Tournament Time Again!

After a long hiatus, it is time to pull out my beloved Skaven again. My Friendly Not-So Local Game Store is having a Warhammer Fantasy tournament coming up on February 22nd. I had to juggle my work schedule around a little bit, but I managed to switch shifts with a co-worker in order to attend.

To that end I have been looking for input as to my army composition, and I have been getting... A very mixed response. On Dakka Dakka I was getting several different responses from a fair few different army lists thrown my way. Some swear I should take a massive block of Stormvermin, others claim that my Grey Seer is going to miscast and blow himself to tiny bits. Since he's not going to be dropped under any circumstances (the Dreaded Thirteenth is just too useful against enemies like Chaos Warriors that my shooting and other spells won't be able to crack), I had to sift through the feedback in order to find a suitable kit loadout. The real debate was over the the Arcane Item he would be carrying. I settled on a kit that allowed him to cast The Curse of the Horned Rat more easily.

Since this is an open-list event, I have decided to forego subtlety and simply go for the throat. The usual shenanigans- a Grey Seer, a "suicide" Warlock Engineer, a super tanked-up battle standard bearer. You know the drill. I did however tweak things a touch this time. First of all, this game is going to be smaller than I'm used to- 2,000 points. That means I had to take a scalpel to my army and remove a few things. Less Gutter Runners, no double Hell Pit Abomination (in fact none at all), and less in the way of Clanrats. I'll be running my old nemesis, the Doomwheel again. Two of them. Lots of "rat darts"- nine strong Giant Rat packs that are there to take up unit drops, redirect the enemy, and generally make a nuisance of themselves will be present as well.

I dropped ten Clanrats, demoted my Warpfire Thrower to a second Poisoned Wind Mortar- the reasoning behind this is simple- it is a more stable weapon, it can move and fire, and it doesn't need to see its target. It also ignores armor. I will be throwing away my flaming attacks, but that just means I'll have to blow those regenerating targets I face up with my various forms of Warp Lightning. Dragon Ogres will be incredibly dangerous, as I'll pretty much auto-frenzy them with all the electricty I churn out, but hopefully the fact that I have thirteen drops (fitting, no?) will allow me to see where my enemies deploy and react by plunking my Doomwheels down on the opposite end of the board. A couple of rat darts will have to soak up the lightning bolts (or Skavenslaves as each unit consists of 40) to keep the Doomwheels from nuking one another. I have a limited amount of time to experiment with these concepts- I haven't even purchased my second Doomwheel yet!

Suffice it to say, I have some work in front of me. The journey begins with a game against the Lizardmen Wednesday afternoon. It terminates with three games in a few weeks. May the Horned Rat smile upon me and my troops.