 Hello. Hello. Yeah. Now I'm talking. Okay. Hello everybody. Oh my goodness. If it's Wednesday, it's time for a Superstar Jam Pact. Wonderful and incredible Warhammer Weekly. I'm not going to repeat my fine joke. It was fine. It was just fine. It was a great joke. It was good. It was good. Yeah. You all should have been there. Joining me as always is my co-host Tyler. What's up buddy? Good to be here. Hilarious. Sure. OBS just decides to reset every so often. I normally do a sound check, but we didn't today because we were setting all this nonsense up and I was like, yeah, that's fine because we could all hear each other. And I was like, okay, great. We're good. Yeah. Anyways, also joining us is Tom. He's here. He's back. He's with me in the room. It's fine. Yeah. It's fine. It's fine. All right. And joining us for the first time, as I said, I have been remiss for so long to not have this exemplary, incredibly awesome member of the community on the runner of AOS list labs, an awesome human being, Sam Morgan. How are you doing buddy? Hey Vince. Hey Tom. Hey Tyler. Thanks so much for having me mate. I'm very, very happy to jump on and talk. I'm going to talk Scaven today. One of my favorite armies in Aegis Sigma. Yes. Now you and Tom have never met before, and you don't know it, but the two of you are cut from the same cloth. You both love weird Johnny angle shooting unusual clever lists where you show up and your opponent's like, I don't know what any of this does. Yeah. We both have a great love of that. That's my goal. Yeah. Is to make my opponent go, I have no idea what's going on. Right. Yes. Tom has been getting healthy. He's been trying his best with as his life stuff happens. We'll be back at some point in time. We are going to talk Scaven today. We're talking the rats. We're all excited. There is no more fair army and AOS 3.0. That's what we're going to say. But huh. No huh. No huh. Fascinating. Come at me. All right. But we'll get there. The news first. The news first. Taking away Tom. It's the co-host job and you permanent co-host apparently rumor engine. Yes. The strangest part of this show that I never know what to say or do and we usually skip it in 10 seconds. Let's do it. It's a bloody hand of bloody. What's that thing called avatar of cane? It's a Tom. You are amazing at this actually. You always seem to know some piece of the rumor engine. And like what it is on an existing model. Do you know this one? Those blades. Is that a daughter's cane thing? It is. You guys bench you might know that part of an avatar of cane. And so it's an alternative avatar of cave model. It's clear. That's what it is. Because those are the leg blades of the avatar. Oh, right. Yep. And it's bloody. So this is definitely a new avatar model. Which would mean it's probably not for it's probably not for AOS. It's probably the remake of the crappy old resin avatar of cane from 40 K. Because they're still running on that like ancient 90s resin model. And Eldar seemed like they could be due for some kind of revamp. So I agree with everything you said. And it will be a new chance to get a cool avatar of cane. But it's going to be for 40 K. There's the real avatar ours is a statue. That's right. I think this is wave two. So like Grave Lords and it's a more gas equivalent. So they don't have any like monstrous infantry style units. I reckon this is that something of blood. Because there's, you know, blood. There's definitely blood and blades. We got that. Definitely sure about that. So do you see anything there Sam that is on an existing model. Kind of a similar visual cue. It's just wishlisting. Like pure wishlisting. Nothing, nothing. Fair enough. All right. Moving on. So obviously we finally got him. Hallelujah. The dragon riders are here. We have been singing the champions. My friends. Yeah, like, look, just everybody shut up. These are amazing. I love these. It's everything I wanted. I'm going to put Skaven heads on them and have little tails coming out from the back of the storm cast. And it's going to be incredible. I'm going to have my rats writing dragons a thing I wanted since I started playing this game in 1998 when I converted my Skaven to be writing a manticore at that time because that was a thing you could do in fifth edition. And now we didn't know you well enough. I would say none of that was true, but that's absolutely true. Everything you just said. That's absolutely true. Since 1998. Those were metal models and I didn't know how to do anything. So I just saw models in half with like a regular saw. Like I mean, like, like I've got a tree saw. Oh my God. That's amazing. Yeah, I love them. I love them. I mean, obviously get those stands out of here. Of course. Yeah. We're just getting those immediately, immediately. So do you guys think we're looking at a unit of men's size one, but you can take him to we're looking at a unit of men's size two. Or we're looking at a box of two. Uh, Sam gonna guess us. Yeah. Sam you go first. I think maybe the equivalent to the blightlords that are writing the play drones. I think that that sort of scale and that sort of army build so you can unlock it as battle line by taking a general on a dragon and then presumably those dragon characters we saw last week fit into the sub faction somewhere. So I'd anticipate a new chamber and then that these that sort of oriented around these particular models. I really like them as well. I'm all in on dragons. I think that I really like that aesthetic. So I'm, I'm keen to see what, what people are able to do outside of the GW palette because I think sometimes their, their pictures actually undersell the new models. Yeah. Yeah. I saw somebody in the comments say, Vince better say he wishes they were more weird. I do. You're not wrong. They're beautiful. They're gorgeous. They're a 10 out of 10, but we could have been an 11 out of 10 if they were more weird. I would love it if they were more weird. But I'm fine with them as they are. Like it's cool. But sure if we had been like, if they had like weird super long necks and like maybe a second set of wings and maybe like their, their front law, their front arms were twice as long. Yeah. Now we're talking just get weird with it. But I'm fine with it as they are. Like it's cool. I love them. They're still what I want. They remind me of like Legend of Human, Dragon Lance and stuff. And so that's cool. I dig that. It's not a bad thing. The fear is, are they, as time this is, I'm just going to go ahead and make Tom's point. I agree with you. They're Puscoil of Light Lords. I'm stealing your point, Tom. The question is, do you build the guy here, the Knight draconist or whatever out of the regular two like you do with the Lord of Affliction and the Puscoil of Light Lords? I would think almost certainly. Yeah. Yeah. It feels very likely. You don't think so? Yeah. I think they look different enough. Like I don't think it's kind of hard to tell they could swap some stuff, but just like the arm position, like they have different position arms. The wings look slightly different. Yeah. I think it's probably two severed boxes, but I could be wrong. It's really hard to tell because they don't give you like a good 360 view. Yeah. The oval bases, they look a little on the smaller side. Maybe like a 105 by 70. I think they're not the 92s. Yeah. The 92s. Okay. Wow. Like the Lord on Carcass. Yeah. So I mean, that would seemingly potentially support the idea of, yeah, they come in twos in a unit. Yeah. Yeah. Vince, Tom, what do you guys think about that idea of two in a unit? I love two in a unit. Two in a unit are my new favorite unit size other than, other than like, other than five in a unit, two in a unit is your next best unit size because then you can actually reinforce them once and go to four and you're still using the good coherency rules. Right. I mean, like zombie dragons are 14 wounds and the vampire, you know, it's 14 wounds with the three up save. We've got the dreadlord on black dragon. That's 14 wounds on a Forbes save. So I mean, a lot of the dragons are minimum 14 wounds. So like you would, I would tend to think that they would be 14 wounds and a three up save because they're just form cast. I think that's way too many. I don't just don't think, I don't think it's going to be that big. No, you're, they're going to be eight to 10 wins. Yeah. They're going to be non hero eight to 10 wins. Yeah. I think similar to a Vangorian Lord, like from a size three plus save, 10 wounds, possibly some ability to heal. Hopefully they don't have the ability the Star Drake has. It would be awful if the whole army can just go around and look at models. Oh, that'd be a nightmare. Yeah. I as somebody who plays sons of them, I don't see the problem. Sure. Oh my God. Yeah. That's the real question. I don't think they do. Oh, I mean, they have to. I mean, maybe the single big guy does, maybe the little guys don't, I mean, they have units of monsters. Again, see sons of them. So like it's not like units of monsters are an impossible thing. Right. But my guess is, yeah, the boss himself is like a 10 wound three up save guy. Right. He has the big annihilator shield. I would point out so they could always justify giving him the, the two up save. He could be the two up save hero that they could, like they picked that shield perhaps to signify his two up save. So that's possible. The little guys, I would imagine you are like eight wounds on a three up save. Right. Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah, we'll see. So point guesses. Let's have, let's have some point guesses. Oh, God. As always, place of bets. All right. Cause like I was thinking, you know, 14 wounds, three up saves, maybe like four, 15 for the year. But I've been convinced that a lot of our local guys are spouting what you guys are. You know, it's going to be 10 wounds, maybe eight wounds. It's going to be two in a unit, which would seemingly drop that down quite a bit. Sam, you want to kick us off? Oh, what a blight. I think blight lords are only 185 at the moment. So I'm going to guess a better profile and better profile on the both sides. Okay. So I'm going to guess that one more time. I'm going to get 12 left in the book for 220. Incidentally, they're going to, they're going to be like over $100 Australian. So like, you got to figure out how much an army's going to cost as well. I think that is a factor. So I'm going to go, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'll. I'll guess. I'm going to say to Hunter even for the unit. And two 80 for the main guy, Assuming we're right about it sort of Vangorion Lord. That's where they like to point those types of heroes. Mm-hmm. I Grew with the 200. I'm gonna actually say that the heroes three Okay, even three. Yeah, even three. Yep. Okay. Oh, I I think I'm gonna revise mine And we're all gonna be 200 and the rationale is they'll want you to be able Stormcaster allies for so many armies They'll want you to be able to include four dragons in all those Yeah, I mean maybe the narrative is that these are like I mean they definitely do look smaller That's certainly the two that they came out with they previewed last week as maybe, you know Like these are fairly recently born dragons that you kind of early. Yeah, Hatchlings. Yeah, that's part of the narrative Yeah, we'll get out that exactly we'll get out the old 12 level chart from the second edition monster manual We're gonna go I'm going young adult That's what I'm doing Nice nice. All right Yeah, I no clue. I mean, yeah, maybe so if they're small Yeah, I like the idea of maybe 240 somewhere around there each and then yeah, maybe maybe 240 for an individual Maybe there's like the Gargants, which I think you can buy in threes for 490 Maybe you could buy yeah, two of them for discount and as as a battle line units And then yeah, something like plus 60 or plus 40 for the for the hero I hope this same guy retroactively also makes the drake offs the foot The foot. Oh, yeah Guys also battle line it'd be really cool if you could mix like the little the new fly dragons and the old foot dragons Into our star Drake. Sure. Sure. Hmm. Like I think it'll be just this guy I don't think the star drake will make a battle line. I think that'll be one of those things. We all go really Just saying yeah All right, so Saying he's excited to use them in cities of Sigmar. Yeah, this is like this whole new release is just like also a cities of Sigmar release right because if anything good in here, it's like hello one in four You know in like flint instantly. Yes, absolutely Yeah So, yeah, Stormcast we have a little preview article. I think maybe like Friday that came out after our show last week and They mentioned that we're still sticking with the two options in terms of army So we can do the traditional, you know lightning down signs of the storm or the new storm keep That we got out of the broken round series. So it's gonna be the two types of stormcast forces We're gonna have they highlighted a bowlet rate mortal auxiliaries pretty pretty cool So that's the you know, Stormkeep army. I think this was the same as broken realms one in every four units can be coalition units from the city's Sigma faction. Yeah, yeah Storm keep battle trait shield of civilization and So first and second battle rounds if any friendly storm keeper demer units, those are like your what liberators Contestant objective partial hole within your territory each model in the storm cast unit counts as three models And then starting from third battle round it becomes any objective on the battlefield your redeemer units count as Three per model for objectives That's the headline the headline is Vendictors already of extremely solid incredibly wonderful well-built battle line Unit now even better So Yeah, like check and check You know three ups and can cause mortal wounds great in the grind perfect attrition unit wonderful battle line getting 10 points cheaper when the book comes out We already know because they showed us the points What's not to love baby, what's not to love and count for more objective on the objectives. Yes, please Yeah, pretty awesome. Wow, there's a deep cut. I see saw it too. It's up tram a trimmer old buddy All right. Anyways, that's a that's a nice warhammer reference there for for our back in our days on Warhammer age of reckoning That was one of our one of our one of our group buddies. We used to go chop people up with all right anyways nice My other favorite bit of this article is that we've gone confirmation staunch defender has been destroyed obliterated They uh, yeah, that was that was really neat. I mean as as it probably should have been And they gave sad like my heart. Yeah Yeah Anyway, it plus staunch defender was a nice little holi within nine bubble plus one save That yeah Yeah, yeah at this point. Yeah, may not be no matter a lot Yeah We um, we had the first event at our Equivalent to warhammer world which is a fraction of the size and they don't design the game there and no GW stuff Work there, but we had our equivalent Warhammer world event and it was won by a mixed arm storm cast army. I think we'd staunch defender So in the early the early version three meta, you know, if you don't have a high output of mortal wounds You're not getting through that army. So I'm not I'm not sad to see it go I'm sure there'll be other buffs in there that um that step up and replace it But as a starting point, this is a nice article because it doesn't say anything to me about We're adding new battle tactics and it doesn't say anything to me about what we're changing the way that this army Play place the corals like I'm happy with the mucking around with the counts as mechanic because obviously every army's five We models are already counting as two and right monsters already counting as five This is a design space. We know and that that we know works And as a standpoint, I mean, we obviously haven't seen the whole book It's nice that what that what they've shown us so far looks like it sort of fits into the broader ecosystem Yeah, definitely Yeah, well said they gave us a little bit on cars out of the scarred Yeah, this cool rule fires a vengeance each time this unit destroys So that's the the red dragon of the two big ones that we're getting each time this unit destroys an enemy unit You can apply the relevant effect below any unit was a hero monster I have one of the attack characteristic and melee weapons used by this unit most of the battle One characteristic of three or more and it's not a hero monster. I want to run in charge rolls So kind of yeah, I got a few different ways. It's gonna be able to buff itself up. That's kind of neat And yeah, that was about it. So a few things you guys I would think we'll get the Sunday preview this week Yeah, I expect it. Yes, like this Sunday should be the next Saturday. You can pre-order for then da-da-da Yeah, yeah, the question is do we get everything all at once or is it spread out over a couple weeks because you're gonna get both the books and you've got all the new dragons and I think that we'll get stormcast Yeah, I don't know. I'm not even gonna predict that one. Yeah. Yeah, I mean you've got there's a lot Yeah, there's a lot all the cruel boys all everything It's it's it's out there So I expect it to be I expect it to be two weeks at least a full releases. So yeah, that's why All right, good stuff. So we have one one more and then do a little bit on events after Just wanted to mention Mr. Mephisto's Randolph on to came to an end 30 straight hours He raised and everybody involved raised over $10,500 for mental health America. I think was the charity. Yep And just extraordinary to see the community come together and do that Yeah, it was it was amazing to watch some of that over the weekends and then she did a little bit of yeah I got a four-hour block in pretty laid-back by Mfs 30-hour standards So yeah, it was good. It was a lot of fun just talked a lot of lot of Warhammer So I was just hanging out chatting Warhammer chat chatting everything in the world So yeah, it was great and shout out to the community. I now have to paint two models for people That was two of the giveaways ironically one of them was one by Martin Orlando good painter stormcast slash Lumineth man and the other one was won by the Lord of Death The hobby bear Brendan himself the the terror of the soul bright gave lords and recent winner of Circle City. So Yeah, there you go. See you have a model picked up for you yet, or do you? Yeah, yeah, he's gonna I think they both already sent me like they didn't mail it to me But they told me what they wanted me to paint. So should be nice I have to do some kind of bone reaper thing Okay Have never painted before so because why would I collect that ultimate ultimately extremely boring army? Take that So all of the well, I think all most of the videos the different segments that Matt has started upload them on YouTube So yeah, folks should definitely get it get a chance check some of the mounts I watched some of your discussion with Ian in hopped on from just played in that segment That was a lot of fun. And