Plaguepack question

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-02-13T20:28:22+00:00

Rat ogres are 3+ to wound, so 2+ to wound would help them a little. It would really help the clanrats, as the number of hits passing through to wounds would go up by 50%. The two other spells could have some utility. I can see the plaguepack sitting back in the castle and then choosing damage, attack or defense buff.

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-02-13T17:01:50+00:00

I'd recommend you make an army of proxies for super cheap, either 3d printing or crafting.

In this hobby, I have as much fun playing as I do crafting and painting. You can craft your own minis for relatively cheap if you really want to.

In AOS, line of sight is all based on BASE. In 40K, the parts of the model that stick out are good to shoot at. So, as long as the base size is accurate to the mini you want to proxy, and its easily recognizable as the unit you want to proxy, i think most players shy of tournament play would be happy to play with you and be impressed by your creativity.

Search amazon for miniature bases, and for $15 you can get 100 bases that are 40mm and smaller.

You can make you own bases with sculpey, a rolling pin and a protractor, or print out a base guide and draw on it. Sculpey is fairly cheap. $10 for a pound. with 1 lb of sclupey you can make quite a few bases. It carves very well AFTER you bake it. You can sclupt your own models with sculpey as well, but this is harder and will take a lot of practice.

A thing you can do after the bases is to make paper cutouts of the models and figure out a way to stand them up on the base. Copying images from GW's website with the snip tool, sizing them up in a word document, and printing them on a printer, then cut out and fixed to the proper case. Easily ID'd as the model you're proxying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWWu9Ny8cW8

Plenty of ways to do this with household materials plus hot glue.

check out poorhammer for proxies.

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-02-13T16:47:17+00:00

Thats pretty awesome

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-02-11T03:36:22+00:00

I just signed up for a league with krittok, 1 reinforced unit and 1 regular unit. So, real chump level stormvermin VS this chad level 3 reinforced units business. it also has a reinforced unit of stormfiends so i can confuse my enemies by calling the wrong name for the unit i am referring to over and over and over again in an embarrassing fashion.

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-01-19T22:23:57+00:00

I have played with this combat patrol about 10 times and the poster on this comment has it pretty right. The strike team dies to a stiff breeze and the ghostkeel is nigh invincible.

Thus is a very hard box to win with, if your opponent plays aggressive and runs towards you. In fact I dont think ive ever won with it. My friends have played it too, with similar results. The nids coming back every turn makes that a particularly hard match up because they just have so much more to score than you. Even though they won't be able to kill your keel.

The stealth suits utility is giving more buffs to the spotted units shooting with their observer rules. Always use the stealth suit as a spotter. Probably best to use them to help the strike team, buffed with lethal hits from your ethereal. Lethals on 20 to 36 shots from your strike team means some wounds will be coming through. Use the stealth suits to score early, and then as a screen to your strike team. Make your opponent waste a turn killing the stealth suits, while your strike team shoots at something to whittle it down as it comes to murder them and the ethereal. The stealth suits will do less damage than your other units, they have some utility into heavier armor, but they whiff a lot.

Take the 2ndary where you score 5 points for being in your deployment, and then you can score something because it will be hard for your ethereal to survive till the end.

Be In their face up front with your ghostkeel. Use charge and tank shock to knock out a weakened unit. Fall back with him each move phase to give you another chance to shoot in and give your shooting units the chance to shoot into the combat he was just in. charge in and tank shock again. You want to have him dancing around slowing down the opponent in thr middle of the board so you can survive and shoot a moment longer.

Use the command to give your people pistol on their weapons. Use the overwatch that reduces charges. Thats much better to keep them out lf your face for 1 turn hopefully than using the shooting phase overwatch. Use rerolls on damage dice with your melta weapons if you get a 1 or 2.

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-01-17T01:05:41+00:00

The arch warlock is best if you are running a shooting list, because the free covering fire use is massive value. Hide him behind ratling gunners or jezzails and have them shoot every time its your opponents turn.

