Nemesis - Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel (starting)
 

I quite fancy playing a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel.

This'd be a 24 hr/turn game (although it would likely go far faster being as there'd only be two of us - but not a blitz), probably on Silent Seas unless the other player had a different preference.

The two sides are:

Skaven: A mod nation by Sombre, based on a nation in Games Workshop's Warhammer world. They are crazed rat-men. They have huge numbers of chaff troops, plus powerful experimental weapons and bettle-mages.

Tomb Kings: A mod nation by me. Also based on a GW nation, although only very loosely, this an Egyptian-themed nation of undead. They have powerful priests who can cast holy buffs on their troops in combat, a good variety of skeletal infantry, archers, cavalry and chariots, and lots of interesting and powerful national summons.

I would probably prefer to play Skaven, since I have spent so many hours playing Tomb Kings SP, but I don't mind strong either way.

Is anyone up for it? Should be a nice game I think. Me and Sombre played Vaettiheim vs Ulm Reborn before and it was good fun.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

I'd be up for it. I've been playing around a bit with Tomb Kings and I'm really liking the unit mix, and the theme is just great http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif You clearly put a lot of effort into making them.

Obviously you have far more Dom 3 experience than I do, so I'm not expecting to win or anything, but I'm up for a challenge!

Also I have the next couple of weeks off work so I should be able to rattle through the turns quickly.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Awesome! I will just get the game set up so we can submit pretenders then.

Unfortunately I posted this at a non-ideal time, since I have friends visiting for the weekend, so I probably won't be able to get my pretender in till Sunday night. Sorry. After that we should be able to go quite fast though, especially since we're in the same time zone. Sadly I don't have the next two weeks off though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Glad to hear you like the Tomb Kings - thanks! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Also we may be a closer match than you expect, although we'll have to see. I'm not nearly as experienced as you'd guess from my post count - I guess I'm just chatty. I guess I have played a fair few games though. Maybe ten, including small ones.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

PLEASE write some sort of AAR for this. We'd all enjoy it, and Sombre and llamabeast can get some feedback.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Excellent, Sunday is fine; it'll give me a bit more chance to practice.

As for an AAR, I'll see what I can do, but I must warn you: I'm not a great writer!

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

The game is up and called "Nemesis". Send in a pretender whenever. I have a bit of a backlog of e-mails and phone calls to sort out, so may not be able to get my pretender in until lateish unfortunately.

I will see about doing an AAR, sounds fun!

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Pretender sent. Let the fun begin!

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Cool cool! Unfortunately I got a bit overwhelmed this evening and haven't got mine in yet - I will work one out ASAP but it won't be tonight I'm afraid - sorry!

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Hmmm, Skaven's troops don't like missiles very much, do they? Or not running away for that matter!

Whereas my troops will never run and are immune to poison, which kinda neutralises one of Skaven's major features.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Yeah... it's not going so well to be honest! Something of a debacle in fact.

I don't think I have played very well though - I'm sure I could have done something a bit more cunning. Also you have pressed home your advantage quite mercilessly. So many Asp Archers!

I do now have a ridiculous number of battlemages - the trouble is I can't get my rats to stay on the screen long enough to do you any damage. Those arrows hurt so much.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Aaargh! You're so annoying! You just ran away again! Why won't just throw yourself on my PD as per my plan?

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Okay, have to stop for now. Not least to think of a plan. I have to say it's not looking good.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

I have another couple of tricks still in the bag as well http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I'll be very impressed if you manage to win from here, I have to say! As I said, though, I think Skaven are at a severe disadvantage versus Tomb Kings.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

I don't think you need any more tricks in the bag!

I will also be very impressed if I win from here. In the unlikely event that I beat your army you have about three times as many provinces as me since you've been cunningly expanding while I've been trapped fending off your army.

I think perhaps Skaven are not ideal vs Tomb Kings, but I think I could have done much more to ameliorate that. Certainly giant rats weren't, in hindsight, the best focus for my strategy.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Skaven have serious problems versus Tomb Kings. They have poison and disease immunity, excellent massed missile fire, swarms of chaff,.. all the tools needed to whomp the poor ratties.

I don't think giant rats make good chaff against archers. They die too easy and run too easy. Clanrats with sermon of courage would probably be better. But Skaven don't really have much of a counter to massed composite bows, longbows and whatnot.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Look you, just attack me!

Sombre: Yep, I think giant rats were just about the worst thing I could have chosen to focus on. Incidentally, I think the packmasters are much much worse deals than the warlords. Wish I'd built warlords from the start - they're useful. The rats just die in droves. Maybe 5 rats a turn from the packmasters?

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

All in good time! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Prince of Death: Causes Fear (+23)

omg I am so pwned!!