yeah, just sure a lot of good content will come out of that But yeah, I think it's really amazing to see I mean that's that's quite an accomplishment So in the amount of work that met and so many people put into it and it's it's really incredible Yeah, so that's that let's talk about events All right, let me bring it up. Let's talk about our events that are happening. There it is Yeah, the event calendar August 2021. We got a packed calendar there Yeah, take a look everyone if you see an event in your area Hopefully Let's see. Are there any Australian events for this weekend? Oh, there are what's what's that gonna look like like? Sam, what's the what's the situation there? Oh, it depends what state you're in. So New South Wales is in a hard lockdown For at least another month, maybe six weeks. They're not having any events But I'm the Victoria where I am with the the clearest at the moment. So I've got an event next Saturday G-con 3 my first AOS 3 event and I've been um, I've been grinding with like a probably a C or a D tier army and For the event I submitted 10 salamanders in Draco Just I thought maybe they'll change it back to artillery so I may as well make hay while the sun shines so yeah And Then yeah at the end of the month I've got the two womb are open which is run by Gemma and Mick from the failed charge and that's up in Queensland. So I'm headed up there with Chris welfare and Simon Hall who've both got our As podcasts because everyone over here is a content creator. So I'm really looking forward to that one. It's a fun Yeah, very cool. Yeah, we got that one on there. And yeah, as always folks to begin the event cinnamon Dan particular down to me, you know, it was events.org. He's got all the information hats and events And love to love to get it all the ones that we came up there And then yeah, I went ahead and added what we got coming up in September. So it was worlds big Championship and I think there's a team championship that's part of it. So teams from around the world are gonna be participating in that We got Bruce City Brawl brings events face hammer that same weekend of September September 10th the 12th Yeah Crossroads gonna be a good one. Yeah, a lot of a lot of good events happening in September I did want to just try to quickly go through we had, you know, three pretty good events that happened over this past weekend Mancunian carnage the loss in the dams and London open I think Mancunian was about 70 players lost in the dam like 36 and London open I wasn't entirely sure on that one. Maybe like 20 25 So Sam to get a game in a tournament over the weekend So let's start with the the big one we had Mancunian carnage this was yeah 70 players, I think it was that element games With the face hammer crew so top 10 we had only a single 5-0 Which I mean big headline coming out of the weekend was zinch in particular Archeon zinch kind of no surprise there I think two of the zinch list that took out all of these three tournaments two of them were Archeon lists. I know at least one was host Arcanum. Maybe the other one was as well There were two each one three events over the weekend two were host Arcanum, and I believe the other was host Uplissus host Uplissus, okay, and Then we had yeah, so top five or top 10 for Mancunian and we had Fabian Quinn with this host Arcanum Archeon Kairos kind of fairly similar to what we had been saying a lot on TTS and the terrible twosome there Archeon and Kairos There's usually they usually sneak a demon prince of corn on in there as well if they can if the if like if Because then it's just like the the ultimate shutdown experience. It's like hey, did you want to charge anything this whole game? No Yeah, the full list I've just pulled it up here Archeon Kairos blue scribes Magister on disk ten Kaira kakalites two by three screamers cogs portal and the enhancement Of course was an extra spell which has become a very popular kind of obvious choice for zinch lists in particular You know bump up those summoning points to spam out those pinks or whatever and Yeah, it's a good list. We had 11 for once for Mancunian carnage Soul blight iron jaws three seraphons silver nath to Luminath legion of the first prince Ma tribe slash BCR and then Sun sneaking in there. I think Sun was around around 10th Yeah, any list stand out to you guys with Mancunian that you saw I think the Fabian's list is an improvement on what was already a highly optimized list And the the change from two to three Has obviously only enhanced that further so in particular things like taking the Magister on disk Getting a pregame move and now the change to the spell portal means they both need to be within 18 of the cast up Not 18 of each other So Kairos can backboard you move forward five and you project a further 18 inches forward with the spell portal Meaning that he can basically take a character anywhere on the board turn one And then obviously getting two casts with everyone and the enhancement for an extra spell on everyone means he's doubling his fake points So he's able to generate a unit of blue horrors every single turn So even though the army doesn't start with bodies over the course of the game He might summon more wounds than your starting army has Great, it's just like and then by the way, there's RK on to deal with so I think that that that list is brilliant He's got a YouTube channel Wargame online and he does meta breakers and they just did an episode last week on dealing with God Trek And he had like multiple plans for dealing with God Trek and multiple plans for dealing with the other menaces in the In the tournament scene so I saw in round four. He played against Tom Maudsley with the What's the balacor legion of the first prince and he was a person to be yeah, he was the only person to be Tom And I think you know that was for me That was the tournament when I saw the 70 lists I thought either this inch list or the legion list is gonna win and and ultimately they've sort of played off in the penultimate round Nice. Yeah, that was a really good kind of control list that Tom together. Yeah, at least it looks like I don't have that one here But yeah, great great list It was double Yeah, yeah, Toby Toby meadows. Yeah, that's that's we talked about a little bit That was the exact list of been running vents for a while now. Yeah, double cabbage double cheerleader of war channers We're not the Tim Brutes and two by three Piggies Yep And he was in the warlord for the CP and make your artifacts You can do it a five-drop or you can go the four-drop command entourage and sacrifice the extra CP He did Ironsons, you know, which is pretty pretty standard very very common You know that reduces run by one on one of your cabbages gives you the minus one to hit that first round I think for one. I mean, yeah, we know we know cabbages are really turned on right now We'll see how they look in the new book. Hopefully even better or at least that same because they're quite good Got those chat cabbages out there, but I still think that's a very impressive showing with that list He doesn't he didn't have the minus. Yeah, like it's not the list has simple What I love about iron jaws and a lot of the destruction forces is that it really lets you focus on play Especially early in 3.0 when there's a lot to remember your units are relatively simple in their things They don't rely on a lot of tricks. They just hit like Mack trucks. You still have to use them correctly Right like you can just be like I go forward then things I win. I guess that's not like you're gonna just lose So you still need to use each piece correctly But you can honestly focus on that in something like iron jaws a lot more Because you're not thinking about 30 other weird triggered special abilities that need to happen for your army You're not you're not trying to spend lumineff pennies and then remember to move bravery minuses around and and every other nonsense thing in the world Yeah, it's a plane. Yeah, it's fascinating like one issue You know, we've heard a lot of talk a lot of us we've on the show We talked about how seemingly the value of minus one rent has at least gone down I mean some folks are thinking it's dropped off a cliff that Toby's army was an army of mostly minus one rent. He didn't even have the minus three artifacts sure Which I I just found that really interesting But I don't know who he played what he played but yeah good on him for for that showing with with that list The key there is that that's an army and what's because of the nature of iron jaws and the fact that he has like three solid hammers yeah, right and The fact that they can all move a lot the fact that they can then if they get damaged they move and Like have good bonuses to charge means he has a high percentage chance to get multiple hammers into fights at once Yeah, and right and neg one rend is valuable if you're going to be engaging across a wide front Because they can only really stack defenses on one thing You know what I mean? So like beyond that it's there the trick is neg one rend does nothing If you if there's like a single piece you need to remove if that's if you have to remove thing X Yeah, right to achieve a battle tactic or win Yes, I'll go in like depending what you're going on neg one rend is basically the equivalent of nothing Because that's just gonna get zotted in swimming sure. Yeah, yeah finest hour, etc. Yeah Yeah We had Greg Shelton with soul blights He had a two-drop cast alive so I want to mention that so, you know, we kind of there's been some conversation like how much Do we think Nagash is up there with Archeon Marathi go trick? He had Nagash Manfred vengorian Lord Sort of you know playing off of each other, especially that vengorian Lord reducing room by one in relation to gash Probably running them as power pair. I don't know but that would be my guess Some some black nights and two by 10 Skelly's so that's that's coolest. Is he on the level? Yes But it doesn't matter because he's correctly pointed correctly pointed Yeah, like the issue with those three offenders is that they are vastly under pointed Like go check Marathi and Archeon are just vastly under pointed right like That's that's it. Yeah, it looks like Yeah Yeah, okay, okay on the shoes are deeper seated than that Here the versatility of Archeon. I don't think point points will address I think he warrants a new war scroll But they consider is how does coalition work and what buffs exist across a whole quite literally like a whole faction? minus Gaven And for me like go track I hear that I know how destructive he is But he he's also on a four-inch move and like I know there's redeployed I know there's these other tools. I just I don't know. It's real hard for me to To buy into that said that he's vastly under pointed. That's what I would say Yeah, I don't know about go vastly or with him or Marathi. He's a hundred points under There you go. Yeah Oh, well, okay. That's like on his point amount. That's vastly Sure. Yeah Yeah, right We can argue about the the various levels here, but they're all wrong They're like, I don't want to get caught in the semantics of this like I can already see that the people in the chat Are springing up with their own pets like no, but I love this one and see it's really fine because of situation x y z Go track is slow and Archeon is there's no excuse for him. Honestly. He's just he has no weaknesses And and Marathi can't heal and everything like I hear you I get all that That's why I'm saying Marathi shouldn't be a thousand points Okay, like I'm not saying that she should be Considerably cheaper than Archeon. She's not the same, right? Yeah, my point is they're all undercosted for where they are Okay Like yes, he's got a four inch move But also objectives tend to be quite close together now and grouped around the center of the board and the board is smaller And you can redeploy and like he can get there and be functional in many rounds And he remove insta removes basically any unit he touches Yeah, okay Yeah, definitely Archeon. I like your Yeah, sam your point about I would agree Archeon is in his own category right now having played all three of those Yeah, personally. Yeah, I kind of put Marathi and go to the same category a little undercosted undercosted and we can debate how much they're undercosted, but Yeah, Archeon is his own his own challenge last shout out Matthew Davies got to do it the new Lord of Trees, whatever we're going to call Matt Mathmallow He, you know right out of the gates with some of the lists he talked about at Rob's show a few weeks back six bows three by five tree revs allerial war song revenant branch wraith and Ventual skull route, which is pretty amazing now when you can spam trees around the board and kind of get that Ventual skull route doing these mortal wounds on multiple units right near enemy space. You can potentially double tap it portal and What's the third one cogs? I think Anyway, yeah, right out the gate for one with that list. So so good on him with the trees Well done to Matt. Well done to Matthew. I am seriously concerned if that is the the type of build that we're going to see rise to ascendancy in that book because The investment in the terrain and the impact of the terrain has on the game Are both problematic for different reasons. So hopefully they can figure out some way Some way of making the book functional without it relying on you buying eight kits and and stopping. Yeah, physically moving Long-time true player here, Sam. I did my job. I was complaining about it Well, zipperously and saying this is a terrible idea that allows to spam trees to no end. So yeah absolutely Okay, let me let me just give the top 10 so we can get through the segment Lawson the dam 36 players top 10 to zinch. We mentioned already the zinch that won it uh lumina soul blight Gets jp ganas legend with the gits army Daughters of kane. I think it was marathi and probably usual marathi and snake bows Maw tribes sons of behemoth slannesh. We should talk about that one and cities of sigmar Coming in. I think the slannesh was Looks like it was ninth so column Combs and claire god secrets host three wins looks like two draws Keeper of secrets dexcessa Sigbal the mass two by 20 demonets 10 demonets three fiends in a five drop with warlord and doing the extra uh enhancement for the extra spell or the enhancement for the extra spell What do you think that's great player great list Great player great list there you go Yeah, I mean a broken clocks right twice a day. I don't know And then finally london open top five the host arcana and we talked about Hagnar that was it Russell taylor that was the marathi and the 15 snake bows. Yeah going for one You know one of the top lists that say that's out there right now. I think that uh, yeah, and then slave slaves of darkness Soul blight lesion of night and then a taker tribe Rounding out the top five there. So, you know like a lot of what we'd expect but but some Really interesting results. It's a wide especially in the beginning of 3.0 in your early doors It's like it feels like it's going to be a pretty wide meta There are problems in the in the nature of the god characters But my honest answer is the other like the nature of this the current scenarios and how they play is that It's still almost always a game Yeah, that's been my experience So like it's it's good. I think the meta is honestly way wider in 3.0 than it was before Yeah So maybe just real quickly. Yeah stem. I mean tom you've I know you're on you've been on a break So but yeah, sam. What are your kind of overall? you know Summary elevator summary Takes on the on the meta so far as far as you can tell like you just like it like healthy terrible mixed bag This could be the three-hour show To get on that question Yeah, look, we've we've got a teams event coming up in October this year runax teams And for that we've we've decided we want to do well So in order to do well, we're trying to determine what the top four lists are in the meta And we've just been trying to go as hard as we can So trying to trying to run things that are absolute failed to tease that out and in doing that It gives you really good insight into What what the prevailing threats are going to be and yesterday I played a game against 120 Zombies 20 grave guard which could be buffed up to be a blender vangorian lord 10 dire wolves gore slav and two necromancers And obviously the vampire for the plus one attack on the big blobs of Of zombies and we played for three and a half hours and we played three turns so like It's it's sort of like there are these builds out there Where you're never going to get through 120 zombies returning with two ways of coming back And the whole army can do mortal wounds and it can fight twice and it does You know a movement in my movement phase and it does a six inch pile in and then it does a subsequent six inch pile in And that that I think is is problematic like against a lot of armies that will just auto win Equally, I've been running the 10 salamanders Again to see if if that's a list that that's going to be viable, which I think it is I think it one shots rk on it's one of the few things In the game because you get an opportunity in the hero phase to go Do the gem and it's go off and does the star see his spell go off? And if either of those things get through rk on defenses He's going to be minus one save a potentially minus one save and can't all that defense And those those sorts of things I think if you took that zombie list If you took the the zench lists that went on the weekend if you take the 10 sallies Into a normal field. There's a really good chance you've ruined five people's weekend so it's sort of like There are lots of opportunities in the meta to run lists which are incredibly the incredibly strong lists I think are frustrating to play against because there are the Lumineth with an hour-long hero phase or there's zombies that you physically can't get through in five turns If you can even play five turns Or the the power that they're able to project in terms of the salamanders or some of the zench lists that span mortal wounds Mean that the ascended builds are also the ones that are worse to play and typically ascended builds are popular So I think that's problematic, but I don't know I think over the overall health of the system I think this is an improvement on aos 2 and I'm enjoying I'm enjoying the the nuance and the challenge of all of the different variables You have to control in a game. So I think that the short answer is I like the system better But I think it's prone to being exploited more than aos 2 Yeah, I don't think that resonates with anyone else or no, I think that's I think you're dead on there. Yep. Yeah All right, Ben. So I'm gonna shut up. I'll give you your show back. That's fine. Let's go Pick of the week next section. It's all right. We got we got to keep moving because we got a plenty We gotta have time to talk scaven buddy. All right. Pick of the week sam. You're the guest start us off Okay I've chosen two podcasts. So My friends sort of criticised me and call me a boomer and I'm