Skaven Rising...

o/

My Skaven haven't made an appearance on the blog since February of 2016, and outside of Mordheim (the game which spawned my little army) they've never seen battle on the table top. Well, this past Saturday that all changed when they made their Olde Hammer battlefield debut! That's right, none of that AoS crap! Instead we went old school with Warhammer Fantasy Battle's 8th edition. 

Bob was amused by the Skaven's request to 'say cheese!'.

As far as I can tell (by scrolling thru the archives of this blog), the last time I played a game of WHFB was in May of 2013 pitting my (now defunct) Stirlander army vs. Bob's Nordlanders. So...needless to say my grasp of the rules was a bit...rusty. This was only magnified by fielding an army I've never used before. Luckily Bob is pretty well up to speed after his recent bout vs. Neverness.

Waaaay too clean, no wonder my Stirlanders and now Skaven see them as enemies...

Recently, My Beloved Wolfy had expressed interest in giving WHFB a try to Bob who was all too happy to oblige in teaching her the game. However she didn't want to go in totally blind and asked if I would team up for her first game. Well of course I would!

My army is relatively small by Skaven standards containing a mere 80ish models and clocking in at 1,000 points. A lord, 3 heroes, 2 regiments of clanrats, 1 of slaves, and lastly 2 poison wind mortar weapon teams. 

The slaves have already been slaughtered by this point.

As for thoughts on their initial run, the mortars were great halving 2 of Bob's regiments and giving severe respiratory distress to the remaining survivors (I'm confident they all died shortly after the battle's end). As is typical of any war machine, one blew up taking 4 rats out of a nearby regiment, but the Skaven care little for casualties.

Wounds from a well placed poison wind  mortar round.
Neverness, this is how you are supposed to roll dice!

My Lord's regiment freight-trained thru a regiment and its detachment cowering to the rear before finally ending up well out of position at game's end. My other, characterless clanrat regiment was predictably mediocre and fled following their charge, being run down in exchange for only a few casualties. 

The slaves are kinda worthless as anything other than a distraction, though amusingly they inflicted more casualties as the fled than they did in combat! Our warped lightning spewing wizard did well, whereas the engineer equipped with the warpmusket was more or less useless. He'll serve as a wizard next go round instead as a free roaming riflerat.

Everyone's positions at game's end.

Whilst we did lose, it was a fun time and Wolfy found the game intriguing. Future purchases for the army aren't planned for at this point but...I do have about 60 or so rats that still need assembly. So that ought to keep me entertained till I can restock some paints from the FLGS (during regular store hours) and return to my Vanquisher.