This month is bringing a massive host of updates to Age of Sigmar as the setting transitions to Ghyran, the realm of life. Each army is getting two whole pages of additional rules and optional alternative warscrolls for you to use in your games and we are very excited about all of it! Before we get stuck in, a thank you to Games Workshop for providing us with these rules as an early release to review.
Skaven have been in an interesting place this edition. As time has gone on, we’ve largely seen them move to a gunline backed up by hordes of Clan Rats for bullying objectives and scoring with the exception of the errant Fleshmeld list here and there. These changes aim to open up a few new game plans in the Skaven playbook with two new Battle Formations, three new Heroic Traits, and new Warscrolls for the Screaming Bell and Brood Terror. Is this enough to move the needle though? Let’s take a look.
Battle Formations
We have two formations to look at here. First is Envoys of the Deepgnaw which gives your Skaven Daemons (Verminlords, Screech and Vizzik) a 4+ ward while they’re near Skaven Infantry at the cost of that unit taking a mortal each time the Daemon makes a successful ward roll. This is interesting for keeping your otherwise somewhat squishy Verminlords in the game and could be neat in Tom Guan’s list that did well recently, for letting Vizzik rumble a little more effectively. Overall though this will likely be a niche pick unless someone can find the right combination of Verminlords to make it really sing.
Your other option is Gathering of the Clans which lets you redeploy two other nearby Skaven units when you Redeploy one so long as they have one of the clan keywords. This lets you lean into Skaven’s already deep toolbox for movement tricks, complimenting Three Claw-Steps Ahead very nicely. This will likely produce some interesting lists but on the initial read this isn’t particularly earth shattering.
Heroic Traits
There are three options here. Devious Underling is your first pick and is definitely an interesting one. During deployment you pick another Skaven hero with an equal or greater Health characteristic as your target. Then if the target hasn’t been slain the bearer gives Skaven units within 13” a 6+ ward and if they are the bearer gives out +2 to charge instead. The ward here is particularly valuable, making Clan Rats that much more annoying to remove, but it can also be helpful with something like Rat Ogres that need just a bit more durability to really get there.
Fleshmeddler is your next trait, allowing you to increase the rend of a weapon on a nearby Moulder unit by one. This is great on pretty much everything but what may not be immediately obvious is this works on Skreech, since he has every keyword, allowing him to get to an eye-watering rend 4 on his attacks. This is somewhat a gimmick play, but could see some use in an Envoys of Decay build.
Lastly there’s Pit Tinkerer which lets you reroll the random moves for your Doom Flayers and Doom Wheels and also gives them +1 mortals on the charge if they do any. There is absolutely some list with MSU Flayers and a bazillion Wheels that will somehow abuse this for a pretty fun highly mobile list.
Overall these traits open up some really interesting options to build around for your army. I’m particularly interested in if Fleshmeddler can get some of the less impressive Moulder units to get where they need to be.
Warscrolls
There are two new warscrolls here and both are pretty neat. First we have the Screaming Bell which doesn’t change stats-wise, but gains an entirely separate suite of abilities. First is The Bell Tolls which in odd numbered battle rounds gives you +2” of movement for nearby Skaven and -1 to be hit in even battle rounds. It has the warscroll spell Gnaw Through Reality which lets your Screaming Bell work as a Gnawhole for all your relevant abilities. Lastly there’s Echoes of the Vermindoom which heals every Skaven unit wholly within 13”. This bunch of abilities makes the Screaming Bell an incredible buff piece. Gnaw Through Reality particularly opens up some interesting combos that you couldn’t really do before, and combining its built in heal with Foulhide will help keep your bell ringing all day long. This scroll works well in almost every list and we expect to see it pop up quite a bit.
Last but not least we have the Brood Terror. He gains a 5+ ward, 2 extra attacks on his Bladed Limbs (which are now Loosely Attached), and gains a replacement rampage ability. Lend a Claw gives you the option of removing one attack from your Bladed Limbs in exchange for giving four other non-Stormfiend Moulder units +1 to hit. This is massive for the gameplan Thanquol’s Twisted Menagerie is trying to do if you’re going heavy on Hellpits or even other Brood Terrors. Rat Ogres also get a lot out of this since one of their biggest weaknesses is that they hit on 4’s. That said, the -1 to hit aura he used to have is still very strong so you may be missing it, but the ward makes up for it quite a bit.
Final Thoughts
Overall there’s a lot to like here. The most impactful change is probably the changes to the Screaming Bell. The buffs it now hands out can completely change how you build lists and what units you bring to compliment it. The Heroic Traits also have some juice, giving you even more tools to play around with when list tinkering. Here’s hoping this opens up some more list variety for our ratmen friends.
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