the Opponent in groups of 2 plus. Hit a single opponent with as many Skaven as possible. Hit first, Hit fast, Hit hard, Hit often, don’t let the enemy hit back.



The major Penalties, if anyone has played campaigns become apparent. The first is well noticed, the low Leadership. A Ld of 7, tends to run early. Verminkin with Ld of 5, don’t do well fighting along. And not well against Fear Causing Creatures. Which goes against the Hit First idea. The Skaven start out with strong stats, but if you play the long enough, their Stats seem to max out lower then other groups, besides Humans. Which brings me to another penalty, I’ve noticed, not regularly discussed. Why do Skaven get 20 members? Because of the lack of availability in Hired Swords and Dramatis Personae. Check out the average number Humans can Hire as opposed to Skavens. The number is staggeringly more toward the Humans. And if you’ve ever played a Campaign (average of 10 games or more) with a good sized group, you’ll see lots of HS and DP with a wide variety of Skills and Abilities. Personally, I’d have no problem dropping the Skavens Max size of 20 to 15, if I could hire all the same HS’s and DP’s the Humans could. The possibilities would be endless.

What he said.

Doc

skaven and sisters are the best core warbands, notably better than the others

Skaven are not overpowered, in a game not necessarily designed with balance in mind... I think everyone just needs to stop speculating on what is uber and play the game to find out how it works for them!

Example: I used to think slings were overpowered in the extreme! For 40% of the cost of a short bow you get a weapon with the same strength, +2" range and the option to shoot twice! Well i wrote all these house rules to change that without even playing a single game with them. My friend wanted to try out skaven, and miraculously decided to drop all of my houserules meant to nerf slings, and much to my amazement, he did not make a list with 15 slings, but a sensible one with 4, and slings were terrible every game!

After that i decided not to change anything else without trying it first!

We did decide to weaken slings slightly be give a +1 to saves like a dagger. This was done to make them "feel" better in our minds, and was a flavor thing as much as it was a rules thing.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant from a blue sky, but i have the best of intentions!

Pathfinder Dubstyles wrote:

I think everyone just needs to stop speculating on what is uber and play the game to find out how it works for them!

Has anybody here had any good or bad experiences with veskit other than the model being pretty bleh? Also there is a lot of potential for adding more skaven hired swords.

Shadowphx wrote:

Skaven Overpowered? Definitely not! As a very experienced player, I’ve played them all and against them all. Every Warband has bonuses and penalties. I love Skaven, by far my most favorite.



There biggest bonuses are discovered early: Speed, Numbers, and Cheap. Speed, Skaven, as a group, are the fastest runners. Great for getting into HtH, and hopefully avoiding missile fire. Numbers, they can start with a full 6 Heroes for exploration. The more Shards, the more Gold. And having a max Band size of 20, by far makes Upkeep cheaper. Which brings me to Cheap. Verminkin can be dangerously hired and equipped for only 25 gold. Example: Verminkin 20gc, Mace 3gc, Sling 2 gc, and Free Dagger. Common Tactic: Run the Verminkin into HtH slinging as they go, if they can. Run the Verminkin to the Opponent in groups of 2 plus. Hit a single opponent with as many Skaven as possible. Hit first, Hit fast, Hit hard, Hit often, don’t let the enemy hit back.



The major Penalties, if anyone has played campaigns become apparent. The first is well noticed, the low Leadership. A Ld of 7, tends to run early. Verminkin with Ld of 5, don’t do well fighting along. And not well against Fear Causing Creatures. Which goes against the Hit First idea. The Skaven start out with strong stats, but if you play the long enough, their Stats seem to max out lower then other groups, besides Humans. Which brings me to another penalty, I’ve noticed, not regularly discussed. Why do Skaven get 20 members? Because of the lack of availability in Hired Swords and Dramatis Personae. Check out the average number Humans can Hire as opposed to Skavens. The number is staggeringly more toward the Humans. And if you’ve ever played a Campaign (average of 10 games or more) with a good sized group, you’ll see lots of HS and DP with a wide variety of Skills and Abilities. Personally, I’d have no problem dropping the Skavens Max size of 20 to 15, if I could hire all the same HS’s and DP’s the Humans could. The possibilities would be endless.

