So as mentioned in my previous SAWS post I have designed a ‘third’ listfor this event. It’s a Skaven list, andin the end the list I’ve decided to compete with (not that I’ll be able to putup much of a fight). This list has beena scramble to get together. There wassome confusion on the SAWS website, which it turned out hadn’t been updatedwith a revised list submittal date. Thesite said both April 5, 2012 (last year’s date) and one month before the event(which would have been April 18th). In the end Mark decided that April 18th was the date for the2 normal points, but April 5th would provide an extra third bonuspoint. Needing all the points I couldget, and the maximum amount of time to construct and paint my list, I wentahead and submitted.
I have decided to go with a gimmick list. This list proudly boasts the following:
No Banners
No Musicians
No Magic
No Magic items (on the characters, though technically the unitchampions have upgrades that equal magic items)
No Lords
No Rare
No Monsters
No unit larger than 20 models
Nothing higher than leadership 7
Full Comp
Only 1 deployment
Did that last one blow your mind? It should have. Here is my listof massive stupidity:
Warlock Engineer, General
Assassin, Tail Weapon
Assassin, Tail Weapon
Assassin, Tail Weapon
20 Night Runners, slings, Warp-grinder
20 Night Runners, slings, Warp-grinder
20 Night Runners, slings, Warp-grinder
20 Night Runners, slings, Warp-grinder
20 Night Runners, slings, Warp-grinder
19 Night Runners, slings, Warp-grinder
13 Gutter Runners, slings, poisoned attacks, death runner, smoke bombs,weeping blades
13 Gutter Runners, slings, poisoned attacks, death runner, smoke bombs,weeping blades
9 Gutter Runners, slings, poisoned attacks, death runner, smoke bombs,weeping blades
I don’t have any pictures to show you with the list because as ofwriting this post (even though it won’t go up for a while) I only have like 25of these models painted. So with 6 weeksI’m on assembly frenzy. In designingthis list I realized I didn’t even own all the models I needed. So I picked up 2 boxes of night runners,threw in 10 clan rats for some extra bodies and 6 master moulders from Isle ofBlood for warp-grinder conversions. Iwant to thank my friends who came up with the stuff I was missing and weregenerous enough to trade/gift the bits I was missing (Ben, Henri, Don, Chris,Alex, Andre and Greg). - Note, I got the models done the NIGHT BEFORE! As you can see I had broken the fourth wall and written this before hand and just gone back and made this note.
This list will be my first hobby project for the blog, and when thisgoes up I’ve hopefully already posted some work in progress posts.
So about this list. For thosewho don’t know anything about skaven, this list is Clan Eshin themed, with theexception of the Engineer. The Skavenlist doesn’t allow for pure Clan Eshin as the Assassin, as the only Eshincharacter, cannot be your general. Ithink there should be an exception for a full Eshin army, but there isn’t. So I’m required to have one other character,and the Engineer is the one I decided to go with. My general is a 15 points nothing withleadership 5, yay Engineer! My plan isjust to hide him somewhere in my deployment zone.
My other heroes are three Assassins all with tail weapons. Another stupid thing about Skaven is thatonly 1 Assassin can have smoke bombs and weeping blades, both of which aremagic items. However, the champions ofthe gutter runners can all have them. Just dumb. It’s also true withthe Death Globe and Globadiers. Magicitem is so common that champions can take them, but not more than onecharacter. So due to this, I’ve decidedto leave the Assassins fairly base, with just giving them an additionalstrength three attack to take advantage of the poison.
The Gutter runners… These are probably going to have to be the workhorses of the list. They will each getan Assassin for company. They have theoption of scouting or ambushing. Betterthan the regular ambush, they get a better change (+1 to the roll) for turns 3and 4. Down side is they can always notcome on the board, giving up their points without effort. I gave the champion all the upgrades, makinghim a massive point sink (12 points for existing, 1 point for his sling, 5points for the poison that only the sling can use, 10 points for his smokebombs, 30 points for his weeping blade and 12 points for the honor of being achampion). That’s a 70 point cost forthat one model. Horrible, justhorrible.
The core is a whole waste of points in night runners. They have slings and two hand weapons, but nopoison. So they can shoot. They can’t shoot well though, only BS3, sohitting on 4s. Moving, Double Tap andlong range puts them at 7s, so they really need to limit their negatives. In units of 20s and no static combatresolution, they really don’t have the ability to fight anything fighty. I’ve also given them weapons teams. Until the construction of this army, the WarpGrinder was the only thing on the skaven list I didn’t have. I think this project will remedy that. It will also give me a good stock of paintedmodels for the core unit I had the least of. The warp grinders provide for an interesting play alternative. Basically it gives them the ability to ‘deepstrike.’
However, unlike 40k’s deep strike rule, where a unit is placed and thenscattered, warp grinders work slightly differently. After normal deployment (yay Engineer!), Iplace 6 tokens on the board. This is thepredetermined point from which the deep strike will be scattered. What sucks, is that it takes away all of theadvantage of delayed deployment by clearly giving my opponent an area to reactto. Units that come up in places wherethey cannot (friendly units or impassable) have their tokens shifted to allowfor it. Units that come up under enemytroops automatically charge the unit – in the front. Units that come up normally sort of count asdeployment – they get to charge, move, march, or shoot as if they started theturn from having moved their last turn. Where it gets rough is in two functions – first that the unit only comesup on a 4+ (and if not up by the end of the game automatically giving up theirpoints) and second, that a misfire on the scatter means 1 of three things –dead, strength test for each model or dead, or opponent picking whatever spothe wants for them to come up.
So what I have is 15 points that deploy and 2492 points that if I don’troll a bunch of 4+s automatically give up their points.
What I’m thinking that I’ll need to do is smartly place the tokensaround the board to force the opponent to focus on a wide breadth of boardspace. With the ability to bring gutterrunners from any side or behind will hopefully allow me to keep my opponentdistracted while I pick up some late game points. Somehow I don’t expect it to work thatwell. A misfire or a failure to come onthe board could wipe out any points I do manage to earn. Not to mention the ease it would be inlocking down a few of the night runner units. I can see lots of deploying just to flee as fast as possible.
So that’s my SAWS list. It’s sobad, just bad. If I win a game it willbe lucky. I don’t plan to practice, andhave some concern that I may not even get the list done in time for theevent. But if need be I can put in somelong nights. I’m hoping to have theassembly and conversion done before I leave for Adepticon, so that I’ll havejust less than 4 weeks to get the painting done. Wish me luck.
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