Skaven Troops, Warhammer Unit Chronicles
Clanrats, Stormvermin and Slaves are the backbone of any Skaven army so let’s take a close look at them, the concepts, the models, the rules and the lore throughout the years and editions.
It’s time to take a look at units from one of the most Warhammery armies in Warhammer, yes-yes, that’s right — the Skaven! We’ll take a look at the core of any Skaven army, the humble Clanrats, the downtrodden Slaves and the elite Stormvermin. These deep dive articles take up to tens of hours to research and write and while I’m doing it to fulfill my passion for the hobby, I would really appreciate any small contributions to help me justify the hours spent to myself and maybe possibly my wife. Just 1 warpstone token (1$) would go a very long way and I would really appreciate that. If you think this or my previous articles are worth a dollar or more, you can do that here. A massive thank you to that one reader who donated previously (you know who you are)! Please do also follow me here on Medium, if you don’t have an account you can just use your Google or Facebook account, that way you won’t miss my next article.
Now that we’ve dispensed with the unfortunate realities of life, let’s get to the topic on hand. I think it’s fair to say that the Skaven are the most distinct and original army in Warhammer, at least when looking at the core concept. I would argue that most if not all armies in Warhammer are distinct and original enough (see exactly what I mean by that here), but that was mostly achieved by taking an existing concept and then slowly along the years marinating that concept in Warhammer juices until they had soaked enough of it. The Skaven however are an original concept, so there never was a need to slowly make the “more Warhammer”. Sure, there were some previous examples of ratmen in literature from prior, but they certainly weren’t a fantasy trope with established characteristics. There is The Swords of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber first published in 1968 with a race of cunning ratmen in a fantasy setting and there’s a few other examples of ratmen in literature that are prior to the Skaven, but none of them are conceptually similar to the Skaven apart from just being anthropomorphic rats and possibly some traits like being cunning and scheming. Even for that I think it’s fair to say that being cunning has been culturally associated with rats already from before any fantasy books were written or at the very least it’s a very natural association to make. We’ve certainly had anthropomorphic animals in mythology and folklore around the world as well, so as a generic concept it’s something that is well established and part of our cultural heritage, making it easy to accept narratively. An additional element of inspiration on the Skaven that Andy Chambers mentioned on the Crown of Command podcast (S1 E71) came from Germanic mythology where their version of dwarfs and trolls live underground, build things, are malevolent and if you strike a deal with them you’ll likely regret it. Andy wrote the first ever Skaven army book for 4th edition with the consultation of Jes Goodwin who was the original creator of the concept. By they way, If you haven’t heard it before, the name Skaven simply comes from the word “scavenger”. The beauty of Skaven is that they have pulled all those deeply held narratives, tropes and images about rats and used that to build a very strong concept for the Skaven in Warhammer. Really when you think about it, that’s not any different from any of the other factions and concepts in Warhammer, there just was much less previously done on this particular concept compared to the others so there was more freedom to design them.
With that general history of the concept covered, let’s now take a look at the main Skaven infantry units in specific, they weren’t around during the first edition of the game, but were added quickly within a few years of the launch of Warhammer during it’s second edition so let’s jump straight into that period of the game.
Warhammer 2nd Edition (1984)
Usually I begin the exploration of each edition with a section on the rules and lore, but in the case of Skaven they interestingly got miniatures before they got any rules or lore so let’s take a look at the first Skaven ever released. In November 1985 during the 2nd edition of Warhammer the Third Citadel Compendium was published and in the catalogue there is a section for “Chaos Ratmen (Skaven)” with 10 Skaven models designed by Jes Goodwin. All of them have a name or a title and we already have a few terms that will be used for all the future editions like “Night Runner”, “Packlord” and “Plague Monk”. We know from interviews with Jes that when he designed these models, he already had developed the basic elements of their lore, so these models were not meant to just be variations of Chaos Beastmen, although you could have certainly used them with those rules before they got rules of their own. These early models are clearly an initial exploration of the concept of Skaven in Warhammer with various conceptual archetypes being established here instead of being a unit of the same type of models and I think it’s quite remarkable how mature these concepts were right from the get go. Anyone familiar with modern Warhammer could take a look at that Plague Monk model and recognize it as a Skaven Plague Monk without any issue. The Skaven are possibly the only army where that could be stated, for all other armies the models released this early wouldn’t be recognizable as the units they are depicting by a modern player who is only familiar with modern models. In fact, most probably couldn’t even identify models from this period being Warhammer or Games Workshop models, but Skaven are so distinct to Warhammer and Jes created such great designs right from the get go that they didn’t require any fundamental changes, they were just able to expand on these archetypes laid out in the beginning.
