After last year’s changes, the most excitement being caused by the inadvertent “removal” of the Birthing Daughter who managed to miss her Big Red Book appointment but subsequently returned to us in the Companion App, this year’s update is pretty substantive, and I’m really excited about it.
Whilst I enjoy a good tournament, I’m not particularly competitive minded so my army selection tends to be a lot more based around rule of cool, and what I can be assed to paint. Whilst you’d be mistaken for thinking otherwise based purely on my win to loss ratio, as a faction, Ratkin are in a good place I believe with the usual suspects acquitting themselves well. However, there are a handful of units that need some love. So, it’s really welcome to see that this year’s changes are a combination of core changes that affect most of the other factions (cheaper phalanx, titan unit strength, redeploy, and menu-based wizards) and tinkering to units that sit on my “I’d like to take them to tournaments, but this unit is just more useful…” list.
Plague pots and Phalanx
I’m really happy to see plague pots get a price reduction, this was one of those changes I hadn’t really thought about until I realised the Twilight Kin’s Bloodhex (which gives +1 to defence for a turn) was priced at 5/5/10. Plague pots are great, but are they really more impactful than a defence bump for a turn. I’ve always wondered why anyone would bother taking phalanx for shock troops or spear warriors when plague pots exist, but with the points reductions for all of these I’m certainly tempted to see how much value there is in these upgrades.
I think possibly the best bang for your buck in all these changes is with the spear warriors. Not only do they benefit from more attacks, but also get a boost to unit strength for the 10 points more they cost than warriors, and now have the expendable key word as well.
It will be interesting to see if shock troops bring more halberds to the table. Personally, I see me giving phalanx to regiments because the combined cost of pots and halberds is the same as the old cost of pots, but I’m not sure about hordes. That being said, at 10 points for a horde instead of 25 I definitely see it becoming more of a consideration.
My one question about plague pots remains – was hackpaws not getting a cost reduction oversight or intentional?
Night Terrors, Swarn-Criers and Scurriers
These are the changes I’m most excited about. I really like night terrors, but having them in the heroes section just made them such a stretch to unlock. Having them as a monster now means they’ve already made their way into my next event list. The rally 1 is frankly the icing on top of the cake. Other than using Scud, I’ve found it hard to effectively rally faster moving units, but I don’t always want the demonspawn babysitting my tunnel runners. Being able to sit a night terror and the improved swarm-crier between a couple of regiments of tunnel runners means Scud (now 10 points cheaper) can make a nuisance of himself elsewhere on the battlefield creating two sources of reliable, fast threats for the opponent to deal with.
Finally, the scurriers have gotten their extra two attacks. Thematically I really like to use this unit, but they’ve just felt a bit lacking. Stealthy is a massive bonus. I will still take plague pots for this unit because when they’re fully rallied I have a suspicion they’ll become surprisingly hard to shift with a bit of ensnare.
Vermintide Legions
I have a legion painted up and will definitely be looking to use them at some point. There are a number of changes that have been made to this unit, but probably the best is that it is no longer irregular. Unlocking this unit always felt like a bit of a luxury, however having it as an unlocking unit, not only do I think it has the potential to be a great core unit for an army but also give more of a reason to bring the Birthing Daughter to the table.
A la carte magic
I’m not going to dwell on the game wide change to magic users, but I am just going to sat that a 15 point reduction on a lightning bolt 5 caster is nothing to be squeaked at.
So, what does this mean for my rats in the coming weeks?
All in all, this year’s changes bode well for another year of rat-based antics. The changes will definitely see me dabbling in some alternative builds. List building is already underway for the Christmas Reaper event in Bexley. I’ll be running out 2,345 of rodents and I now have a couple of ideas for lists, one built around tunnel runners, a swarm crier and a night terror, and one list bringing the vermintide legion to the table with a bunch of different synergies; but more on that later.
The Wizard's Bookshelf 