Also Flaming Arrows for some reason caught me completely by surprise, not that there's anything I could have done.

To be fair that big battle went exactly as planned, in that my troops were astonishingly brave and survived several volleys while my mages rained down (final) death on you. Unfortunately there just wasn't enough final death to go round with your large and powerful army.

I had kind of forgotten how much stuff you must have been doing while I've been squatting in my little north-east hovel. Your fully-kitted PoD certainly brought it home though. Oh the pain!

Have to go to bed now unfortunately, although I think there is little left to play for. My mages all escaped happily, but my army summoners didn't. They are trapped inside the fort. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Ouch, those battlemages hurt! I think that if you had had a better start (not losing your god early on), I might have been in trouble. What killed him, by the way?

I always do manual magic site searches and got lucky with the sites so I was able to forge all that stuff. I've also got a couple of Ushbantis on their way up to join the party. That spell is hard to cast since only 1 in 30 tomb kings have 2E. Fortunately I had enough earth gems to empower one.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Yep, the battlemages are pretty good. And if they could have got close enough for some more Dust to Dust action they would have been devastating.

Did you see my god then? He had a short and sad existence.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Well warlords are better than packmasters at summoning and leading troops, but they do cost more gold and a little chunk of resources (which matters if you've gone sloth, or want to mass build clanrats/stormvermin). Also packmasters have that chance to get B1 and are ok as blood hunters (not as good as chantors though, generally).

I think the problem is you were using rats to soak up damage, which isn't something they can do. They're actually ok in melee though, especially against low att enemies they can swam, like jotuns, ogres, bandars, pale ones etc. I don't build a huge amount of them but I do like to use them for flanking with hold attack rear, because they kill fleeing troops/exposed mages/archers well.

I might write a strat guide for Skaven soon. People didn't seem very interested in the vaetti/ulm ones i did though.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Aaargh, I just staled! Sorry Cicadian, I only just got home, and forgot how late it was.

However, I think the time has come for me to resign - any more turns at this stage will just be a formality, I haven't got a hope of holding you off. Well played sir.

I am quite tempted to try a rematch. Are you up for it?

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Rematch and switch sides!

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Well there's not a lot of point switching sides, since I've got a ton of Tomb Kings experience from all my SP testing, and besides I'm interested to know if the match is winnable with Skaven.

I'm still not convinced the rats are worthwhile. They may be okay in combat, but I'm pretty sure four rats will always be worse than three clanrats. While the warlord is more expensive, generally the limiting factor is commander-training slots rather than gold for commanders. Also I think the idea of endless swarms of rats is awesome! It seems to me that an astute player would never build a packmaster. I definitely vote for an increase to 5 rats/turn.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

I build packmasters a fair amount. They aren't just for producing giant rats, after all. I build them when I want to bloodhunt and don't have a temple with that fort, so can't get chantors or plague priests. They are ok leaders with a bit of standard, though warlords are clearly superior in this respect.

They have two main advantages over clanrats, besides being spawned by a cheaper commander and coming in groups of 4 versus 3. They are faster than clanrats, fast enough to be used as flankers and they cost like a third of the upkeep (though they are not free).

There is little chance that I'm going to have packmasters spawning 5 rats, because they're already pretty nuts compared with say,.. LA Ulm's wolfherd. What's more likely is I'll change their price or nerf warlords.

The next version of Skaven will see a Vermintide combat summon for 3D which will give you a large number of rats in combat and they'll actually have good morale too, being driven forward by the power of the spell.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

I would be up for a rematch.

I have a few comments, having played Skaven a bit as well:

- Grey Seers seem too expensive for 5 magic levels. I realise they are h3 as well, but compared to Tomb Kings, they are underpowered IMO.

- The sacred census bearers are really cool units. Unfortunately, they are counter-productive to use at the moment as they will poison your own troops. I would suggest upping the posion resist to at least 50 on all national troops. They are rats after all.

-Given the low morale of the rats, they really need a cheaper h2 priest for sermon of courage. At the moment, most of Skaven's killing power comes from non-holy battlemages, which makes it difficult to get enough priests at the current price.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

First off, I really appreciate the feedback. I will consider all of it carefully.

1. Grey Seers were initially balanced against MA Ermor's Grand Thaumaturgs. They have a few advantages over GTs (no old age, stealth, better leaders, fortune tellers) and one or two disadvtanges (no reanimation, worse sacreds). They aren't especially awesome (like say MA Pythiums Grand Theurgs), but I don't think they're underpowered.