I would argue that these models are on the higher end of quality just in terms of sculpting when compared to other models of this period, especially their posing is very good in context to others as the poses are very varied and they feel natural. While I love models of this early period, many of them suffer from looking very hunched and rigid and I don’t get that feeling from these ones. Sure by today’s standards they might be very rigid but considering these were hand sculpted with the tools and materials of the day, they are very impressive to me. Jes really hit it out of the park with these ones, especially from the design perspective but also from the technical sculpting perspective.
I have always personally thought it obvious that the Skaven were quite heavily influenced by Medieval Japan with the styling of their armour, their weapons, the monks with wooden staffs and the assassins with their throwing stars and the shape of their banners among other things but surprisingly I wasn’t able to find anyone from Games Workshop talking about this and even the general hobby public doesn’t seem to talk about this in discussions about the inspirations behind them. I think it’s especially evident with the Stormvermin with their polearms that look like Naginata and their armour with the interlocking folding armour plates that resemble the armour of the Samurai. Even the helmets with their decorative tops have something of a Samurai helmet feeling, although visually totally different. Sure, that type of armour with the interlocking strips of armour was also used by Europeans as well as other cultures and there were also European polearms with a somewhat similar design of a curved blade so it’s not totally one to one like the Empire with Germany, but still I would argue it’s obvious that Medieval Japan served as one of the main sources of inspiration for the main elements of their aesthetics. There are the curved blades of the knives and swords with the cloth strips, the afore mentioned curve bladed polearms and also the mancatchers used by the Packmasters which were common in Edo era Japan. All of this isn’t quite as evident on these first Skaven models, but all of the elements I mentioned are already present there and they were just expanded upon later on. I don’t think it would be too far fetched to say that the symbols of Skaven also have some Japanese influence to them, the main triangle symbol of Skaven to me has that look to it although I think the case for the symbols isn’t as strong as for the equipment and units. All of this is just commentary on the visual elements of the models, I haven’t really thought about the general lore of Skaven and whether there’s anything that could have been inspired by Japan there. Maybe the council of thirteen could have been inspired by the Rōjū council under the Tokugawa Shogunate? That might be a bit far fetched as there’s plenty of examples of councils in other cultures, just throwing that out there while writing this, I’ll need to go deeper into all that in another article.
The C47 Range of Skaven models was started with the models pictured above from the Compendium, but very quickly within a few months there would be additions to this range along with the first publication of lore and rules for the Skaven in the Citadel Journal. Let’s take a look at that next.
The first time the Skaven got published lore and rules was in the Citadel Spring Journal 86, which contained the famous scenario The Vengeance of the Lichemaster that had some Skaven in it as antagonists but more significantly in the following pages the Skaven got a proper article length treatment. Here again one is left amazed at the level of maturity of the concepts and lore, which were written by Jes Goodwin himself as well. You could pretty much insert the lore section from here to any later army book and it would mostly fit right in terms of the content. The text itself is more conceptual than the style of the army book, but the lore and concepts themselves haven’t changed. I think there’s a few elements going on here on why the Skaven in specific didn’t require any major overhaul later on in the setting’s life, which I would say are quality of the design, being distinctly Warhammer and popularity. I think it’s fair to say that Jes Goodwin is one of the most talented concept designers in the industry and even though this was early days in his career, the design of the Skaven was of very high quality right from the jump so there wasn’t much that needed to be fixed. As I wrote in the introduction, the Skaven are arguably the most original army in Warhammer, so there wasn’t a need to make them more Warhammer like there was with other armies. The last element is popularity, as far as I’m aware, they have always been a quite popular army among the players which obviously meant that there was less pressure to update their core concepts.
