Nemesis - Skaven vs Tomb Kings duel (starting)

[Sombre]

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.

[llamabeast]

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?

[Sombre]

Rematch and switch sides!

[llamabeast]

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.

[Sombre]

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.

[Cicadian]

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.

[Sombre]

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.

[llamabeast]

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.

[Sombre]

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.

[llamabeast]

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.