2. First, poison res 35 -> 50 would make basically no difference. Poison res below 100 doesn't work properly vs poison clouds - check Ctis and their slingers or set a unit to 95% poison res and see for yourself. It helps, but they still get killed/afflicted. If you were talking about the old plague censers, before I was able to use secondaryeffectalways, I would agree with you - those guys were kind of a liability. But these new censers are very cheap considering their offensive power and they don't even hit your own guys with poison that much. Besides which, you should be using them with chaff where you hardly care about losing it anyway. With Nature/Water bless they are pretty crazy. Finally, you can always cast a vastly improved national poison ward in the form of Nurglitch's favour.

3. The Plague Priest is expensive for a H2 priest, but he is a steal as an all around buy. He summons troops, is a priest, is thuggable, a good leader and has pretty good magic. If Skaven could use sermon of courage to fix all their morale problems, they wouldn't be very skaveny, would they? But I'll consider a change to the plague priests perhaps.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

I have a couple of thoughts too, on those points.

1. Balancing against Grand Thaumaturgs isn't necessarily a good idea since the main point of the GTs is reanimation. They make 4 cavalry each a turn, which is extremely powerful!

I assumed you had made grey seers expensive to restrict access to death/astral (which is quite reasonable). They are not especially better than the warlock engineers to my mind. But at the same time I have no problem with them being expensive. I would only build a very few, but they are meant to be special.

3. Again I have no strong problem with this pricing. It is annoyingly expensive, but as you say I wouldn't expect it to be trivial for Skaven to lay down Sermon of Courage. One thing though - the fact that a unit is multipurpose doesn't really make it much more valuable to my mind, since it can only do one thing at once. If I buy a plague priest to accompany an army (the only reason I would, I think), the fact that it can summon troops is largely irrelevant. Similarly with the packmaster - the fact that he can do stuff apart from summon rats is of no use to me if I recruited him to summon rats.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

It's no use to you as long as summoning rats is working out. But if your opponent has countered the rats (say with missile fire, or battlefield wide spells) then the fact that they can also ferry troops and blood hunt is a factor. Similarly, if you use plague priests purely as army support casting sermon of courage and random death spells, but suddenly find yourself without a foe (does happen in MP a fair bit) with an army trapped in a fort or province or require an ok leader, you'll be glad they have more tricks up their festering sleeves.

You're right of course that once you get multiple special abilities and you can only use one at a time, you shouldn't have to pay full price for all of them, but it isn't like that's the case with the Plague Priest. You're paying more than the baseline of any one of those abilties it's true, which is the cost of versatility. Not just of the unit, but of the race. Skaven aren't that predictable, outside of the fact they'll be using hordes of missile vulnerable chaff (legions of steel + clanrats helps there btw). This is partly because their commanders can be used in different ways and suddenly switch tactics. There are also abilities that commanders have (such as the Grey Seers being able to spy) which you get 'for free' and aren' supposed to be the basis for a strategy, they're more like easter eggs. I'm not expecting anyone to use grey seers as dedicated spies, but the ability will occasionally be useful in the course of some other strategy (stealthy army for instance) and it makes thematic sense.

It is optimal to have a unit which just researches, a unit which just leads, a unit which is all combat magic with no ability to research, H1-3 priests with no other abilities etc all at the lowest possible price and just have a load of these specialist commanders, but it isn't like you get that with dom3 base nations.


As for the Ermorian Grand Thaumaturgs, I don't think their reanimating ability is really that hot. If that's all they do, I'm not sure they're worth it. It seems like it's just another special ability which makes them more versatile. I could be wrong on that though because I'm no MA Ermor expert.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Yeah, point taken, I think we pretty much agree that extra abilities beyond the unit's main purpose have some value, but less than if it was on a separate unit.

Grand Thaumaturgs though - well I've only played one MP game as MA Ermor, but I won, and boy did I have a lot of skeleton cavalry! They are awesome.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

As the person on the receiving end of Llama's Ermor game I can attest to the effective - and demoralizing - effect of endless hordes of undead. (Cavalry and otherwise)

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif indeed. That was a fun game.

Caduceus - I've created the game NemesisII, and I'll be uploading my pretender probably fairly shortly, so I'm ready to play whenever you are.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

I think you mean 'Cicadian' http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I won't be able to start til tomorrow evening I'm afraid.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

I do - sorry. I got the names with two 'c's and a 'd' mixed up.

Okey doke. Well I will be out tomorrow evening and Saturday evening, but we can probably get started over the weekend.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

You think those are easy to mess up, what about Jazzeppi, Juzza and Jutetra?

My next account will be Jarrutza.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Jazzepi, Juzza and Jutetrea are indeed a bit of a problem. They are kind of the same person in my head, unfortunately.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Sorry, I've just had laser eye surgery and recovery is taking a little longer than expected. I should be able to start in the next couple of days.

Re: Anyone fancy a Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel?
 

Hope the recovery's going well. Just upload your pretender when you're ready to go.