Before I get too carried away on that, let’s return to the ’86 Citadel Journal. There’s plenty of very intriguing stuff discussed in it, but as I have to remind myself here, this article is a deep dive on the main Skaven troops— not the Skaven in general! That’s another article I’ll certainly write another day (remember to follow me here!) and there’s also already a great video on that by Jordansorcery. Unfortunately there isn’t any dedicated section on the different troop types themselves yet, but the basic characteristics of the Skaven and their way or war is established here. Their basic weapon type is said to be long knives that are sometimes serrated and have cruel nicks or twists to their design, they are also said to employ polearms commonly as well as various nets and hooked weapons with which they seek to entangle and trap their enemies. Some of them can even use their tails as third arms! They are said to be vicious fighters but generally lacking in discipline, however if they can be driven into vicious frenzy, they are almost unstoppable. There’s lots more to the article like the description of how Skaven came to be in the Warhammer world, about warpstone and so on. You can read the whole thing at The Stuff of Legends.
The basic statline for a Skaven, which would later be called a “Clanrat” was established here as well. The statline would remain almost exactly the same for all of Warhammer, only the personal characteristics are different compared to later edition where they will be compressed to just leadership and where a basic Clanrat will have a leadership of 5 although usually bolstered by numbers.
As mentioned above, Jes Goodwin designed and sculpted more models to the C47 Skaven range right away after their initial release at the end of 1985 with these additions having been released during the spring of 1986. We now have a few more models for Skaven archetypes, like Gnawdoom for Greyseers and Carver for Clanrats or possibly Stormvermin as he’s armour is of the style that would become usual for the Stormvermin later on (also for many Skaven characters). Throt The Unclean is also wielding a mancatcher which would be wielded later on by Skaven Packmasters and there’s multiple models wielding polearms, which will be heavily featured with especially the Stormvermin. The C47 range contained all in all 19 distinct models, you can see modern pictures of all those models at the Lost Minis Wiki.
In 1987 at the tail end of 2nd edition Games Workshop published the army lists supplement Ravening Hordes which has Skaven as one of the army lists, they are now first time included among the other armies in a “mainline” publication for the game. Here we already have the Skaven clans described, Clan Eshin with their assassins, Clan Skryre with their Warlock engineers, Clan Pestilens with their plague monks, Clan Moulders with their foul Chaos beasts and the various smaller Warlord Clans who provide the fighting force of Skaven. The various units of those clans are all described here with their rules. There is no dedicated section to Skaven warriors, either Clanrats or Stormvermin as neither of those terms are in use at this point yet. The basic Skaven warriors which will become Clanrats are called Warrior Clan Skaven here, but there are no elite troops like the Stormvermin yet. We do however get a dedicated lore text about Skaven Slaves and also rules for them, they are described as being poorly equipped and used to bulk up the number of troops and to serve as cannon fodder. Here they are said to be chained together to ensure their cooperation and prevent them from fleeing, which is also reflected in their rules.
The basic statline for Skaven, which the Warrior Clan Skaven use, is exactly the same as was published in the previous Citadel Journal. Apart from the personal characteristics section this statline will remain exactly the same for Skaven Clanrats in later editions, when those are condensed into just leadership with 4th edition Warhammer, they will have a leadership of 5. The points cost will of course vary between editions based on how that particular edition handles the size of armies but the general trend is that compared to the basic troops of other armies they are very cheap. It’s really a quite solid statline for that points cost and the movement 5 is a definite advantage compared to most others. The main defining weakness is of course their low leadership, but there will be various ways to compensate for that in the different editions. The only way to do that in this version of the army list are potions which can be taken by Skaven regimental leaders and administered by them at the start of the game to the whole unit at a cost of 2 points per model, the effect of the potion is random and determined by a roll of D6, but there doesn’t seem to be any limit on it’s effect so assumedly it lasts the whole game. There are various positive effects with these potions with of course some risk added to it, we are talking about a Skaven concoction after all! On a roll of 6 the potion is a dud and does nothing, on a roll of a 1 the morale of the unit is bolstered and they add +2 to their leadership for tests of rout, fear and terror, the other results can make the unit have increased armour save, give the unit hatred against enemies with animosity towards other Skaven or give them hatred and frenzy with animosity towards other Skaven. On a roll of a 5 you need to roll another die for the regiment at the start of each turn, with a roll of 2–6 the regiment doubles it’s movement and attacks as they become stimulated by the potion, but on a roll of 1 you need to roll a die for all individual models in the unit and if a 1 or 2 is rolled for this test, that model is killed as the ratman’s little hear explodes due to over stimulation. That’s quite a bit of beneficial effects with not that much risk, although I think as a Skaven player you’d probably hope to be able to compensate for the low leadership in a way that isn’t based on a random roll of the dice.
