tricks2

Nows its time to adress one of my least favorite things about Games Workshop, a rules change. While these rules changes are almsot certainly made due to a financial intrest from the manufacturers (as the always propell us toward having to buy more units, and expensive books) they present us with a new feild of play to master, and a new set of limitations to operate under. That being said here is what I think of the new rules.

What Has Changed?

Well for starters magic has become almost completely impotent. I think this si the single most drastic set of changes. Dispelling is much easier and spells are not that nasty in general at all anymore. Perhaps we will be able to magicaly put some shame in other army's games when our book is released with the new Skaven spells, but that really shouldn't be neccissary as our numerous troops now make us even hard to beat in combat.

Wich brings me to what I believe is the 2nd biggest change. It sort of makes up for the loss of magic's might. The new "outnumber" rule.

Sure, its only a +1 to the combat result, but that can, has, and will make a big difference when you're fighting superior units such as Knights, Elves, or Saurus Warriors. In my experince so far this has made the rather stalwart units of Elves and Saurus become much more prone to fleet than they were in the 5th edition.

I think the 3rd big change is the standardization of poison rules. In a way is kind of sucks, taking away the D3 wounds from assassins, but at the same time, it makes assassins much more likely to actualy wound the enemy. In the end, and after much deliberating, I have decided that in the case of our army it is essentialy an even trade-off (Lizardmen have recieved an incredible windfall though.)

For me, its been great, since the number of chacters and the amount of points you cna spend on them is fixed, I usualy end up having many many more points to spend on the things I love best like clan rats, slaves, and warpfire throwers.

By the way guys, Ive started using warpfire throwers alot lately, and have actualy been able to fire them. My opinon on them has changed, they are totaly awsome. Alot of the time they've been taking precedence over Jezzails and plague monks!

I would go on about the changes to our troops, but since all we have right now is Ravening Hordes, it seems like sort of a waste of time to rattle on for paragraphs on end talking about the pro's and con's since it will all change alot in a few months.

I feel though, that the tactics I have developed in my years of game-play have been slightly invalidated recently both by these new rules that play down characters to the extreme, and also by a growth of my own personal tastes in strategy. The overall shift in my philosophy can be read in my new paradigm page.

Just because Im changing the way I think about Skaven, is no cause for alarm. The rats are still the best army and probably will be for a long time. Suffice to say, every time GW ups the ante on units and takes the bite out of characters we keep getting stronger. These new rules are by no means an exception. It looks like we will have a very victorious run over then next 3 or 4 years until they revise the rule YET AGAIN (and you know they will, I think they even said they were going to). Ok, thats it for now kids, e-mail me with specific questions, and check back a little while after the Skaven book is released!