I’ve got a new player that’s going to give KoW a try. He has and loves his Age of Sigmar Skaven so definitely going with Ratkin.
Now we often play Ambush and it’s definitely the way to start out with a new player but what to do about needing hordes to apply the Ratkin’s main rule: rally? Would allowing rally 1 on regiments totally break the game? If it would be problem would restricting the rally bubble to 3" help?
Thanks in advance.
Also 25mm bases are too big for rats and likewise 50mm for rat-ogres. Also, GW’s oval bases are a pain to make sabot bases for. Sorry needed to get that off my chest.
I’d just use the rules as written myself, 13/15 for a shock troop reg and 12/14 for a spear reg isn’t amazing but it’s fine for the points involved (at 95 points spear rats are actually pretty solid, when most hammers in Ambush are cavalry). Night terrors, mutant rat-fiends and brute enforcers all have rally (1) to help bolster those numbers.
But if you want to house rule some rally on the rat regs to help him out, I can dig the 3" rule as a trade off
As for multi-basing, infantry regs can easily accommodate the AOS bases, and obviously nightmare hordes can easily be ~3 rat ogres. I guess for Ambush they’ll have to just hang off the back
On the ovals, you talking about the wheels, abomination, bell and furnace? I’d probably use those as tunnel runner hordes in KOW if they aren’t being rebased. Brood terror would be a perfect MRF (it’s got a 90mm round base??? so yea, another proxy baser I guess )
Also: It’s pretty easy to magnetize the feet / wheels on the big chonky GW sculpts, if the goal is to swap between the two games. AOS players rarely want to do this but it’s a thought re: basing for two games at once.
He has Nightmares but they’d have to be a horde to get rally. The pics he sent me don’t show a rat-fiend or something obviously a brute enforcer. Then again, I kind of remember him working on painting some war–machines years ago and I didn’t see those either. We could designate a something as an Enforcer but that seems closer to orcs and their drums than to “strength in numbers.”
He has Jezzails on oval bases. 60x35! At least 3 will fit on heavy infantry frontage so theirs that.
Because I was procrastinating work, I took a look at what a Ratkin Ambush army drawn only from the Skaven side of the Skaventide box might look this. Here’s where I ended up:
Warriors (Infantry) Regiment [95]
– Plague Pots [10]
Warriors (Infantry) Regiment [95]
– Plague Pots [10]
Warriors (Infantry) Regiment [85]
Warriors (Infantry) Regiment [85] ^ 10 clanrats a base, with the two ones with standards as the units with pots
Clawshots* (Heavy Infantry) Troop [95] ^ 3 jezzails packed on a base
Nightmares (Large Infantry) Regiment [140] ^ 2 rat ogres (the one with the gun for sure), with the 3rd either solo based as an eventual enforcer or on another reg base to form a horde
Death Engine Spewer (Monster (Chariot)) 1 [200] ^ Warpblaster
Night Terror (Monster) 1 [135] ^ Clawlord on Gnawbeast on a 50mm
Swarm-crier (Hero (Infantry)) 1 [70]
– The Boomstick [25]
– Lightning Bolt (3) ^ Grey seer or engineer, whichever fits better on a 20mm; if he takes the lute instead, then probably the grey seer, but the engineer does suggest the tek elite bubble better
Would be a fun hobby project! No idea how it’d do in Ambush, but it’s got guns!
Boss has basically done all the heavy lifting with regards to advice, but I’ve a couple of comments.
Ratkin not having the horde Rally is similar to a number of other armies having issues at Ambush scale, where either the rely on hordes, lots of heroes or pricy heavy hitters.
Default nerve isn’t great, but there Rally options and cheap inspiring is available - 12/14 is less of downside when you consider virtually nothing is better than 15/17 anyway?
I’d say I’m more worried about the “feel” of playing skaven than worried about balance.
And yeah, as someone living in a rural bit of the U.S., Mantic’s move away from making it easy to bring in people that play AoS or have old WHFB armies stashed away isn’t exactly helpful for getting opponents. Hopefully 4th edition doesn’t go too far in that regard.
Yeah, I feel you. The transsition from AoS to KoW is not as easy as Oathmark/9th age → KoW.
It’s not so much a matter of Mantic’s move away from making it easy. It’s just that GW decided other bases since WHFB, which was predecessor to both AoS and KoW. KoW remained true to the WHFB base sizes, both TOW and AoS did not!
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