After a couple of months of playing Halflings, I decided to go back to Rats for the second Hinckley Heist event. Three games at 2,300 were the order of the day. With fourth edition looming I’ve found myself at a bit of a hobby loose end. So, with no real inspiration to try out new lists I decided to give the list I took to Gloucester earlier in the year another go.
Not only did the list perform pretty well, it includes a couple of my favourite units, the Death Engine Spewer and a troop of Scurriers. I have to admit that the Scurriers didn’t perform massively well at Gloucester in every game, but they had a couple of moments, and I wondered if a few more games might give me an opportunity to work out how they should be best employed.
My first game was against the organiser’s Forces of Nature. Nature is a naturally grindy faction, and Martin’s list had a healthy helping of fliers with two beasts of nature and two Greater Air Elementals. I kept a keen eye out for surge shenanigans from the outset, but fortunately none materialised. Because of some aggressive scout moves with the Hunters of the Wild I found myself making turn one charges with my Mutant Rat Fiend, spear warriors and vermintide. The gamble paid off, with one of the Hunter of the Wild being routed and the others blocked up. In the following turn the rats struck another decisive blow, with the war engine teams removing a Fire Elemental horde. Then a Greater Air Element went down.
Despite their best efforts, and several double one’s in their favour, the Forces of Nature just didn’t seem to be able to make a decisive impact on the vermin. Fire and Water Elements did manage to combine forces to wipe out both hordes of Shock Troops, but as the elite rats died, their comrades circled the elementals and finished them off and ending the game on a strong win.
Next up the rats faced off against the Order of the Brothermark, another grindy list, although with some very killy bits hanging around. The game started cautiously, with ratkin shooting removing two of the villain penitent regiments. The armies circled, creeping closer on the flanks, until the Brothermark made the first contact in turn four, charging an ogre captain into the mutant rat fiend and the Palace Guard into Mother Cryza. The fiend survived, but Cryza was smashed to a pulp. This meant the ogres were now free to start rampaging through the rat lines, taking out the fiend with a flank charge in the next turn.
On the other flank, at the bottom of the table, the humans were held in place by swarms of vermin fighters, whilst in the centre the ratkin weapons teams went to work. Bursts of flame cut through the foot paladins, making them easy pickings for the shock troops to run down.
With the Brothermark centre collapsed the shock troops prepared to overrun the scenario scoring zone in the centre (we were playing Hold the Line). Unfortunately for the rats they needed a seventh turn for that, which sadly never came, giving the Brothermark the win.
The final game was against the Orcs. I was really interested in this match up as I’ve had a lot of games against the green menace over the years where the rats have really struggled to break through. Since playing my horde heavy army, I feel like I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough, and I seem to have found an army that works well for me. This game felt like a good litmus test.
The scenario was Fools Gold, and I took no chances, positioning all my scoring tokens within easy reach of my troops. The rats don’t want to move much, and I wasn’t going to force them to. I was quite surprised by the orc’s set up as it meant it would take a couple of turns for the cavalry to reach my lines. That gave me time to break down their troops on my right flank in relative peace.
Orcs always seem to take longer that you’d expect to kill, but slowly and surely, they were rolled back. The weapons teams made an absolute menace out of themselves wavering infantry, removing already damaged units and shutting down orc movement. Much to my joy Gak got distracted by the Death Engine Spewer and the orc cavalry charge never materialised in the storm of hoof and tusk I had feared.
As the dust settled very few of the orcs still stood, although in a final act of defiance Gak smashed up a weapons engine team, causing twenty points of damage. Despite this the rats carried the day.
All in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable day. The rats performed admirably, taking sixth spot, and three highly enjoyable games were played. The best thing is that I think I have finally worked out what to do with scurriers. They are a bit counter intuitive to play, although I find that with a few rat units, but the troop has been absolutely legendary at this event. The vermin scouts took a Greater Air Elemental off with a sneaky flank charge, contributed massively to shooting off the penitents and holding up a phoenix in the second game and then smashed orc face with more flank action in the final game. Those melee three attacks hit hard, especially with some bane chant from the Tangle to complement their vicious. Now I’m getting used to them I’m looking forward to playing them at the next tournament.
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