Need Tactical Advice for Multiplayer Game

My group and I are two rounds deep into a round robin tournament. We have four players, and at the end of each round we do a 'Blood on the Streets' multiplayer game. I've been playing Skaven. During the first round, I was doing very well, but the multiplayer game ruined me. Lost a lot of members and my Rat Ogre. Since then, I've been stomped every game. I want to turn myself around, because it is hard to get the momentum back once you've lost it.

A bit of background;

Me: Skaven- my assassin is dead, the rest of my heroes all have infiltrate, and most have resilience. Everyone is armed with slings.

Tom: Dwarves- noble is dead, lots of shooting. Has only won one game (which was against me!).

Megan: Orcs and Goblins- All heroes with two handed weapons and strongman. Lots of gobs with spears and short bows. Oh, and a troll.

Jim: Undead- eclectic group of undead, most of little power, but the vampire is ridiculous; resilience, 3 wounds, jump up.

Now, granted what I can do is very limited by what the scenario and the exact layout of terrain and such is. I would love to wait for them to kill each other. However, I have a feeling that everyone will be ganging up on me...again, since I am the one who has been playing the longest. What I plan to do is try to stay hidden away from the dwarf shooting, hopefully get in close to take them out. However, the two bigs worry me. The Vampire and the Orc Chieftein. While I might be able to get one, if I luck out, but there is no way to get them both.

I think that I might try to do some diplomacy. Try and get everyone after the Orcs & goblins, since they are the big threat, and then turn on the Vampire. I'm not a big fan of that sort of thing, though. Any good general suggestions?

Well, if they persist in ganging up on you in the free-for-alls you are going to have a hard time turning the campaign around. Losing the assassin hurts, of course.

How are you tracking victory conditions? If the standings in the campaign are calculated regularly, over time people will tend to turn on whoever is in the lead. As a sneaky skaven type, feel free to prominently post league standings in the gaming area whenever you are not at the top. It is OK to whine, just do it in character!

I don't have a huge amount of experience playing Skaven - some - but in general, play sneaky. Skaven should slink and skitter and run away and then dog-pile anybody who wanders too close to them without support. If it looks like a fair fight, avoid it. You are faster than the other warbands, so move. Your initiatives are high (4s and 5s), so climb (and buy your heroes ropes-and-hooks). I would work on developing the shooting capability of heroes - the black skaven and night runners and any promoted henchmen (choose "Shooting" as one of their skill areas). Weapons Expert opens up a wealth of possibilities: a skaven with a blunderbuss is a wonderful thing (since skaven are fast and generally run away from their enemies, pursuing warbands tend to bunch up as they give chase - so a quick reversal with the blunderbuss fellow may well catch a large number of targets, and even T4 orcs and dwarves are going to hurt if you catch enough of them in the blast). Crossbows for your heroes also helps offset the T4s of the orcs and dwarves. Poisoned crossbow bolts, doubly so. (Not worth buying the poison for games vs. the undead, though).

Dwarves are tough fellows. Better than you in melee, and better at long-ranged shooting. But they are sloooooow and they climb like clumsy rocks, so go for the high ground and hide. Make them come to you. Given the relative costs of your warriors compared to theirs, in theory you should outnumber them, but if you have been having some rough games I realize that might not be the case.

Orcs are tough, but the goblins aren't particularly. Remember, the troll has to stay close to the Big Boss to have much chance of making his Stupidity roll, so make potting the Boss a top priority - you take him out, and you have neutralized the troll as well (again, altitude and crossbows are your friends). As you retreat from them, they may well become strung out, due to their animosity rolls. If their leaders pull ahead of the henchmen during the chase, you might have an opportunity to quickly reverse yourself and dog-pile her heroes. It sounds like she is optimizing for close combat (I would too if there were dwarves around), so don't melee with the orcs - shoot 'em!

The vampire is a nasty piece of work. Avoid him or pin-cushion him, but try to avoid melee. With the undead, you are going to have a very hard time in melee - your crappy leadership vs. the Fear most of the undead cause works strongly against you. On a more positive note, many of the undead climb as badly as the dwarves, and they are crappy at ranged combat, so go for altitude again, when possible. Stock up on Holy Water. With the BS of your Black Skaven, they should be able to really hurt Mr. Vampire if he comes too close.

Good luck! It sounds like you have had a bit of bad luck, but you may be able to bounce back. If not, enjoy being a sneaky little rat and make them work hard to stomp you!

I have found that in multiplayer games the starting position of the warbands is extremely important. Try to choose a place that is far from any objectives and gives you places to hide and most of the time the other warbands will not come after you right from the start.

If you want to go after one warband and delay the others use giant rats to slow them down / prevent them from running. Even a hidden rat will still prevent a model from running - and if they see it and kill it it is no big loss. They only cost 15 GC and your high numbers mean that your rout number is still far away.

Concerning your warband: You have chosen infiltration for your heroes. Maybe that leads to you exposing them often when the rest of the warband is still too far away to help? I never choose this skill because of that reason, the first skill any of my skaven get is tail fighting. Nothing is better than high numbers of attacks.

Reading about your opponents i noticed that the vampire has jump up. Why does he need it? He is undead after all.

