It’s said that you’re never more than six feet from a rat in the Mortal Realms, but unlike our world, these rats are hunched, humanoid, and armed with wicked weapons. The Skaven lurk in the dark corners of the realms, always chittering, gnawing, and scheming.
They have toiled for long centuries in the foetid sub-realm of Blight City, chewing away at the tattered edges of reality, enviously regarding the realms with a Black Hunger that dominates their thoughts and forces them to consume.
Surprising everyone, their grand scheme to elevate the Great Horned Rat into the pantheon of Chaos Gods has been a success. The Skaven are now in the ascendent, surging into the eight realms through gnawholes – corrupted portals from Blight City. These treacherous gateways corrupt the land around them, which degenerates into a polluted wasteland that threatens the life of any who enter. Armed with this foothold, combined with maniacal ambition, warpstone-powered weaponry, and the resources of the Great Clans, the Skaven have set their sights on supremacy.
Overview
Each Skaven is entirely convinced that they are the greatest of their race ever to have lived, and that every other Skaven is conspiring against them to keep them from their rightful rewards. This towering paranoia makes natural cravens – arch-traitors perpetually willing to backstab their superiors, inferiors, and peers in the pursuit of victory. A knife in the back being far preferable to facing conflict head on.
Bound together by worship of the Great Horned Rat, an ancient and hungry deity, Skaven society is a loose coalition of competing interests whose plots and schemes sometimes align just about closely enough to get things done. The Council of Thirteen sit at the top of the food chain, powerful rulers drawn from the mortal movers and shakers of their kind. Underneath them – so they claim – are their faithful agents in the Masterclan, sorcerous Grey Seer prophets with a direct line to their god.
Most Skaven are lowly dregs who toil in service to lesser clans. They endure short and pathetic lives, kept going only by doomed dreams of avarice and ambition – but some lucky few can climb the rungs of Skaven society, elevated by cunning, talent, or ruthless good fortune.
The lesser clans themselves belong to one of the Great Clans, which dominate Skaven society with their specialties and secrets – the assassins of the Clans Eshin, the madcap engineers of the Clans Skryre, the breeders and beast handlers of the Clans Moulder, or the plague priests of the Clans Pestilens. When they go to war, they do so as a result of bargains, bribes, or intimidation, disparate elements finding common cause with their allies... For now.
Naturally, each of the scheming Skaven screeching orders believes that they are the one truly in control and responsible for victory – and if not, a smartly placed warpstone dagger will definitely make that the case.
Battle Traits
As inveterate cowards who value their own short lives above all else, the Skaven are well-versed in the art of the tactical withdrawal, their warriors Too Quick to Hit-Hit when they retreat from combat.
As the Splinters of the Vermindoom – the catastrophic invasion of Blight City into the Mortal Realms – create new wounds in reality, a tide of Skaven can pour onto the battlefield through fresh Gnawholes to overwhelm their foes. You can pop up to three of these festering tunnels onto the battlefield – a canny Clawlord might set aside some furry warriors at the start of battle as part of The Lurking Vermintide and deliver them into charge range with the Gnawhole Ambush.
Finally, conspiratorial thinking ensures that any Skaven is Always Three Clawsteps Ahead of an enemy, scurrying around in the enemy hero phase to reposition.
Battle Formations
The Clans Moulder have contributed terrifying new Rat Ogors for the Fleshmeld Menagerie. These Prized Creations are enhanced by warpstone, bolstering their melee prowess, generating a Ward (5+), or provoking a self-destructive fury.
Pestilens, Skryre, and Clan Verminus also have representation in the Skaven Battle Formations, specialising in lethal prototypes, corrupting the earth itself, and emboldening your rank-and-file Clanrats, Stormvermin, and other Claw-horde units.
Arcana and Incantations
Once in a generation – which is only a few years for Skaven – special ratfolk are born who can tap into the aether energy that suffuses the realms. With the aid of volatile warpstone chips, these twitchy wizards unleash devastating spells and can even summon a roiling Warp Lightning Vortex.
These swirling masses of warp energy hamper the movement of enemy units, and lash out with emerald bolts that fry foes with mortal damage.
Unit Focus
Mortal ratmen make up the vast bulk of the teeming Skaven hordes, but on occasion they are led into battle by Verminlords, potent daemons who answer only to the Great Horned Rat. Chief among these fell creatures is Lord Skreech Verminking, a being said to be the gestalt reincarnation of a particular Council of Thirteen that once plotted to murder their god.
This arcane amalgamation is a Terrifying Monstrosity who can weaken enemy infantry with a glance. As the Thirteen-Headed One, Skreech has numerous once-per-battle abilities, empowering units from one of the Great Clans within a 13” aura.
What the Skaven masses lack in muscle, courage, or raw violence, the Rat Ogors have in abundance. Not that their Clans Moulder packmasters stopped at mutations – they also saw fit to graft warpfire weapons on particularly promising specimens.
This violent combo sees packs of Rat Ogors periodically fly into a melee frenzy with Unleashed Warp-Fury, while dousing their opponents in searing blasts of green with the Shoot in Combat ability.
Most Skaven agree it’s far safer to engage enemies from a distance – but then, most Skaven haven’t suffered a Clans Skryre war machine malfunctioning in their face. Despite the high rate of friendly casualties, Warp-Lightning Cannons are prized tools, with Warlock Engineers and Clawlords alike demanding More-More Warp Lighting regardless of the price in scorched flesh.
With Faction Terrain getting a Health and Save characteristic, your opponents will want to quickly cave in any Gnawholes as they crop up, lest they be overwhelmed in a tide of fur and fangs. Fortunately, your Battle Traits will let you keep returning them to the battlefield.
Beyond acting as nodes for deploying your reserves deep into the battlefield, Gnawholes allow you to replenish The Endless Vermintide that is your swarm, and Tunnels Through Reality allow for even more devious movement shenanigans.
The Word from the Studio
Sam: “We've changed the way Gnawholes play on the battlefield to align them better with the narrative of the Vermindoom, in which the ambitious scheming has paid off and given them easy access to every Mortal Realm. Rather than setting up three Gnawholes at the start of each battle, Gnawholes will be constantly popping out of the ground throughout the course of the battle, thanks to the Splinters of the Vermindoom Battle Trait.”
This opens up lots of opportunities for your plans to unfold, all backed up by the variety of specialist units on offer via the Grand Clans. Coupled with your Battle Formations, you can build a Skaven army focused on one of the main Clans, or create a hodge-podge mix of rats of various creeds united in one purpose – defiling the realms for the glory of the Great Horned Rat.
Spearhead Spotlight
Just like the Stormcast Eternals, the Skaven have two complete Spearheads to choose from – the current Warpspark Clawpack and the new Gnawfeast Clawpack.
The new Spearhead does not suffer from its lack of literal Gnawholes. Your forces can still nibble through rifts in reality, as The Lurking Vermintide and Gnawhole Ambush gives you plenty of positional play – which is even more important on the smaller Spearhead board.
Tying everything together is a Grey Seer – that rare breed of magical Skaven with curling horns. Embodying the Will of the Horned Rat, he can turn even the most craven Clanrat into a valiant soldier – if only for a moment – and sap an enemy’s strength with Wither.
We’ll be getting even more dank, devious, and cowardly tomorrow, as we bask in the light of da Bad Moon and look at the Gloomspite Gitz with their disparate hordes of grots, troggs, and squigs.
