Tips on skaven and Best way of killing lords?

[Abobziel]

Hello all! I’ve recently gotten into this game, and been mostly having a blast! Despite it, however, I struggle in a couple areas. Im playing ikkit claw’s campaign, and ive noticed i struggle massively with the beastmen to my left. They seem to easily puncture through my line of skavenslaves, and begin harassing my weapons teams, which cant kill all of them in time before leadership breaks. I could try to make use of clan rats, but even with an army mostly made up of skavenslaves my money drops down to around 500 per turn just with the 2 armies i have. Any tips?

Furthermore, it feels like whenever i get into a battle with these guys, i end up just courting their lord rather than getting rid of him altogether, leading to him hiding with their stealth ability and making it near impossible to follow up on any of my victories. I killed their leader thankfully, but even then i only managed to do so via autoresolve. Whats a good method of busting lord better so they cannot continue pestering me, or is this just more of a beastman thing due to their stealth abilities?

[Smex]

Heroes and Ikit Claw will be your best way of slowing down the enemy advance. A traditional front line wont work for skaven, especially weapon team armies.

[joe83]

Hi, dont bother with skavenslaves/clanrats, not even stormwermin. In the begining use skavenslaves slingers to fill up your empty army slots/additional armies. They do at least some DMG and after routing and coming back, they can get few free shots into enemy flanks/backs.
As Ikit, its all about weapon teams. Great composition is something like 4 Plagueclaw Catapults, 4 Rattling Guns, 4 Warplock Jezzails, 1-2 Poisoned wind Mortars + heroes (at least 1 Warlock Engineer and rest Plague Priests).
Your front line should be Ikit + Plague Priests spamming Vermintide as expendable roudblocks + menaces below. Have your heroes close to max range of your army, so enemy wont ignore them and rush your shooters.
To kill single entities/lords/heroes, always asses when its ok to kill them or if its waste of ammo(small target/shielded/too much Missile/Physical/Ward esistance) and just kite them with ikit (have Ikit on his Doom Flayer mount, it has much better survival then Doomwheel).

Early Economy is pretty bad, but practically every skaven building generates gold. So you want to expand quite fast to increase your Food Cap and food/gold production.
There is a great cheese you can do to get a very strong start:
Dont bother building anything in Skavenblight(just cheapest buildings to unlock techs) and try to get your food cap to 130 (and have actual 120 food) then, you just abandon Skavenblight (turn before, sell all buildings to get some gold back) and have lord ready to resettle it next turn - bam, you have tier 5 Skavenblight somewhere around turn 12-15.

Oh, and have ALL provinces commandments to generate food,

And one more general advice: AMBUSHES.
You are skaven and there is absolutely no excuse to not have every battle (minus settlement battles) to be an ambush. increase your chance of ambushing by any means you can - techs, defeat traits (Skarsniks defeat trait is awesome), skills, starting traits (new lords should have starting trait Sneaky).
Your normal stance has chance of ambushing rolled every time you attack, so if you have enough movement points, you can just retreat and attack again and again, until you get ambush.
And use ambush stance as much as possible (preferably with another lord next to your army as a bait).

[BIG E.]

Guns.

Also be friends with beastmen. They are your only allies in the region.

[Abobziel]

Originally posted by BIG E.:

Guns.

Also be friends with beastmen. They are your only allies in the region.

I actually tried to do that, but as soon as the bretonia faction between us was destroyed they immediately declared war on me. Idk if there’s some way to prevent that or not, but it might have to do with me not understanding diplomacy maybe (it feels like whenever i try to do something diplomatic i have to expend, like, 5000 gold to do even basic things). Also i cant expand to the right because the pirate faction took over the faction (i cant remember what they are) next to me, and wont let me pass through their territory since i signed a nonaggression pact with them. Did i make a mistake?

[BIG E.]

Originally posted by Abobziel:

Originally posted by BIG E.:

Guns.

Also be friends with beastmen. They are your only allies in the region.

I actually tried to do that, but as soon as the bretonia faction between us was destroyed they immediately declared war on me. Idk if there’s some way to prevent that or not, but it might have to do with me not understanding diplomacy maybe (it feels like whenever i try to do something diplomatic i have to expend, like, 5000 gold to do even basic things). Also i cant expand to the right because the pirate faction took over the faction (i cant remember what they are) next to me, and wont let me pass through their territory since i signed a nonaggression pact with them. Did i make a mistake?

You should be able to make pacts with them as early as turn 2. They even give you around 8k gold for non-agression

Join their wars, pull them to wars. Check diplomacy every turn.

[Abobziel]

Originally posted by joe83:

Hi, dont bother with skavenslaves/clanrats, not even stormwermin. In the begining use skavenslaves slingers to fill up your empty army slots/additional armies. They do at least some DMG and after routing and coming back, they can get few free shots into enemy flanks/backs.
As Ikit, its all about weapon teams. Great composition is something like 4 Plagueclaw Catapults, 4 Rattling Guns, 4 Warplock Jezzails, 1-2 Poisoned wind Mortars + heroes (at least 1 Warlock Engineer and rest Plague Priests).
Your front line should be Ikit + Plague Priests spamming Vermintide as expendable roudblocks + menaces below. Have your heroes close to max range of your army, so enemy wont ignore them and rush your shooters.
To kill single entities/lords/heroes, always asses when its ok to kill them or if its waste of ammo(small target/shielded/too much Missile/Physical/Ward esistance) and just kite them with ikit (have Ikit on his Doom Flayer mount, it has much better survival then Doomwheel).