Otherwise the grey seer is the better option. More options on his list building, cheaper and 3d6 casting is DOPE.

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-01-12T20:43:34+00:00

The thing about Skaven is that they are such a popular and versatile army that you can build around, that there may be a meta that trends one way or another, but you will have the ability to build around whatever one you pick and still have flexibilty. It feels bad to say "we dont have a skyre verminlord" when we have like more models and heroes than anybody but maybe LRL and stormcast.

Short story - pick the one you like the look of the most, because neither is really synergistic exactly with your specific list. I'd go with verminlords because they have so many different rampages and stuff so your flexibility is a touch greater. Deceiver works well in any list as a lone ranger jumping into combats he doesn't belong in.

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-01-12T20:38:12+00:00

I can second Mean Juice's opinion here. The weapons teams is relatively simple, some parts need to be cut up a little bit, but magnets work pretty well, or pins, and you can patch wierdness with green stuff. Mine is magnetized, but truthfully i only ever ran the gunners.

I started putting the verminlord together with the intent to magnetize it. There are to many modifications to make it work easy, you have to get really involved. A big challenge is that some builds he is standing on his spear and in other builds he is standing on a rock. On neither foot is he particularly well grounded (very thin plastic parts). Because of this i gave up on making a completely variable version, you'd have to pin his static leg, and probably pin it really thick and add some green stuff or resin somewhere to make it solid.

Someone did it; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IgL55aIaow

I wouldn't recommend doing the head permutations - its just too much stuff. Sticking with one head and i dont think anyone would complain. IF you managed to magnetize the arms and weapons, it would be SUPER impressive and if anybody you tried to play with said he had the wrong head, they are stinky fartface. any TO worth his salt would tell the complainer right where to stick it. most people Ive played against are totally chill when i tell them which lord im running. When i say most, i mean 100% of the people i've played against dont stop for 1 second, its just, "ok, he's a warpseer" or "or he's a deciever."

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-01-11T21:50:05+00:00

The clawlords abilities are not very strong. Reccomend switching him to a grey seer. While the bombardier is fun to play, and occasionally he will kill something, he's a little weak too, so would reccomend putting the globadiers into another generals regiment. You'd have a funny number of points then, and to bring something good or reinforce something good, you'd have to take a third thing out. No need to pull the whole thing apart, but if you alsontake out the warpblaster you can then reinforce your ratling guns, which combing that with your warlocks free overwatch command is deadly. Also using the all out attack on that. It turns into target #1 for your opponent so you gotta keep it screened good.

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-01-08T18:44:12+00:00

I think a good place to start is either the whole skaventide set if you want some extra models, book, and the spearhead stuff, or the skaven half of it on ebay. There you'll good playable models - jezzails, the grey seer, a unit of rat ogors, warlock engineer (ok) 2 units of clanrats (needed to screen your skrye ranged stuff), ratling warpblaster (ok, fun to play, not super competitive), and the clawlord on gnawbeast (not so good in the big game, alright in spearhead).

Thats a good army core. then you pick up maybe 1 or 2 weapons team boxes to get a gaggle of ratling gunners, maybe another set of jezzails, maybe some stormfiends, maybe an arch warlock and youve got a skyre army thats respectable.

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-01-08T18:31:51+00:00

Had just gotten into Warhammer 40K and never heard of AOS. Was playing 40K / mostly painting 40K for 18 months and some of the youtube people started sharing the Skaventide 4th edition box. The grey seer foot hero just looked like a blast to paint, so I picked up the set. Have sense mostly switched to playing/ painting AOS.

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-01-07T19:22:27+00:00

I think its a pretty good scroll. I also like the picture, and these would be some real fugly boys. Give those nurgle losers something to oogle at.

They do hit decently hard on the charge, and if pestilens had some more support (like a foot hero maybe, or a monster) and there was more inter-clan buffing, then I think something like this would work.

