Topic: Skaven SAD

[Hochland Hero]

When i post on here i hear alot of people talking about SAD skaven players and i just wanted to ask. Do many of you guys reguarly play against a SAD army? Because i play skaven and everytime i hear about someone playing a skaven SAD army it really frustrates me. By the way can you get a "SAD" empire army?

[BAWTRM]

I only have one regular Skaven opponent and he prefers nicely balanced lists so I don't ever have this problem. Even so, the firepower of the Skaven can still be amply demonstrated by his balanced lists so I can get a good idea of the horror of an actual SAD list.

Like any over the top shooting list (well, except for Dwarves) it's the combination of shooting and magic that really does the trick. However, the Skaven have 2 important advantages over other army, like the Empire, who can also go this route.

1) The very high S values of their shooting. I honestly don't know what Allessio was thinking when he assigned those values. Ratling guns, Jezzails and also Warp Lightning should all drop a point of strength to get in line with other armies IMO.

2) The ability to shoot into combat. Combine this with the 40 pts Slave units (that gain massive Ld from a nearby Warlord + their own ranks) and one of the traditional defenses vs shooting and magic (get yourself into CC) does not work at all.

Because we lack these things the Empire is unable to make a true SAD list IMO. We can still make a very boring to play against gunline though.

Luckily those weapon teams can now be targetted much easier with the 7th. Ed. shooting rules so Skaven have been a little bit toned down already. Now I'd only hope they'd reduce the strength of their shooting and the ability of Slaves to use the General's Ld and I'd be rather happy with the Skaven.

[cisse]

The high strength of their shooting weapons and magic, and the fact that ratling guns *should* be unreliable but in fact are rather reliable, mean that Skaven can indeed get a wole lot of firepower on the table. Couple that with the ability to fire into combat and the leadership (higher than ours, in fact - one of my biggest gripe with Skaven), and you got yourself a tough army. BAWTRM hits the nail on the head.

You can target those weapon teams now, and you should do so. This fact alone makes for les SAD armies, since they're now rather vulnerable and need to be used with caution - although they're still just as devastating.

[Lachieo]

Well one of my friends have a skaven army (and bretonnia and iron warriors for 40k fancy that ) but his skaven army isn't SAD. As a matter a fact I don't think I've ever seen a SAD army. Also I don't think the empire can really make a SAD army, gunlines are way to fragile and can easily be dismantled with the right tools. On a side note SAD stands for Skyre Army of Doom yeah?

[Elieress]

skaven Shooting Army of Death

[Gneisenau]

2) The ability to shoot into combat. Combine this with the 40 pts Slave units (that gain massive Ld from a nearby Warlord + their own ranks) and one of the traditional defenses vs shooting and magic (get yourself into CC) does not work at all.

Of course they should get massive LD if Warlord is nearby! He is a moderator!

*ducks*

Apart from that silly joke, there's nothing to add to BAWTRM's excellent sum-up.

[Warlord]

2) The ability to shoot into combat. Combine this with the 40 pts Slave units (that gain massive Ld from a nearby Warlord + their own ranks) and one of the traditional defenses vs shooting and magic (get yourself into CC) does not work at all.

Of course they should get massive LD if Warlord is nearby! He is a moderator!

*ducks*

I would never command a Skaven army.  I hate the rats. Always have. They haunt me even in real life...

My Skaven 'friend' doesn't know how not to take an SAD. He says its not a hard list either, but I honestly think he would be hard pressed to find a harder list...

[Wyzer1]

Ya, Skaven are SAD players...   

[mormeguil]

Aww come on don't start saying that. Yes a SAD army is very boring but it's not all skaven player who play that way and i'm very happy to play skaven .

Anywat, right now a truly SAD army can't really existe because ratling gun are easy to kill. Also, a lot of skaven army are dubbed SAD while they are not lets look at a truly sad army.

5 units of 20 clanrat and ratling gun
4 unit of 20/21 slaves
2/3 units of 10 jezzail
2 warpligthing canon
1 grey seer (some don't even bother and just got for another warlock)
3 warlock engineer (one with storm daemon)

Now thats a truly SAD list, a Grey seer and 2 engineer is harsh but not SAD. 10 or 10 Jezzail and a ratling gun is not SAd either.

Just wanted to clear thing up a bit

[Ratarsed]

Most army lists like Skaven SAD and Empire gunline are only found at tournaments. They get boring to play with pretty quickly. IME the majority of gamers much prefer to play with balanced or interesting varient lists.