Skaven Slaves have a worse statline in almost all characteristics, especially the halved movement is quite brutal and severely hampers the usefulness of the unit. That slow movement is there due to them being described as being chained together so they cannot move freely and they also take double casualties from their pursuers if they are routed from the “free hack” rule as well as on subsequent pursuit rounds (fleeing and pursuing is a bit different here compared to later editions). They have an even worse leadership and all the main strengths of the Skaven, the high movement and high initiative are also taken away, but that is all compensated by the very low cost of 1¾ points. That is the lowest cost for any unit in Ravening Hordes, for comparison the Goblins come at 2¼ points by default. I do appreciate the granularity of the early points system, but I’m glad we don’t have to deal with quarter of half points any more! As is visible in the screenshot of the statline above, equipment for the salves cost only half of their normal value due to their low stats, although later on in Ravening Hordes the cost of “halberds of similar polearms” is listed as ¼ points per model while the same costs 1 point for Warrior Clan Skaven so I’m not sure what they mean by that half cost below the statline (surely it’s not halved of what is specifically listed for them). They can also take shields at ¼ points per model, although only 50% of the Slaves in the army can take halberds or shields. There are no other equipment options for them listed even though the text below the statline says specifically “arms & armour”, well I guess shields could be considered armour. A Skaven Slave unit needs to be led by a basic Warrior Clan Skaven at their cost of 4½ points and he can be equipped like Warrior Clan Skaven units with a spear, halberd, shield, “chainmail or metal breastplates” or even with full plate armour!
As mentioned earlier, there are no Stormvermin or any other type of elite infantry in this list yet but you could create a Warrior Clan Skaven unit that is equipped with halberds at +1 point per model and full plate armour at +1½ per model at a total cost of 6 points per model. The full plate armour is limited to max 25% of all the Warrior Clan Skaven models in the army, but halberds can be given specifically to 30 warriors in the army. With the maximum amount of Warrior Clan Skaven you could take at 250 (1125pts for all those!), you could in theory have 63 of them in full plate armour but only 30 with halberds but of course for most armies the 25% works to make the armour more limited than halberds as makes sense. I guess you could call that as part of the charm of these early editions to have mixed limitations of numerical values or percentages, although to be fair with the 2nd edition the worst of such rules had already been ironed out. I’m sure Richard Halliwell or Bryan Ansell, who are credited as the authors, had a rational reason behind such rules even if now looking back they just seem unnecessarily convoluted.
After a break of around 1,5 years from the previous Skaven release discussed above, a new quite large set of various Skaven warrior miniatures were released in September 1987 followed the month month by a set of Skaven Command miniatures. A month prior in July a set of Skaven warmachines had been released with a cool Skaven flamethrower team, but that we’ll leave for another article. I’ve chosen here to include the full colour picture of the new C47 Skaven miniatures from White Dwarf #93, but they were also shown of in the same month of September ‘87 in the famous “Thankyou, Mister President” -flyer where Games Workshop is thanking the then US President Reagan for his efforts to fix the price of US dollar that includes an illustration of the White Dwarf himself shaking hands with President Reagan! If you haven’t seen this gem of GW history then I thoroughly recommend clicking the link and checking it out, it’s probably the only time GW has so openly referred to a current political issue (they did use to do it all the time but normally covertly by allegories in their game publications etc.) and it’s just a pretty bizarre thing to see. I think it’s probably high time to send Mister White Dwarf to the White House again to assist with the fixing of the dollar price!
This new set of Skaven models includes 20 + 1 distinct models (that +1 is the Skaven casualty as you wouldn’t likely us that in a unit) and 12 distinct command models, with the previously available models you now had around 35 distinct models that are suitable to be used as Warrior Clan Skaven models (not including the Grey Seer, the Plague Monk, Throt and the scroll guy of the previous set of 19) as well as 12 command models allowing you to build an army with a pretty decent level of variability in the models of your units. It’s not quite up to the level of many other armies during this period especially if you wanted to use only models that reflect the equipment that should be on that model as is usual. There are certainly models that are suitable as slaves as they have no armour and you could also create a unit of just models with hand weapons and shields or a unit with polearms, armour and shields but with that you would have quite a bit of repeat miniatures. Despite some of those limitations I must say that this Skaven range is easily one of the best ranges available during 2nd edition with lots of really great miniatures, I would love to get my hands on these Goodwin sculpts one day even though I’ve never collected any Skaven previously. They are just bursting with character and for the most part they do not have the issues some of the early miniatures have with rigid posing and strange proportions.
