Warhammer: Mark of Chaos - Units - Skaven

This is an overview of Units (and combat) for Warhammer: Mark of Chaos v1.72. A list of all our Warhammer: Mark of Chaos articles can be found here.

We are looking at Units and Combat from the perspective of the CAMPAIGNS, not multiplayer wargaming.

Skaven Units

Overall Chaos has high armor and low range on their missile troops.

ClanRats

• A very high model count, but tightly packed so they are quite maneuverable on the battlefield.
• The "lap around" ability is surprisingly good as it lets you flank and attack the rear without having to coordinate any of that yourself. Plus, if they completely surround the enemy, you won't have to chase down fleeing units.
• If you do not let them come under sustained missile fire, which can erode their morale and cause them to break, this is a fairly good melee regiment, but not as versatile as the StormVermin.
• Can climb up walls without using a ladder.

Giant Rats

• Classed as Large creatures so they are vulnerable to spearmen. But only have 1 HP, so these units can die remarkably quickly from any attack.
• Fast but fragile so once they reach their target, they might not survive anyway.
• Basically useless if you have anything else.

Gutter Runners

• Without any idea of the range at which they can be detected through their stealth, this unit is almost useless.
• All attacks are supposed to poison their foes, but only melee attacks are poisoned. And since they default to ranged attacks, you have to close the gap with running or tunneling. The poison can make for a very powerful suicide attack, however.
• Tunneling is a way to directly move behind an opponent without having to micromanage running behind them. It can also get them behind castle walls without ladders, whereupon they can go up tower stairs and onto battlements.
• Heroes cannot be attached, including the critical Grey Seer, which can replace lost models.
• Unless you can scout well and have a reason to do it, take some other regiment.

Plague Censer Bearers

• You do not get to use these in the Chaos Campaign.

Poisoned Wind Globadiers

• Extraordinarily good ranged unit.
• The attack rate is quite high, and they do magical damage instead of having to contend with armour -- these factors compensate for the low hit chance and make them good against most units. Armor is also very high -- higher than Chaos units -- and gives excellent survivability.

Rat Ogre

• The 8 HP per model is actually divided into 1 HP on each handler, and the rest on the actual Rat Ogre. The giant rat model dies remarkably quickly from any sort of spearmen. Losing all handlers also means the giant rat becomes berserk and uncontrollable.
• Charge attack seems strong and does hit multiple units as well as knock normal sized models down, but after that they are a useless unit. Tests show that regular attacks take forever to kill anything (even though they supposedly do 2 damage with every successful hit) and it is not clear if the ability to hit multiple units ("Cleaving Death" attribute) applies only to the initial charge.
• Veteran units have 2x or 3x the number of models in the same set.
• Probably the best way to use these is to repeatedly charge the enemy by charging, directing them to leave, then try charging again. However, they will probably be dead long before then.
• Causes fear in their attackers but this probably takes too long to work.

StormVermin

• Very good armor, good model count and strong against Large and Huge creatures ("Giantslayers" attribute). They basically cannot be effectively charged by cavalry, on top of being solid all-around defenders. Their higher armor makes them a safer choice than ClanRats in the open field where regiments could come under missile fire.
• If you have a lot of missile regiments for support, you can instead block the front lines with another regiment of Poisoned Wind Globadiers, which have even more armor.

Warpfire Thrower

• Huge disadvantages make this an utterly useless unit unless you are willing to do a lot of micromanagement just to get them into position without getting killed.
• NO armor and cannot be upgraded to get armor, or attached to a hero for Command Skill armor.
• The flame-thrower like weapon has a charge-up time instead of a cool down time. It cannot be immediately fired when the unit gets into position. Instead, once in position, it starts charging up. This adds to the complexity of using it because during that charge-up time, the target unit could easily have moved away.
• Friendly fire from the flame-thrower means you can't simply have it following a front-line blocking regiment as you'd gas your own troops that are in the way.
• Other than these disadvantages, they are theoretically a very strong unit that does magical damage and have a good conical area of effect.

Warplock Jezzails

• Cannot go up stairs.
• Very long range makes this a nice sniper regiment as well as a look-out as they can outdistance the enemy shooters, so once they start firing you know something has just come out of the fog of war.
• Also good for pulling the enemy and then running away until they turn back.
• Attack has a good chance of hitting and enemy armor is halved.
• Decent armor and 2 HP per model-team means really high survivability, necessary for a low model-count unit.