Ratarsed

[Hochland Hero]

Ya, Skaven are SAD players...

thats exscactly why i hate sad players imagine going to a games club and everyone thinking your a SAD player even before you open your case. In some ways people that play empire are lucky that they cant play a SAD list because they dont have to be reminded by everyone that a few individuals go all out on shooting. and give us all a bad name.

[Wyzer1]

In my defense the only skaven lists I have played were SAD style, but I was just making a joke anyways    Just trying to jam a pun in

[offroadfury88]

By the way can you get a "SAD" empire army?

yeah, just keep it out of the sun.

[Volkbane]

I've been playing Skaven for the better part of a decade and I've only seen one SAD army, and it wasn't even my own.

I'm not into grand tournaments, so I have a big blind spot there, but to be honest I think a lot of this SAD talk comes from people on the internet who've heard about it and seen army lists but rarely if ever fight Skaven.  A lot of Skaven players have a preoccupation towards Skryre with the new book.  It's only natural I think: it seems powerful, and cheaper than pure horde to build, and the tactica at the back of the book blatantly suggests you go for it.  You can do an incredible amount of damage just with 'twins' and a pair of ratling guns, but that doesn't make it a 'SAD' army, which would have purely caster heroes, big units of jezzails and multiple small clanrat units to act as ratling gun caddies.

My early Skaven armies in 6th, which leaned a bit that way more than now, could get off a couple devastating, memorable casts/volleys--but they were not nearly as effective at getting a victory as a large force of clanrats and slaves arranged in checkerboard, flank denying formation.

[MisterGato]

My weekly Warhammer partner plays Skaven. He certainly doesn't play SAD, but I am well aquainted with his friends the Triplets and their pal Storm Daemon. It can be annoying to see pistoliers and knights completely destroyed one after another in magic phases, but it's easier to deal with it than try to find something to complain about with it. It isn't as if I don't play rather magic heavy Empire myself, after all.

[thatdave]

A fair part of why I quit playing Skaven is the largely predominate perception that most Skaven is SAD.  I finished in the top 10 at a GT with a list:

Seer
Engineer
Engineer (SD)
BSB
30 Clanrats (RG)
30 Clanrats (WFT)
25 Stormvermin (RG)
30 Slaves
5   Plagued Rat Swarm
4  Globadiers
5  Tunnelers

No Jezzails, no WLC.  The only realistic complaint I could understand was maybe too much Magic.  And I still got a OTT label.  It is a tough list to be sure, but definitely not SAD.

The guy I traded them to just over a year ago is now looking to pass them along as well.  Though his lists were much deeper into the grey area, into the blackness of SAD.

[Volkbane]

Part of the reason I never started tournaments even though I live like an hour from where the Chicago GT is held is that I never liked the idea of people critiquing my army composition.  I don't know how much effect it has in reality, but online people seem to be paranoid about comp and it all seems really arbitrary to me.  I look at your list there and what I see is that you have a properly supported grey seer.  If having engineers around to get through magic defense so your seer might actually do something to justify his huge points cost and leadership 6 is "OTT", then that is the fault of the developers not the individual gamer who is only doing the rational thing.

I haven't really used my Skaven since 7th but I assume the new rules have thrown a big wrench in ratling guns.  Setting up terrain with my Empire army in mind I can pretty much guarantee I'll get a hill no matter where I deploy and from there I can snipe those guns no matter where they are being screened. 

What I'd like to see is a reduction in the power of warp-lightning and in exchange, more utility from the skaven engineer.  The engineers serve more of a role in the army fluffwise than just arcing chain lightning around, which seems more of a desparation move.  I think warp lightning's higher strength at a cost of risk is part of its character, so how about this: remove the 9+ version of warp-lighting, and keep only the 1d6, strength 5, hit yourself on rolls of 1 version.  In exchange, I think the engineer should have the option of doing something interesting for the army--perhaps being able to augment a WLC / Globadier / Jezzail unit if he accompanies it kind of like our engineer.

[Wyzer1]

Here is the biggest problem, IMO:
On every warhammer site forum conceived, people put forth army lists to be "critiqued". People suggest changes to make the list more effective. As a player, commonly people dont take under-powered units. I dont take engineers or halbediers. IMO they are inferior to the other core/hero choices, and in general I dont like them.

Unintentionally, this can lead rather quickly to cheesy armies. Is it really the players fault when he builds a list out of effective units? Some people dont care nor know about fluff, they just likely miniature combat.

In a video game, you play to your best to try and beat your opponents.

