Back in 2018 I was just finding my way back to wargaming and into Kings of War. In 2019 I settled on Ratkin as my army of choice and attended my first tournament. It’s fair to say I didn’t really know what on earth I was doing, and had a very poor grasp on the rules, but I just wanted to play a fun list with some cool models.
From my point of view, I definitely achieved that. I was excited about the titan heavy army I carted along to the first four tournaments I went to. That list didn’t survive the transition into third edition. There were several reasons for that, but I suspect a large part of that resulted from a lack of understanding on my part of how to adapt new rules and unit swaps to the new edition. Since third edition arrived I’ve played many of the elements from this army at different events, but this is the first time I’m sticking them all together, and I’m looking forward to it.
What changed?
My final list in 2019 looked something like:
Shock troop horde with Brew of Sharpness
Nightmare horde with Caterpillar Potion (for newer player this used to give the unit pathfinder)
Blight horde with Brew of Haste (Blight were essentially a warrior unit with stealthy and ensnare)
Vermintide regiment
Hackpaw regiment
Night Terror
2 Mutant Rat Fiends
Scud
Enforcer with Inspiring Talisman (an individual that provided rally 1)
Warlock with Lightning Bolt and Banechant.
With 11 drops this was a pretty compact rat list and probably the biggest change between then and now (for this list specifically) were the changes to the Mutant Rat Fiends. In third edition their melee 4 would become melee 3, they would also gain Radiance of Life, gain Rally 1, lose Thunder Charge +1 and their base size would increase from 50mm to 75mm.
Overall, it was a pretty decent glow up for the fiends, but the new base size felt as though it fundamentally changed how the beasts worked. Also, the inclusion of Rally 1 hinted at them having a different role within the army.
There were a handful of other changes as well. Blight were retired, but from them (I like to believe) the plague pot emerged, and other point of note was the Enforcer also grew a bigger base and renounced its individual status. The bigger Brute Enforce has turned out to be one of the best loved Ratkin characters in third edition, arguably only rivalled by the Brood Mother, so it had to stay. Blight were relatively easy to replace with spear warriors, and plague pots were given to everything that could have them!
As a result the revamped list has seen some changes just by virtue of moving through editions, but I also wanted to make a couple of further tweaks, one in the name of functionality and one in the name of fun. Whilst I think Nightmares are a solid unit, they just don’t seem to work for me, so I decided to replace them with more spear warriors. This is the one change I feel there’s lots of arguments for and against, and I think only time will tell, but the other benefit of this is that it freed up points for fun things like plague pots on the Hackpaws. The final change was to swap out the Warlock for Twitch Keenear. I think Twitch is such a super fun character I couldn’t resist including him just in the spirit of the list. It has just struck me that losing the shooting from the Nightmares and the Warlock does change the army dynamics slightly, but I think there are plenty of other changes that will have had far bigger impacts. All this means the final list looks like this:
Shock troop horde with plague pot and Brew of Sharpness
2 Spear hordes with plague pots
Vermintide regiment
Hackpaw regiment with plague pot and Sir Jesse’s Boots of Striding
Night Terror
2 Mutant Rat Fiends
Scud
Brute Enforcer
Twitch Keenear.
If you don’t want to miss the next post, drop an email below to subscribe.
The Wizard's Bookshelf 