MORE Clanrats?

And somewhere in the middle of it all, I decided to build a million Skaven Clanrats...

 

 

I had hoped to have the new General's Handbook by now, but I was unable to pre-order it, and couldn't find one locally. But now the book is in the mail and I'll finally be able to see what all the hubbub is about. There have been leaks-a-plenty online, so most of the points values and changes are available, and I mostly know what's up. Other than a couple magic artifacts for Clan Pestilens and the basic rules for Clan Skryre, I haven't seen the full rules for the two Skaven Allegiances, so I'm not sure how this will affect my army. I'm sure I can take mostly the same stuff and now get some new benefits.

I've been sitting on these Clanrats from the Isle of Blood (now known as Spire of Death) starter box for a few years (three full sets worth), so I decided to throw them together. I've been pretty good about not letting Skaven projects languish on my Shelf of Shame– Sure, I've got spare models and kits sitting around, but I finish each Skaven project before moving on to another one. I'm building two units of 40 for a total of 80 Clanrats, but I'm not quite sure how they'll slot into (or if they're even needed) in a Pestilens Allegiance. They are Battleline units for a geveric Chaos Allegiance, but for Pestilens they'll have to be allies and the Plague Monks will be the Battleline units. I have 80 monks, so these units will bring the infantry total to 240 models, and the new Massive Regiments rules will give me a break on the points cost. (You know, because the advantage of Age of Sigmar is that you can play with only a few models. Ha!)

For painting, I've got the rats on wooden strips, with each sculpt on its own strip so it will be easy to match all the details. I'll probably tackle these in batches of ten so I can get some of them on the table rather than having all 80 in various stages of completion until I get them all finished.

 

 

Speaking of languishing projects, my Hexwraiths are still in progress, but I haven't touched them in months.

 

The leaks that I saw for the Death Allegiances seem to have the the Death army organized into overly-specific groupings (Flesh Eaters, Soulblight, and Nighthaunt). Those faction Allegiances have some interesting new abilities, but I fear that they will lack any diversity. Nighthaunt's allies are so limited and their unit selection so narrow that every Nighthaunt army will probably look the same. I They can only ally with Soulblight (expensive Vampire units) and Deathlords (expensive characters and Morghasts), so they don't have access to any massed infantry units. And I guess Nieman Kimmel won't be able to hang out with Korak the Grim anymore if I want to use any of the cool Nighthaunt abilities. Sad.

I'll talk about the new rules a little more once I've got the book in hand. In either case, I've cashed in my Amazon gift cards for some more Spirit Hosts and Crypt-whatevers so I can fill out my Nighthaunt and Flesh Eaters aspects. So much to do...

'Til next time!