The armies

The Battle plan

Battle plan – Apex predators.

This is a tricky one as only leaders can capture an objective and they do so by two means.

Being within 3″ of that objective or killing the leader that already held it. Great for Skaven with many heroes and the means to move between them (gnawholes), great for sons of behemat if you have more than one leader unit – but a tough matchup for both of us. My List doesn’t have the damage threshold to push through the gargants and he didn’t have the volume of leaders to contest more than one objective.

The match

Deployment.

One gnawhole in my territory towards the right of the table. Another Gnollhole near each of the objectives but on the other side of the gnawholes.

Warstomper and his buddies toed the line with the middle objective.

Nightrunners out front to screen the center, clanrats to be a secondary screen, stormvermin just behind them, with a blob of heroes (all within 6″ of the gnawhole). Another unit of clan rats screened the top of my forces and my last screened the left of my little square of land.

The HPA backed up the left flank.

Pregame

Warpstone – 3+d3(1) – 4

Left-center unit of Nightrunners moved 4″ forward, right-center unit moved 11″ to screen my entire force..

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Round 1 – Turn 1 Sons of Behemat

Battle tactic  – monstrous takeover

Sons of Behemat Heroic action – Heroic Leadership (fail) 

Skaven Heroic action – 

Hero phase..  Yup that was it.. 

Movement phase he moved everything forward – that was terrifying… 

Shooting phase he threw a bunch of boulders using the stomper tribe command ability… All out defense saved my stormvermin from Total destruction as those rocks hurt! But a 4+ save helped. The nightrunner screens didn’t fare too well and my Bell managed to spike a few saves and ward shrugs. 

Charge. Terrifying.. 3d6 for big boy means he goes where he pleases. 

Well my screens didn’t last, in fact they crumbled and with some cheeky pile-ins he managed to get within 3″ of not stormvermin and smash over half of them to a pulp. Oof.

All night runners died but that was their job.

My eight stormvermin in range dealt 4 damage to his mancrusher gargant unit.. 32 wounds to go for that unit.

Most importantly his decision to pile in to try and finish my stormvermin removed him from the objective zone and so he didn’t score his battle tactic OR the objective. An oversight or smarter-than-Skaven big brain play I don’t know but regardless it wasn’t looking good and it all depended on what the Bell and spell casting could do for me.

Battleshock didn’t happen (nothing eligible. Thanks Bell!)

Round 1 – Turn 2 – Skaven

Tactic – ferocious advance.

Skaven Heroic action – healing on my bell – healed 2 so back down to 1 wound!. 

Sons of Behemat – Willpower (and got it!)

Bell tolled, a 2… Well that hurts.. Mortal wounds splashed about across my heroes with a few of them getting 3 wounds on them (2 wounds remaining for my little foot heroes).

Death frenzy was successful and went on my hell pit abom (since my other units that remained were not worth putting Death Frenzy on).

Be got mystic shield off on verminlord warbringer.

Verminlord warbringer failed both casts.

Grey seer on foot managed to get skitterleap and teleported my arch warlock to take the top objective (so I could camp both top and bottom objective and double his points easily).

Arch warlock lined up his overcharged warp storm and.. failed.. even with reroll (a first for me). Then self immolated for 12 mortals.. so he died.

My top units of clan rats went to form a line near the objective and the gnawhole I put to pressure the top-right objective.

My left unit of clanrats went to do the same on the bottom left objective and provide a rat-meat shield for my verminlord warbringer who I would take through the gnawhole.

HPA moved to support left clanrats, everything in the middle moved up to pressure the middle objective. My stormvermin retreated to “safety”.

Due to my top unit of clan rats suffering 2 mortals from my bell failure they were due a battleshock test but rolled a 3 (-1 because of 10+models) and vs a bravery of 5 (inspiring terrain) – they were fine.

Ended my turn scoring 4vp.

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SoB won the roll off, something that would happen often and took the turn.

Round 2 – Turn 1 – Sons of Behemat.

