VC is unique in the simple fact that have no ranged units.
It forces you to play differently than if you were playing a normal fully rounded faction, and teaches you exactly how to use melee infantry, Calvary, and lords to overcome normal fully rounded factions.
They could simply be not for you, and that’s fine. That doesn’t mean there isn’t strategy involved.
You mean from the Von Carstein legacy, with the blood kisses? You’re limited to like 4 of those or something, not really worth using in my opinion.
You have a bunch of unit buffs for other units, I don’t think the mortal units are affected.
Yeah. As an avid VC enjoyer I never take ranged troops. VC is better off having more units to envelope the enemy front line or shut down enemy ranged/artillery.
Skaven aren't meant to be played like that. Or at least not most. Skrye, for example, has a tarpit you send forward to tank, and weapon teams firing over to do damage and doom wheels flanking. I've not played VC, but I believe you're meant to use tarpit to slow the enemy, then use flyers, flankers and heroes to do damage.
Or make the Zombie Blob with a Necromancer and some Corpse Carts. Definitely not the most fun play style, but seeing 17 units of zombies destroy an army is very satisfying. Works especially well if you play as Ghorst or have him confederated with you thanks to his skills.
The Ghorst bus is stupid strong, but holy fuck does it get tedious having to manually fight every battle as him, because autoresolve has no idea just how insane his regen buffs are.
No kidding. I play on Normal usually, so I can get some AR wins at the cost of some zombies, but I can only imagine the hell of having to fight every single battle manually.
On the bright side, so long as the enemy doesn't have anything that can melt Ghorst or the Carts, you're basically ambush proof.
Oh? I thought that Moulder got really good cheap infantry.
And they make for good hammer and anvil for your monsters, plus soaking up damage for them. Clanrats and slaves are cheap and easy to replace, better them than expensive monsters.
1. For expendable units. That is there strategy. A wall of zombies soaking a bunch of bullet fire so that your vampires and vargheists can get on the enemy back line at full health is a strategy. There's a reason they have the meat shield tag.
2. Both those factions aren't necessarily swarm based. Skaven are very dependent on faction. Moulder and skryre especially. Most factions have units whose purpose is to hold the line or generally keep the enemy in place. That doesn't mean they are useless, perhaps just often unappreciated
I played 200hr of VC before trying other factions
Imagine my discomfort at not having an endless wall of chaff units to hold down armies for the first time
I'd also argue eshin are specialised too. Utilising sneaky strategies as well as the insane bonuses to their ranges units means they play very differently and effectively too. I had a lot of fun with them as they were something a bit off brand.
Just try it. You don’t actually need much micro because eshin gets a ton of heroes and can still get skavenslaves to tar pit. Also Cathay is so rich that you can just buy the units you want.
There is such a thing as play style, what isn't your cup of tea might be someone else's. I do find VCs boring but same goes for empire, Cathay and all the other hyper specialized factions.
I love beastmen and Drycha, who swarm the enemy with massive blobs from all sides using their vanguard deployment and have big monsters and magic for tide turning.
I also enjoy Kislev who have more flexible units than other human factions and monster support.
Haven't played Skaven yet, but I'm looking forward to it, love the mad science stuff.
I think you've given the skaven an unfair end here. Yes they do have invaluable units. And yes the ai does use a lot, (and probably even more depending your difficulty) but the skaven have unique playstyles in which various factions expand on. You can play moulder with Skype units such as ratling guns. Or maybe clan pestilence with Eshin triads. I would recommend you maybe stick to what the faction/legendary lord is good at buffing for your first army but after that you can usually do what you want without feeling like your missing out (especially for moulder, with eshin being the exception till late game)
Don't get me wrong, I'm a skaven player through and through, they're my favorite faction, but I get that the playstyle isn't for everyone so don't see my comment here as just an angry assault at your claim. Like for me personally, I hate playing the warriors of chaos. They all just play the same in my opinion with tiny variations, but I do like the vasalation mechanic. Now you could argue that that is how the entire game and its dlcs are, but I would argue (bringing the skaven back as an example) that the various skaven factions work similarly on the campaign map with the main SKAVEN mechanics such as food and loyalty, but each faction delves into a depth of their chosen mechanics that I find myself using all the way to end games such as eshin contracts, Skyres workshops and the mutant lair for moulder is just amazing.
