[Kheldron]

STRATEGY 2 : “Breeding the swarms of the Horned Rat”

This second strategy is still a lot RPG-oriented as it makes use of the fast-breeding nature of the ratmen.
They’ve got several things going for them in that they have some early national spells to summon swarms of giant rats.

Take an awake rainbow Great Sage

Turn 1: Research blood 1 with you pretender, make a prophet and send your scout. Recruit a moulder mutator and 6 plague censer bearers.

Turn 2-4: Finish blood 1 then go for enchantment 3. Send your prophet to take some provinces while you recruit 3 more moulder mutators, 6 plague censer bearers a turn then clanrats with spears and gutter runners. Recruit an indy leader to bring reinforcements to your prophet. On turn 4 send your 3 moulder mutator to the nearest province of around 5000 pop.

Turn 5-6: Start bloodhunting with your 3 mutators and set taxes to 0 there. Recruit a leader to bring back the slaves on turn 6. Recruit a grey seer, a plague chantor and same troops as before.

Turn 7-9: cast breed rat swarm with your mutator. Finish enchantment 3 to get raise skeleton. Recruit a plague priest. Script your Grey seer with divine blessing then skelispam while your plague priest spam sermon of courage. Put your clanrats and giant rats in the middle and your seer and priest not far behind. Plague censer bearers on the flanks with gutter runners.

Afterwards : You should breed rat swarms on a monthly basis and send them with indie commanders to reinforce your expansion armies. Get to blood 4, empower some moulder mutators and start to summon the cavalry of the 7th circle : hordes of demon knights are as fearsome and effective as they seem.
Afterwards you should go for construction and start your MIT lab all over again.


STRATEGY 3: “Rise of Clan Pestilens”

Don't you think those sacred plague censer bearers deserve a bless strategy of their own? Yes they do.
Think Mictlan. This blood nation with high magic diversity and jaguar warriors has a lot in common with skavenblight. Most of what you'll read on Mictlan can be efficiently used here.

Plague bearers are quite cheap recruitable-anywhere sacreds with high destruction potential. Unfortunately, they are skavenish from head to toe : most of the time they'll kill themselves as much as your enemies!

I like to take an imprisoned A9S9N4 oracle with Ord3 Slt3 Col2 Mis2 Mag1.
You should note this triple bless is an all-defensive one, on purpose.
To the contrary of jaguar warriors, they really don't need anything more to kill things like a F9 bless. They hit quite well, especially when they go berzerk, and their poison cloud is on strike so they can fight even high defense cavalry. Besides, a F9 would be quite unthematic as flaming weapons override the poison cloud...

On the other side, they die 3 times faster than your average jaguar warior : they've got abysmal protection and defense (especially with berzerk), no second life, and they even poison themselves, hence the bless.

A9 is really good as it gives you that early air shield and later on synergizes really well with your friendly-firing lightning-artillery, especially the doomwheels. Warp lightning in the evocation tree becomes a lot more attractive and deadly...and it already was.

S9 gives you the needed twist fate, MR+3 for your demonic verminlords in late game and helps you cast the biggest astral spells in late game. Interesting enough their poison cloud can trigger berzerk without wasting twist fate.

Finally N4 is vital to offset the poison cloud as even with PR85 they take 1-2 dmg a turn. The lessened chance of afflictions is a bonus.



Well, this guide is already longer than I thought possible at start.
Thanks again Sombre and please please don't stop the good work :-)