still I haven't transitioned yet into this medium of video So I've chosen two podcasts. I usually listen to them when I'm driving or going out and doing something or whatever So they're they're a good multitasking thing, right? The first one I've chosen is Bruinax radio So it's a relatively new podcast hosted by two blokes Up in Queensland. So Gabe and Matt and I just like I listen to it, right? And it just feels like you're having that chat you have on the saturday night of a tournament You're talking about like, how did your game go and what's happening? And I think they're just really awesome representatives of the australian war gaming scene the the the way that they do it is really level-headed. They don't have any like Awful or obnoxious hot takes and they're the thing that I really like about it is that they don't buy into that sometimes It's easy to be negative about something. You're passionate about and they don't really buy into that the the vibe is positive with that I don't think you could ever accuse them You know of being g w whatever word you want to include there But the overall tenor is really positive and I I love hobby. So I want to hear positive messages So yeah, I'm really enjoying that and they're learning aos 3 And the going on that journey with them has been really great Awesome. Gabe's Gabe's been playing slanesh and nergal And that's been playing corn and I don't think any of those three factions are strong And they're just trying to work it out and I love that. I think it's really cool Nice nice Then the next one I won't I won't talk as long for on which is just party at the all points My friend Tristan recently joined party at the all points anything Tristan does You should check out because he is a genuine hero of a human and he's joining two of my other friends But I'm dating as well. So three three mates on a cast. That's just a shout out for friends, isn't it? But I'll I'll do it anyway Nothing wrong with that at all Uh taylor, what do you got? What's big? Yeah So there was a nice write up by the winner of the london aos open on the london gt London gt website Just wanted to give a shout out to that and he goes through his list and a little breakdown Goes to this games just a very thoughtful write up On his choices in the list how he played it and so on I wanted to try to pronounce his name with my jen bob, uh, american mouth So Let's go with Second one age of sigmar battle tactics. Yeah, goon hammer had a nice article on battle tactics in geno's handbook 2021 just a good breakdown of of the battle tactics, you know thoughts on how you can try to deny thoughts on how you can get them When he might try to go after which ones sort of sequencing We've all talked about how critical battle tactics are and you know trying to get up in that that little mini game Really really nice article. Those are the two very nice. Tom. Do you have a pick of the week? Some things change Gotcha That's fine My pick of the week is going to be for the aforementioned rankcast It is going up on youtube in the two hour blocks as it was hosted So you can actually watch it in digestible two hour shows I mean, I would highly recommend the two two hour blocks with Me on them because of course, I think those are exemplary But in honesty, it was all wonderful. Um, it when I can't wait till he gets the late night ones loaded up I did watch some of the like overnight where it was hey, whoa I do want it like it's not this one's not up yet, but do watch meff's channel Hey, whoa, did a tier list of his tier lists Oh So it was fantastic. It was like way late at night. I don't remember when I was once maybe like God, I was watching like three in the morning or something, you know, like whatever. Uh, it was fantastic I was dying. Uh, so yes, like it's all the tier lists he's done on his stream He broke down the quality of those and ranked to the ranks So, uh meff's channel will be linked down below. Um, so you can go check those out That is high quality entertainment there. It was it was pretty genius the the tiering of the tiers. Yes, we've gone full meta. There we go Uh, okay So with that gentlemen, let's uh, let's get into some hobby time Uh, sam What have you been working on buddy? What's what's been on your hobby table? You've been what have you been doing? Last night. I built 72 skinks Nice and that took me about 90 minutes Sure, and then I built one Fine cast slam and that is not finished after 90 minutes the cleaning and the scraping and the Fixing the fixing of little bubbles or whatever Um, I don't I never want to buy another fine cast model. Uh, so I've got yeah, just what have I got to go Um, I've got the astralifera in fine cast and I've got five more camo skinks in five cast in fine cast And when they're done, that's it no more never again Yeah, it is a range in need both It's funny that the what we're talking about today in scaven and sarapan two classic enemies of each other from the old world Both with huge oversized ranges Both they're in desperate need of an update like I would love it if they just Next summer had some big event and just like relaunched both of them at once through some big box The situation like it'd be the mode it'd be a it'd be a that would be a hot girl summer right there for me Let me tell you what a hot rat So yeah, tyler, uh, obviously you're not painting anything Obviously some games in yeah, I gotta gotta A slog of a game against another legions of the first prince list that those lists are so technical And it's one of those that you know, you make little mistakes. I was playing daughters of kane Very very friendly with only 10 snake bows Very friendly. I think it was 20 friendly friendly version 20 20 witches 10 witches Trying out the 20 hagnar, obviously Medusa, I mean anyway, nothing that you wouldn't you wouldn't expect So it was yeah, right in eight avatars of kane got it. Okay. Exactly. Exactly That's what I was on that too two man i'm a two and hagnar. That's a thing Uh, no, I love I love avatars kane underrated by themselves and absolutely underrated. No bad units in the book Sure, I get it. We all get it. You dangled your worst unit in the book as still being good over the rest of No, yeah slog of a game, but uh pulled it out by one point And it was yeah, it was a good one. Yeah, it's always just fascinating playing legions of the first prince all the different tech that they have And yeah, because they can go like offensive control defense control very toolbox Really really interesting armies. And yeah Nice very nice Tom, what are you painting right now? Yes, you are you were Uh, I am working on my Uh, my k.o Bugman rangers mixed weapon thunder KO unit Yes So You can't see it, but There he is. There he is. I I I saw him up close when I just killed him Oh, that's actually the one guy who lived I think is what you have in your hand. No, the one guy that lived is over here So gotcha. Okay. Yeah Yes Tom and I were playing we got a game in uh, I piloted skavin just so he'd have some fresh hot takes Uh for him so that way he'd have some experience with it I've gotten lots of 3.0 games in with skavin, but I'm always look i'm always getting i'm down for one more Like playing skavin in 3.0 is like pringles once you pop you can't stop you just is always just popping one more Uh Myself my hobby time boy, it's been packed. I have been working on a lot of stuff like so much stuff And it's secret and I'm not gonna tell you about it. So that's my hobby time But believe me I've painted a lot of stuff You'll see in the future. Okay Wonderful. So there we go. Don't believe it. He's not painting it all right now I'm not at the moment. I mean, it's not a lie. I'm not at this second All right, uh And I got a game in with tom. So that was fun. I also got a game in this weekend against lumenath And there I used my I've kind that was tournament practice So that was a good game managed to take out the lumenath. So always anytime i'm killing elves It's generally a good day All right, tom tom was at your first 3.0 game second how many maybe it's not my first one It was my first real Okay, there you go. Yeah Right. Well, we're at we're at an hour. So I want to ask you for 15 minutes. Yeah take on on a was three and destroy Is what I would say like there's just a lot of mental loads and some armies are going to be Better suited for it than others. Sure. I felt bad for tom. He was like remembering wait, okay This unit has rerolled ones to hit and this unit's rerolled ones to hit and wound and like Okay, I think I'm going to spend some aether gold here and wait when do I need to use the command point? I'm like when you attack, you know, just like it's a lot, right? And for those armies that have those kind of triggered stuff It just becomes so much. Yeah Yeah Now I will say when I've wrapped them enough that it's all internalized, right? I mean, that's the other key if you've got a complex army get in the reps Because I'm you know, like at this point, I'm just like, okay, start of the turn The checklist fires, you know down. So I think I think redeploy has been the worst analysis paralysis for me of the new addition The optionality with redeploy it's I will say generally I think threw it pretty fast But there was one there was one movement phase in the game where I was like You know what the solution is Don't play anybody with melee Sure. Yeah, I mean it gets ko. It's like, you know, okay. I'm like uh pass pass Shoot shoot. Okay done. Yeah. Yeah, just do all shooting. Just do all shooting Is tom shouting into vince's mic. He's talking at a slightly raised pitch into my mic. Yes. Yes, so we don't echo or anything Uh, okay gentlemen, are we ready? It's scaven time Let's do this All right, so bringing up The presentation scaven In a os 3.0 Before I get into my summary sam You've gotten a lot of reps in a scaven given with a very unorthodox list But what's your take on scaven? What drew you to him? What do you like about scaven 3.0? What do you think about him? I love the scaven law. I think the scaven are the most interesting political and economic society in the mortal realms As they were in the the world that was I love the council of 13 the blight city The the way that the grace is have these grand machinations. I think that that they're just awesome Um, I'm particularly drawn to clan eschen Probably because they have all of the clans are that, you know, the the sneakiest and most political and You know that they have the greatest influence over the broad story arc what's happening in In the the mortal realms, um, whether that's, you know, political assassinations Whether that's knowing the exact location of the hidden eyed net cities, whatever it might be There was this there was this piece of narrative back in 8th edition war hammer that said that That the clan eschen were the only clan to ever infiltrate zench And that they actually had more knowledge about the old world They had more knowledge about the old world than zench, and I know that they'd also, um, you know Infiltrated null and they'd taken all of this information from the empire and just just to me that that always resonated with me And I always thought it was fantastic And then the way that they work on the table, um, is that they privilege quantity In terms of the number of bodies and number of shots the quality is awful, right? But this this whole idea of just having all of these redundant bodies And all of these buffs that you can still stack now even in a os 3 where they've tried to limit buff stacking To me that's a really fun way to play. It's really tactically challenging And it's really really high risk if you make a mistake you just lose and I like I like playing like that on occasion Like I wouldn't I definitely wouldn't try and do a whole season with these guys Because there's going to be too many times that you just you make one crucial error Even a small one and then that has a really significant detrimental effect on your overall plan But I'm super rewarding to get wins in with them and and super fun to to paint and play And I think that the book is obviously incredibly deep So while I started with Esh and I am pivoting through and looking at all the other stuff as well And everything that I've used so far has been fun on the table And I feel like it's been fun for my opponent as well And that's a really nice place to be at the start of an edition Yeah, I love it Tom you just played against it. What's your take on scaven? They have a lot of wounds Sure, and it gets some types of armies That's a real big detriment and so chewing through all that can be a real issue I still think that they have lots of pieces that are actually really useful In what seems to be a lower model lower wound game. So that's what I would say. Yep. Love it Tyler your thoughts Yeah, they you know, they've been one of the ultimate toolbox armies for practically seemingly forever That's when the book came out. It was a fantastic toolbox It still is it, you know, you can't get everything though as as far as I can tell You know, which which is what you need with really good toolbox armies not allowed them to get all the tools Yeah, they I like that they seem to work for a broad spectrum of player types and interests You know, like if you're just interested in crazy nonsense happening, you can really lean into that If you want a toolbox army, you can lean of that if you want low model count, you can do that High model count, you can do that. You want to be really competitive and do that You know, it's like it's got all these seemingly different options. Like I said, it's a deep bench Uh, just by giving you crap all the time about your nonsense recast I do find scaven utterly fascinating And like I I am really really hoping it gets a modern range update in the relatively near future It desperately needs it for some of each units. It's always been one of the most, you know intriguing cool IPs for games workshop in my minds They're uh, yeah, they're they're great. Yeah I I agree with everything has been said especially sam Thank you for bringing up the point about just like the lore and the aesthetic and the feel of the army One of the reasons I want a 3.0 You know a new version build of this So much is because you want I want to see Scaven always had the crazy technology and now we live in a world where the technological sort of like, you know The mortal realms have pushed the technology forward and stuff like ko And I really want to see what new crazy scaven technology looks like right like when you turn those those Miniatures designers loose And just say go nuts, right? What does scryer look like? What are the new monsters that molder has created look like right? What is a new range of echin ninja rats look like? Right expanding out that range. So there's just so much potential here And honestly, I'd love to see them call some stuff from the range, too Like there there's just something I could call out and it would be fine Like they could get rid of the doom player like look it's fine. Just let it go Just it's it's never been good. Just let's let it go. Okay Um, so like it's not that there's no losers in this army. My summary looks like this It is an incredibly varied army with lots and lots of potential By the way, I built this off the city's a sigma Presentation and I was surprised by how many sub headers I didn't have to change Because there is a lot of similarity to something like cities or seraphon I think all of those three armies all kind of sit in the same space in what they can do But there are some notable differences like there's a long list of units with potential They have very strong like I'm going to say sub factions. What I really mean is like You're they don't actually have sub factions in skaven world. What that means is like your clan rules Right, which are very potent and like you can mix and match all of those together. I actually think skaven is my favorite sub faction Build I'm using this in like extreme quotation marks, right because it's kind of driven by the hero and then what that can do So it's interesting I think then some the the city's analogy is a really good one and that this book cities and and possibly in a different way slaves to darkness That they utilize that the best In terms of being really deep versatile books that can then play particular ways depending on the The choice you make at the very start of bliss building, which is what sub faction is this And I I love that the the skaven aren't constrained by the the typical sub factions that exist elsewhere I love being able to to have a really versatile list because of that right like the way you pay it off Is that you always have to have clan rats and storm vermin if you want versatility, right like Or or because that that's your battle line period. I think that's where it begins and ends if you're not in mono other thing in which case your versatility is like Restricted down to nothing. So it's an interesting Counterplay there. I actually really like how they balance that Um because it does mean that like you are going to need to chew up some portion of your army with these troops But happily those troops do have a purpose like they they can serve a purpose in the game Which is cool. Um, so yeah good hero monsters good selection of wizards and priests lots of ranged output potential versatility Can still run hordes with ease better hordes than they've ever had in age sigmar period like we're they they still they're the they're the Second best horde unit in the game right now and probably the best zombies number one. Yeah zombies are number one. Yeah, yeah But like but overall, they're still a better horde army Because like zombies are cool because they can recurse and stuff like that But your your rats can actually survive and and do interesting other technical things like retreat and charge built in and stuff like that So there's you know Whatever in a in a in a vacuum if you're going, you know one or one by six year two by 60 clan rats What's your first choice for the baleshawn community? Is it like the the bell? Is it the vermin lord? Yes Yes, it's fair. I think I think if your first choice is that you've got options and a lot of army other armies can't say that That that's the thing because there's an artifact in there as well You can have just a little grace here with the snap grovel robes. There's a spell. There's like there's four different ways at least um on top of your um inspiring presence So the they're able to do it in a way that other armies aren't and they're able to turn off What is it the horigast and the cathol are and those sort of really strong abilities that other people build their army around Which is great Yeah, cool. Yeah, I mean like in the game we ran today. I had double layering of the baleshawn community Right, like I had a bell and the works here and I just fire off the works here command ability every round Because on a five up i'm going to get that command point back So it's like yeah, why not, you know I'm never using all these command points that you can generate because the works here himself can generate more Right, so it's just like he can just pay it back just in mass and The so like people are just battle shock immune on top of battle shock immune so your hordes don't drop Right, like they're just you you've got to do the wounds period Right, because it's also quite hard like if you have both the bell and the warps here good luck removing both of those in a turn Right, right, like they're both decent save with an after save units 13 wounds on the bell 13 wounds on the bell 12 on the vermin lord the vermin lord has his own built in plus one all the time Right, and then obviously he can also mystic shield himself quite easily and have his best day ever and use the Defense and so you can like he can pretty fat. He can pretty quickly be like ignoring red two or three Yeah, right. Yeah, so he's just gonna stick around and by the way, they're both high bravery things as well So like the vermin lord can just sit there and heal himself Like he's bravery 10. He's a big demon. So anyways, yeah mobility And good mortal wound potential. There's a long list of strengths. Now the key is it's hard. It's not like you can fit all of that Into one force. That's the trick, right? The weaknesses is current points mean you can't have it all I would also state that in the in this world. This is what I say Skaven are the most fair Current army in the game. I stand behind that statement Okay, there's there's no go trek. There's no marathi. There's no archion Right But so you don't have like a god thing you can fall back on and win. You don't have a techless Yeah, all that kind of nonsense But you're also not and like the obese of chaos players out there or like gets or somebody are looking to be going Like we don't have that crap either Right. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm like, yes. I agree. My point is that's the perfect mix Where they sit right now feels like Where armies should be aiming for in 3.0 No easy win boy. No easy win buttons Tough choices to make in list building But the versatility to lean into lots of different builds do some mixed arms, right? So it's it can be tough for them to answer the god dilemma. Like I thought his He had go trek in his force. We use last you know today And I you know, I had a guy with curse I had clan rats like he came into a unit of clan rats where I was going to be able to curse him the next round the clan rats had There was probably still 55 of them when he came into them or something got 53 of them I think at that point just because of a few errant casualties And they had bless on the the priest had actually used the six up ward So these are these are rats with a six up ward and I had given them all out defense Right frenzy and they had death frenzy. So they were like dying and swinging back on go trek, right? And so I hit go trek with like 77 attacks out of those clan rats And I did three wounds to him and I had seven rats left after he was done. Now that was actually a win for me Because go trek was going to heal next round, but but the priority was mine So I was just going to retreat and hold the point because go trek still made two models, right? So but it's just tough to bring him down now if I could have gotten to a situation where sure I could have cursed him And then like, you know, then had all the clan rats tack him. Sure. We'd probably spike him like a football, you know Hmm, but like that was the best case scenario for clan rats They had every buff I could ever want and he still blew him off the table Right with basically nothing in return. Like he took three wounds from 70 some attacks most of which were on like, yeah One point that comes up, you know, a lot of us thought that this game seemed to be pushing more msu And I mean, it's certainly that that pattern is is clearly there in some ways And yet we've seen plenty instances of these big units and ways, you know rally Emerald live swarm Etc. You know stacking buffs on a particular unit where it seems to still be quite a bit of value in a lot of cases Of these these bigger sized units that we're still seeing a fair amount of game right now That's a dps job. Yeah, like can you do enough damage? to chew through these armies And ultimately they will be Uh, gatekeepers and tournaments Just from the standpoint that some armies just can't chew through Like I was struggling to get through them. And this is my higher db dbs list that I brought Right, yeah, and I yeah what then happens is you you need to assess the direction that the meta is taking as well Because you know predominantly shooting meta Bigger units that you can stack save buffs and those sort of things on Become better because they get to utilize it against multiple unit shooting at them But in a predominantly combat meta having more more small units is better because you can set up screens Block them and they're not able to project their power Right and the scaven can do both of those things super effectively So that's why they're in a really good spot even if the meta does sort of give it a change over time Right. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely agree So I'll I have one potential asterisk on the the fair and the no easy win button And then she probably know what it is we discussed before but I can I can hold off on the storm fiends discussion if you want Yeah, I mean the the storm friends part of it, right? I don't think nine storm friends is Ultimately a winning strategy. I think it's too easy to get that I one I'm highly sus of death star type builds in general in this edition because we already talked about how You know that like it's it's generally easy to counter death stars now. They're a shooting death star, which is better than a melee death star I think melee death stars are really bad They're a shooting death star And you know sure if you get all your buffs off which by the way is hard You're relying on spell cast buffs there Spell cast buffs off a guy who is not the best spell caster like it's okay He's not bad. I don't I don't know he goes plus one to cast from his warp stone He goes reroll to cast even better reroll to cast from his warp stone and plus one to cast from the The warp nor so get the norhold. So what is it a six with a reroll? Yeah, it's not I didn't say yeah, he's not the worst. I'm just saying like there are There are casters out there. There are armies out there that will just look at you and go no Right. Yeah, post arcane. I'm in turn one three and five is just going to be like and I just spell that automatically no rolls. That's what I do I just get a big one spell a turn what's their one spell they're going to shut off in turn one Tough decision the thing that's going to let you wreck my face Right and and like when you turn off More more warp power They're like the efficacy of that unit really does change a lot Okay, now you can still spark them and get the bonus damage, of course. I'm like they're still stuff Yeah, I don't want to I'm not trying to say it's not like it is a scary scary unit But the nine storm friends also requires you to be in only scryer Yeah And there are just like that is such a limited build as for the slice of what you get out of there other than your one master plan in general Yeah, Benjamin didn't have much in his list that I was saying that yeah saw that yeah It just it really compromises your ability to complete the battle tactics as well Right because you're investing one thousand points between the unit and the buffing pieces Just to get to a particular point and kill things and and killing things is less valuable than it's been in previous editions So Yeah, I don't I don't like that build at all I much prefer six and then you get a a screaming ball in or six and then you take Some jazzyles or whatever like it doesn't matter What yeah pieces you take to complement it up But I think six is still enough to kill a lot of medium sized units, which the the meta is progressively Seemingly moving towards because obviously there's that reinforce and double reinforce limitation and And then yeah, you're just you're giving up so much by just being scryer You're just you're not able to get a priest in you know You're only able to get one master clan unit You have units of five acolytes as your battle line and obviously then you're seeding this Battle trait whether or the the secondary where the person says i'm going to kill a battle line unit It's like okay five guys with a six up save right. They'll be free two points this turn Yeah, yeah, I agree. So so that's why I don't think it's the easy win button Because like I I understand i'm not i'm not doubting, you know, ben did really well with it Benjamin sorry, I did really well with it and you know, he's Mr. Saba is a great player like a truly great player I'm pretty sure I could hand him almost anything and he'd go for one right um like he is truly an amazing player and I just think if you were it but under most normal circumstances, there is a massive achilles heel in the second someone plants an arrow in it you're done Like I just think I just think edge shooting like that is a bad way to get a five-oh Like that's that's what it comes out. That's fair. Yeah Yeah, I mean that's the only thing that I've seen that's out there that like at least stands out as like a smooth brain Pointing at that thing whereas. Yeah, I mean I would tend to guess. Yeah, like you said it's got counters But yeah, I mean it certainly seems like you can build build lists that are that are quite strong But I'm not really seeing anything as you said that's like there's not any gash. There's not an arch on So yeah, the nine storm fiends is the only thing that you know We talked about that group like 30 iron drakes 30 sentinels those kind of like death star Units that are having an impact early on at 3.0 Like what might be the equivalent the single point equivalent of that in the scabin book They can point to and think that might be a problem. That's the only thing that I've heard of so far Yeah, agreed Well, let's do a Let's do an exercise So what do acolytes look like? Bad, they're they're capped at 15 now. So you could go 15 plus one to hit plus one to wound Rerolling to hit and wound plus one damage And then you've thrown all all of your almeas buffs onto that one once more You know, I mean they got run and shoot but still the range isn't great. Yeah And yeah, it's short range. And by the way, they die to literally as difficult I mean, they are on no save No bravery like they better be and and by the way in that scryer build It's actually much harder to fish out your battle shock immunity You can still do it like you but then you're you have to commit to like one specific thing to fish out your your battle shock immunity Yeah, right, not that they're ever going to live anyways like 15 if somebody looks at them funny, they're all dead so Uh and and like battle shocking your nine storm friends if they're not near a battle shock immune thing is actually a problem I'll be torn that They don't have it. They don't have a champion. They need a they need a babysitter at all times. Yeah, right. Yeah Uh, somebody needs to smarten up one of those brain rats on their backs make it make it a champion smart, I guess I want the old I want the old warlord on bone breaker back. That's what I want the the claw lord writing the A giant armored rat over bring that back Let's see a new sculpt for that they love returning to old concepts and reimagining them So you hey gw sculptors who watch this when you do it, please give me back a claw lord on bone breaker That could be amazing So they don't have the the gash. They don't have the rk on they they have got someone and i'm Maybe this is better place for characters later, but i'll just say it now the um forge world vermin lord comes in at 270 points and you know, he can do Five damage six attacks at twos and twos and he can break coherency and isn't to castle I don't know what his longevity is Maybe that that stuff gets written out of the game shortly, but but for now the warp nor vermin lord is He's not at the god level, but at only 270 he's excellent economy, and I would say probably the strongest thing available to the army Yeah, he's he's so he's so good, which makes me think there's no way he's going to stick around They're gonna put out some kind of points to each other for two miles or whatever I trust those forge world things as far as I can hug the entire forge world cataloged so Uh, all right Let's talk about tactics the general tactics with this army. We've already mentioned some of them Uh, widely very wildly sorry widely varied strategies that require dedication is my answer for sort of the general way The army you think about it. So one is just oops all shooting Again, it's just like it's it's there. You can do it in a lot of different ways Lots of things in this army can have guns You can have very minimal battle line that don't have shooting but are just there to be fodder for the shooting Or you can just go all shooting if you want in certain builds So that's one, uh the swarm The swarm is the body play the body block play you're just flooding You're just flooding and making them all battle shock immune One to two units of 60 packs of rats and the tools to make them immune to battle shock, right? You can go even farther by the way if you want like there's it is extremely feasible to fit Another significant chunk in on top of that, right? Like that is to say you could go 60 60 20 right that's That is a viable build That absolutely fits in the reinforcement points, right? And that's just like 140 wounds in clan rats I played what are Uh, what are 16 points right now? three hundred and Uh 60 points. I think that sounds right off the top. Yes. Okay. Yes, because there it's 120 for yeah 120 for 20 And so 360 for 60 fantastic Quite tasty So yeah, I'm in like Flynn for that I think some people are upset because they you used to get 40 for 200 Because the board bonus thing, you know, it was like 120 and then the board and I'm like, maybe they're 130 now I use 390. I don't even remember. It's it's a great deal. Whatever it is. I'm sorry. I just built the list I don't have the points in front of me. Um, sure. No worries. So like 10 point change. So somebody of 130 390. Thank you very good. Okay. I thought so that was that was itching at the back of my head Still a great deal Right like 390 for 60 wounds. That's that's a fantastic ratio. Remember these dudes are all retreating and charging Um, they're only on a six up, but they have a built-in plus one to save as long as they got 10 models So it's really easy like that's just all the time So so if you spark the all out defense, it's like you're ignoring a round of one and you're still on a five up Right. Um, they're a great recipient of bless as I mentioned earlier from the priest Uh, where you can, uh, suddenly give it, you know, given 60 guys a six up word actually does something like that's That's great on those on a massive pack like that of low armor units. So there's just tools. There's tools, right? This one Okay, mixed arms. This is sort of your traditional classic Mixed scathing Clan rats to lock rat ogres with upgrades to hammer jizzales or a warplight in canada shoot vermin lord to lead This is basically what's on for tonight All right, junk in the front part in the back Yeah, the jizzales are quite nice because they take up an artillery slot So in some of those battalions, you're not using like if you want it to be a low drop army, for instance The jizzales don't eat into one of your five troop choices for that one drop battalion Which is a nice little thing for them to get obviously previously you could take nine of them and throw all the buffs on Um, disappointing you can't do that anymore, but sixes are still really good Yeah Sixes of jizzales will really do a lot of work, especially if they happen to have obviously like in all these things There is sort of a power pair mentality here, right? Like if you've got those guys, you're going to have a Of warlock around to to be giving them buffs to be sparking them to be doing all the quintessential things they need to do Uh, and then what I call edge shooting wackiness Uh, that is my wheelhouse. No the smorgenn play. Yeah, this is the smorgenn play So this is the eschen swarm of night runners and gutter runners Which are just like outrageously cheap for what they can do and the bodies you can put on the table of like pregame moving ambushing nonsense The moulder menagerie, uh, where like I look post uh broken realms That moulder stuff is legit scary now and you can pack a lot of upgrades onto those things um What's uh highlights and why on why it's scary? So you can go six wounds with a four up save so you count as two models and it's changing the save value It's not adding plus one to your save So you go uh four plus save then you whack a mystic shield and you're all out defense and you've got a three up ignoring red one That's brilliant. Um, they've got capacity to heal They've got um buffs within molder for like plus one to kill and stuff so they can still do some damage And then the other version I think has um more attacks and yeah goes up to six attacks and has built in re-roll charges Re-roll charges. That's right. So it's just really good. And then there is a speedy version as well But I don't think I'd have a pivot to the speedy one Yeah, the the the one that makes them faster is kind of because they are already fast enough like they're fine. Um, yeah so The uh, the the like edge shooting is fun. There's a lot of like there's a scryer list That's a weird edge shoot list like they generally are in the specific clan wackiness, right? What kind of list would you guys expect to see with the molder menacherie? Like what are we looking at? Uh, you'd have a clutch of master molders Probably a normal unit of pack masters running around because it's six wounds for 60 points In these these three little idiots who can walk around and make rat ogre's bravery 10 You want enough so that you've got like two help hits and At least two good size Blocks because that your your rat ogre's become battle lines so they can go to six Right. Oh cool. So you got two six packs of rat ogres is generally going to be your your reinforcement points And then two help hits and then you know stuff like that You're gonna you're definitely going to invest in a big master clan general Like maybe a thankful or something like that can be a pretty good fit into there. Um, since he's master clan Um, your rat ogres actually are one of the few things that don't have a bravery problem Because if they're near a master molder or any of the pack masters, they're bravery 10 I think just a quick shout out to the rat swarms that are bravery 20. Yes, they're the highest bravery in the game Yeah, they do go to bravery 20 Because you can take all molder units bravery Yeah, you can take storm fans in molder as well because they're both molder and scryer Which to your earlier point Vince when they do look at at redoing the book Amalgamations like that where there's a hybrid between yes between the different clans I think it's a really a nice