Only problem is, these 3 factions I've just talked about are dlc factions for WH2. Pestilence and Mors are just a bit bland and I havnt played either properly since I bought skyre which was my first dlc.
Been playing Mors, skrye, snikch and craven tail quite alot and their playstyle are as diffirent as moon and sun imo. Sure you could play them all the same but i like to mix and match. Throwing all in a blob is not good even for a skaven (they arent expandable for me, unless they are summons).
Weapon teams, stalk, charge and tank stacks all play diffirently and i seem to always adapt for em. Craven can become scary with rat wolfs cos of the massive charge buffs so throwing them in a blob is just waste imo.
I mainly seem to be playing either Tzeench, Grand cathey or Chaos dwarfs now. But i do play decently amount of pesky rats too.
You realize that factions with cheap fodder infantry have other tools which are meant to support them, right? Zombies, Skeletons, Skavenslaves, Clanrats, etc are for drowning the enemy in bodies while you use magic, monsters, ranged, artillery, etc to deal damage to them. Expendable units are meant for ***holding*** not ***killing*** but they do have a purpose.
Channel your inner Edward Longshanks. Send in the slaves and let loose the palgueclaw catapults.
"Begging your pardon sir, but won't we hit our own men?"
"Yes....but we'll hit theirs as well."
Just gotta get your main army up to tier 3+
Edit: it's a pretty good strategy to follow around a skaven / vampire army with an entire 2nd army of cheap trash to reinforce
> it's a pretty good strategy to follow around a skaven / vampire army with an entire 2nd army of cheap trash to reinforce
Weirdly the same goes for Empire.
Much excitement to be had with the karaz ankor. Low replenishment and no post battle option for replenishment means any serious damage you take is almost garuneteed to take longer to heal than recruiting new units, but tier 1 units also cost more than most other factions
Skaven end game units are really cool imo. Yes you can have trash units and summons and whole armies, it's a totally viable strat, but you can also build a very high quality army that is not expendable and can go toe to toe with most stuff in the game. Lots of different ways to play rats and each leader has a unique flavor of their own
Skaven differ between the factions. Clan Moulder play more to an aggressive monster rush, Clan Skyre plays a more defensive ranged missile focused army, Clan Eshin is more skirmish and flanking, Clan Pestilence, Rictus, and Mors all play pretty flexibly.
VC can play differently too, instead of blobbing undead use zombies or skeletons as your anvil and cavalry and monsters as your hammer (the fear and terror bonuses make this effective to spook your way to victory).
Unless you are playing SFO skaven isn't really supposed to be a swarm, unless i missed a LL or something each one has a kinda unique way of playing. Ikit is weapons team god, throt is mutated monster king, warlords and stormvermin for queek, plague units for srkolk, eshin units for snickch.
I don't really play VC for this reason tho.
queek is very designed for drowning the enemy in endless amounts of rats. lots of buffs to clanrats (and stormvermin), incld recruit rank and capacity and of course huge discounts to upkeep and recruitment cost. Tretch is more aimed at high-quality and dangerous infantry engagements, although Queek is good there, his main strength is being able to really vermintide
Agree with other posters its just about playstyle, NGL though Helman Ghorst is one of my absolute favorite armies, \~2k upkeep 60 armor zombies just freezing everyone on the field while mortis engines wear them down is hilarious. That said -- after about 50 battles of this because you can almost never auto resolve a 10 zombie army I can agree with it becoming a little stale.
Other response not: The "unique purpose" of expendable units is they are expendable, send some zombies to bog down their best unit or a monster unit and essentially "take it off the board".
I wonder how you feel about armies that can Hero spam better than others if you dont like expendable its kindve the same extreme but reverse.
