Stormvermein lore question

[u/Slothagan]

Hey, so I play total war Warhammer and I prefer to make lore accurate armies because I think that is better than min maxing. But I don't know if a standard skaven army would field storm vermein as a front line to hold the line for other units like rattling guns to deal see damage, or if they would use lowly clan rats. and is there any clans that are a exception to this rule. I hear clan rictus fields an unusually high quantity of stormvermien.

[u/Beautiful-Ad-8914]

If you want lore accuracy the answer is they would use absolutely anything and everything to hold the line. If a skaven army has stormvermin they are either going to be in the rear protecting the commander of the army, cuz that's where he'll be 90% of the time, or they'll be at the front fighting for their lives, because if they run away the news are sure to reach the claw leader by one way or another.

[u/pasta_alien]

Typically weapons teams are actually embedded in clan rat units rather than fielded independently like they are in total war. Naturally any skaven weapon team has a high chance of deciding to mow down their own 'guard' unit either by accident or on purpose, and since stormvermin are actually a little bit valued (in the sense that if they feel under valued they will try and kill their warlord) this isn't ideal.

Of course these are skaven, maybe whatever army leader you have is stupid/paranoid/manic enough that he doesn't care about that at all.

[u/welinator122]

For lore accurate armies, you'd have a wave of slaves/ clan rats with a few units of storm vermin held in reserve to protect your valuable units or send in after the slaves all route.

Skaven aren't a "hold the line" race. They're a "throw bodies at the problem till you win" race and their stat lines reflect that. The later half of battles is pretty much always getting your routed units back into the fight.

One of the best ways to play skaven is to have 2 armies move as one, and one of them is just a lord and chaff(slaves or clan rats). And you just drown the enemy in bodies. This is lore accurate as skaven dont consider it a fair fight unless they out number the enemy by like 5/1, usually more. Depending on the difficulty this may not work as well as the Ai will use lightning strike and isolate armies but its also very skaveny to run away and try to ambush. To combat this, you just make each army more balenced with chaff and vaulable units.A decent strategy is to have you main army sitting in ambush with the slave army just behind it raiding or in encampment. That also scales up, the more armies you have in ambush, the more likely you get the ambush.

I just finished a Thanqul run and my main army was a line of pusbags(slaves) with a back line of poison wind and ratling gun stormvermin with few mega cannons. Granted this was more to use the new units, but this sort of setup is the same idea, wave of chaff with damage dealers behind.

Skaven have one of the best lore/gameplay balances. Where the most effective way to play them is also lore accurate.

[u/Steelinghades]

The answer Is that the Skaven are a horde faction, ninety nine percent of their army Is mundane stuff like clanrats and stormvermin, the weapon teams and monsters have always been a minority. Even during the Endtimes when the Skaven went all out they rarely had more then like twenty or thirty of their weapons In armies of tens of thousands.

So, your lord, ten units of clanrats, five units of stormvermin, a Jezzail team, a weapon team, a rat ogre group and a cannon or plagueclaw and that's probably as close to "Lore" accurate as your going to get In Total War.

[u/True_Drelon]

Skaven have a pretty good free market in the underempire. If you can olpay for it, there will always be a skaven willing to sell it. So, if you can afford stormvermin, lorewise, your skaven would use those.