Skaven totally over powered?

Popmouth wrote:

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.

We should all have our own unique colours

Red is used by the mods/admin for various purposes. I expect they'll edit your post soon and explain that.

I feel pretty, oh so pretty



.... sorry

catferret wrote:

Red is used by the mods/admin for various purposes. I expect they'll edit your post soon and explain that.

No fun....

Shadowphx wrote:

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?

Well, we don't have that much terrain, so we place the terrain until there are none left. Maybe if you have a lot of terrain you could role say 2D6 or 3D6 to see how many terrain pieces there will be, and the players must place all. It just feels unfair that say a shadow elves warband can take advantage by limiting the terrain in such ways. I mean, a warband can't really choose the setting, fluff ways, so it seems just weard.

Sorry about the color thing, feels a bit stupid today, I'm just a typography suckup, and can easy get hung up on in my sense irritating text. ^_^

I think it is best, if possible, to have a third party set up the terrain. I also think that every table should be packed with terrain. If there was a really shooty band that wanted to try to limit the terrain on the table I just wouldn't play against him/her. Mordheim is a city. In most cases it will be densely clustered with buildings.

We allow open spaces, represented during terrain set-up by blank pieces of paper, as legitimate terrain picks. Despite this, we normally end up with moderately dense terrain purely because the majority of the players in our group want everybody to have a good game. Appropriate pressure is applied to the unenlightened few who don't share this mindset.

Citizen Sade wrote:

We allow open spaces, represented during terrain set-up by blank pieces of paper, as legitimate terrain picks. Despite this, we normally end up with moderately dense terrain purely because the majority of the players in our group want everybody to have a good game. Appropriate pressure is applied to the unenlightened few who don't share this mindset.

This is a smart idea!

We typically just set it up in blocks, with roads ect. doesnt look like a bunch of buildings randomaly thrown on the table and works fine.

If you want the best way to place terrain do the following;

Cut out approx foot prints of the average building you have. write "building" on some of them and "empty" on fewer of them. Then randomly determine how many you'll use, depending on table size and place them. No one knows whats going to happen, but you can make guesses

We just set up the table with the hole group to have the terrain "match" the scenario and make it as "fluffy" as possible.

art of silent death + fighting claws is great, but I think I can dig on weeping blades + expert swordsman just as much!

In the rulebook is said about 70 % terrain coverage i couldn t find the page right now. With that much terrain it is nicely possible playing meele warbands, but i won all my games with shadow warriors too (which are very shooty, and in the first 5 games they are NOT imba (we started 2 campains, which were endet after 5th and 4th battle because the players didnt like the game)). I think it is very important to place that much terrain for the balance! We tried out a btb scenario (the one with the thief) with less terrain ( about 40 %) and the dark elves, which are considered absolutely op in mirdheim had no chance against the btb norse. The btb norse from btb i think are imba btw.

I looked and have a done a PDF Search for “%”, and have only thing found resulted in Route Check, and the starting Gold for Marienburgers. Of course, if have the PDF version posted from Specialist Games (from many years back). I have misplaced my original book many years back after a few moves. If you find it, please list where.

Dudes ... in case you didn't notice ... this thread Feanor decided to ressurect is over three years old.

And welcome to TBMF Feanor ... interesting, I used to live in Freiburg for more than ten years myself.

Old thread or not I like some of the ideas I see here.
I like personaly to let some one else set up (My Wife likes to do this some times).
But if not I like the idea of open spaces as an option for set up and also like the idea of 2D6 or 3D6... maybe tie it to the table size (4x4 or 4x6). For this it's just of course for larger buildings and suck not small things I would think but of course it would be something to test out in your own group.

I did notice that. I posted heavily in this first time around. But if someone would like to bring new thoughts to an old thread or point, why start a new one each time and everybody keep posting the same remarks to it over and over again. He had a new point about terrain and I looked into it. Besides, this is an old debate and many still keep trying to make it in other threads, including how to make the Skaven “Fair”, and how much terrain should be required.