design space for them to explore 100 agreed. Yeah. All right. Let's get into the specifics Okay, so time stamping All right, let's talk heroes um These guys have great heroes like we're going to start on the quality monster heroes big heroes your big heroes skaven Okay, we'll get to we'll get to the smaller utility guys in a minute, but let's start on the big boys I've identified three here vermin lords Probably like there's a there there are certainly standouts amongst the vermin lords But at all they all have some kind of value for the most part The guy actually in the picture here is one of my faves, but not my absolute tippy tops This is the deceiver in the picture. He's Choice for many reasons Thankful who is the uh, the best porcupine in the game period bar none Um, like you cannot charge him with any unit of any size and expect to live or charge near him Like he just incinerates Anything assuming he's built sensibly Uh, and then the the old grace here on streaming bell you get a fun bell roll every turn which can actually do stuff Sometimes, uh, you know when you crack off and give your whole army neg one to be hit It's pretty great Summon a vermin lord pretty great. Do a bunch of d3 immortal wounds to the enemy army Pretty great Right, like there's just a lot of good stuff that comes out of that bell give all your casters an additional plus one to cast Pretty great And you know it is itself a double caster So it's only downside is that it needs rats to move so it gets stranded these they're all solid Sam what's your vermin lords? Let's talk them First of all, do you rate them and what who are your who are your vermin lord picks? Who's your top draft pick? In the world if I had to if I had one pick in the draft, I'd take screech vermin king. He's my preferred lord And that that's a recent change so Wow He is the swiss army knife that I think that the scaven army needs He just brings so much utility He could be a good magic caster and unbinder. He can push out mortal wounds His spell to me is is arguably the best spell in the book. So 13 dice four pluses to a mortal wound So kills most support characters For each mortal wound that gets through you get a clan rat that pops up nine inches away from the enemy so It's feasible for him to summon You know four or five units of clan rats over the course of the game, which is tremendous I think the the thing is right all of the vermin lords pair really nicely with the deceiver The fact that the deceiver can teleport them to six inches away from the enemy means that he's a huge force multiplier And because he's a constant in all of my lists, I guess my assessment is is based on the fact that I'm assuming I've got him to move me around but yeah, I really love screech He also has a re-roll to wound Commandability and affects all scabids. That's really strong Because there's obviously An absence of re-rolls probably and the fact that scaven have retained them is a strength of the army Yeah, re-roll wind rolls of one. Yeah, holy within 13. That's great I literally love all of them. Like I could I could Conceivably mount an argument for any any vermin lord the the worst on paper is the corruptor But he's also only 280 flat points right and he's the only one that's able to become a priest And we all know that priests obviously really strong in this edition. Yeah Yeah, they're all defensible exactly because he can take he can take stuff to become a priest the If you want a storm vermin blender unit, which I think is actually quite viable still like at 30 of those guys They can still absolutely do work Um, and you know, he's a good way to get at that He's he's gonna give those vermin units again some some hot re-roll action as well as being a relatively interesting melee threat himself Uh and being and he is verminus. So like, you know, that's easy. He's in that um The and then of course the vermin lord warps here my personal fave. I miss his re-roll to saves But I'll take the plus one to save any day It honestly makes me more ready to throw the ball when I need to to just drop the d6 mortal wounds He also has an incredible spell. I mean 26 inch range d6 mortal wounds half run in charges and you lose fly Just piling on right? Yeah And I've had that thrown in my face too many times Yeah, like I hate that spell and the fact that he can now take into the universal spell lore Uh and and get flaming weapon, which just makes him an even more potent melee threat with his big halberd You know being on d3 plus one damage is a good damage number So, I mean he can he can get there They're all great. I do love the deceiver. I love the neg 3 rend. I love the skater leap I mean, it's just he's such a hard to stop piece the difference between being able to show up Either him or something else the fact that he can he can do it other things as well The fact that you can make them show up Six inches away is so much harder to screen out. It's crazy the difference in diameter of that bubble Right, you have to work so much harder to screen out six inches Then you do to screen out nine And because it's a setup in the hero phase you deprive them of the opportunity to make their movement Right, so that only happens if you finish a move within nine in the movement phase, right? So it means, you know where they might have thought okay I'm gonna fall back here or whatever the strategy might have been you're able to take that away from your opponent Which is quite nice in this edition Yeah, I Yeah, he's he's so good. I actually love him with the if assuming he would still be on the table Which I'm not counting him for this, but if he for some reason sticks around the forge world Uh, is like the hottest dreaded skitter leap out of him You should just backboard him and then suddenly that not that lunatic shows up six inches away With like this ridiculous weapon just coming in boom Drop in just tons of derthu level attacks from six inches away. Yeah, it's It's real good It'll get people out my best my best with the warp series 24 damage on a unit of more tech so Six six go through five go through damage six and they they only pass one of the saves. So that's pretty good. Nice. Nice So, yeah, vermin lords are amazing. I love. Thank. We'll love all these guys Did I miss any that's this is basically the big heroes and that's what's funny. This is basically the list They're all good. I guess the one thing I don't have here is the plague furnace if somebody wants to defend it, but No, I think just one thing to add about thankful though is that the obviously he's got these Amazing shooting attacks and that they're able to project mortals and that's fantastic. One of his Maybe drawbacks in the past was that he only had access to a single spell from the the spell law Which is a fantastic spell law and provides like quite a lot of diversity and utility in your list build Now with the enhancements, you could actually give him an additional spell if you want to So you could take two spells from that excellent spell law be plus two to cast and once per turn he can go I'm going to roll three dice And if he hits a 13 he takes some mortal wounds Whereas the graces just die if they hit a 13 So roll three dice chooses the best two and then gets plus two to cast that makes him a super reliable caster Particularly when you can add in then the door hole as well for plus three Yeah Like thank well near and all whole you're talking about just a just a flat rolling plus three caster That's great Like look by any math. That's great. If you're hitting negash level bonus just like it. It's good That's good. I don't know what else to say Plus three to cast strong. Yes Breaking news, right? Yeah, you heard it here first folks Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that all of their big heroes have some kind of use Right. There's there's basically nothing that's the big hero in the army that that you go That's very unusual and they're also getting they're also getting the five up board thank well and the vermin lords They're also getting that Uh, yeah, the vermin lords have the five up board. The bell has the five up board. Thank well has the five up board. Yes I didn't check the fact. I didn't know if that had changed at all. Okay Thank well. He also wound a turn as well, doesn't he so he's got inbuilt healing He's always he's got a bunch in warpstone. So he's just constantly healing up He's he's on an armored an armored giant rat as well. So bone ripper gives him a four up So he's having his best day ever. He's casting mystic shield. Um, he's super hard to move and um Just scaven generally the heroes are able to retreat rather than activating combat So you can be moving him in your opponent's combat phase Which is a really really strong ability and because of the use of screens you can do it in ways that I think You know, if you know that you're going second in the turn, you can move him somewhere In their combat phase. So he's then able to cast a short range spell Which is just terrific. Like the amount of sneaky tricksy really on brand in theme scaven things you can do with the the heroes is great Yeah, I mean let us not forget that your heroes can just choose to leave In combat including these big guys like that is one of their options instead of activating scaven heroes can just be like Nah and just leave and some of these guys have crazy movement like a vermin lord You charge a vermin lord if I don't want this fight, you know, like Maybe you go first. Maybe you don't like certainly if you realize that I have the power to walk away You've now decided what your first unit fighting is because you have to fight my vermin lord first Your chances of killing a vermin lord when I know this is coming is pretty minimal with most units in the game And then I'm just going to activate and walk 10 12 inches away Just like just see you later, man. I'm out of here. Like I don't think I'm going to win this fight You know, it's not manfred good, but it's pretty good And you can you can couple it with redeploy So you could be really aggressive if you wanted to you could move in there to and towards them They charge you then you could move over them if you've got like levitate off or there's a gap Well, I think yeah, there's there's so many options there and it creates a really Um a really interesting dynamic for your opponent in terms of who am I going to charge? And what's the sequencing in the combat phase going to look like? Yep. Absolutely. Yeah Incidentally, I was always really impressed by the dreaded plague spell from the vermin lord corruptor I know you mentioned sam that you weren't too keen on him but I was playing that allegiance of the first prince a lot where like they would I think cask, I don't know skitter leap was basically like an autocast with the Whoever was doing that and then they would throw the vermin lord corruptor more than six away from me And they would have like an artifact or something that would do d3 mortal wounds on a five up with 10 attacks As well as yeah, this dreaded plague that yeah Picking into me within 13 roll one dice reach model on a four up and you know, like bye bye 30 dryads or half a 30 Yeah, I mean whatever plague is still a horde breaker. It's a four up mortal wound. So it's a true horde breaker Yeah Now there aren't as many hordes but god almighty if they have them is his that spell potent, right? Because it's just like just it just burns people Yeah, it just burns the heart of them right out Uh, so yeah, it's hit like again. They're all playable and we would point out. He's like the cheapest one Yeah, you know, so Yep They're all good It's funny because skavener a horde army that i'm usually completely unafraid of enemy hordes like I welcome them I'm so excited generally with most of my builds fighting a horde army. I'm like, this is great This is gonna be great Because you'll just out horde them. I can kill more of your horde than you can kill mine and you know, yeah, okay Heroes let's talk quality support heroes that can bring value. So this is your little guys Uh, by the way, I would point out that the icket claw here slash now arch warlock That's on the screen was painted by the one and only Darren Latham And this is an incredible piece one of my favorite paint jobs of all time I truly love this piece. So anyways, I just I had to go fish up this particular piece of art Because it's wonderful and beautiful and Darren did an amazing job Uh, and it's got the distinction. It has the distinction of being The only model in the game that i'm aware of that can do 18 mortal wounds to itself. Yes skills He can just Atomize himself. Yeah, absolutely Yeah, all like I'm I'm using him to represent both the arch warlock who I think is amazing and the regular warlock Both of whom have roles and and and absolute value Regular warlocks and even their base spell is really solid in the mortal wounds It can damage when when overcharged and oftentimes you'll be like, yes, sure Bombadiers can can uh, huck a 2d6 damage rocket at people which is pretty incredible Um You know it gets on a base save the arch warlock being on a 3 plus base save because he's in power armor is wonderful Uh, so like that dude can survive against non mortal wound things. He's super survivable The regular claw lord is super survivable because in being verminous. He always gets a extra command trait So you always just take verminous valor with your one claw lord. He has a plus one attack command ability, which is fantastic Uh, so he can pass wounds, right? He's got a four up wound pass to to regular clan rats So he ends up being quite survivable Gracier can eat rocks cast on 3d6 Wonderful and the plague priest who've already mentioned this little guy This little guy's the hero we all wanted indeed He can get plus one to pray from standing near a knoll hole now And he's got the lever bubonicus if you want which is freaking fantastic artifact still He can the first prayer I did against tom. I think it was the first prayer My second prayer second prayer I did against tom. I great plagued off and then Picked the bubonic plague against the unit of three wardens Which is just like d6 mortal wounds And if you kill the unit then you get a jump it roll the six Wipe the unit of wardens jump to another unit to d3 Hallelujah all hail the word rat. It is a glorious day This is um, this is the point where we get to talk about the red moor curse Yes So the red moor curse is on a hero the closest hero within 13 of the priest You have to hit a six on your prayer to trigger it And then from that point on for the remainder of the game That hero Is counted as a friendly hero For your army in the combat phase if it's within three of the opponent And not within three of you. So in typical scaven fashion, there's so many conditions going on there There's like a heap of stuff happening, right? But what it means in practice is that you get within 13 of our friend kairos He can't affect the role Of a prayer right hit the six He's then standing next to some screen that's stopping you from getting into him in combat He then has to fight that screen. He's a friendly model So you use his once per game dice change on his first to hit roll and it is gone The next game you come up against gotrek And he has to be at the front of his the opposing army because as we've said already his only movement four, right? He has to be front and center So if there's anyone within three he piles him backwards and then hopefully piles in a second time backwards So he's suddenly six inches back and has killed whatever screens their army had and in the third game We get to play against our k on Or a star drake a star drake just eating something out of the center of a unit. It's awesome Like it's super situational, right? But it is amazing if you get that off and it should put the fear in God into people Like the fear of God into people that sort of thing. Yeah, it's amazing. Oh, yeah All the great all the great plagues are really really cool. Yeah And I just think the add 85 points He's a steal. He's an absolute steal at the moment and getting plus one to your To your prayers and being able to re-roll your prayers all that stuff like it's just it's really strong Yep Yeah, the the sadly when I triggered it the only thing it was in range was those wardens But I was okay. I was happy to just why pick up the unit with the great plague. It's still good God trek was just out of range because I wanted to Yeah, he was like I took my little 13 inch stick and he was like 14 away. I mean he was just like Imagine God trek God trek into an iron clad twice. I don't know what the math is, but I'd be very worried if I was okay Oh, it's so good So that's insane. Sam. I never heard of that before that red mile. That's crazy. Yeah, it's really fun It's really really fun. Just in terms of the the little support characters. I think These enable you to to take the battalion that gives you an extra cp and an artifact Without any loss to the bill because they all add tremendous value And it's not uncommon for you to start your army would say thank well in a vermin lord or two vermin lords And then you know chuck for support characters in so you could legitimately Have two additional enhancements, which is really good because you've got a good spell law And you've got some of the best artifacts in the game And then the ability to to utilize those without actually compromising the build at all is a real strength Hmm So is the plague priest sort of an auto include at this point for a lot of lists like okay 100 percent Yeah, he's brilliant Yeah, what about an arch warlock is that also He's expensive enough to need him. He's good, but you you're always gonna have some warlock in there generally But it's not always going to be the arch warlock. It'll be like You will have something that has warlock in the name. It basically any list Okay, unless you're doing like again the the edge shooting wackyness Most scaven lists that I build have about 16 or 1700 points that are locked in And the the warlock or bombardier Or arch warlock would be in your last 300 points And it would just fluctuate depending on the the way you wanted the build to go So he's 50 points more than a normal warlock, but he gets an additional wound Plus two to his save an additional spell Like on balance that That package is worth more than 50 points But it's like you just sometimes you just don't have the points in the bag to take him So you have to go for the the cheaper one 25 point characters Gotcha And then one I'm just kind of get trying to get a sense of yeah, like what Situational mom particularly these four that you've listed here vents and then what sort of you know You're gonna see the majority of the time. So what about the claw lord? It's that like vast majority of the time or is that a little more situational? I think it's more situational I tend to use him because I like him he can like his ability to just be survivable He's a relatively interestingly hitty hero as well Like he can do okay against little screens and stuff like he can he can do enough work that he's valuable If he does take damage, he does more attacks. So