While it’s not the biggest points sink of the Start Collecting boxes it gives you a great taste of what units you’ll actually be using. Shouts to Luke Stone. At first you’ll be like “why are these Artillery” and then later you’ll be stroking your chin like “why aren’t Longstrikes Artillery”. Friends, these are just Skaven Longstrikes. You get half the shots, but they’re half the points. This actually works out pretty well! Because they’re Artillery and Single you’re limited in how many total you can get, but they’re cheap enough that unlike Longstrikes you don’t need to invest anything extra into them for them to do a decent job. You can take as many as you can and make pew pew noises or you can take one or two units and they’ll be OK. Warp Lightning Cannon The Brass Orb – One use item in hero phase; roll a dice and on a 6 the nearest enemy model is removed. A few armies do/have had this kind of item and while it can be hilarious, it’s not reliable at all. D That warscroll spell is pretty tasty though, if you can get it off. A CV8 spell with the traditional 13” range, Screech has the dreaded thirteenth spell which targets an enemy unit and rolls 13 dice, doing a mortal wound for each 4+. That’s a lot of mortal wounds but on top of that you can then summon a unit of Clanrats with one model for each wound caused by the spell. This is a little awkward as they have to be set up wholly within 13” of Skreech and more than 9” from enemy units, but is still a “free” unit.

A couple of boxes of these serve a great core to a Cities of Sigmar force, and brave converters can take the extra Warden King and convert it into a Runelord for some anti caster potency and buff potential. Best-best Warpstone Spikes – A reroll on your 4+ spell ignore. There’ll be matchups where this is probably your choice, but not very often. Staff of Rightful Supremacy– All enemy Wizards within 13” of the bearer subtract 1 from casting rolls. Also a dispel (unbind?) scroll: once per game an endless spell within 13” can be unbound without having to roll the 2D6. Nice that this doesn’t take away from a spell the rat would cast too. B+ Contents: 1 x Plague Priest Plague Furnace (Hero) / Grey Seer on Screaming Bell (Hero), 1 x Plagueclaw / Warp Lightning Cannon (Artillery), and 20 x Plague Monks (Battleline in a pure Pestilens army)

Postage Types and delivery times

If you have 3 Masterclan heroes in your starting armies, you get this in addition to the Skilled Manipulators, providing you with three movement boosts to your army. To his dismay, Thanquol has found that he’s not the only survivor from the World-That-Was. His arch nemesis, Gotrek Gurnisson, has also survived, and is set to foil Thanquol’s plans all over again as part of their never-ending vendetta.

If you’ve played with or against a Skaven army any time in the history of Age of Sigmar, there’s a good chance these were involved. Infamously one of the most points expensive non-hero units in the whole game, due to costing 320 points and wanting to be reinforced. Malevolent – Re-roll wound rolls of 1 with melee weapons. Useful on the Verminlord Corruptor, kind of, still not really. C- In truth unless you have one of these two specific plans in mind for them, this is probably one to leave on the shelf. Clans Moulder Giant Rats Redmaw Plague – This targets the nearest enemy hero within 13” and infects them for the rest of the battle. At the start of the combat phase, if that hero is within 3” of any enemy models and not within 3” of any of your models you can count it as a friendly model for that phase. There’s obviously a fair amount of play your opponent has with positioning to avoid this, but sometimes you are going to be able to engineer Arachaon to batter his own army and that’s hilarious. Blistrevous, the Living Cyst– what a wonderful name. The bearer adds 2” onto its move characteristic as well as re-rolling all hit rolls with all weapons that this character is armed with. Could be useful on a Verminlord Corruptor or Plague Furnace, maybe. However if there are any other Pestilens Heroes within 13” at the beginning of the Hero phase then this artefact is transferred to them instead, even ones that already have a relic so you’ll need to be more careful with placement so this doesn’t ping over to a Plague Priest who doesn’t really want or need it. C+Honestly, this is on the lower end of the value we’ve seen for Vanguard boxes. However, if you need every miniature inside, you basically get the Warriors for free. If you don’t plan on using everything in the box, you don’t save any cash. What these vortexes do is twofold: first enemies within 3” of any of them can’t run, which is quite nice when you’re trying to keep your opponent out of your castle. Secondly you get to roll a dice when the spell is set up and at the end of each movement phase for each unit within 6” of a vortex and do d3 mortal wounds on a 4+. You get +1 to this roll for each vortex the unit is within 6” of, so that units having to move through it are in the most trouble. This is where your issues with setting it up and that inch away come in, it used to be possible to cast this over a unit to get it trapped inside immediately and that isn’t really possible now. Still, getting to double tap this damage on the turn the spell goes up is very nice if you can get it in the right location. Bell of Doom Here are the named Skaven characters with models you can get your hands on when building your own fledgling ratling empire: Verminous Valour – After save rolls or rolls to ignore wounds, pass wounds off of the hero to a nearby friendly Skaventide unit within 3” on the roll of a 4+, or a 5+ if the hero is a Monster or War Machine. Best on a Plague Furnace to help it stay on the table longer while surrounded by plague monks, but there are better options here. B-

Chain Warp Lightning – CV7, each enemy unit within 13” takes one mortal wound. Your Engineer’s warscroll spell is better than this.

Building an Age of Sigmar Skaven Army

Screech also has a command ability targeting any Skaven unit that hands out +1 to hit and wound which is as you might imagine, very good. It is combat phase only, so can’t be used to replace more-more-more warp power for your Skryre units. Foulhide – Gives your Master Moulder 10 wounds and they heal a wound at the start of your hero phase. It’s OK. The model still only has a 5+ save but if your battle plan relies on it being alive for whatever reason then this + Stormvermin probably keeps it alive unless your opponent really goes for it. But if they’re that important then Master Moulders are only 90 points, just take two. Contents: 1 Terrorgheist (Behemoth, Batteline in Gristlegore) / Ghoul King on Terrorgheist (Leader, Behemoth) / Zombie Dragon (Behemoth, Battleline in Gristlegore) / Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon (Leader, Behemoth), 3 x Crypt Horrors (Battleline in Blisterskin)/ Crypt Flayers (Battleline in Hollowmourne) / Vargheists (Battleline in Soulblight) and 10 x Crypt Ghouls. With Nurgle abilities now on unmodified 6’s this box is an excellent choice for all the puss fans out there.