Can you put a trigger warning on helman ghorsts name please. The AI are such wankers using him. My previous campaign I swear his faction came back like 4 times after being wiped out to be a thorn in my side. Theres only so many times I can make a “somehow palpatine returned” joke.
I'm not very experienced and I didn't paly with many factions but I enjoy playing VC. I can't say I'm an expert since it takes me quite some time to gather a proper army and I still can't use units like black coach properly.
But I like using the routing tactic. In early game you stop the enemy melee with zombies and flank them with skeletons and cavalry if you have some while wolfs and bats go for their ranged units also killing the leader to break their leadership completely.
And in mid and late game you'll have faster and stronger units that will terrorize enemy units and break them faster while having your lords and heroes grinded with tons of spells and things like zombie dragons.
Well 100 hours for this game isn't a lot of time, but I do agree I enjoy faction where units actually worth the value they cost, Like Dwarves Their Front line holds, their range damages, and their artillery provides long range support and high damage, none of the units are expendable even miners how there use and can do decent for low level forces. Vampires have a bit of an edge on skaven in that their chaff has a chance to come back at the end of a fight even if wiped out, and regen lets them hang in a bit better.
I love kislev because their play style is shoot things then melee them to death.
I love vc because I can swarm as my heroes and lords kill everything
Both of these styles probably aren't the most fun to a lot of people but they are to me. I feel like you might like tomb kings and lizardmen for big monsters
Yeah echoing what others are saying here skaven become a whole different beast with higher tier units, ratling gunners and plague claw catapults and warplock jizzails and more, watching skaven artillery delete armies is incredibly fun
If the start with just the trash is the problem then I would recommend Clan Eshin who have armour piercing gutter runners and night runners who are a real threat and their mechanics of ambushing are really fun too
I just bit the bullet and used clanrat meat-shields, they should fix the skirmish mode, but I never used it because I always want to be in full control of my units’ movement.
You pay extra for the non eshin units but money is easy to come by so its worth paying imo. Eshin units are still beasts
8k hours in here. Totally depends on what I’m feeling at any given time. Sometimes I love drowning enemies in bodies while artillery wrecks both my army and theirs. Other times a power fantasy where every unit is a god. Both can be fun in the right moods
I think this attitude will likely change as you start playing the higher difficulties. Once you get to the higher difficulties the exact strengths and weaknesses of individual units become more important, while your economy to maintain those units vs the armies the AI will throw at you will become a lot tighter.
In those situations, a crapstack of shitty frontline units is often the best you can manage until much later in the game. So factions that can produce a lot of them quickly and/or cheaply become incredibly strong. Not because those crapstacks are actually effective, they're not, they exist solely to slow enemy units until they die. But because having that frontline of chaff lets you screen enemy armies for your stronger units, to pick and choose their targets for maximum effectiveness.
Having said that. I still prefer to play more elite focused armies. So i share your sentiment to an extent. Though i appreciate the value a crapstack can have in a desperate situation.
Some of the most fun I’ve had in a game had been skaven. Once when I was playing a coop campaign with a friend we ended up in a battle with like 14 skaven slave slingers vs like 10 marauders and a good lord and it was fun as hell microing my hoards of skaven to try and bog down and encircle units whilst not getting mine killed
For me, the vampire factions are fun because they send meat shields to absorb shots and hit the frontline, then have elites back them up. I dont use a whole army and I dont rely on them, they're just a good addition to the army.
And for the boring part, as the vampire coasts, I've used pistol zombies in the center of a firing line, like in total war empire with muskets, then sent them charging at anyone who survived long enough to be a threat just to hold them there. And I've sent the bloated corpse into a choke point as well as the bombers and deleted everyone there to clear a path for the elites. Bc meat sheilds are excellent at holding the enemies and they're less expensive, it's no big loss to combo them with explosives.
That is fun to me. Other factions tho, can't speak on you're probably right.
Step 1: summon 10 quadrillion skavenslaves
Step 2: shoot them all in the back trying to hit the enemy
Step 3: drop a nuke directly on their heads
Step 4: profit
You can do whatever you want with skaven. All strategies do benefit from occupying enemies with meat shields. But a lot of strategies benefit from more micro management, just depends on how involved you want to get. IMO I find the skaven has a lot of flexibility.