A most wonderful rundown. Another weakness to add is that a skaven warband have a hard time splitting up, as all the henchmen have to run with the leader, meaning only the black skaven and the sorcerer can split out from the group.

@ Veskit, he is insanely powerful, but actually rather slow so he'll only keep up with the verminkin group, 3+ armour save with 2 wounds is useful, but he is still a glass-jaw, as many criticals can land him right out of the game.
And as he usually kills what he charges, and you want your heroes to get experience, he can be rather annoying. Also he is expensive as hell.

The warlock is by the way an excellent hired sword for skaven.

Shadowphx wrote:

Skaven Overpowered? Definitely not! As a very experienced player, I’ve played them all and against them all. Every Warband has bonuses and penalties. I love Skaven, by far my most favorite.



There biggest bonuses are discovered early: Speed, Numbers, and Cheap. Speed, Skaven, as a group, are the fastest runners. Great for getting into HtH, and hopefully avoiding missile fire. Numbers, they can start with a full 6 Heroes for exploration. The more Shards, the more Gold. And having a max Band size of 20, by far makes Upkeep cheaper. Which brings me to Cheap. Verminkin can be dangerously hired and equipped for only 25 gold. Example: Verminkin 20gc, Mace 3gc, Sling 2 gc, and Free Dagger. Common Tactic: Run the Verminkin into HtH slinging as they go, if they can. Run the Verminkin to the Opponent in groups of 2 plus. Hit a single opponent with as many Skaven as possible. Hit first, Hit fast, Hit hard, Hit often, don’t let the enemy hit back.



The major Penalties, if anyone has played campaigns become apparent. The first is well noticed, the low Leadership. A Ld of 7, tends to run early. Verminkin with Ld of 5, don’t do well fighting along. And not well against Fear Causing Creatures. Which goes against the Hit First idea. The Skaven start out with strong stats, but if you play the long enough, their Stats seem to max out lower then other groups, besides Humans. Which brings me to another penalty, I’ve noticed, not regularly discussed. Why do Skaven get 20 members? Because of the lack of availability in Hired Swords and Dramatis Personae. Check out the average number Humans can Hire as opposed to Skavens. The number is staggeringly more toward the Humans. And if you’ve ever played a Campaign (average of 10 games or more) with a good sized group, you’ll see lots of HS and DP with a wide variety of Skills and Abilities. Personally, I’d have no problem dropping the Skavens Max size of 20 to 15, if I could hire all the same HS’s and DP’s the Humans could. The possibilities would be endless.

I still can't rid of the feelin that almost all pros are of immediate use - you use them whenever you move, fight, shoot. And cons are in play only "later in campaign", only when someone decides to use HS which rats cannot hire (though they still got own DP and can hire warlock), only when warband causes fear (which causes less then more warbands)... Honestly how often do you use M and S stats compared to Ld? With better Movement and Strengh and advantage in number you can avoid using Ld at all.
IMHO from point of wiev of price, stats and numbers comparison and weight of advantages that arise from it, Skaven realy are better, then other core warbands.

Okay, I’ll try to elaborate further. Since you mentioned the Core Book, I’ll stick to just that for now. Of the 5 normal Humans Warbands, all with different Bonuses and Penalties, for time constraints, I’ll cover the most common three. Comparing Mercs to Skaven, on why Skaven can have 20 member and Mercs 15. There are many advantages the Humans have over Skaven. The point I brought up earlier was HS and DP availability. Not counting the Warlock because he can be hired by both Mercs and Skaven, HS and DP is 9 to 1. If Mercs and Skaven hired everyone available for 1 game, the Band number would be Mercs 25 to Skaven 22. And that’s not even mentioning the wide variety of Skills and Abilities of the HS and DP.



Why is Skaven Speed, 5’s and 6’s. For that, look at the Ranged Weapons Available to Mercs, which have Ranges from 20 to 48 inches. Not even adding in the Skill Eagle Eyes for an additional 6 inches. Skaven need the speed to get to the shooters before they get shot. Speaking of weapons, one would also compare HtH weapons available. Skaven have a couple of really attractive weapons. Weeping Blades, the benefits are only if the roll a 6 to hit. Other than that, they’re the same as normal swords. Warplock pistol, range 8in. S4, but 8 inches isn’t really that far. But the best weapon they have is the Fighting Claws; Parry and Re-roll Failed Parry, Climbing, and combined with Art of Silent Death gives an extra attack. But only a few Skaven can use them without another skill. Then look at the HtH weapons the Mercs can have, almost all can have Double Handed Weapons. That would make a S3 Human into a S5 Human. Sure they hit last, but if/when they do, it’s a 2 to wound.