Battle Tactic was “Slay the wardlord” to try and kill my General. 

Gargant Heroic action Warstomper finest hour. 

Skaven heroic action – Finest hour on my verminlord warbringer.

This saw the topmost unit of gargant move to engage my clanrats that were defending the Screaming bell, another unit moving to engage and threaten the clanrats and hellpit abomination guarding my verminlord warbringer and the third doing the same to flank the warstomper who was coming over to say hello to my verminlord warbringer. A 2” redeploy of my clanrats saw them move to make the Warstompers charge to be a 13” to my verminlord warbringer. 

The left unit of mancrusher gargants ran into my clan rats and killed a few poor little rats on the charge.The other Gargants charged the edge of my clanrats and brought in my Hellpit. 

The warstomper didn’t make the charge to my verminlord warbringer but hit the clan-rats hard. 

Combat saw my clanrats near my Screaming bell fair well enough against the mancrusher mob. 

My clanrat screen died, but kept the mancrusher mobs away from my verminlord warbringer, but the warstomper was free to engage my poor verminlord warbringer. 

But not before the Hellpit had killed one mancrusher gargant and dealt 9 wounds to the next. 

The Warstomper piled into my verminlord warbringer, I activated all out defense. 

The verminlord warbringer managed to gain 4 extra attacks due to devious adversary and with a 3+ save and ignoring 2 points of rend (and the verminlord 5+ ward) the verminlord warbringer survived. 

The punchback on the verminlord warbringer into the mega (finest hour and rerolling saves) meant I received 1 mortal wound back and dealt 1 wound to bring me up to 9 wounds taken but not dead. 

The Mancrusher mob then killed the hellpit abomination, triggering death frenzy which dealt about 12 wounds and brought the final Mancrusher gargant in that unit to 4 wounds. 

Battleshock phase saw that last gargant run.

End of turn, Sons of Behemat scored 1 for killing a monster, Skaven scored 1 for killing a monster but the battle tactic failed and the mega-gargant was .5” from contesting the objective.  

Round 2- turn 2- Skaven

Tactic was “conquer” which I wasn’t able to do, but there was no other way to score another tactic. 

Heroic action – Skaven – Heroic Leadership on screaming bell, failed. 

Gargant was heroic leadership which was failed. 

This turn saw the bell roll a 10, not quite the 12 I was wanting but it was far from the worst outcome. It dealt a few mortal wounds here and there but not enough to write home about. 

Spells saw Verminlord warbringer gain flaming weapon and mystic shield, cracks call went off and no damage was dealt, skitterleap was successful which enabled me to score the middle objective and a arcane bolt dealt 1 mortal wound to a mancrusher gargant. 

My 3 man unit of stormvermin rallied and I rolled 6 6’s from 17 dice. Big play. 

Movement saw my clan rats shuffle to screen the verminlord warbringer and his teleport (through gnawhole) to the top objective. 

The Screaming bell ran up to help contest the middle objective and support the Grey seer. 

Stormvermin moved to charge and the clawlord moved up to support them. 

Vermin lord abandoned the bottom left objective and teleported just outside of 3” of the top right objective, that hurt.

Charge. Stormvermin made it and dealt 4 more wounds leaving the Mancrusher gargants on 2 remaining. They piled in and managed to get on the line of 3” for my Clawlord which saw him fall to 2 more damage than he had wounds remaining. 

The clan rats dealt 1 more damage to them leaving them on 1 wound remaining. 

The stormvermin were removed. 

Battleshock once again wasn’t a thing but the end of the turn brought another 2 points to the Skaven. 

Score was Skaven 7, Sons of Behemat 1.

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Roll off – the Sons of Behemat won and took initiative. I burnt the middle objective so they had the choice of keeping their Warstomper on the other side of the table or abandoning that objective to come and get my models – they went for the models. 

Round 3, turn 1 – Sons of Behemat

Battle tactic – Broken Ranks (my 4 clan rats..) 

