Rats are my spirit faction for Kings of War. They’ve been my go-to since second edition, so changes to this army we’re always going to get my full attention. I won’t lie, my first reading left me with mixed feelings. The way the units were divided up and structured didn’t come as a great surprise, and a I really like the improvements to units like the War Chief and Birthing Daughter. What I haven’t been so keen on are the changes to plague pots, moving to commands, and the reduced impact of rally.
In third edition rats were considered one of the harder lists to get to grips with due to the various synergies and support interactions. Playing at events I’ve had a few people mention that they like the idea of rats but found they couldn’t get them to work. I can relate. It took me the best part of third edition to really get my head around them, find a list I really enjoyed playing and get them to perform reasonably well. For me rats were all about reliability. It’s a strange thing to say about an army that is powered by melee scores that rarely pass 4, but rallying, plague pots and the various other mechanics worked together to create dependable units. For anyone who doesn’t know I also played a Halfling list built around gastromancy in third edition, and whilst they relied on many of the same mechanics and units with stat lines that aren’t a million miles away from rats, they played very differently. The Halflings were much more random, far less reliable and delivered a very different type of enjoyment.
The impact of rallying has now been much reduced and plague pots have become unreliable, unless you get some Birthing Daughters on board. Yes, they can be used more often and there are ways to improve the chance of the command working, but I found an unjustifiable amount of satisfaction in getting the one-use version deployed at exactly the right moment. I appreciate that a lot of people are excited about strider being a command, but the range of units it can be applied to feels like the guard rails are sufficiently raised to not cause too much upset (it’s not like we have a cavalry unit with 20 attacks and movement 10 that can benefit from it). All this may sound like sour grapes, and I accept that, although I’d prefer to consider this a bit more of a cathartic ramble. An attempt to cleanse before pulling the plaster off and reminding myself that this is a new edition.
This is all the more important since I like the Mantic rat aesthetic, am largely enjoying forth edition and really want to see my army on the table. One positive I’m hoping from all this is that rats become a little easier to play and we see people revisit them, as well as starting shiny new armies.
I definitely won’t be burning my miniatures just as soon as there’s a break in the rain in the UK. In fact, last year’s plan for this year was to build a brand-new army, I’d still like to do that. To that end I decided that for their first game I would try running out a version of one of my favourite fun lists, all so known as “The one with all the Hackpaws”.
I do love the changes to the mounted vanguard of the Ratkin and so I built a list around the three and a half regiments of riders I have in various states of disrepair, tournament travel has taken its toll. I also took a War Chief, mounted of course, and two Birthing Daughters. I think these characters have a lot to offer, because they provide so much support. I would go as far as to say that Birthing Daughters will replace Brute Enforcers as auto includes as they are cheaper, can perform the same roles and make those all-important commands easier to get off. In addition to dishing out commands, the removal of disordering and the fact they aren’t yielding makes them ideal for slowing up any flying beasties that get into your back field, and they can score.
One cool thing about seeing multiple Birthing Daughters in armies is that the background states Birthing Daughters quite often become Master Scurriers, which gives me a great excuse to use both of these brilliant models.
The rest of the army was made up of Shock Troops, warriors, vermintide and a Death Engine Impaler. Unfortunately, my opponent’s list turned out to be a pretty solid counter to lots of light cavalry and relatively poor infantry. He brought Abyssal Dwarfs with 3 horde of Black Souls, 2 regiments of Golems and a horde of Decimators as the highly survivable core. My opponent played well and the result was a solid win to the angry dwarfs. Now, my intro of gripes is certainly not intended to be a response to the outcome of the game. The game was great, and there were certainly a few interesting moments. Watching the War Chief take down a horde of Decimators, pretty much single handedly was brilliant, whilst riding multiple unhindered regiments of Hackpaws into blocks of infantry felt fun (although watching them bounce off was not quite as much fun). In the end my units were simply not able to chew through the enemy as quickly as they chewed through me.
The commands may have been successful on almost every turn, but they don’t guarantee a win. Now please don’t think that I’m suggesting based on my one game that Ratkin are not a good army, that’s not true, a much better player than me has already shown that’s not the case. However, what I do think is that the army feels very different which I suspect will mean whatever list I eventually settle on will look very different. One thing I’m currently wondering is if we’ll see less diversity of units in lists going forward for rats. My pervious list featured 12 unique unit types out of 16 drops, lists that I’m currently working on seem to drift towards quite a bit of repetition, but this is only the start.
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