With Mercs having better availability HS’s, DP’s, and a wider variety of weapons; most people want to just focus on “Skaven can have up to 20 guys.” And all this information is only from the Core Book, this isn’t even getting into 29 Town Cryer issues and the Annual2002. Like I said in an earlier post, Skaven start out strong but max out fast in a Campaign. If the only two Warbands that are played are the same Merc Vs. Skaven Band, the Mercs will have trouble getting stronger. But as they increase gold and buy better weapons and more guys to wield them, the Skaven better use a lot of cover.



Death from a Distance! If I shoot you, you can’t touch me!

Shadowphx, that is theory-mordheim and in my opinion misses the point. No warband can afford 9 hired swords, the upkeep is simply not affordable. Keeping more than three or four is next to impossible. Compare that to henchmen that you have to pay for only once and you´ll see what i mean.
As for shooting - ranged combat is weaker than close combat because you don´t get the advantages for stunned or knocked down models that you get in hand to hand. If your table has a decent amount of cover a hth-warband and a shooting warband will both have a chance of winning. Add to that the skaven´s ability to use one or two giant rats as cheap meat shields to soak up the ranged combat hits and you´ll see that skaven have a very decent chance against even maxed out Reiklanders.

All in all skaven are powerfull, but not overpowered. All rulebook warbands can play and win against each other - and winning in Mordheim does not mean that you are doing well. The after-game dice rolls are often much more important than winning.

I think it depends on the Senerio you are playing. On any of the Grab and Go Senerios Skaven are hard to beat.

I think that you can stack a few of the better abilites together and make them really powerful, but one power character doesn't make a war band. One good Zap from a wizard, to some hot rolls by your enemies he is still toast.

If you want to play a Busted Warband just look-up Shadow Elves.

The discussion is whether or not Skaven are over-powered/unbalanced. My point is that they are not. Strong, yes, but so are the other Bands in the book in different ways. The Game is Strategy! In every aspect. Know your Warband and it bonuses and penalties, know your opponents Warband Type and its bonuses and penalties. Know your Opponent(s). What kind of Player are they (runners or shooters)? Terrain is also a big part of Strategy. What Type, Size, and Shape. Terrain is placed by the players, each player takes a turn placing terrain. If you have a “shooter” Warband, and you want open space for shooting, when its your to place a piece, declare done. After that, no more terrain can be placed. If you’re playing and HtH Warband, (I.E. pitfighter skilled), then you want more buildings to fight in.



Every Warband has bonuses and penalties. And when comparing one band to another band, one of them will always seem stronger. Example: A Player in my group has a Possessed Band with 2 Possessed, 2 Mutants, and 2 Beastmen Heroes. One of those Possessed is almost maxed in stats. That one Possessed walked through half my Skaven band alone, blocking a bridge, before I finally failed a Route check. While this was going on, his Mutants were shooting my non-fighting Skaven trying to cross the bridge just out of range for slings. In this case, Possessed seem overpowered. But really, it was Strategy. The Strategy of Player, Band, and Terrain.

What do you mean "declare done"? Seems like a home cooked rule to me!

And I'm sorry, a bit of topic, but the blue color of your text makes it quite painful to read. So if you really want people to read your stuff, you might want to reconsider your choice of text color.
best regards.

When placing Terrain, each player takes a turn to put a piece on the table. I understand there are no set rules on how much or little terrain is placed on the table. (I.E. each table must have 50 pieces of terrain) When one player chooses not to place anymore terrain, the Turns would end, and that’s all that’ll be on the table. The player that stops placing terrain, would declare Done, finished, that’s all, or what ever your group wishes to say that all the terrain going to be placed. Or does your group keep placing terrain out of turns? When would it stop?



Is this Color better?

You'd stop when all players consecutively pass on their opportunity to place a piece of terrain.