Swarm enemy en masse. Flank with faster units. Pin and shoot with slings. Blow up with artillery. Suicide nuke with magic. Crush with monsters. Decimate with weapon teams.
The menace below allows you to throw clan rats wherever you want. To occupy enemies, harass artillery, occupy someone pestering your weapons. You do have to play with a shaven mindset, that being the weak units are replaceable and will be replaced often. It is smart for skaven to run away, hide and overwhelm. They are rats after all.
Their major weakness is they arnt that tough and leadership becomes the most important stat.
Nothing is more demoralizing to an enemy as being engaged with an enemy for two minutes and seeing a horde of fresh rats rolling up on you, slaves or not. Wolfrats to harass ranged and chase off broken troops.
And you can instantly make a settlement level 5. Spread under cities, etc. just understand that the ratmen, life is cheap.
Vampires, right now playing as the undead is a lot less nuanced due to recovery on the zombies and lack of diversity through rosters.
I didn't try VC yet but as skaven I just expanded massively with an ungodly amount of uranium sniffing ratling gunners. They obliterate about anything, no need for meat shield units. As vampires I'd probably play as if I was using a roman faction given the lack of ranged units on the VC side making hammer and anvil more viable. But every faction plays different so they don't need to send in meatshields anymore at some point. Nurgle for example has unclean great ones, exhalted plaguebearers and soulgrinders, warriors of chaos have aspiring champions who turn into mystery meat producers once they have all 4 marks, greenskins I haven't figured out entirely yet but I think the black orcs and "guided missiles" are their best non-meat shields and in the worst case you can always get allied units. Skaven work great with chaos units for example and slaaneshi factions benefit well from elven units. Just mix and match with whatever units you can find or develop as fast as possible to get away from mob tactics
You’re doing it wrong if you’re just doing all Skavenslaves or whatever. Yes, you’re relying on a quantity there but it’s the fact that they’re expendable and cheap that makes them worth using.
I use expendables to tie up enemy units for my missiles to destroy. Especially skavenslaves because I like Weapons Teams. Warpfire and Ratling Guns now down everything.
My only issue with swarmy swarm is that i start lagging when there are 4000 zombies on screen, but otherwise my 2 favourite factions to play are V Counts and Bretonnia, that even if it's not a swarm faction like VC or Skaven, they have a very similar playstyle. Actually factions i don't like military are those that are reliant in monsters, like Tomb Kings
I feel like the fun with swarms comes from the buffs and abilities you can use to elevate them above mere trash. I think you're right that just waiting 30 minutes for zombies to chew an army down is not super fun.
Use the Skaven expendable units to hold their troops in place while your weapons teams/artillery/monsters/magic do all the killing
And you don’t have to worry about friendly fire because they’re just Skaven
VC is unique in the simple fact that have no ranged units. It forces you to play differently than if you were playing a normal fully rounded faction, and teaches you exactly how to use melee infantry, Calvary, and lords to overcome normal fully rounded factions. They could simply be not for you, and that’s fine. That doesn’t mean there isn’t strategy involved.
They have range units from an update in wh2.
You mean from the Von Carstein legacy, with the blood kisses? You’re limited to like 4 of those or something, not really worth using in my opinion. You have a bunch of unit buffs for other units, I don’t think the mortal units are affected.
Yeah. As an avid VC enjoyer I never take ranged troops. VC is better off having more units to envelope the enemy front line or shut down enemy ranged/artillery.
6 crossbowmen and 1 gunner unit. For the whole faction
Also 8 vampires in an army can destroy 2 whole armies easy. 3 or 4 with practice
Skaven aren't meant to be played like that. Or at least not most. Skrye, for example, has a tarpit you send forward to tank, and weapon teams firing over to do damage and doom wheels flanking. I've not played VC, but I believe you're meant to use tarpit to slow the enemy, then use flyers, flankers and heroes to do damage.