The extra attack from tail fighting might be nice, but against undead (Fear will mean charges are going to be uncoordinated) and T4 orcs and dwarves, I really think optimizing for shooting should take priority, especially since the orcs seem to be focusing on beefing up their melee abilities. But perhaps that is just my play style, If the skaven are already behind, I don't think they are going to have much luck catching up by focusing on melee.

Jump Up benefits the vampire. If he is knocked down by an injury roll of 1 or 2 he jumps immediately to his feet. When his No Pain special ability converts an injury roll of 3 or 4 from a stun to a knocked down result, the skill doesn't help, admittedly, but it does help if the original roll was for a knock down.

@Horatius [quote=Living Rule Book Page 10]A model can only run if there are no enemy models
within 8" of it at the start of the turn (fleeing, stunned,
knocked down and hidden models do not count).[/quote]

Infiltration is a good skill, but you should be realy carefull if you use it in multiplayer games. With some modells with crossbow it could be a very good thing, to place them a bit away from the battle, but with a good view for the objectives or the whole battlefield.

Holy water will help a great deal in multiplayer games. Tell the undead player of your cool stuff and perhaps he will go and attack other players, which don't have such a deadly item.
For the Orcs, try to let them come to you. They are slow, because of animosity. Very often some of them will fall back, because of a bad roll and you can easily outnumber the vanguard.

Thanks Saranor, we have played hiding / running the wrong way for years! Fortunately the delaying tactic ist still possible, but with more risk to the rat.

Mweaver you are right about the jump up rule, but i still wonder if it is not simply overkill on a three wound vampire with fear, high toughness and top fighting skills - how often will he be forced to use it? I don´t think that he will get clobbered that often...unless you charge him into the middle of he enemy warband on his own :-)

I don´t agree that focussing on shooting is a good idea for the skaven, a mix of mid-range shooting (slings for everyone) and close combat is better. To get really effective at shooting you need several heroes with multiple shooting skills (weapons expert and things like quick shot or nimble), this will take a long time, you need some luck to actually get the skills and it will get expensive if you want the good shooting stuff like crossbows.
In close combat a T4 enemy is not that scary, the skaven have lots of strength 4 (or even 5 with mighty blow) attacks to deal with the orcs and dwarves. You just have to pick your fights, this is another time when giant rats will shine. Use them to ty up his strong models and gang up with your heroes and good melee fighters on your opponents weaker models in order to force him to check for routs.

Horatius, I almost never take Jump Up for my vampire captains - not a bad skill, but there are several I think are more critical. I agree with you there.

Again, I am not that experienced a Skaven captain - having only run four or five warbands through the years (and all but two of them in fairly short-lived campaigns). My most successful was Squeelsqueek's Suicide Squad, who I played as nutty kami-kazi rats from the start ; they proved extremely lucky early on - in their second gang two man-thing merc bands hit them from two directions at once, and in the first round of the melee they took out both enemy captains - SQUEEEK!). So again, I agree with you: Skaven can indeed be tough litte rabid maniacs in melee.

However, keep in mind LAZ is describing a situation where all of his opponents are (a) excellent melee warbands, (2) being more successful than him, and thus piling on more advances, and (c) ganging up on him to take him out first. Add those facts together and I think in this case sneaky-shooty is probably a better option.

LAZtheinfamous wrote:

Try and get everyone after the Orcs & goblins, since they are the big threat, and then turn on the Vampire. I'm not a big fan of that sort of thing, though.

Your skaven. You should totally do that lol

Thanks for the advice guys, it was pretty much along the lines that I was thinking, although I hadn't thought of the deadliness of getting crossbows. One of the reasons I joined this forum was for the expansion of my own thoughts on tactics.

Today, I discussed things with Tom (the dwarf player) about how to handle the upcoming game. He being a devious so-and-so was completely in agreement with taking out the O&G first, and then worrying about the Undead. Especially since right now, we are the bottom ranked teams. As long as we get opposite board edges, that will cause a cross fire between the two of us that will decimate most people, depending on the scenario. If it happens to be Lost Prince, well, I'm the fastest!

My skaven like it when a vampire doesn't take Jump Up because we use the optional crit tables. My monster killer black skaven has Mighty Blow, Art of Silent Death, Web of Steel and attacks with *no weapons*. His job is to get Possessed, Ogres, Vampires, and other creatures that think it is funny to go around with lots of wounds knocked on their ass so they can be taken OOA without having to punch through all their wounds. He also has a DHW and Strongman if I am not feeling lucky.

... sorry...

@Lord O:
That sounds interesting! But how does the unarmed crit table make opponents KD or even stunned? the wording indeed says that the opponent is sent sprawling to the ground on a 5-6, but is this interpreted as KD? that setup is too good to be true!

The reason to my thread resurrection, is that I'm planning a Skaven warband atm and would really love to create a ninja rat as yours whos only task is to cutt down hard opponents, just like a dwarfen slayer with monster killer

It was a house-rule we used that I had forgotten was a house rule. I am afraid you will just have to make do with the afore-mention skills and a DH club or dual clubs until you get the requisite skills. Either that or you could use a flail until you can use a DHW.

Shame, was all exited about the idea. Yeah, I think I'll start with the flail, untill I get the strongman skill. People usually underestimate the power of the "can't parry because of over double strength". its really a cool starting weapon on a str 4 model.