Eighth Edition Thus Far.

Starting this off with a general musing on what I've learned so far with skaven in eighth edition, as well as what I've learned from other armies. Now I should say all I've played against with any degree of regularity has been High Elves, Dark Elves, Lizardmen, Ogre Kingdoms, Vampire Counts, Empire, Orcs and Goblins, Daemons of Chaos, Warriors of Chaos and Beastmen. So, that said, here's what I've learned so far about 8th edition.


The first and most important thing I want to crush. Hordes haven't been very good. Units that're that wide are very easy to manouvre around or just totally stimmy with many cheap units, before you absolutely crush them with a flank/rear charge. However, hordes (not 10 wide, just a lot of models, for example, I run slaves from 9 to 13 ranks deep) are a very effective unit from what I've seen. With cheap fodder troops you can make a mighty anvil.

Ok, so next up. A lot of people seem to think monsters have died a death. Especially near the start of the edition. This is obviously not true. A lot of lists near me field two to three (sometimes four or five) monsters. With high toughness, usually a decent to good save, and the ability to crush one, two, sometimes three, four ranks of infantry they're very good shock units. Fair enough cannons hurt them, but they always did that.

Magic. This is something that will probably get a whole article to itself in the near future. However, people said "now I don't need to take a wizard" when they learned you get free dispel dice. Nothing could be further from the truth. When you have a Slann sitting bringing his whole army back to full strength you need every ounce of extra dispelling oomph you can get. On the flip side, some spells are ridiculously powerful, with very little cost or risk. Magic is a force to be reckoned with now and I'd definitely take a level 4 to every game of 8th edition I play.

Shooting. This is another one I'll probably end up writing a whole article for. But hey'o. In a nutshell, Dark Elf Shooting is good, but otherwise shooting that relies on BS is bad. Things like mortars, cannons, catapults and suchlike are all pretty good. Especially against ridden monsters. With the speed of Warhammer however, and the resilience of most armies across the table (and the speed they can cross it) an all out gunline is very hard to do, in my opinion. But you can definitely run a gunline with a few good anvils, or just have a very mobile "Run 'n Gun" style list (for example, Tzeentch Daemons can do this).

Combat. Huh, here we go. Basically, it's good. The changes were for the better, in my opinion. Steadfast makes core troops good, and cheap troops great. Striking in initiative order makes elite high initiative guys fantastic, see chaos warriors. One thing I did notice though is combat is Killtacular. Static CR counts for very little these days, which means my slaves almost always lose and my combat units almost always win. This is something I'll probably do with my next article. But combat is a lot more fluid and involved now, I like it.
So that's probably the more general principles, a few basic things I'm going to say;

The Power Scroll is very good. Slann are very good. Engines of the gods are very good. Salamanders are good. Teclis is batshit broken. The Dreaded 13th is just nuts. Hydras are ridiculously good now. Life Magic, if you've played against/with it properly, you'll know. ASF is crazy good. People need to learn to (ab)use swift reform more. All my slaves have musicians for a reason, it's a fantastic rule. Slave and goblin anvils of around 40+ guys are very good buys these days. Same goes for gnoblars. I'd always take a level 4. I'd always take something quick for warmachine hunting too.

So, that should get the ball rolling. I'm going to be using this as a reference point and coming back here to pick out things to write articles on. If you manage to wander deep enough into the crevices of the internet to find your way here, then please leave a comment if you have any preferences as to what I should write about first.