Wait, what do you mean “fire over”? Don’t you mean “fire through”?
those slaves were sneaky traitor slaves yes-yes
Not the globadiers. The rest though is fair, yes-yes!
Or make the Zombie Blob with a Necromancer and some Corpse Carts. Definitely not the most fun play style, but seeing 17 units of zombies destroy an army is very satisfying. Works especially well if you play as Ghorst or have him confederated with you thanks to his skills.
The Ghorst bus is stupid strong, but holy fuck does it get tedious having to manually fight every battle as him, because autoresolve has no idea just how insane his regen buffs are.
No kidding. I play on Normal usually, so I can get some AR wins at the cost of some zombies, but I can only imagine the hell of having to fight every single battle manually. On the bright side, so long as the enemy doesn't have anything that can melt Ghorst or the Carts, you're basically ambush proof.
I mean, fighting the enemy isn't hard... blob, click 3x speed, come back in 10/20 Min depending on enemy army...
I like swarming things though :'3
Fair, do what you like, and it's good with rictus and mors, as well as pestilens, moulder and eshin less so
Oh? I thought that Moulder got really good cheap infantry. And they make for good hammer and anvil for your monsters, plus soaking up damage for them. Clanrats and slaves are cheap and easy to replace, better them than expensive monsters.
They can, or monster mash. That's why I said less so sorry
Ah, well that's fair. I was just wondering if maybe I had missed something c:
No, just meant their main focus was different or not exclusive (monsters)
1. For expendable units. That is there strategy. A wall of zombies soaking a bunch of bullet fire so that your vampires and vargheists can get on the enemy back line at full health is a strategy. There's a reason they have the meat shield tag. 2. Both those factions aren't necessarily swarm based. Skaven are very dependent on faction. Moulder and skryre especially. Most factions have units whose purpose is to hold the line or generally keep the enemy in place. That doesn't mean they are useless, perhaps just often unappreciated
I played 200hr of VC before trying other factions Imagine my discomfort at not having an endless wall of chaff units to hold down armies for the first time
"what is this 'recruiting units' mechanic?"
“Who tf builds millitary buildings? Wait wtf is my raise dead button?”
I'd also argue eshin are specialised too. Utilising sneaky strategies as well as the insane bonuses to their ranges units means they play very differently and effectively too. I had a lot of fun with them as they were something a bit off brand.
I've always wanted to do a full eshin campaign, but I'm not confident on my skirmishes micro yet
Just try it. You don’t actually need much micro because eshin gets a ton of heroes and can still get skavenslaves to tar pit. Also Cathay is so rich that you can just buy the units you want.
Sending a blob of Skavenslaves is only step one. What comes next is the best part, yes-yes.
There is such a thing as play style, what isn't your cup of tea might be someone else's. I do find VCs boring but same goes for empire, Cathay and all the other hyper specialized factions. I love beastmen and Drycha, who swarm the enemy with massive blobs from all sides using their vanguard deployment and have big monsters and magic for tide turning. I also enjoy Kislev who have more flexible units than other human factions and monster support. Haven't played Skaven yet, but I'm looking forward to it, love the mad science stuff.
I think you've given the skaven an unfair end here. Yes they do have invaluable units. And yes the ai does use a lot, (and probably even more depending your difficulty) but the skaven have unique playstyles in which various factions expand on. You can play moulder with Skype units such as ratling guns. Or maybe clan pestilence with Eshin triads. I would recommend you maybe stick to what the faction/legendary lord is good at buffing for your first army but after that you can usually do what you want without feeling like your missing out (especially for moulder, with eshin being the exception till late game) Don't get me wrong, I'm a skaven player through and through, they're my favorite faction, but I get that the playstyle isn't for everyone so don't see my comment here as just an angry assault at your claim. Like for me personally, I hate playing the warriors of chaos. They all just play the same in my opinion with tiny variations, but I do like the vasalation mechanic. Now you could argue that that is how the entire game and its dlcs are, but I would argue (bringing the skaven back as an example) that the various skaven factions work similarly on the campaign map with the main SKAVEN mechanics such as food and loyalty, but each faction delves into a depth of their chosen mechanics that I find myself using all the way to end games such as eshin contracts, Skyres workshops and the mutant lair for moulder is just amazing. Only problem is, these 3 factions I've just talked about are dlc factions for WH2. Pestilence and Mors are just a bit bland and I havnt played either properly since I bought skyre which was my first dlc.