That’s it for the first releases of Skaven during 2nd edition, next up we’ll take a look at the Skaven troops during the complex and magnificent 3rd edition when Citadel was releasing models at a breath taking pace!
Warhammer 3rd Edition (1987)
With the release of Warhammer 3rd edition in December 1987 it was pretty much a clean slate in terms of rules as 3rd edition was the first major overhaul of the game rules, the core of the game remained mostly the same, but there was much that was added or tweaked. This edition is widely considered as the most complex and comprehensive Warhammer ever got with rules for most things you could imagine wanting to play out on the tabletop. In White Dwarf #95 (November 1987) 3rd edition is introduced with an article explaining what was changing with the new edition along with what you’ll need to play the game, here they write that Warhammer Armies is the companion volume to Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd Edition with it’s full army lists. Unfortunately it would be nearly a year before this companion volume was released, so players were left with either only using the rulebook with it’s bestiary and equipment sections to build a list which is quite clunky and has a very limited selection of units or using the previous editions army list supplement Ravening Hordes. From what I’ve been able to find in GW publications using Ravening Hordes was mostly fine, but might have required some modification to fully align with the new rules.
The bestiary section of the rulebook contains a section on the Skaven now for the first time in Warhammer history with a very short description of them along with stats and points for a baseline Skaven and the various levels for heroes and wizards. The Skaven are said to be a race of Chaos Beastmen combining the physique and mental outlook of human and rat who are sometimes known as ratmen. They owe their existence to the mutating effects of warpstone that causes severe mutation and death to most creatures, but due to their origin the Skaven are mostly immune to those effects and they are able to consume it in a refined form to gain energy. They are said to be widespread throughout the world but with their presence rarely felt as they usually stay underground in their vast network of tunnels and underground cities ruled by the Thirteen Lords of Decay organized in clans. So really the usual fare of Skaven lore we are all familiar with, this being the first version of a very condensed section of lore with all the main elements included.
The statline and the points cost of a basic Skaven at 4½ points remains the same as in the previous publications, their alignment is listed as chaotic and there’s a few special rules about what the Skaven army can include but those simply say that they can take assassins, special weapons and magics “as indicated in Warhammer Armies”. The only interesting tidbit here is that “for competition games” Skaven units must have D6–3 dominant chaos attributes generated before the game and under the supervision of the GM. Those are generated from the same list of chaos attributes that Chaos armies use, noting how the Skaven are here more closely associated with Chaos compared to most later editions where a stronger distinction was made although that association will always remain.
Finally in October 1988 Warhammer Armies was published so that players no longer had to scratch their head wondering at all the references to that book in the main rulebook. I haven’t found the reason why it was obviously delayed so long, there’s no mention of that in the introductory article written about the supplement by it’s main author Nigel Stillman in White Dwarf #106 (October 1988) other than it being a “perilous journey”. It’s likely the usual production issues that happen with such publications especially since in this one Nigel was tasked with including rules for all the Warhammer models “currently in existence or likely to exist in the future” which at this point was becoming quite a massive range of miniatures.
The Skaven section in Warhammer Armies contains a new section of lore which is at least double in length compared to what was in the rulebook. I won’t go much into it, I’ll just highlight that in this text they are described as being the servants of Chaos and that they spread the corruption of chaos via a vast network of underground tunnels, which makes them seem certainly more active in their dealings with the other races than in the previous text in the rulebook. The many Warlord Clans are said to often be just small packs or gangs but they provide the bulk of Skaven warriors. Skaven wear dark, ragged clothing with their armour often being scavenged from the battlefield.