Early Economy is pretty bad, but practically every skaven building generates gold. So you want to expand quite fast to increase your Food Cap and food/gold production.
There is a great cheese you can do to get a very strong start:
Dont bother building anything in Skavenblight(just cheapest buildings to unlock techs) and try to get your food cap to 130 (and have actual 120 food) then, you just abandon Skavenblight (turn before, sell all buildings to get some gold back) and have lord ready to resettle it next turn - bam, you have tier 5 Skavenblight somewhere around turn 12-15.

Oh, and have ALL provinces commandments to generate food,

And one more general advice: AMBUSHES.
You are skaven and there is absolutely no excuse to not have every battle (minus settlement battles) to be an ambush. increase your chance of ambushing by any means you can - techs, defeat traits (Skarsniks defeat trait is awesome), skills, starting traits (new lords should have starting trait Sneaky).
Your normal stance has chance of ambushing rolled every time you attack, so if you have enough movement points, you can just retreat and attack again and again, until you get ambush.
And use ambush stance as much as possible (preferably with another lord next to your army as a bait).

You’re the second person to mention using my lords and heroes as fodder for the enemy army. Isnt ikkit kinda squishy though? It seems like he gets routed decently easily in melee combat, unless im misunderstanding?

Unfortunately i dont quite have access to my weapons teams yet. I will in a few turns, but still. I *do* know that you can expend food to have a tier 3 settlement turn 1, but I was scared of going for it because im anxious of the starvation debuffs. Is it really worth going into starving for food that quick?

As for the ambushes… I admittedly completely forgot about them lol. As said, im kinda new, so i dont have the best knowledge on the game itself. Just to be sure. What does ambushing do again?

[Abobziel]

Originally posted by BIG E.:

Originally posted by Abobziel:

I actually tried to do that, but as soon as the bretonia faction between us was destroyed they immediately declared war on me. Idk if there’s some way to prevent that or not, but it might have to do with me not understanding diplomacy maybe (it feels like whenever i try to do something diplomatic i have to expend, like, 5000 gold to do even basic things). Also i cant expand to the right because the pirate faction took over the faction (i cant remember what they are) next to me, and wont let me pass through their territory since i signed a nonaggression pact with them. Did i make a mistake?

You should be able to make pacts with them as early as turn 2. They even give you around 8k gold for non-agression

Join their wars, pull them to wars. Check diplomacy every turn.

Really? I was anxious to expend all my money like that compared to building up a large army. Then again, said army is 90% skavenslaves and clan rats, so i guess it makes sense

[joe83]

Originally posted by Abobziel:

You’re the second person to mention using my lords and heroes as fodder for the enemy army. Isnt ikkit kinda squishy though? It seems like he gets routed decently easily in melee combat, unless im misunderstanding?

Unfortunately i dont quite have access to my weapons teams yet. I will in a few turns, but still. I *do* know that you can expend food to have a tier 3 settlement turn 1, but I was scared of going for it because im anxious of the starvation debuffs. Is it really worth going into starving for food that quick?

As for the ambushes… I admittedly completely forgot about them lol. As said, im kinda new, so i dont have the best knowledge on the game itself. Just to be sure. What does ambushing do again?

He is quite tanky, but you dont want him to duel anything but squishy caster heroes/lords. But once he has his Doom Flayer mount, its quite easy to kite with him (fake charges, charge-do little dmg and retreat, dont allow enemies to blob around him, etc).
Go with his blue line first to get more movement points, ambush chance and upkeep reduction. After that his unique lord line available at rank 10 and after this his combat line to get Second-Wind Serum (must have, i allows you to end practically every battle at full HP).

Weapon teams you start with are more then enough to get rid of Morghur and any other early enemy.
Well, it depends on your actual enemies you will face in the next few turns until you increase your food to decent level. if you are only at war with Morghur or Tilea (or both) and you just smashed their starting army, then you can afford to. if you know you will have tough fight in the next few turns, going to starving can bite you in the ass (-10 leadership is really bad for skaven, but if enemy dont make it to your lines, it doesnt matter).
Personally, i would not bother with t3 Skavenblight, but t5 is something else, if you pull it right, you have access to top tier units around turn 25. But its not necessary, you can just get max tier settlement once you can safely afford it. Try to get food any time possible, commandments, battle rewards, even raiding if you are not expanding and try to not waste too much food on the Menace Below.
Dont waste food on leveling minor settlemens, just major ones (with exceptions like securing border from counterattacks or getting specific resource/landmark).

Ambushing allows you to deploy all around enemy army which marches toward an exit point. Best way for Ikit (and weapon team armies in general) is to setup as far from the front of enemy army as possible, to allow for longest time of free fire until they form and reach you, usually it allows your jezzails to snipe enemy lord and heroes, while your catapults decimate their infantry. Just get Ikit and Plague priests far enough ahead to enemies, so they go after them and allow you to shoot them into pieces.
To even further slow the enemy units, you can cast Bless with Filth on your Jezzails/Ratlings to apply poison dmg (-15% speed) + passive from lore of plague -10% speed after each cast. So spamming Vermintides and acasional Bless with Filth is great to passively debuff whole enemy army.

And have Warlock Engineer ranked asap, go for mobility boost and his army boosting line - Ammo/Missile Strength and Ballistics instructor. After that, go for his magic (that way, you can delay Ikits magic line or even ignore it). Against enemy flyers, you will have Howling Warpgale to pin them in the air for your guns.