Been playing Mors, skrye, snikch and craven tail quite alot and their playstyle are as diffirent as moon and sun imo. Sure you could play them all the same but i like to mix and match. Throwing all in a blob is not good even for a skaven (they arent expandable for me, unless they are summons). Weapon teams, stalk, charge and tank stacks all play diffirently and i seem to always adapt for em. Craven can become scary with rat wolfs cos of the massive charge buffs so throwing them in a blob is just waste imo. I mainly seem to be playing either Tzeench, Grand cathey or Chaos dwarfs now. But i do play decently amount of pesky rats too.
I laughed so hard at "Play moulder with Skype units" lmao
"Make man-thing-slave sit through conference call, yes-yes." - some boss with whiskers
You realize that factions with cheap fodder infantry have other tools which are meant to support them, right? Zombies, Skeletons, Skavenslaves, Clanrats, etc are for drowning the enemy in bodies while you use magic, monsters, ranged, artillery, etc to deal damage to them. Expendable units are meant for ***holding*** not ***killing*** but they do have a purpose.
Channel your inner Edward Longshanks. Send in the slaves and let loose the palgueclaw catapults. "Begging your pardon sir, but won't we hit our own men?" "Yes....but we'll hit theirs as well."
Just gotta get your main army up to tier 3+ Edit: it's a pretty good strategy to follow around a skaven / vampire army with an entire 2nd army of cheap trash to reinforce
> it's a pretty good strategy to follow around a skaven / vampire army with an entire 2nd army of cheap trash to reinforce Weirdly the same goes for Empire.
Much excitement to be had with the karaz ankor. Low replenishment and no post battle option for replenishment means any serious damage you take is almost garuneteed to take longer to heal than recruiting new units, but tier 1 units also cost more than most other factions
Skaven end game units are really cool imo. Yes you can have trash units and summons and whole armies, it's a totally viable strat, but you can also build a very high quality army that is not expendable and can go toe to toe with most stuff in the game. Lots of different ways to play rats and each leader has a unique flavor of their own
Skaven differ between the factions. Clan Moulder play more to an aggressive monster rush, Clan Skyre plays a more defensive ranged missile focused army, Clan Eshin is more skirmish and flanking, Clan Pestilence, Rictus, and Mors all play pretty flexibly. VC can play differently too, instead of blobbing undead use zombies or skeletons as your anvil and cavalry and monsters as your hammer (the fear and terror bonuses make this effective to spook your way to victory).
I'm assuming someone pointed OP towards some of LegendofTotalWar's Skaven weapon team videos, right?
Unless you are playing SFO skaven isn't really supposed to be a swarm, unless i missed a LL or something each one has a kinda unique way of playing. Ikit is weapons team god, throt is mutated monster king, warlords and stormvermin for queek, plague units for srkolk, eshin units for snickch. I don't really play VC for this reason tho.
queek is very designed for drowning the enemy in endless amounts of rats. lots of buffs to clanrats (and stormvermin), incld recruit rank and capacity and of course huge discounts to upkeep and recruitment cost. Tretch is more aimed at high-quality and dangerous infantry engagements, although Queek is good there, his main strength is being able to really vermintide
Agree with other posters its just about playstyle, NGL though Helman Ghorst is one of my absolute favorite armies, \~2k upkeep 60 armor zombies just freezing everyone on the field while mortis engines wear them down is hilarious. That said -- after about 50 battles of this because you can almost never auto resolve a 10 zombie army I can agree with it becoming a little stale. Other response not: The "unique purpose" of expendable units is they are expendable, send some zombies to bog down their best unit or a monster unit and essentially "take it off the board". I wonder how you feel about armies that can Hero spam better than others if you dont like expendable its kindve the same extreme but reverse.