like it's you know, it's fine As I mentioned, he's sort of survivable for free because he just gets the bodyguard thing automatically like there's no cost to that It just happens Um, and you know anybody who can just give plus one attack is like, yeah, that's a pretty good command ability, right? Yeah And when you already he tends to be targeting units that probably already have plus one to hit Because it's just built into your core rules for numbers So you're not often needing to use the plus one to hit command ability on that unit in the He or in the combat base. Does that make sense what I'm saying there? Yeah, is that keyword or sub faction keyword limited in any way? No, he is okay. Yeah, so it's it's your clan rats your storm burman stuff like that But again, like if you have a storm burman build, he's and you don't have a crawler. I don't know what you're doing with your life Like you've you've chosen poorly I mean, he's absolutely there because because he turns storm burman into blender machines Right, uh, you know, these are guys on a 25 mil base with a two inch reach Um, we're just gonna very easily, you know be on like threes and threes if you're lucky and you get them in unscathed threes and twos You know Like yeah pretty amazing Yeah Sam what do you think about the grace here? Is that majority or is that more situational? Oh, he's excellent. It's just everything comes down to points The fact that he is, you know, only 140 points and can cast twice and has innate bonuses And access to his master clan to access to command point regeneration like We're in a really good spot in terms of the heroes like everything save for um The the sort of the bind of my existence the um ash and death master. Yeah, the death master. He's the only one that did me saw this Him and the master boulder are here because they're like super situational. Yep Gotcha. Yeah, I mean, I will say in most lists I build there will be some type of grace here So what I mean by that is there's the guy on foot or the guy on the bell or the guy on the back of bone ripper Like there's something that is a grace here in this army somewhere Yeah, the the bell is probably too cheap relative to the the grace here at the moment so the bell is only 265 and the amount of value that it adds is so significant That it's hard for me to justify including a grace here if I want to grace here I'll probably chuck him on a bell that Generally like but it like I say you can't get all your toys in and it's a really nice It's a really nice problem to have the the the design floor is that all of the super strong lists are 2040 points or 2035 or 2020 So you have to make some you have to make some compromises. Yeah I think the grace here on foot would often show up in like a double berman lord list If you're still trying to fit enough meat in there that that's where he shows up, right? You he might show up like with the snout gravel robes and then you've got two other berman lords So he's just kind of in the middle Doing what he's doing What are the what are the ropes do again 13 inch battle shot community bubble around him? Right. Okay. Cool. Yep So it effectively makes him a tiny bell So he's a very tiny bell Yeah, these dudes are all good. I dig them Like it's just it's great to be able to look at your list And by the way, we haven't even mentioned that like by including these heroes. You're also turning on their specific clan related special abilities, right? Like the scryard dude brings the warpstone sparks the priest is obviously bringing in the great plagues The molder guy brings even we didn't mention it, but he does bring in more mutations if you're going heavy that direction the death master brings like Railroad warings, which is brilliant. Yeah, he brings a good ability. I wish it was a little more good, but it's it's good The and then the warlock or sorry, and then you know, yeah as mentioned the claw lord brings as the free bodyguard. So yeah Yeah Okay troops Uh, in my opinion another strength like the bench of this army is strong So i'm not going to talk first this time Sam like this is sort of the this is the sort of core stuff. I think of right that have solid roles We'll get to like the specialists and shooters In a moment. So this is kind of like your backbone stuff What do you think of like clan rats storm vermin rat ogres night runners godrunners that kind of thing The sort of base rats are slightly bigger rats Land rats are in the top five battle line for the whole game. Yeah, thank you. You're They're a tier below Horrors and zombies And possibly a couple of others, but they're they're right up there at 130 You know six and a half points per wound The they get plus two to their runs so they can go up and they can screen really aggressively They can teleport using the gnoll holes, which you haven't spoken about yet. They um, they can retreat from combat But basically with the clan rats you you just want like I don't know any number greater than one to survive So if someone comes into you they fight you and you just have a few guys left and then that that unit becomes an incredible Blocker and annoying and if you have greater than three they can go on contest objectives That are just being protected by small heroes and I think yeah, I think the clan rats are really versatile They're one of these units not dissimilar to To hunters where there's the eternal debate about what the best loadout is I I prefer spears at the moment just because they've got two inch range And I like to try and threaten characters that are hiding behind screens But both like they're not doing anything in combat any damage you get from them from their base profile Is a bonus or you go hand weapons and you invest extra attacks fight on death All of that stuff onto them sixes the sixes doing mortals Coupling it with the the priest is actually somewhere that you can potentially like get a high variance output unit Which is on brand for scaven and then yeah Sorry sam you guys mentioned there's a way to re-roll the prayer re-roll that prayer How easy is that to do? So there's two different ways you could automatically do it with the liber bubonicus if you're already appraised Or you could get the great prayer Not sure what its name is there's one that's like all all priests for the rest of the game re-roll their prayers for scaven Which is a nice one. It's plus one instead of re-roll, but yeah It's still good because then you can literally be knocking off these four ups on two ups. Yeah, you're near a hole It's better Yeah Sweet. Yeah, so it's it's it's doable Like realistically, it's what like this army pretty reliably curses people if you want to if you're going that direction Or blesses or whatever So in the same with clan rats. So like what are we talking about in terms of Reasonably ideal conditions that you can get clan rats to if you're trying to do work in combat with them Uh, and then you know, maybe pick one of the you know pick swords or sides in terms of the loadout Yeah, sure You go with the because you can't stack buffs anymore If you're trying to make them an optimal fighting unit You go with the swords because they've got a better starting profile if albeit with the shorter range So you go with the swords then you get plus one to hit and wound natively for having over 30 models in your unit Then you can go plus one attack from the claw lord Then you can go plus one attack from scaven brew if you felt like it So you're up to three attacks of pop Then you could go fight on death from a gracia then you could go fight on death from a warbringer So they They three attacks each and let's just say you've got curse off as well three attacks each plus one to hit and wound you've also gone the The shield that option that way as well you because you don't need to use the plus one team in combat plus one team wounds Three attacks of pop sixes and mortals And then potentially fighting three times Wow Okay. Yeah, I didn't really have a sense of like what the Reasonable, you know baseline might be like in terms of what would be fairly doable and again 500 540 mortal wounds from a unit of six Oh Thank you. I was thinking they changed it to plus one, but I was I was misremembering. It is still reroll So you're good. You were right sam. You were right Yeah, so it's good So would part of the potential play be the likes skitter leap is scaven tired to Tell the teleport spell is that skitter leap that you can't you can't skitter leap your units only heroes But the dreaded dreaded skitter leap puts you six inches away. So you're in range for curse turn one That's what I was thinking, right Would that potentially be a common play where you know, like you set up you you wait for the opportunity Yeah to teleport pop off that two up or whatever that three up reroll and then yeah you go in with the clan rents Yeah, I mean if you're if you've got like a clan ramp beta strike build. Yeah, right Yeah Interesting. Okay. I would use clan rats to screen my high output things that are sitting behind And to to late game can test objectives On the spread because they're they're really good at getting out of combat and then going for a run After you've retreated obviously not being able to run when you retreat is a big change from two to three for Skaven because they they used to be able to Use a combat as a springboard Because all right, I treat at and then front of it again plus two to they run, but that's not a thing anymore Yeah, yeah, I said retreat and charge still quite good Oh excellent. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, we already mentioned night runners and gutter runners the whole you know pregame move or ambush capability rat ogres now with one free mutation Just like a unit of work and do work as tom learned earlier Like they're there when you make them insanely rabid they're so brutal You know four of them got in to get into something and it's like 26 tacks something like that, you know with assuming no other buffs. They're sixes or double taps Uh, you know pretty easy to get them plus one to hit in multiple ways Uh It's because if pack masters are around that's of any variety master motors or the regular pack masters That's plus one to hit other bonus obviously you can still all attack them Uh in various ways and so like it's just it's just so much you can do and they're they're Then that they're suddenly on um in that particular case when I attacked him That was they're also a great recipient for if you have a triumph They're a fantastic recipient of your plus one to wound to try them Something when yeah, because suddenly they're making like four of them are doing like 20 What it was 24 attacks I think I'd made two extra attacks against you. No, I didn't I can't I said it wrong But then I made the right number. I didn't I said it wrong, but I didn't Counted out the dice. So I said the wrong number but counted the correct dice. Anyways, They make a crap ton of attacks and it ended up being on threes and twos but sixes double tapping Right neg one two damage each. I mean, it's just yeah, it's just brutal. It's tasting Thank god. They're one inch range not two inch range What are they on 40 mils 50s 40s, okay With the um, sorry, they're big with the gutter runners and I think this is probably true of all of the units in the book Like what they look like on the surface versus what they're able to do when you couple multiple buffs is is quite different So 15 gutter runners. Um, I've had charging to support heroes A death master pops out gives them plus one to hit. I use the triumph for plus one to wound I've got re-rolls to wounded all of a sudden I'm doing 30 attacks hitting on twos wounding on threes re-rolling at rend one So like I've had situations there where I've been able to put up like 28 wounds on a five-win character And that's like on the surface not something that your opponent is necessarily expecting So there's that that sort of thing exists across the book basically Yep Wow, it's all about like this kg explosion, right? You have to like it A big part of playing skaven is like setting up the plan Right you because you're setting up these kg explosive moments Um, and you just you just lay it down to to make it happen. Yeah Yeah By the way, if you love explosive rat ogres or clan rats or storm vermin like us you should you should hit the like button That's how that you want to make the little clan rats happy Uh hit the like button so or subscribe if you haven't already we're glad to hear welcome to the verminus horde Uh, join us. It's a lot of fun over here. We have cheese And warpstone all right uh Now let's talk about ranged power Boy oh boy, is it a thing in this army? So here I've listed things like storm fiends warp lightning cannons jazales rattling guns You name it. We've got it. Um That certainly the little weapon teams got more interesting now that you can put them in units and pop them out So they can be immune until they need to show up at the shooting phase when they're just like Classic target for the sparking if you get a good roll You double it. Then you really see how it turned out that you spark it Um great use of a spark turning the rally gun into two damage shots is very potent Uh, yeah, I mean, I love all these things They're all good I don't know I don't know what to say other than they're real good Like there's a lot of real good shooting a lot of it contains either high damage or mortal wounds the ability to spark off of the Uh, scryer Basically scryer sub faction just put put the air quotes around sub faction every time Uh, it's just potent as all get out Um, tom you haven't you haven't mentioned anything like I didn't have a huge amount of shooting against you, but I Didn't I was surprised Um, I mean what I would say is they have a lot of flexible shooting and they have a lot of options I love jazales in this meta because not only do they have red They can do mortals so they can still do Um, obviously your warp lightning cannon went really well when you rolled that too First shot you dropped the two And only rolled two ones so he lives. It's a great day. Yeah It uh, it was pretty terrible um Yeah, it was uh They have lots of options is the answer and I love that uh because it's a chaos army with shooting Which is something you don't normally see Yeah, yeah, I I agree with all that Yeah, I had to go into a warp lightning cannon and had to in a game and Yeah, unleash hell with that thing Playing iron jaws where we don't have any throwaway units to to take that to the face And that situation happens. Yeah, that wasn't a lot of fun. How so how would you guys so How would you guys are there any shooting units that you would not rate? So, uh, like ratling gun, would you rate ratling gun at all? I absolutely rate it especially now now that you can hide it in units It's it's a great choice because it do you like the problem before was it could Incidentally die to sort of just splash damage, right? But the fact that it can just be in a unit and then pop out when it needs to shoot Is like it makes all the difference Okay There are shooting units that maybe aren't in the best place like I really am not sure I rate acolytes right now Like I really think their questionable at best like don't get me wrong. I love their rend. I think it's awesome but They're so fragile It's so easy to die Like I just don't think they get there Um, I mean ostensibly One of the things that drives me nuts about clan eshen is that all their like on scroll bonuses talk about being like Are shooting stuff like they double tap on shots and their shooting is Let's call it situational. I'll let sam defend it if he wants to Yeah, I'm taking great offense at this. I'm very carefully Yes Like they can put out a ton of shots, but boy is it a lot of dice rolling often for not much Now against soft targets, it's great But that's where the story kind of stops and there are a lot of higher armor saves in the meta right now so yeah so it's it's forced to hit sixes explode so Effectively it's three stick it right and then it's fives to wound but you've almost always got re-rolls So that's like three and a half's to wound. It would be so much nicer if it was just Threes and threes or threes and sixes do a mortal and then nothing else happens. That would be a lot cleaner There's a lot of dice rolling but on on average like against a lower armor save A lower armor save unit you do a significant amount of damage and then against A high armor save unit you literally do no damage. You bet you're better off just not rolling it So like particularly now that there's heroic recovery if you're like shooting a monster You're better off not shooting a monster hero because they're just going to recover those wounds. Do you know what I mean? Like it just it just is really time-consuming What the ashen stuff is far better at doing is is running around and projecting Like these little bubbles of space where your opponent can't move And then throwing the shackles and then using the the warps the espel to stop them from From running and flying and all that sort of stuff as well. So Yeah, it's at the moment There's a design problem with ashen because I'm you know rolling 160 attacks every Shooting phase and sometimes doing 15 damage and it's like there probably is a need a way that we could we could do this right Yes, uh, it's at least that reminds me. I really need maybe you already have this I'm missing an aos list lab five or ten minutes on how to use shackles Okay Yes, yeah Do you do you rate shackles as a generally like in a in a vacuum a quality choice or maybe not in a vacuum? If you have a list that let's say, you know, can use it meaningfully. Do you think that's a pretty solid choice for 65? if you've got the combination of Consistent reliable casting And then and then some sort of some sort of range projection or shooting. I think it's going to include If you are a combat army, it is still a really nice protective piece Um, I personally think I think shackles and cogs both need to be around it. I think both those both those spells are wrong on release Yeah shackles in particular because we're in a meta that has bellicor and that has kairos And the combination of of those pieces Creates and the corn demon prince should be added to that conversation too the combination of those pieces Nerf nerf the hell out of that model everybody It's just orienting it's orienting top table play into far too negative play A space and I love control builds. I'm not like I think you should think of ways to counter control And part of that is decentralizing power so that they can't just turn off your one unit that does all of your things Um, but but equally there's a point when the control becomes too egregious And it's sort of just like this isn't actually fun for my opponent to not move Right. Yeah, right. Yeah I was a little yeah, because I didn't I haven't seen shackles in that many like top 10 Looking at the top 10s the last couple of weekends I haven't I haven't seen that it used that much yet But yeah, looking at it like I was looking at it for daughter I've got 85 points of daughter's cane