Heroic action for Sons of Behemat- Heroic Leadership (success)

Heroic action for Skaven was heroic recovery on Warbringer. (1 wound healed) 

Everything moved, threw rocks and killed my Clan rats (Sad times).

Big charges saw my Grey seer on foot get pulverized by the Warstomper and two units of Mancrusher mobs (6 models) into my Screaming bell. The less wounded unit attacked and brought him to 9 wounds out of 13. Attacking back the bell managed to kill one more Gargant scoring me 1 point for killing a monster this round. 

That was really the round.

Sons of Behemat scored their tactic, with a monster but had no objectives scoring 3 points, Skaven scored another point for killing a monster going up to 8 points. 

Round 3 – turn 2 – Skaven

Battle tactic – savage spearhead (wasn’t going to get it sadly..) 

Heroic Action – Heroic Recovery (healing 2 more wounds!) 

Simple really with 18 clan rats and my verminlord warbringer left – I cast mystic shield and flaming weapon on the doom glaive. 

Moved my Rats to brace for a gargant charge and moved my warbringer onto the objective scoring 2 points.

End of the battle round saw Skaven 10 (1+more), Sons of Behemat 4 

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Round 4 roll off – Sons of Behemat won and took it again. I burned to the top right objective making him choose between fighting me with his warstomper or running back towards the only remaining objective (as none of them are Prime objectives?) 

Round 4 – turn 1 – Sons of Behemat

Tactic – Bring it down 

Heroic action gargants – Heroic leadership (Got)

Heroic action Skaven – Heroic recovery (Failed)

Hero phase was a non – event. 

Movement phase saw the gargants advance and I redeployed my Skaven to once again make it really hard for the Warstomper to get to my warbringer (this time forcing a 15” charge). The 

Command ability was used (like every turn) for all gargants to throw rocks, this hurt the clan a little bit but failed to hurt the warbringer. 

Command ability was dropped to give all gargants re-roll to charges.

All gargants made the charge into the rats and the Warstomper made a 11” charge from 3d6, twice.

Combat and impact hits saw all my clan rats dead and the warstomper ended up piling into 3” of my verminlord warbringer – just. Because I never started combat phases with him within 3” I never was able to activate “shield of distraction” for the -1 to hit, but was able to still reroll 1s to save which had saved him quite a few times. 

He survived and manage to gain 4 stacks of “devious adversary” without finest hour on the Warstomper I managed to punch through 17 damage from his fist attack and the boosted doom glaive and piled 3” further away from the mancrusher mob, within 3” and closer to the Warstomper (and within 6” of the gnawhole).

This ended the turn with no VP scored either side.

Round 4 – turn 2 – Skaven.

Battle tactic – err.. Slay the warlord (wasn’t going to get it again..)

Hero action, it didn’t matter so I didn’t bother and neither did Sons’ player. 

Spell casting – both went off in case of a miracle. 

Teleported out using the gnawhole and onto the last objective. 

We called it there when my score ended up being 12 – 4 in favour of Skaven. 

Conclusion

Despite losing ~1680 points worth of models and killing.. 475 points of models the battle plan favoured me heavily – it was pretty rough going.

A first for playing against SoB for me, and not the first for playing against Skaven for my opponent – but a first for this list. They are hard to chew through without rend and range and especially the stomper tribe who do increased damage vs horde (or 10+ model units). This made all hits or failed armour saves feel really impactful and probably why I had only a single model left (on 7 wounds remaining out of 12…)

The multiple ways for Skaven to have a leader with a ward is incredible. Only my poor arch-warlock (who was incredibly unlucky this game) didn’t have a ward of a 4+ or 5+ (as Verminous Valour is counted as a ward) and it was felt.

Devious adversary felt good but was a high-risk high-reward playstyle and when coupled with the bonuses to save, the ward save post fact and the shield of distraction (that never got to distract anyone) it made him survive two combat rounds against a unbracketed mega-gargant and live to screech about.