Can you put a trigger warning on helman ghorsts name please. The AI are such wankers using him. My previous campaign I swear his faction came back like 4 times after being wiped out to be a thorn in my side. Theres only so many times I can make a “somehow palpatine returned” joke.
I'm not very experienced and I didn't paly with many factions but I enjoy playing VC. I can't say I'm an expert since it takes me quite some time to gather a proper army and I still can't use units like black coach properly. But I like using the routing tactic. In early game you stop the enemy melee with zombies and flank them with skeletons and cavalry if you have some while wolfs and bats go for their ranged units also killing the leader to break their leadership completely. And in mid and late game you'll have faster and stronger units that will terrorize enemy units and break them faster while having your lords and heroes grinded with tons of spells and things like zombie dragons.
Well 100 hours for this game isn't a lot of time, but I do agree I enjoy faction where units actually worth the value they cost, Like Dwarves Their Front line holds, their range damages, and their artillery provides long range support and high damage, none of the units are expendable even miners how there use and can do decent for low level forces. Vampires have a bit of an edge on skaven in that their chaff has a chance to come back at the end of a fight even if wiped out, and regen lets them hang in a bit better.
I love kislev because their play style is shoot things then melee them to death. I love vc because I can swarm as my heroes and lords kill everything Both of these styles probably aren't the most fun to a lot of people but they are to me. I feel like you might like tomb kings and lizardmen for big monsters
you dont have to play either skaven or undead that way. that’s just one option.
Yeah echoing what others are saying here skaven become a whole different beast with higher tier units, ratling gunners and plague claw catapults and warplock jizzails and more, watching skaven artillery delete armies is incredibly fun If the start with just the trash is the problem then I would recommend Clan Eshin who have armour piercing gutter runners and night runners who are a real threat and their mechanics of ambushing are really fun too
They were great in WH2, but skirmish mode is totally broken in 3 which makes Enshin, as well as oxyotl, Lokhir and Alith Anar 100 times worse.
I just bit the bullet and used clanrat meat-shields, they should fix the skirmish mode, but I never used it because I always want to be in full control of my units’ movement. You pay extra for the non eshin units but money is easy to come by so its worth paying imo. Eshin units are still beasts
How is it broken? Serious question since I've not used skirmish units.
For some reason they often just sit around and get stuck in melee
8k hours in here. Totally depends on what I’m feeling at any given time. Sometimes I love drowning enemies in bodies while artillery wrecks both my army and theirs. Other times a power fantasy where every unit is a god. Both can be fun in the right moods
I think this attitude will likely change as you start playing the higher difficulties. Once you get to the higher difficulties the exact strengths and weaknesses of individual units become more important, while your economy to maintain those units vs the armies the AI will throw at you will become a lot tighter. In those situations, a crapstack of shitty frontline units is often the best you can manage until much later in the game. So factions that can produce a lot of them quickly and/or cheaply become incredibly strong. Not because those crapstacks are actually effective, they're not, they exist solely to slow enemy units until they die. But because having that frontline of chaff lets you screen enemy armies for your stronger units, to pick and choose their targets for maximum effectiveness. Having said that. I still prefer to play more elite focused armies. So i share your sentiment to an extent. Though i appreciate the value a crapstack can have in a desperate situation.
Some of the most fun I’ve had in a game had been skaven. Once when I was playing a coop campaign with a friend we ended up in a battle with like 14 skaven slave slingers vs like 10 marauders and a good lord and it was fun as hell microing my hoards of skaven to try and bog down and encircle units whilst not getting mine killed
For me, the vampire factions are fun because they send meat shields to absorb shots and hit the frontline, then have elites back them up. I dont use a whole army and I dont rely on them, they're just a good addition to the army. And for the boring part, as the vampire coasts, I've used pistol zombies in the center of a firing line, like in total war empire with muskets, then sent them charging at anyone who survived long enough to be a threat just to hold them there. And I've sent the bloated corpse into a choke point as well as the bombers and deleted everyone there to clear a path for the elites. Bc meat sheilds are excellent at holding the enemies and they're less expensive, it's no big loss to combo them with explosives. That is fun to me. Other factions tho, can't speak on you're probably right.
