4000 Skaven

There wasn't much that went wrong tbh!

Empire won the roll for 1st turn and in a strange attempt to derail my furnace/monks he went full steam ahead with the steam tank (s3 vs t6 1+ save, I understand the thinking behind it) but I managed to restrain with my monks and charged with my censer bearers instead.  They knocked 6 wounds off it for no loss, and then when raising steam points at the start of his turn 2 the tank went kaboom, taking 6 censer bearers, 4 monks, a rat ogre and 2 pistoliers with it.  That sort of set the tone really.  Although the 2 remaining censer bearers did then gas themselves to death against the pistoliers in my turn 2 which was embarrassing for pestilens finest.

There were some early setbacks for me, his gunline removed my cannon, doomwheel, wounded my HPA, killed about 10 monks and 7 night runners plus the ratling gun in his turn 1.  All to be expected really.  After weathering the initial storm it was all skaven though.

Rat ogres chomped through the pistoliers and the inner circle knights with relative ease, furnace/monks had several turns of moving before finally getting a charge off but then won all their combats.  The brewed and death frenzied stormvermin were a big investment but beat the halberdiers, swordsmen and greatswords surprisingly easily.  Gutter runners took care of the cannon gunline and the tunelling night runners actually did great- rear charging handgunners on both turns a unit appeared.

It was a crushing victory, only karl franz was alive turn 5 but I had some uncharacteristic good luck with all the random things that usually go wrong for skaven. 

Also I would have put the Jezzails as two 3 man units with snipers. You could then spend then 20 points left over on something else.

Hi dannytee, you're probably right with the model count- but then again there was more than enough units to move around and I won by an absolute massacre so it was alright for this game lol.  As you say it was a deliberate removal from a 'classic' Skaven army and there's quite a few things I'd change if I had the models for my ideal takes-all-comers list.  A second warp lightning cannon for starters. And there's more ideas I want to try out now too, I reckon there's as many viable different lists in this book as you can get out of high elves etc.

A tar pit wouldn't have helped me here I don't think because there wasn't any real shooting in the rest of my list and the 3 fast moving combat hammer units would be miles away from them after a turn or two so unable to take advantage - this is exactly what happened to my clanrat bunker actually who struggled to keep up and provide the bubbles like they were meant to be.

re the naked BSB, to try and explain it fully -  essentially he's in a unit that does not want to be in combat EVER, and there are 20 meatshields against shooting (and as you are behind other skaven units, it's hard cover to shoot this unit and probably long range too so the -3 to hit is going to keep the meatshields alive for a bit).  Spending points on a magic weapon for him is pointless as he won't be in combat to use it, and the same for protection -  if he's in combat so is the grey seer and I've just served up 500 easy victory points.  The philosophy is the bunker unit keeps out the way of the front lines at all times.  Skaven characters are so cheap that you don't need a BSB to pull his weight in combat like with other armies IMO, you just buy another hero for combat duty.  Worst comes to the worst you can use the avoid challenge thing, but then the grey seer is at risk so I'd rather keep him out the way and weigh up whether the unit champion or BSB is better off in the challenge. Hope that helps!