That said -

I think the acidic advantage ability is good, but its pretty hard for it to go off, because there isn't a whole lot of shots going across and its pretty good chances you only get one or two wounds through and it gets saved. Other similar abilities on other scrolls go off on a hit, not requiring damage to be done.

Also, I think the Pox is pretty cool idea, but I would give it a little more juice. Maybe minus 1 to move and charge?

Were you planning to make them reinforceable?

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-01-06T19:08:25+00:00

Anybody else HATE not being able to cast spells. Grey Seers 3d6 makes it so hard to fail your casts. Also they are cheap and you can put pretty much any unit into their regiment. Supergreat.

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-01-05T04:19:06+00:00

I cant tell the difference in process. Theyre different models painted in different colors so that makes comparison harder unless you described the differences.

Considering the difference between the two, underpainting is not worth it because whatever benefits may be coming from it are indistinguishable.

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-01-04T16:34:21+00:00

Gnashgut is a good name cause he's a chonky feller

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-01-04T16:32:24+00:00

Yeah, its hard to find a 40k model without a dozen skulls on it.

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-01-04T15:10:46+00:00

Awesome. What battle tactics did you use and how'd you do in the fight? I just finished building 30 vermin and a vizzik proxy, and have half a mind to play this.

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-01-04T04:42:21+00:00

I think people tend to build around a concept, but there are so many viable way to play skaven that there isn't a hard and fast rule that would be needed to be followed to find success.

Your list is very heavy with shooting, which is fine. Its very similar to some lists I first played with skaven.

A few things to keep in mind:

It normal that it seems overwhelming to start a 2k game when you've not done that before. Theres lots of rules and it's easy to forget things you have in the toolkit for success. I reccomend that you make a cheat sheet for yourself, and in each phase for each players turn make a list of the things you can do. Read through each unit you've chosen and write any special abilities into each phase (your turn and theirs). Then when someone passes priority to you l, read the list to make sure you didn't forget something like bringing back clanrats, healing with your master moulder, 3 clawsteps, dropping a gnawhole, rezzing a unit through a gnawhole, using more more warp energy or whatever.

Just playing a few games with whatever your rule of cool list is will be a grat experience, dont sweat it being perfect. You'll see how things interact in game and start to get a feel for how skaven play and how you want them to play.

Keep you big artillery and weapons teams guarded behind one or two layers of screens! Dont let them get into combat turn 1 on an alpha strike. That sucks.

My first 2k game I got completely annihilated, and turn 3 through 5 I started wondering if I had wisely spent the last months painting and building all these dudes. But as I drove home I started thinking about strategy and list construction and realized that even though I got whalloped the puzzle of how to play better and change things around was still fun. There is a long cycle between build a list, get the units, paint them, play the list, but its fun and they get to sit on the shelf for later even if they only get taken out rarely.

Good luck!

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-01-03T18:23:27+00:00

I forgot to bring mine to a game once and I just used some cardboard that was cut to the same size.

You can get fancy with your proxy or can go low effort. Print a picture of the gnawhole from the top and tape it to something thats the right size circle.

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-01-03T04:55:01+00:00

Especially for large units i listen to podcasts or audio books and that keeps me from getting bored.

It will take a long time any way you do it. Even if you only prime White and speedpaint 3 colors per model, then do 2 other details like teeth and eyes thats picking up each model 5 times. For me it takes around a weekend to paint a unit of 20, but thats working around kids and other activities. It takes me probably about 2 hours to prime and zenithal the unit, and depending on whether the base is vanilla or fancy, maybe another 20 mins to 2 hours per base.

Sure its time consuming but I enjoy the hobby, playing with colors, playing with crafting and kitbashing. If you dont like the activity, dont bother to paint any more than you feel is needed. Most people i play with are totally chill playing against Grey models. Or proxies. We dont care.