In Warhammer Armies the Skaven must have at least half of it’s points used on “rank & file” units and all Skaven units may have D6–3 Chaotic Attributes, but they do not have to have them. There isn’t any specific mechanic for compensating for the low leadership of the Skaven listed anywhere within the Skaven army list, so it seems they don’t have anything that is specifically for them in 3rd edition. The rulebook contains a section on creating magic items for your army with various abilities that can be put on various forms of magical items (weapons, armour, banners etc.) where you could boost the leadership of a character by +1 with a magic item, which if he is leading the Skaven unit, they use his leadership. That was the only one I found going through them, there isn’t any banners that help with routing, panicking or leadership in general. It seems like here you had to deal with the low leadership of these units as it is by default, luckily it’s at least 6 for all the basic troop units instead of the 5 it would be in future editions.
With Warhammer Armies we now have for the first time actual unit cards where you can find most of the pertinent information related to it like the statline, points cost, basic equipment and equipment upgrade options. This is a huge step up in the ease of building an army list or just generally reading the book as in the previous publications you usually needed to look in multiple different sections or even from multiple different publications for this basic unit information.
Now for the first time we have a unit named Stormvermin which are a elite unit of Warrior Clan Skaven being +2 Shock Elite. I’ll need to write a separate article to go through some of these 3rd ed rules, but basically that +2 means that the unit has been upgraded by 2 levels from the baseline Skaven statline, the upgrade is already in the statline so it is simply there for reference, to be able to quickly assess the power level of the unit. If my memory serves it increases at least the weapon skill and initiative of the unit, at level 2 it might include other stats as well. In any case, it means that the unit can be made more powerful than it’s basic statline denotes, but at a high points cost. The statline for Stormvermin will remain the same in later editions except again for the personal characteristics and leadership of 5, but the equipment will later on be standardized to halberds and heavy armour (beginning with 6th ed).
Now the Warrior Clan Skaven are called Clanrat Warriors which will be their name until 6th edition where it will be shortened to just Clanrat. Other than that there isn’t much to remark on here, their points cost has gone slightly up to 6 points but that includes now shields and light armour by default so it’s really about the same. They can also take spears or even double-handed weapons.
In addition to the 3 Skaven troop types discussed previously, with 3rd ed the Skaven also got a unit called Black Skaven Clanrats which are a semi elite unit of Skaven warriors. Interestingly the only time after this publication we’ll see Black Skaven as a separate concept will be in Mordheim where they are one of the Hero choices for the Skaven warband. In the later lore the Stormvermin and Black Skaven are combined into one as the Black Skaven are a stronger breed of Skaven almost all of whom join the ranks of Stormvermin to become elite warriors.
Here the Black Skaven Clanrats don’t have much to differentiate them from the Clanrats of Stormvermin, they are right in the middle of those two in terms of their power level as they are +1 Shock Elite. Without the upgrade their statline is a mix between the basic Clanrats and the Stormvermin as they have the same weapon skill 4 as Stormvermin but only 4 initiative like the Clanrats (5 for Stormvermin). The only other difference is that only the Black Skaven Warriors can take Halberds in this list, so that’s likely the biggest reason a Skaven player would deploy a unit of them. Note that in 3rd edition a unit with halberds cannot take shields as well, but they add +1 strength to the model and interestingly they also give the model +1 initiative against mounted and flying models. 3rd edition has quite interesting weapon rules with most having multiple special rules instead of the later simplified system, for example Pikes have 9 different rules affecting their use! That might be a bit overkill, but I do wish the later editions would have a bit more varied rules for weapons and especially more of a rock, paper & scissors system where spears and pikes would be a counter against cavalry and so on like they have here in 3rd ed (amongst other rules pikes give +6 initiative against mounted enemies!).
The slaves are here listed as Skavenslaves and that’s what they’ll be called until 6th edition. They are no longer bound in chains so they can move the normal 5 of a Skaven, which I’m sure caused sighs of relief amongst Skaven players at the time. Otherwise they are mostly the same as before, now at a slightly higher cost of 2½ points per model, they can be equipped with spears, shields and interestingly with slings. There doesn’t appear to be any special rules affecting them.
All of the 4 units described above would have been made using the same basic Skaven range, although of course you’d select the most applicable looking models for your units and you could differentiate the Black Skaven from others with your paintjob. The pictures in the Warhammer Armies book are of mostly units using just one specific model which I find a bit peculiar since there were multiple models with the same equipment and style of each different loadout so you didn’t actually have to use just one model, although the selection varied depending on which loadout your unit had (more models available with halberds for example).
