Skaven OP spells ruining my game

[BruceFlea]

I'm taking take thier settlement and I got damn rats popping up every 2 seconds under my arty stopping them knocking out the towers, I try to kill them then I got thunder bolts from the sky wiping entire units out!!! I'm all for this Warhammer thing but these spells are ridiculous and spoiling it for me.

How can I deal with them? I'm elves btw. Can I mod out the OP spells?

[Sargeist]

The menace below spawns should be easy to rout in those situations, but I do agree warp lightning is a pain during siege battles. Don't blob up your units too much to minimize the damage and try and kill the warlock engineer on the walls asap if your using siege towers.

[DivadREX]

Skaven magic is not op.
Menace from below spwns trashy unit that is easy to rout or deal with, there is limited amount of uses.
Warp lightining does not wipe entire units, it can damage some chunks of formation that is all.

I got a feeling you are playing on small unit size, don't do that
Always ultra unit size
Why?
It's badly balanced feature that makes units with more models weaker to magic and single model units.

If you mean thunder bolts like from warp lightning cannons, yeah this is the best cannons in game.

[Zane87]

Originally posted by Ahriman:

The menace below spawns should be easy to rout in those situations, but I do agree warp lightning is a pain during siege battles. Don't blob up your units too much to minimize the damage and try and kill the warlock engineer on the walls asap if your using siege towers.

Warp lightning is one of the best spells for it's price.

Had a defensive Siege as skaven one time against Greenskins.
They had an army full of black orks and siege towers.

1 warp lightning could kill 50 Black orks on the walls. I thought I had no chance defending against them but my single Warplock engineer was my MVP thanks to his warp lightning.

@ OP: Do not, do never blob up against skaven.
And always leave 2 units to protect your missile troops/artillery.

They are sneaky basterds, yes-yes

[Old Dirty Bingo Caller]

Knock down the gate with your arty (if you absolutely have to use it) while you storm the walls. Have your archers focus their ranged units on the walls. Remember rats cant fight for ♥♥♥♥

[Iriath Zhul]

People, don't dismiss MFB. The Skaven warpbomb the rats unless you can rout them in 5 secs, resulting in total annihilation of everybody within 100 feet.

[zefyris]

The warpbomb has been changed to not be targetable if the unit is above 50% health tho.
If you rout them before that (example : keeping a fear/terror inducing unit ) and stop attacking when they rout until they're no longer in the middle of your unit (kill it from distance afterwards if necessary) you're totally safe they can't activate it. AFAIK the spell USED to be targetable more easily than it is now, but as long as you keep in mind that trying to make units go below 50% while your elite units are in contact with them during siege battles against skavens is NOT a good idea, you should be pretty safe.

Also, other solution is, stop abusing artillery and go toe to toe with them (or at least, use missile units rather than artillery to clean the walls). The walls are pretty easy to take with any elven army without any artillery.

warp lightning is another problem and the artillery units during sieges should not be in range of it to begin with.

[Salty Nobody]

The spawns are easy to deal with, the AI uses them by themselves, as early in the battle as they can, and in predictable places. The most the spawns alone can do is force you to stop moving until they run out.

To protect your art units, have them in line formation and park a melee unit over it. Not in front of the shooty end, over the crews. The Skaven will spawn in the middle of your melee unit trying to get at your art crews and will insta rout, and your arty crews probably won't even notice the disturbance.

The lightning is another problem entirely. You are just going to have to eat it. Try not to blob and try to kill the mage(s). For me personally the damn mages are usually the last thing to go down so.... hope you brought damage dealing magic of your own to even out the odds a bit and overwhelming force that can chain route their entire army quickly.

Also watch out for catapults firing from the point, left alone those hurt as much as the lightning. Also beware if they have the army ability that explodes enemy units to deal massive damage to yours. They will probably use it on their summons so try to present them with a single entity unit that can withstand the blast.

[JODEGAFUN]

Originally posted by Iriath Zhul:

People, don't dismiss MFB. The Skaven warpbomb the rats unless you can rout them in 5 secs, resulting in total annihilation of everybody within 100 feet.

Thats why i attack those rats at best with a single modell which cause terror, they root and no explosion. Ore strong cav do the job too, they run faster and once they run you get the off. Until nect one spawns.

[IntrepidH]

It’s not that bad it takes like 5-6 warp Lightning’s to have any real appreciable effect on...anything lol
Those spawned rats die in seconds either to disintegration after a few seconds or if you position literally one of any unit to defend said artillery.

You must use counter play to respond to the enemy. If you know what they tend to do use that against them and if art gets knocked off their weapons put them back on quickly while using that unit to protect them

[Wyvern]

Originally posted by Iriath Zhul:

People, don't dismiss MFB. The Skaven warpbomb the rats unless you can rout them in 5 secs, resulting in total annihilation of everybody within 100 feet.

Yea, MFB is just an annoying, unfun mechanic by itself. Warpbomb turns it into a bit of pure bullshitonium, since if you get unlucky with the spawn, dont react fast enough whatever, youre getting nuked. On the brightside, warpbomb was slightly nerfed with the changes to summons. Since MFB no longer degenerates passively you dont have to worry about passive degeneration+damage youre doing dropping the unit under 50% as quickly to activate the warpbomb(@those unsure, the 50% hp mark has always been the requirement, this was not changed)

Warplightning is strong no matter how you cut it, but in a field battle or even in a position where you arent forced to blob, it's tankable and not crippling. In a siege though, especially with siege towers, 1-2 warplightnings can delete entire squads as they mount the walls.

[Wh♂♂par]

What I actually don't understand is, how can you have a Warplightning on you, if you're going to kill the rats that attack your artillery. Do you hug the walls with your artillery? Or am I interpreting this wrongly?

[Gamefever]

I'm having a hard time understanding the trouble as well.

Your attacking a Keep, so your opponent is stationary.
You have artillery, whats the point of artillery if you dont allow them to use all of their ammunition softening up the target to be attacked?
For the most part you shouldnt have moved your army in until all of your salvo's have been depleted. The range should have kept you well outside of the reach of spells.

[Rhudda]

Originally posted by Gamefever:

I'm having a hard time understanding the trouble as well.

Your attacking a Keep, so your opponent is stationary.
You have artillery, whats the point of artillery if you dont allow them to use all of their ammunition softening up the target to be attacked?
For the most part you shouldnt have moved your army in until all of your salvo's have been depleted. The range should have kept you well outside of the reach of spells.

Unless you have an overwhelming amount of artillery, enough to destroy towers with a few volleys, this is not a very good plan as part of your army is going to be torn apart by defensive fire. You're taking losses for not much in return, so it's better to lose those lives on the wall, killing enemies in the process.

[archonsod]

Assassinate anything with 'Grey Seer' or 'Warplock' in it's name. Shadow Warriors work wonders for this - they have vanguard and stalk, so if you deploy them as close to the walls as you can away from the main body of your assault you'll usually find they can ladder up a completely unguarded section of wall and proceed to turn any squishy rat wizards in the vicinity into pincushions (although if the AI is being as braindead as it usually is you can often bypass the siege entirely by sneaking them over the walls and capturing the plaza while most of the defenders play the 'how many rats can stand on the same gatehouse' game).

[Subtle Butt ( >ω<)っ ♡]

Keep units guarding your artillery pieces. Shut down enemy caster. Warp Lightning is great spell, but from the lore of ruin, literally only Warp Lightning and maybe Death Frenzy is worth casting.

Wind Blast is also the better spell than warp lightning and overcasted will shred the Skaven on the walls in one cast if you do have a heavens caster.