Army Advice: Skaven

[Frosthydra]

If anyone is going to be at Plainville tomorrow night, I wouldn't mind kind of a learning game of fantasy with my Skaven, if someone doesn't mind teaching a bit since it will be my first game.

I'd prefer a low-ish point total, just so it doesn't get too confusing.

Either that or I'll just spy on people's games and see what I can pick up.

-Steve

[Frosthydra]

So, I know that I had some minor discussions about this the other evening, but I thought I'd ask here just to make sure.

I'm thinking about making my groups of clanrats / stormvermin as follows:

30 clanrats with hand weapon / shield (6 models, 5 ranks) full command
30 clanrats with hand weapon / shield (6 models, 5 ranks) full command
40 clanrats with spears / shield (8 models, 5 ranks) full command
36 stormvermin with halberd / shield (6 models, 6 ranks) full command

Are these good setups as far as models / ranks go?  I was contemplating using the 40 rat group in a 10 model, 4 rank fashion, but I feel like a 5th rank might be more useful.

[Rhys]

as a general rule, narrower is better. the wider your unit is, the more models (from both sides) get to attack and this rarely works out in the favor of the skaven. i'm not a skaven player so i'm not sure but i'd say keep them 5-6 wide. if keithb chimes in on this though, listen to him.

[JakeM]

Your going to quickly learn that clan rats are not fighters. Their job is to stay alive  and not break for as long as possible. So give the enemy as few chances to base you as possible, have as many ranks as you can get and don't get into hand to hand until your shooting and magic have crippled them.

[keithb]

Your going to quickly learn that clan rats are not fighters. Their job is to stay alive  and not break for as long as possible. So give the enemy as few chances to base you as possible, have as many ranks as you can get and don't get into hand to hand until your shooting and magic have crippled them.

This.

You can do certain tricks to make your units better in hand to hand, like Doom flayer weapon teams and hidden assassins.   But the key to all this is that your magic + shooting, weakens your opponent.

[Frosthydra]

For the rats then, would it make more sense to go as follows:

30 clanrats with hand weapon / shield (5 models, 6 ranks) full command
30 clanrats with hand weapon / shield (5 models, 6 ranks) full command
40 clanrats with spears / shield (5 models, 8 ranks) full command

Just basically swapping the model and rank numbers, keep them as narrow as allowed, and very long?

And I only have the 40 with spears because that's how they're built, if my opponent doesn't care, could always say they have hand weapon instead I suppose.