because events you got, you know He's got too many points to play around with with this army apparently I'm like I'm like cycling through and like you know shackles looks pretty tasty Anyway, I'm just curious. I always looking for for my last hundred points because I've liked orders as well Always look in the sea's there's always something nice an easter egg in the city's book that'll help you out sweet, sweet Very nice. All right, uh Modular pieces unique crazy options that can bring potential is what I've filled this under here This is this is what the world's all about in in Skavenland uh the zoom wheel Giant rats the warp fire thrower again warp fire throws interesting because he can be just like a little thing That's around there that pops out, you know, sort of after the initial Guarded against law that he just kind of hides in the middle of a unit of clan rats and is like well if he charged me It's gonna hurt a lot I'm gonna That's like it's a great unleash hell target because you're just gonna burn an eight the countryside of people charging into you And ultimately the thing is not that many points like these are very very cheap pieces Warfire is uh, it's one of those like Roller dice per model five up four up four up four up everyone within eight takes a model But he can um, he can crank it up to 11 and it's two dice per model So against 20 more tech guard You get to roll, you know 40 dice And you're having a good day So you roll 30 models and take the whole unit out and then on a one or two it dies But on a three plus it survives and you get to do it all again. Yeah, it's amazing It's just a great. I've got one at the moment as a threat piece So I'm running three units of 20 clan rats and it's like one of these units has a walkfire throwing in it Feel free come come towards me as quickly as you want, but just be aware and you don't know which one it's gonna be right I love it, but it's so rude I really dig giant rats now as like scaven budget aether wings Because they're impacts of six, which is an unfortunate number. I'd love it if there were fives, but six is still fine um For 40 points So it's just like if you've got the points you can just you know sprinkle a couple of these around and they're great for Unleash hell where they have like Uh, if you need to absorb an unleash help, right? They can they're an easy way to get it now. You can't get over the lines in the same way aether wings can right? They're not flying giant rats They are the most hilarious recipient of levitate in history um, but like But the but just the ability to have something to either sit out in front of your your your stuff and just be an extra Extremely cheap speed bump, right that they've got to deal with or they can unleash or they can just run around real fast From your bodies that grabs stuff like for 40 points. They're so cheap Right, that's that's what So I think I think I disagree right so I'm just gonna need to how do I how do I frame this? um You're getting for 40 points six wounds That has to be sort of stuck together. Yeah, and then for 65 points you could get five gutter runners that could deep strike can shoot Aren't subject to the bad coherency. So it's like if you've got the extra 25 points The the difference between the two units is night and day Or you could and that are the root of the the acolytes and the acolytes are a unit Obviously they died with stiff breeze but but equally so to the giant rats So it's like if you've got that 25 points, I would be exploring the other options I think there's maybe 13 units in the book that are under 100 So it's like giant rats in a vacuum are great, but giant rats in the scaven book I don't I don't rate them at the moment. I mean, I haven't tried them in third So I need to get them on the table to to um, you know test that assumption But at the moment I just think there's so many better options that are just marginally more more expensive I think that's a completely fair response, Sam For me 40 points is the kind of thing I often have at the end of the list And I love having that bonus unit because you can still go four wide and basically two triangles Right with an inch between like that's still a valid setup And that's still a nice amount of coverage. They basically have a sort of eight inch wide kind of framing sort of of what they're taking up And they're just so funny and how they screw you around They're never going to be prioritized by your opponent in any way Yeah, right, which is a nice advantage So you can use them in a lot of just interesting ways to either be an additional screen Or to just sit kind of behind off to the side and go run real fast and like You know, you got to be you got to be wary that you don't set yourself up for an easy conquer Right with with taking objectives But they can just be a great extra couple bodies you throw onto an objective that just sprint out there, right? So But again, I totally get what you're saying. I'll flip it around on you for only 15 more points You can have two units of giant rats instead of the gutters Yeah, and then I'll go I'll add five for that and then we'll get the plague priest Yeah, exactly. Oh, no I've been hoisted by my own patard Yes Yes So uh and the doom wheel, which is just I admittedly not an extremely competitive piece But my god is the most fun things you'll ever use in this game I think it's got the potential for a lot of fun lists its ability to drive over models So it's hard to like trap it in is actually quite good Um, it does generate interesting shooting as well by the by like it actually has It's not eighth edition skaven shooting when it could like or whatever addition or back of it when it could shoot It couldn't do things. Yeah, just like three strength 10 volts Ignoring line of sight firing through buildings. Those were the good times, but uh But nonetheless, it's it has like it has good shooting and it does receive buffs accordingly And it's one as well. It's only 165 points. It's not excessively expensive And I know some people just include them because they're fun They'll have like a well-honed 1800 point list and a doom wheel and I think that that's completely reasonable And a nice a nice way to play skaven. Absolutely the variance is massive You should expect to get about 14 damage out of it, but it can spike It's it's highest damage point is 48 damage Right, there'll be there'll be someone in the chat or someone watching this video That's had a 40 plus damage shooting phase with it guaranteed Yeah, exactly Like it's it's actually a really interesting way because of its sort of mobility that can drive over Screens and stuff and do mortal wounds and then and then unleash it shooting It's actually kind of an interesting way to get at heroes that people are trying to backboard With its with its shots. That's often how I've used it if you like if you wanted a pet unit Right every army everybody has their pet unit and to me the doom wheel is like one of the best pet units in history Because it can actually sometimes do things And when it does you're gonna be like, whoa Holy crap that thing just exploded that I was shooting at that's amazing You know, so like I I don't think it's a bad idea at all to have add doom wheel as your pet unit You don't just don't don't make it your strategy to win with doom wheel You know, your strategy is whatever's in the 1800 points, right? That's that's how you're winning the game This is your I can have fun with this in a lot of different ways, right? And um, we do have a precedence in australia. So sa gt 2019 Dan Brewer came first at a a 50 plus player event with a doom wheel in the list So it's it's seen the podium before That guy's a hell of a player. I watched a bad report of him playing skaven and wow Like yeah, that guy's that guy knows how to play skaven. Oh, he is on the council of 13 for sure. Don't wait Yeah So we haven't touched on two things too much the help we haven't touched on the hell pit Abomination and we haven't touched on most of clan pestilence. We've talked a lot about the plague breeze But we've got like the plague claw. We've got plague monks and you know in that general, okay So are they just not on the radar anymore plague monks and you know, they were the scourge for a little while Sam you want to you hit it up? I'm interested for your opinion on this. I I think that they um They're a noisy unit, right? There's a lot going on there. They don't do anything. They're like they're they're a poor man's They're they're a poor man's gunner runner or not runner. So where my horse rules are really like really busy Um, I actually at least can do some things with them. I don't I don't really rate them at the moment I think that Conceptually, right They should Lean into them being the durable scaven. But instead they made them like the poison fighty fighty scaven um Which I don't I don't I don't like the plague monks the the plague claw Doesn't have enough attacks in this meta. So it's it's variance is massive because it's attacks are low And it's just too likely that it will do nothing like actually nothing zero damage in which case you're wasting your time What about the furnace? Um You'd have to build your list you'd have to build your list around it. So I wouldn't I wouldn't that's the only The only angle that I would be taking at the moment is down down that That's sort of pestilence route Okay Yeah, the furnace is interesting because it's it ostensibly it's a cheaper access to the battle shock community Like the battle shock community bubble still comes off the furnace and it affects everybody Not just clan pestilence now It also has a chance to wound non pestilence units that are around it So if you're like if you're dragging that thing around the battlefield with clan rats, it is gonna like Damage them a little you know over time. So you've got to be aware of that, right? um But I mean it's big giant swingy ball Does do quite a lot of mortal wounds Okay, so like That's not to be underestimated. Like, you know, I and I says I said it's cheaper Like it's actually surprising how cheap it is. It is still packing a priest on it Right Like it still has a plague priest on it. It's sort of though the inverse of the gray seer versus the the bell situation where the distance between the two is maybe a little too far Yeah, 245 for the plague priest on furnace 265 for seer on the screaming bell Right and like the problem so the dip as sam pointed out the difference between the grace here on foot and the grace here on screaming bell Is such that you're almost always incentivized to go up to the bell The difference between the plague priest on foot and the plague priest on furnace Is such that you're almost always incentivized to go with the priest on foot, right? Because he's delivering a lot of the same value But at a like you can have three of those guys basically for for one bell And that's you're really if all you're doing is trying to get the prayers out of it Hmm, okay Right Yeah, so Now, you know Again, it does stuff. I don't want to be like it doesn't do stuff. It does stuff Okay, it's still got a five up. It has the big giant sensor Uh, which is like d3 plus four mortal wounds if the thing's uninjured It is bravery 10 So it can self heal like very easily right, um You know, yeah Cool. Yeah, I was just curious and what about uh sam, what do you think about the help it? I hope it's cool that the help it in particular through the um The the changes in cragnos, uh, it it suffers from The the same thing that the the hydra And the caributus and any other the what are the guys in basic house any other monster that's not a hero? Um, the they're they're just so much worse in comparison Um to say something like a frost lord on stone horn or a frost heart phoenix or a vampire lord on dragon Like the monster heroes are just in such a good spot that it makes me not really want to take a just a generic monster um But yeah, I think that the help it is another high barrier space that could do a lot of damage And could be quite survivable in the right situation. So, um, I mean it's it's certainly it's certainly better than the um The pestle and stuff. Uh, it just probably isn't making its way into any any like optimized army lists Yeah, I I agree. It's got interesting options on its horrible mutations now. Like there's some really interesting ones. So, um So for example, there's One that the one that I would take to give you like the re-roll wound rolls of one and Something else. I don't know what the other something is But that that's the best one on the list like for just if you're trying to make the thing competitive um There's a really interesting one that because it it it suffers from the classic monster problem. It's a five up save it moves Uh, and it moves randomly, right? It's got a random. Yeah movement. Yeah, which is always crappy right 2d6 is like one of the worst movement values you can have in the game and uh But there's a really interesting horrible mutation you can take where it always moves and charges seven It's just that's what it does Okay, you can still run itself but I'm fascinated by that one because the the the fact that you can wheel up to a seven inch charge and just Do it is actually quite interesting um to not have to ever roll on that but The so just like move seven charge seven or whatever is is kind of a fascinating thing It's still a little bit under capable. That's the challenge. It just dies It's it's just ready to give a point away to your enemies um that being said I played it in the game against like a luminous list that was Eometrica and didn't have any sentinels in it and Careened that idiot into like a tight little pack of of like There was like five stone guard and then the cowl mountain and then a 10 pack of wardens all kind of He took you and drifted in the whole lot He did a bunch of damage to all of them through his attacks Like he just kind of spread out his attacks and avalanche to flesh the big unit and yada yada yada Like he did all his stuff And then of course cowl mountain is just like squish and then he exploded and killed everybody else Like between all that there was no wardens and no stone guard left and then the cowl mountain had a few wounds on him And I was like all right. That was totally worth it Totally worth it Because obviously one of the things you can do on death is explode and just do more wounds everywhere so He's he's fun You will there are a few more fun roles in the game than rolling that d6 when he dies Just that's that's what i'll say That's living that scaven lifestyle Nice And then finally, uh, I brought a little sample list guys. I brought a little sample list for us to talk through Okay So I just thought this would be a little interesting exercise So this is warp seer grace here on bell plague priest bombardier and the claw lord The and then 60 clan rats 20 clan rats 10 10 storm burman in battle line four rat ogres and three pack masters to uh as as a little power Ish pair there and then a warp lightning cannon and then the two battalions are battle regiment and command entourage In magnificent for the extra enhancement Yeah, so there you go So yeah, kind of a classic combined arms. Yeah, yeah And No, is that what you read? Yeah, this is basically what I ran against tom. Yeah Yeah, yeah Sam what are your impressions of this kind of list? Yeah, I think ultimately this is the this is the best all-rounder this this sort of approach I think you could possibly you could possibly swap the Molder elements and replace them with a unit of three storm fiends. I think you know three three storm fiends without buffs is an interesting Um an interesting unit, but yeah, I really like this this type of build I can't I can't seem to like find a space for the warp lightning cannon Um, it just it feels like the kind of piece where I'll roll a five or a six every single turn And then do no no damage because it's one of those strange pieces where the lower you roll the better the model is Um Yeah, so I think there's a couple of elements in there that I that I haven't been Testing out myself, but I like overall I like the composition. I think it's doing all the things we've spoken about So far, which is you know having the having the utility being able to flex in different ways Being pretty responsive to both opposing hordes But also being able to maybe either tarp it or shoot monsters like it does lots of things You want to be doing in the current meta and it's it's sort of this sort of epitomizes Why I like the book because there's so many different things you can do And and still be competitive, which is nice. You're not like by taking this sort of mixed arms build You're you're not you're not compromising your ability to win You don't have to take a death star and throw everything into it, which is good Yeah, I want to answer a question here No more seashore said don't you need a master molder to get the mutations in the ogre's hba? No, you get your first one for free. Yeah, much like Much like all dealers the first one is for you then you need when you take additional master molders you instead of taking their normal bonus of modifying the Fighting beasts you can take the the horrible mutations instead Which I think you always do I don't think you ever take the the one from the book and I'm like a bit disappointed It's not both. It'd be really nice if it was in it in addition to yeah That's what they something like that needs to happen to actually make molder Quote unquote competitive right like they made them fun and don't be wrong I actually really like like the four right changes, but not far enough Yeah, the pocket rat ogres I do back them because they're a great counter punch unit to sit behind clan rats to especially with that insanely rabid They just put out So many or or as a little anvil as you mentioned like the six Moving them to six wounds when they're 95 points apiece Right, so suddenly you're getting 12 wounds for 95 points on a base four up save You know on bravery 10 realistically almost all the time They're You know Like they'll stick around It's actually shocking the kind of punishment they can take right because in a unit of four Suddenly you're talking about 190 points for 24 wounds on a four up save like that's a square deal So they can play interesting rolls Yeah So what do you guys think are some of the ways to try to counter what skaven is doing or like what are some of the The challenges that they may have out there, you know particular factions or play styles or Yeah, or maybe just challenges in general in terms of some of these seems like they'd be pretty good at the battle tactics Because they they have such a toolbox and you know like they have the ability to target some damage when they need to You've got you got your battle tactics on lock with this army every day You want like if you if you can understand how to use them when it's almost never a problem like playing this army I think i've gotten in Five games of skaven in a was 3.0 right now and like battle tactics were the least of my concerns every round I'm like this is the one i'm doing this is the one