Asian Nick's New Skaven - Version... 6?

My good mate Nick Ng (Master Enginner Extraordinaire) was busy not working on completing a Skaven army for the last army book and with the newest iteration of Those Dirty Rats has continued to present totally bizarre and highly experimental list for our fairly regular games. Skaven can present something of a problem for Vampires - they are now an awesome leadership army, they have stacks of magical attacks, their focused shooting combined with magic and dodgy template rules (I hear this will be the norm for 8th edition Warhammer) can vapourise a unit in the space of one turn.

Nick's latest list - seemingly vomited forth from a random list generator:

Seer - 2 Scrolls, Skalm (restore all lost wounds once per game)
Cheiftain with Battle Standard and reflecting saved wounds armour
Plague Priest - level 2 on Furnace with various kit including Pipes of Piebald (leadership test for enemy wishing to charge his unit)

39 Feckin Plaguemonks who, when joined by the Priest (or rather, his Furnace) become Unbreakable. The newly dubbed "Plaguetrain from Hell" as it were
11 Censer Bearers (an unusual number)
2 units of 3 Jezzails (again HIGHLY unusual)

Doomwheel
Plague Claw Catapult

3 units of Slaves
1 unit of Clanrats (Mortar)
1 unit of Stormvermin (Mortar)


A really tiny Skaven list. I waved the frenzied Plaguetrain through with some Wolves and set to against the rest of the list. Poor deployment of the Wraiths (which is becoming disturbingly habitual) saw them survive the battle but cause practically no discernable damage). I lost 14 Grave Guard in the first turn to a casting of Scorch and 2 Plague Mortars which was pretty frightening from a psychological perspective. Any other army losing their elite tough-guy unit in one turn would have been in a heck of a position but I got an Invocation past Nick's defense and 6 of the previously fried Grave Guard sprang back to unlife.

I took the Varghulf in this game. Yes I know I know - it's mentally hard. To compensate I took out the Lynci Vamp. Putting a lot of thought into this at the moment - is taking the two rares balanced out by taking 2 characters and having less offensive and defensive magic ability. Potentially for Vampires less magic is a "bad thing" so I'm unsure at this stage.

In this particular game the Varghulf went nuts - blasted through the Censer Bearers in a turn, got stuck into the Clanrats bunkering the Seer forcing him to expend an entire magic phase escaping or risk getting eaten (5 str5 attacks with Hatred from the Varghulf will munch any magic user) - Nick cou't chance losing the PD/DD and scrolls so chucked 5 dice at Skitterleapand bailed. Curses! Old Vargy was joined by my boss 2 turns later and they cleaned up the Clanrats before turning their attention to the Stormvermin now hiding not only the Seer but also the Skaven BSB. With Dire Wolves in their flank and Grave Guard in the front (along with the VC general and Varghulf in the back) the Stormvermin auto-broke and were run down.

The Plaguetrain managed to trample a unit of Skellies, claiming their banner and holding a quarter and this was the only Skaven unit to survive the game. There was absolutely no way I could tackle the Plaguemonks so it was always going to be 600pts I couldn't touch and how much of my stuff I could stop them from killing.

A win to the Vampires by maybe 500pts? (sorry Nick I've forgotten the details).