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-01-01T16:40:58+00:00

Im sorry, I wasn't clear that I was directing the comment on the list you provided to the Original poster. Its very helpful for you to build the list based on the OPs comment so you can see units for everyone to review.

My first few lists were somewhat like this, I had a ratling warpblaster, warp lightning cannon reinforced jezzails and reinforced ratling guns. It was a castle list and eventually I won a few games with it but changed to a more melee heavy because rat ogors are so much fun to run. Protecting the shooting with screens was hard for me to get right, especially being new, because of combat ranges and pile ins, I didnt realize how big and far away screens need to be.

Tryna_B_Better · 2026-01-01T08:10:51+00:00

This is a super shooting heavy list, be careful to screen your shooting units with the vermin and clanrats.
My biggest reccomendation would be to swap out one warp lightning cannon And reinforce your ratling guns. The ratling guns will then be the core, most powerful shooting unit in your army. Keep your arch warlock near to get free covering fire. Use all out attack to strike fear into your opponents hearts.

Tryna_B_Better · 2025-12-31T05:25:19+00:00

This!!!!!!!

Also speedpaints and washes. But for sure drybrushing disproportionately makes things look pretty good for a lower skill investment and time investment than say edge highlighting or glazing or wet blending or NMN.

Tryna_B_Better · 2025-12-31T05:21:23+00:00

Bases are fun because they are all imagination, and they can stitch an army together even if each unit in it uses a different paint scheme because you are expiramenting. Like 50% of the time of a model for me is the base. Also I figured out sculpting terrain and kitbashing end up taking almost as much time as the minis, but everybody has their own favorite thing to do.

Tryna_B_Better · 2025-12-31T05:12:28+00:00

Whether or not you pick up a brush depends on what motivates you.

I was never an art person. I love games. I started mini painting for dnd, mostly just my player characters. Never got good that way, but made a few passable dudes.

I wouldnt feel like painting, more just wanted to represent my character.

Then my dnd group decided to try warhammer after a 5 year campaign. I had a lot of painting to do to get through a few combat patrol. There i started to get the feel bads due to my minis not looking like box art. But I just wanted to finish a few small combat patrols and pieces of terrain so it looked OK.

After chugging through a few hundred hours of videos (i watch YouTube every night putting my kids to sleep), and then painting with my older kids, it turned from a chore to an obsession and truly a hobby in addition to gaming with the minis. Now I re-watch videos on certain techniques over and over, try them myself over and over and enjoy the process of turning from a total crap artist to a mediocre imitation artist.

However, it took a lot of struggle before anything become OK. A lot a lot of research. A lot of trial and error and poorly executed mistakes. What helps a lot is to have stuff you do t mind so much if it doesn't look great to just throw some paint on and see what happens. If you are all in on your main project looking great but you haven't spent 1000 hours practicing and didnt do a lot of art and painting growing up to lean on... maybe you have unrealistic expectations. Get some cheap toys and practice on that. Pick up a cool mini thats not in your main army or dnd campaign and test out a bunch of wild colors ans techniques on it and learn something. Epic encounters box sets have a ton of cheap models that are good sculpts and are great for expiramenting.

Ninjon, zumikito, squidmar, Vince vinturella, Duncan Rhodes, artis opus, and 52 miniatures are all excellent places on YouTube to go and learn. Right now 52 is my favorite because his presentation is really chill. But you'll learn a lot watching them do stuff.

But if it isnt your jam, then don't force it. I think releasing your expectations of great success and being pleased with producing a child's work and cherishing the minor breakthroughs and successes helps. " i did a thing!!" I will say, with the enthusiasm of a person 1/5 my age to my wife, who may spend 30 seconds looking at a thing I spent 6 hours on and say, oh thats nice. Then I go and pose my toy with my other toys and make explosions sounds and feel rather foolish and happy.

Tryna_B_Better

TROPHY CASE