i'm doing this is what i'm doing We've got options for days So I think that they also enjoy removing a an objective in turn three because it's an attrition army Turns three four and five you've you've got these diminishing numbers anyway So the fact you're playing around less space is actually beneficial That's probably true of all all large ward armies, but that's been my experience with the ashen I know that i'm training units. I know every unit every turn i'm losing two or three units, right? And the fact that there's one one fewer place that I need to be on the board in the late game Is actually beneficial for the type of build that i'm running The the obstacles that I've faced as a skaven player have been Where my opponent has been able to Have multiple centers of power Because my buffs are wholly within 13 So I want all my army to sort of pivot around together to to utilize the holy within buffs And where they've got multiple centers of power and then they couple that with with really high saves I don't have sufficient border wounds in my builds to to get through really high saves I have to then out body them that has to be the strategy Which is less reliable obviously than just killing the thing I'm killing the thing is always the the preferable approach even in this version with the the extra the layers that you need to score But I think you'll miss like fences is is better in that respect because of the the the number of water wounds that you'd be able to do in the The hero phase and then a number of water wounds that he could potentially do in the shooting phase that are both absent in my build Yeah, interesting. You I think that like this sort of mixed arms list What I what I fear with this is something that can just Dps me so hard Right that they just eliminate my screens and all my bodies at a faster rate than I can withstand Yeah, okay Like I've got 160 wounds in this list. It's pretty good. It's pretty good a month Pretty good number of wounds, right? Yeah And that 60 pack like in general my move is going to be to bless them if I don't have somebody to curse Like I'm going to throw the six up ward on there because Duh, just like anything that keeps rats alive, right? But if somebody can get into me fast and just Dps me down Like if somebody's coming in with a super high offense build like a hard a hard son's breaker build right, yeah, or a um Or like a hardcore iron jaws type of list, right? Yeah, just like it's daughters could probably do it Yeah that kind of stuff those become really tough fights because if they can burn away your bodies faster than you want to Like you need to a trit at a certain speed Yeah, right. Yeah, and if that tilts the wrong way You're just gonna be in a bad place. That's that's what I'll say. That's what I fear the most, right? Um, I really don't love fighting Uh, like I have fought the host arcade and zinch nonsense with this and and one Hmm, but I don't love it Because it does make it so you're feeding them like this is a Skaven cast a lot of spells and want to cast a lot of spells And so, you know zinch lists just are just Right just eating that up and you're just they're just spitting bodies because of it And you don't keep having the hammers to deal with all those bodies over and over again mm-hmm Do you think uh lumineath techless, you know, we're seeing still some similar variations what we had been seeing with the techless builds You know where we're still seeing sentinels wardens Uh something over the weekend. We actually saw a two by ten stone guard in an emetrica with techless What what what do you guys think about techless and lumineath, you know techless venari or otherwise with Skaven You know, is that spelled on going to be a massive problem or is it that you can burn through the Generate the bonuses to cast right Yeah, like we can generate a lot of bonuses to cast we have interesting answers to To sort of techless in that we can do 3d6 You know type of stuff 3d6 shenanigans um and the And and ultimately like no, I'm not I think lumineath play a great game again Like Skaven against lumineath is honestly a really fun game It you you you both have interesting optionality to to what you're doing um They don't have bodies, you know, they're very elite. So when you do get mortal wounds on them, it's extremely costly to them often Yeah, right And they they struggle they can definitely struggle with the dps check Right lumineath, right. So depending on depending on what they're doing, but but most of the lists that i've seen out there Yeah, they're they they can struggle. Yeah, you tend to not care as much about chip damage In a lot of things like chip damage. It's like what what are you chip damaging my 60 unit? Like, okay, you know, right, right cool, man You know and and and the heroes that I really care about are gonna basically ignore chip damage It's any reasonable way. So or or just heal it back if I needed to um Yeah, I think it makes for a good match is my honest answer Yeah, okay Yeah, and then of the so you laid out at the beginning a range of different, you know Oops all shooting the swarm mixed arms and edge edge shooting wackiness So I mean presumably we can roll out the edge shooting. Oh my god I almost finished that statement apart from the smorgans of the world. We can roll out edge shooting wackiness Who are capable because of their extraordinary gifts of running them competitively? What what how would you to particularly rank them respectively in terms of competitiveness if you're trying to go 5.0 All shooting the swarm mixed arms Oh, I don't think they're well, I don't think they're well suited for comparison because they're such a high It's such a high variance book that the shooting build with a good run Is the most probable of getting a 5.0 but equally has the most hard counters So you might end up having situations where the nine storm fiends win two or three events in a short space of time But also have a heap of mid table finishes with comparatively skilled generals So that that that to me is like that's so scaven and I sort of like that, right? I think the mixed arms is the most consistent And and therefore is the build that I think should should become the prevailing and ascended build Over the course of this sort of year that we're doing in guh Yeah, I I agree like if you were asking me, what would I take if that was my goal? I would take a good mixed arms list I wouldn't be this exact list because the war playing a cannon's a pet unit and it's not a good choice Like it's very easy to like it is the high variance of high variance But I take it in most fun games because like when you drop that two or that one you're just like Like here comes the overcharge, baby um So, you know like But but but I I always prefer a mixed arms style list because this gives me options to respond To what my opponent's going to do could I get skewed into hard and and peel like they're like a soft ripe grape Sure, but I'd still rather take my chances with that then go skew and reach one of my hard counters and just feel like Well, now I have no out You know, right? Yeah So, uh, raxia said I found some real hard matchups Uh, sorry, I found suns a real hard matchup with this kind of list Hard to compete with their numbers even with 80 plus client rats in your hammer type stuff is usually concentrated On one side any tips? I mean suns are a tough matchup for a lot of armies They will dps check you very hard and they do count like it depends whether you're talking taker driver breaker tribe neither which are great Uh, I I would much rather fight Takers and have them be, you know huge amounts of stuff on objectives Because I can still Out I can still out body there even their big numbers their little giants should be your first target Because that's what's actually going to do the damage So with any kind of ranged power you have you target their babies and bring the babies down because that in like a Taker tribe type build that's 45 bodies. That's just problematically huge Um, but they die pretty easy Especially to the very since andre ranged methods you have with enscaven those guys will just fall over dead Um, so you kind of focus on the babies and you and then when they have megas Then at that point it's about playing around them, right? Like you you figure out which one has the amulet of destiny Don't fight them Just like fight the other one right Um, and you know we get them to get caught up in nonsense Like what you're ultimately trying to do is make them they've got a big base. They don't have a lot of mobility Catch them in your screens and pick the fights you want to fight. That's my answer, right? If they try to bring multiple giants into you and your heroes are in the way skitter the heck away Just bounce immediately get out of there, right? That kind of stuff They um, they can't beat clannish and I'll play any sons of behemoth player anyway in the world You're not beating clannish and you're you're you're barely gonna move Um, I'm gonna be able to shoot off stuff. I can stop you from piling in once There's just so much stuff that clannish is doing if I get the shackles off midboard Like they just they can't do anything and I get rear ulti wound against two of the megas for my whole army because of the the clannish ability like it's just a really really favorable match up for MSU that runs and shoots, right? But if I was running a typical scaven army where I don't don't have those options I think all the things that the vincer set around zoning About avoidance of the guy with the five plus plus that that's the play really Yeah, I mean like ash it's a dream match up for the ashen army because they look at those baby giants. They're like Slings and throwing stars are just ready to do some work. This is this is the moment we have been preparing for Killing a monster return Yeah, that's awesome. So we've almost got a whole show without even mentioning the warp lightning vortex Maybe that would be my last one. Uh, are we still thinking the warp lightning vortex is a good option? Good choice or Sam yeah It's a very it's a very good spell in a bottle. It's maybe the best spell in a bottle right Yeah, my answer is it's toxic and I would never run it I think but but in addition to that. I don't think it's a great choice in scaven anyways, so I mean sure just the the delivering it is the challenge. I mean other than right Putting it where you need it is really yeah Like sure you have wacky mobility tricks that you can move people around and cast it and stuff like that But I just think it's terrible and I wish they would rewrite the scroll into something. It wasn't like it was Just turn it into a huge damage thing Yeah, they had an opportunity didn't they they read all the endless spells and that for whatever reason it stayed the way that it has Um, the the casting value is what makes it incredibly difficult to dispel but also makes it like a pretty low probability strat even with the The bonuses you're getting. I don't I don't I haven't been running it. I prefer shackles My concern is that where you actually need it Like I want to be by those top tier armies as top tier matchups They have auto dispel options. Yep. And so Archeon just picks it up. Teclis picks it up Like change Change covers they just pick it up And so it's just not valuable In the in the in the really difficult games. It's dead weight Yep, right And remember like a hundred points is a lot in this army as has been pointed out this show repeatedly, right? That could be real things doing real work right So it just yeah, I like It's a stupid spell and I wish they would get rid of it. It has it has almost no point in the army It's from its only point is in ko where it's too good Just like they should have fixed it and they didn't so I don't know what to say about that like It's it's terrible and unfun and shouldn't be there you go Right on All right, well that's Skaven gentlemen, we did it we got through all of it. So, uh, all right As I said, I really think it's a super fun army. It's it is kind of hard to collect Unfortunately, like it's you're signing yourself up for a project and some some not great models in some cases So let's hope for rewrite, but it is very fun It is what it is the way I always say it is it is my favorite second army to recommend to players Uh, never the first great second army So just in terms of the picking it up and collecting it vince haven't spoken about Miami as a hobby project So if you guys will indulge me for a minute or two, I'll just talk about the um the approach I took there so I've been working my way through the hobby cheating series on this channel And just try I set myself the goal. I was talking to my friends Joe and Jacob from the the rager sigma podcast about You know picking up a hobby project where I push myself in different ways So the objective here is to try and produce models at as fast a rate as possible That that use a series of techniques that I'm not familiar or comfortable with and that the overall aesthetic is nice So the individual models Are not well-painted But if you look at it because I've used the zenith all and I've used the contrast washes And I've used that I've been really deliberate with the palette. So it's like bright yellow flowers Purple everyone's wearing purple clothing and then they've got bright green poison bits So there's this green yellow and purple split split complimentary thing going on if you look at it from It actually looks really like like sneaky and eschity No, but it only takes me about 10 minutes a model. So it's just been really cool It's been really fun for me to to push myself and learn with the army And I think scaven is because of the fur The clothing the rusty metal like it's an army where you can actually really try out different things and from from like a learning perspective I've learned so much about like brush control and and hitting high lights And where would the the sort of the light be falling and that sort of stuff. So it's been it's been really fun in that respect Yeah, nice, man it's It's like as I've said on this channel in one of the hobby team videos I made a whole video about this claw lords are my sorbet Like when I am looking for something fun to experiment on I mean I have like I have more claw lords than you can include in a 2000 point army If you just took claw lords which you would never do Because there's so many different sculpts of them out and old sculpts and new sculpts and stuff And they're just fun and beautiful models. And I just really love the aesthetic of of scaven um, and they're a great they are a great army to learn on like if if If like part of what should I do is practice Well 120 clan rats will get you there, you know, like that's just gonna get you there Yeah, let's get them reps in Or did you use like the existing night runner kit sam like the old monkey? Yes, so one of the things I did you had this video um about painting over your old slanesh army And you said don't strip the models Just haven't got painting over top. So I bought stuff off ebay mold lines included just straight over So I've got the big the massive hands. I converted up the first 30 so that they've got The bits from the clan rat with the properly proportioned hands and they've got Bits from like war cry, which look a lot more modern and appropriate for assassins And it was just so much work like it was more work to convert up a unit than it was take We take me now to paint like 30 or 40. So from there on I just I just went with the stock build I never came in the mail. That's what I used Um, I spent no time on construction and it's just yeah It's been a super efficient army to get on the board and like I say I get lots of compliments about it as a collective The individual models aren't painted well, but that's not the objective here It's to make it look like this cohesive rat force and it's worked really nicely. That's fantastic. That's wonderful. I love it Yeah, I love it Do you got photos sam on your twitter? I have to go check them out. I haven't I haven't taken any nice ones I'm going my friend Danny does a lot of commission painting for me And I'm going to his house soon when I'm allowed to not allowed to just yet And he's got a proper studio sort of set up there. So I'll ask him to to take some pretty ones for me Cool, man. Yeah, I'd love to see him. Uh tell Danny that I said hello and that I can't wait to see the next army That he's working on. Um dragons dragons. We've been messaging the last day. I'm excited his So Danny had this if you go back and watch the thing on the honest war gamer Just real quick because this is this was really a standout army Like one of the best of all time that I've seen Danny did a wonderful army of k.o In his display board was a 40 gallon oil drum that he you know that he cut out and hollowed into a Yeah, I've seen that hive city. Oh my god. Yeah, they got like weirder and deeper and darker the deeper you went into the barrel And like he had his his frigate was a converted space marine ship with the thunders all like coming out of it on ropes and stuff like I mean it was It was gorgeous So the the theme for his army was called um barrack degenerate So like to generate with the number eight And then my scaven are their mortal enemies and my scaven are called clan degenerat so We've got the the pun off if we get to fight each other. That's awesome All right, so there you go everybody. That's scaven as I said, I do think it's just such a great army in 3.0 It's a lot a lot a lot of fun to play as you've seen here in lots of different ways So uh for all of you out there, thank you so much for watching Sam I'm so glad we finally had you on the show. You will be back again. We will press gang you We would love to have you back. So assuming we didn't wear out our welcome with you here too fast No, I I had so much fun. I do have an analogy that I didn't get to use I was thinking about it as we spoke so it's the scaven. I think are the cryptocurrency of the mortal realms It's highly volatile They're widely misunderstood and they garner really divisive opinions from intelligent people So I think that the the scaven at a scaveny of bitcoin of the mortal realms. I love that. That's good. That's fantastic So get into uh into rat co the new the new the newest crypto I love it Or maybe it's just rat coin warp coin. There we go. We got their war coin. That's what it is Had to find it. Okay at any rate. Thank you all for watching if you haven't already subscribed. Please do. We're here every wednesday Uh, I will be actually on the road next week. So it will be an unusual show Uh next week because I actually have to travel for the first time in a long time See you next week tom Looking forward to it buddy But all of you out there, thank you so much for watching subscribe if you haven't already hit that like button We really appreciate you watching Hitting that like button is such an easy way and it helps other people find the channel and the show So I deeply appreciate it. Thank you to tom for coming back. Thank you to tyler as always sam absolute pleasure All of you