According to Lost Minis Wiki some time during 3rd edition a range of Skaven Clanrats was reissued under the code 4450 Clan Rats, this set contained models previously released in the C47 range that contained all kinds of Skaven models, likely with the purpose of making it easier to distinguish or buy specifically Clanrat models. This set contains also 3 models sculpted by Jes Goodwin, which are clearly from this early period but they haven’t been featured in any of the catalogues, journals, compendiums or White Dwarfs of the period so it’s a bit of a mystery. They are present in a later early 90s catalogue, so it’s possible they were released only then even if they had been sculpted at the same time as the C47 range or they could have been done later. I’ll include them here for completeness sake, but I wasn’t able to verify when they were released from a secondary source so it’s possible they were a later release although 3rd ed is more likely. At least these are very cool models with their imposing poses and weapons.
I have done my best to catalogue all the Skaven models that can be used as Clanrats, Stormvermin or Slaves released during the 2nd and 3rd editions above using Games Workshop publications, but there are a few models that were released during the 80s and never included in any of the catalogues or other publications. They seem to appear for the first time in the 1991 Section 2 Catalogue, but they are mixed in with models already featured here so I won’t include all those catalogue pages here. I’ll include a picture of a particularly cool model below that hasn’t been featured here yet and if you want to see all the models, you can check them on the page for the 4406 Skaven range at Lost Minis Wiki. The 4406 range was a new range from the early 90s that simply combined all the 80s Skaven models under a new product code, it had 71 models in total, but that includes all Skaven models of all kinds. The whole range has 45 models that could suitably be used as Clanrats, for Stormvermin and Slaves there’s of course less suitable models bu still easily enough to create great looking varied units.
In 1987 Citadel released one of it’s first plastic miniatures set, the Fantasy Regiments (PBS3) box set. It contained 60 models all together but strangely these were of 6 different armies so you got 10 of each army’s model. There was an alternative head and a weapon for the Orc, Dwarf, Skaven and Goblin included in the set and just alternate heads for the elves. The head was a separate piece, but the weapons were molded on the model so if you wanted to change them, you had to cut off the weapon and glue the other part on, for the Skaven this was an alternate blade for the sword. The set included shields for all except the elves. I have personally 8 of the Dwarf models from this set and they are really of a surprisingly high quality for being so early plastic models. Obviously the plastic is very different compared to more modern Citadel models, it has a different feel and the details are much more rounded but if you paint them in a similar way as your other much later models, they blend in surprisingly well. The Skaven model is especially quite close to the metal models of this period in look and you could easily bulk up units with these plastic models without the look of the unit suffering much at all. The set was meant as a cheap way to build up bigger regiments for your armies, but it kind of failed in that because it was a very big box but you would likely only need 10 models out of the 60, so you’d have to buy it with a friend or try to sell forward the rest of the models. Even with all of that I’m sure hobbyists of the period were happy to have a cheap option for bulking up their units if they played one of the armies featured in this set. This certainly was a big step for Games Workshop in their journey towards the company they would become.
Warhammer 4th Edition (1992)
The 4th edition of Warhammer was launched in a big box set, marking a first time Games Workshop did that with one of their mainline games (they had previously released a big box set with lots of models for Space Marine that would become Epic later). The Warhammer box set came with a hefty set of High Elves and Orc & Goblins models as well as a rulebook, a bestiary and the Warhammer Armies 4th edition booklet that contained initial army lists for most factions. With 4th edition the ruleset was significantly simplified and trimmed from 3rd edition, which was a very comprehensive and quite complex ruleset. This is also the edition that will set in stone many elements in the rules and especially for the armies, establishing “the feel” that all the armies would have for the rest of the game’s life (and likely after it’s resurrection with The Old World!). In the 4th edition bestiary book we see the effects of this for the Skaven, the personal characteristics have been trimmed down to just leadership which here is 5 for the baseline Skaven. Other than that the Skaven statline remains the same, but already here in the bestiary we now get the crucial rule for Skaven which gives them a leadership bonus based on their rank bonus, without which the whole army would be nearly unplayable. Here the rule says that it applies to all Skaven and that they get +1 leadership for all ranks they have up to leadership 10, not that in 4th edition (and until 7th) a rank needs to be 4 models wide to give this bonus or a rank bonus for combat resolution. Combat resolution is capped at +3, but with the leadership bonus going up to leadership 10, that means for Clanrats you’d need to have 5 extra ranks (the first rank is not counted for the bonus) to have the maximum bonus so that would be 24 models for a formation with 4 models per rank or 30 models for a formation of 5 models per rank. In terms of later editions, that isn’t a huge unit, but for 4th edition a unit of 30 models is certainly larger than usual but that’s how the Skaven are intended to be played, that was done intentionally by Andy Chambers to promote large units as it fits with the theme of the army (and endless swarm of rats!).