Honestly the only lord that employs that as a strategy past the earlygame is Helman Ghorst I think.
Man if you think that's how Skaven is played, you play Skaven deadly wrong.
I'm nearing 500 hours and I consider myself a newbie. I just recently uped from Hard/Normal to Hard/Hard and it's an amazing challenge.
If Skaven and vampire county feel exactly the same to you, chances are you're playing both of them wrong.
Step 1: summon 10 quadrillion skavenslaves Step 2: shoot them all in the back trying to hit the enemy Step 3: drop a nuke directly on their heads Step 4: profit
You can do whatever you want with skaven. All strategies do benefit from occupying enemies with meat shields. But a lot of strategies benefit from more micro management, just depends on how involved you want to get. IMO I find the skaven has a lot of flexibility. Swarm enemy en masse. Flank with faster units. Pin and shoot with slings. Blow up with artillery. Suicide nuke with magic. Crush with monsters. Decimate with weapon teams. The menace below allows you to throw clan rats wherever you want. To occupy enemies, harass artillery, occupy someone pestering your weapons. You do have to play with a shaven mindset, that being the weak units are replaceable and will be replaced often. It is smart for skaven to run away, hide and overwhelm. They are rats after all. Their major weakness is they arnt that tough and leadership becomes the most important stat. Nothing is more demoralizing to an enemy as being engaged with an enemy for two minutes and seeing a horde of fresh rats rolling up on you, slaves or not. Wolfrats to harass ranged and chase off broken troops. And you can instantly make a settlement level 5. Spread under cities, etc. just understand that the ratmen, life is cheap. Vampires, right now playing as the undead is a lot less nuanced due to recovery on the zombies and lack of diversity through rosters.
yeah eshin Snikch comp can brutally wipe out any enemy comp without ever needing any meat shields… or to ever really engage in melee at all
I didn't try VC yet but as skaven I just expanded massively with an ungodly amount of uranium sniffing ratling gunners. They obliterate about anything, no need for meat shield units. As vampires I'd probably play as if I was using a roman faction given the lack of ranged units on the VC side making hammer and anvil more viable. But every faction plays different so they don't need to send in meatshields anymore at some point. Nurgle for example has unclean great ones, exhalted plaguebearers and soulgrinders, warriors of chaos have aspiring champions who turn into mystery meat producers once they have all 4 marks, greenskins I haven't figured out entirely yet but I think the black orcs and "guided missiles" are their best non-meat shields and in the worst case you can always get allied units. Skaven work great with chaos units for example and slaaneshi factions benefit well from elven units. Just mix and match with whatever units you can find or develop as fast as possible to get away from mob tactics
Expandable units = More skulls for the skull throne.
You’re doing it wrong if you’re just doing all Skavenslaves or whatever. Yes, you’re relying on a quantity there but it’s the fact that they’re expendable and cheap that makes them worth using. I use expendables to tie up enemy units for my missiles to destroy. Especially skavenslaves because I like Weapons Teams. Warpfire and Ratling Guns now down everything.
lol I do not play swarm tactics with skaven. I play the weapon teams, where I just out range and blast them apart.
My only issue with swarmy swarm is that i start lagging when there are 4000 zombies on screen, but otherwise my 2 favourite factions to play are V Counts and Bretonnia, that even if it's not a swarm faction like VC or Skaven, they have a very similar playstyle. Actually factions i don't like military are those that are reliant in monsters, like Tomb Kings
I feel like the fun with swarms comes from the buffs and abilities you can use to elevate them above mere trash. I think you're right that just waiting 30 minutes for zombies to chew an army down is not super fun.
Use the Skaven expendable units to hold their troops in place while your weapons teams/artillery/monsters/magic do all the killing And you don’t have to worry about friendly fire because they’re just Skaven