Example: In Dawn Of War (when playing marines) you dont build your entire army out of scouts, as they will be slaughtered. You try and take units to beat your opponents. In an FPS you dont typically use a pistol when you have a shotgun/rifle available?

Is a player who builds his army intelligently a bad player? Somehow I cant just stick this blanket statement on people. It seems wrong to force players to buy different models because some people cant handle the type of army they play

Newer players more than anyone, as they are learning the rules, look at the army books and see the big'n'nasties and immediatly want to buy them. Somehow when looking through an Empire book as a new player the steam tank seems like a better investment than a block of halbediers

I guess the issue comes from actually playing against the army in question. While I typically find it hard to blame the player for his army I understand that they aren't really fun to play against

Kinda a double-edged sword IMO

[ostron]

Is it really the players fault when he builds a list out of effective units? Some people dont care nor know about fluff, they just likely miniature combat.

Is a player who builds his army intelligently a bad player? Somehow I cant just stick this blanket statement on people. It seems wrong to force players to buy different models because some people cant handle the type of army they play

Newer players more than anyone, as they are learning the rules, look at the army books and see the big'n'nasties and immediatly want to buy them. Somehow when looking through an Empire book as a new player the steam tank seems like a better investment than a block of halbediers

I guess the issue comes from actually playing against the army in question. While I typically find it hard to blame the player for his army I understand that they aren't really fun to play against

I think the complaint mostly originates from the feeling that the so-called 'cheesy' armies remove the 'strategy and tactics' from the game, and it becomes simply a matter of who rolls the dice better. For example, if you put a dwarven gunline up against an SAD, tactics really don't enter into it beyond what you're aiming at; both people are going to stand their ground and attempt to blow the bejeezus out of the other, and who wins is largely a factor of who gets better die rolls on hits and wounds. By contrast, when you've got two "balanced" forces on the table, how people maneuver and charge become a larger component of who wins.

It's sort of a feeling of false advertising, in my opinion. You are expecting to play a strategy game where you're going to be required to set up maneuvers and counter-charges, etc. You aren't expecting to get into a die-rolling contest. The same thing turned me off of a lot of RTS games - with most of them there's no combat strategy involved - it's who can find the sweet spot of resource production and churn out units faster.

That's how I measure a cheesy list - if a 10 year old can win with the list without even thinking about strategy or tactics when they play it's probably a cheesy list. On the other hand, if on turn 6 I'm watching my one handgunner run screaming off of the board with an arrow in his backside after my whole army was outmaneuvered by dark elves, then it wasn't a cheesy list, I was just outplayed.

[Fandir Nightshade]

jup but it isn^t a problem of the player but the designer messed up

[BAWTRM]

Maybe so, but it's the player's fault as well. It does not take a lot of brain power to recognize when a list is one dimensional or overpowered. You might play it a few times and then move on.
Players who stick with a broken list however, just because they like to win, are complete douchebags IMO and no "It's the designer's fault' remark is going to change that.

Blame the designer for abusive combinations but blame the player for making the list.

[Fandir Nightshade]

but there is always a possibility to beat a list if you know you will run into it...at least that is my opinion if i meet a player with a "broken" list i try to find something to take the problem that he is one dimensional and use this to get to him. I expect the same of my opponents. If I field the same army over and over again because it works there is for every army the possibility to adapt to it. The whining this is too hard...this is to broken is pretty childish.

On the other hand it is boring for myself to play the same army over and over again so I will try other stuff and change my list but on a tourney I will max out the potential of my Army.

[thatdave]

but there is always a possibility to beat a list if you know you will run into it...at least that is my opinion if i meet a player with a "broken" list i try to find something to take the problem that he is one dimensional and use this to get to him. I expect the same of my opponents. If I field the same army over and over again because it works there is for every army the possibility to adapt to it. The whining this is too hard...this is to broken is pretty childish.

On the other hand it is boring for myself to play the same army over and over again so I will try other stuff and change my list but on a tourney I will max out the potential of my Army.

That is a good theory, but in tournaments you never know what you will run into.  And a good "take on all comers" list will most likely have very little chance against an army like this.  Most balanced armies do not have the tools to take on a SAD.  Sure, in one-off battles you can tailor your list to beat a SAD.  But if I am the SAD player and know that you know, then I will build the army a bit differently and your (now tailored) list is at a disadvantage, again.

[Fandir Nightshade]

But than you adapt again....what is very good and exactly my point. An SAD List has also Problems with a Khorne I smack your ass list or a bretonnian with a balanced list with ....öh lets say three maids. Scissors rock paper