2 cents:

I remember reading somewhere the 75% terrain thing too. cant remember where though, but for balance of the game, its required.



as for skaven,
my group nerfed the Art of Silent Death ability so that it crits on 5s ONLY when used with Fighting Claws.
Seemed to get the job done just fine, while not discouraging players from playing the race. In the last campaign, the skaven warband kept up nicely with the others, instead of being light years ahead as usually is the case. campaign lasted 3 months playing bi-weekly.

In my group we found we didn't have to do a thing to Skaven to keep them under control. We just had to play the game with the rules and equipment that were in the book.

Skaven are a top-tier warband but they are certainly not overpowered. Heck, I abandoned my Skaven in favour of my Marienburg, because the Skaven miss out on so much cool stuff late game.

The sling is one of the pooest ranged weapons in the game that has one redeeming factor - it is cheap. If they are slinging you to death then what the good-god-damn are you doing in range of them? Bows, longbows, and crossbows *all* outrange them and are available to almost all warbands and a bow with hunting arrows is a thing to fear - especially a Skaven with little to no armour. If there is little terrain, stand back and pin-cushion them. If there is lots of terrain then when they bunch up shoot them with Blunderbusses if you have them (most will need a TLGT hero) or firebombs if you don't (equipment and so available to every hero).

If they are turtling in a building so they can shoot past your henchman screen then stay out of range and sniper them to death. If they are on the ground then they can't shoot past your screen so you can rush them.

Whenever you can, pick scenarios that shaft the Skaven - usually the ones that last until one team or the other routs - pick off their henchmen and make them scatter. Another downside of their poor leadership is that their Tarot card usage will suck. Get some for all your heroes as soon as possible and out-earn them in the exploration phase. So what if they win? They get +1 xp for the leader and an extra dice to roll so (assuming neither of you screwed anything up) you will both be keeping 6 dice, but with all your +/-1 it will be *you* that is getting d3 crossbows, a wardog, slaughtered warband to loot, etc.

Yes, Skaven have one of the strongest starts but once you get your quickshooting heroes with crossbows or bows with hunting arrows online their ranged will be much less threatening. With your firebombs to take them out if they cluster and your regular shooting to pick them off one by one if they don't they are less of a threat.

If they do get a good start and manage to get away from everyone then do what you do to *any* warband that gets too powerful too quickly - gang up on them and take them down a peg or two. That is pretty much what the ambush scenario is *for*. They all start clustered in the middle and then your guys with sprint and firebombs run up from all sides and blow the crap out of them.

If you want to make it even easier, you could house-rule Knife-fighter to Throwing expert and let them use the skill with all throwing weapons and equipment e.g. bombs, holy water, throwing axes, etc.

Get caltrops for your more valuable heroes so that when they charge from their long range there is a pretty good chance they willl be stranded in the open.

Some warbands don't have access to bows or crossbows, but that is why we use the interpretation that the TLGT heroes can choose any skill list available to the warband rather than only skill lists that are available to some of the heroes. If they are going to be dicks and try to turtle and sling you, then you can just stay at range of your TLGT snipers and wait until they get bored of you shooting at them and them not being able to return fire.

I do played skavens a few times...

They get strong fast and have good special skills, they are certainly an above average warband.

Still, their leadership is low and if you do not forget morale rules (like us most of the time!), they are cowards.

Also, their low maximum stats makes them more balanced as the game advance.


The two most overpowered warbands are the dwarves and the shadow warriors... if you face the dwarven fortresses or the skippy elves someday you'll understand...

I have encountered both of those (the dwarfs many times) and although I think the dwarfs are on par with the skaven, I agree with GW that the elves were too powerful, but then that is probably why they removed the elves from being official .

I played a long campain between dwarves , shadow warriors, skaven, orks&gobbos, and carnival .. And ..

- it was soo fun, we had multiple level field and open terrain too
- the only broken thing is nurgle pestilenze but in multyplayer scenario s there was a silent alliance .. All vs that damn mage and Then all vs all.
- I played dwarves and after some hard battles I Reached a good edge and won the campain.
- the orcs are played by a not vero s killer player but he had fun, vs all the OP warbands out there .. The troll if u have many goblins to feed well .. Is a good choice.

The Elves are good .. High iniziative and mobility in a skirmish game .. But with dwarves, low mobility and low iniziative, never had problem to beat Them.
Shooting with crossbows while advancing with the band in cover. He couldn't run all the game