Welcome to another review! This time I am taking a look at the Age of Sigmar Skaven Battletome. Skaven are an Army I have always been fond of and I have spent many hours playing Vermintide with members of the blog and my partner. I have been looking forward to a Skaven release in Age of Sigmar so that I could jump on board. This, unfortunately, isn’t it.
Don’t get me wrong, the book is brilliant and full of wonderful artwork, spells, abilities, allegiances and warscrolls. It really is a massive book. So why am I not reaching for my wallet in relationship ending defiance? Simple. The Skaven range is old, tired and doesn’t fit with GWs current exceptional model standard. Here is artwork of a plague monk from in the book:
Here is one of the models that I think came out in the early years of this millennium.
The range just isn’t there. For me, this is a problem across the board for Age of Sigmar where old models and ranges are given a piece of terrain, a new hero and some endless spells with a battletome and that is deemed as acceptable. For many it seems to be working as AoS is doing well from my understanding. For me it is poor form.
Before I get onto the actual review of the book I have one final gripe - the setting itself. In one piece of artwork you have Dwarves with flying lead balloons and pistols fighting against muscle rats with guns...it’s all a bit too ‘Epic Fantasy’ for me. It has moved away from any degree of realism so far that I find it difficult to get interested in the lore.
Enough about that.
The book has some nice painting guides too, looking at areas of importance like flesh and fur:
Let’s look at my 5 discussion areas from the book:
1. The gang is all in one place. One of the things a lot of players were annoyed about was the breaking up of some of the factions. In Battletome Skaven the band have got back together and it is now easier to field them all in one giant mismatch army...a bit like they were in 8th edition I guess!
2. Allegiance variety! There are no less than 10 Allegiance abilities in the book! 4 of them are standard fare and 6 of them are for the major clans. Now, I may be reading this wrong - or just plain don't get it - but in the Warhammer Community preview it says you can use all 10 at once...https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/02/05/5th-feb-chaos-battletome-skaven-the-low-downgw-homepage-post-3/
3. Endless spells. My favourite endless spell is the Bell one. You get to roll 3D6 and if you roll the magic number 13 then every enemy unit within 13 inches receives D3 mortal wounds. It also has a positive battleshock modifier for Skaventide and a negative modifier for everyone else.
4. Clan variety. There are 6 command abilities and artefacts for EACH of the Skaven clans! That's a whopping 36 abilities or optional wargear! Whether you are focusing your force around a single clan or not there is a tonne of options here to sink your teeth into. My favourite is 'Cunning' as I feel it really fits with the sneeky nature of the Skaven:
There are also 2 sets of spells! One set of 6 for the Grey Seer only and one set of 3 for Clan Skryre.
5. Last is Warpstone shards. These shards are generated before the game and can be used to help various dice rolls and skills. Yet another nice little addition to the Skaven army.
I would like to take a better look at the Endless Spells, Spell lores and Warpstone Sparks in a future post but that's it from me for now. It really is a wonderful book and well worth a look if you are interested and can ignore the fugly model range lol.
Order yours from my friend at Battleground Gaming:
https://battlegroundgaming.co.uk/collections/age-of-sigmar/products/games-workshop-battletome-skaven drop a note in the comments saying I sent you and take part in his competition:
'From now until the 30th March each £20 spent in store or online will give you the chance to be our one lucky winner. The grand prize is £150 worth of GW products of your choosing.
Make sure to like,share and comment. IF you have not already liked the page then like the page as well.
Draw will be done on 1st April'
If you have any questions about the Skaven boom or you want to know more, drop a comment and I will happily revisit it asap.
Kaelo!
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