There’s a nice long section on the lore of Skaven in the bestiary, longer than in the previous publications with the exception of the original Citadel Journal article. The only new thing mentioned here that I noticed is that the Slaves of Skaven are usually other Skaven beaten in combat, but that they can also be other races like humans or any other that can be subjugated to slavery. That’s something that has never been reflected in the models for Skaven slaves, likely to keep the theme and aesthetics of the army consistent, but it would certainly be cool to have an unit of Slaves with various races represented in it. I’m sure someone has modelled that, but I haven’t come across a unit like that so far in my hobby life or during my obsessive browsing of various Warhammer communities. The lore section in the bestiary also highlights the internal squabbling of the Skaven more than the previously published pieces, it has been always mentioned, but here it’s one of the central themes of the race and that will certain be the case going forward. In fact the Skaven are likely the biggest threat to the Warhammer world due to their staggering numbers and crazy technology, so making them very fractious and paranoid of others is a clever writing ploy to maintain that sense of the world teetering on the edge of catastrophe but having a believable reason for it not to happen. It obviously fits very well with the concept of the Skaven just based on the fact that they are rats, but it also lends it self particularly well to the general narrative of the setting. But before I veer too far in to writing about the Skaven in general, let’s take a quick look at the 4th edition army book.
The first ever Skaven army book was published in 1993, it was the 4th army book to be released after The Empire, High Elves & Orcs & Goblins Warhammer Armies books. It’s main writer was the big time Skaven fan Andy Chambers, he worked mainly with 40K but he was one of the writers of the core ruleset for Warhammer Fantasy 4th edition and he also wrote the High Elves army book in cooperation with Bill King. For the 4th ed Skaven army book he is credited solely as the main author. After that he didn’t write anything for Warhammer Fantasy, except briefly coming back to help with the 6th ed Skaven army book due to his passion for the army, although he was only one of the minor credits for that book.
The Clanrats here remain exactly the same as in Warhammer Armies for 3rd edition with the exception of no longer being able to be equipped with double-handed weapons like they used to, now they can only take spears for +½ points per model. They cost the same 6 points and come with light armour, shield and hand weapon. The unit can also be accompanied by up to 2 Clan Skryre Poison Wind Globadiers and by one Clan Skryre Warpfire Thrower team.
The Stormvermin have been changed more, they now come at a pretty hefty price of 9½ points per model and that only includes light armour and a hand weapon so no shield included in that cost! The increased cost is due to them now having a baseline strength of 4, when in 3rd edition it was just strength 3. Their equipment costs have gone up as well, shields being +1 point and double-handed weapons +2 points. Now they can also take halberds at +2 points per model, which will become their main weapon from now on and how all the Stormvermin models ever released are equipped. The increased points cost is also likely partly due to the rank leadership bonus they now get, although the Clanrats of course get it too and their points didn’t go up. They can also be accompanied by poison globadiers or a warpfire thrower.
Skavenslaves (yes, that’s how it’s still written here) remain exactly the same as in 3rd edition at 2½ points per model which includes only hand weapons and being able to be equipped with spears, slings and shields all at a cost of +½ points per model. There is one crucial addition for the slaves, now other Skaven units do not need to take a Panic test if a Skavenslave unit breaks next to them or flees past them, only other slave units are affected. This rule will remain in place for the remainder of Warhammer.
There were a lot of new models released for the Skaven during 4th edition (overall at least 22 model releases with many containing multiple distinct models), but for the ones I’m focusing on this article there were only 3 releases. Those are a plastic monopose Skaven Clanrat Warrior, Stormvermin Command and Stormvermin. All the previously released Jes Goodwin sculpts were still sold, so the applicable models out of those were used for Clanrat Warriors and Skavenslaves during 4th edition, they were just featured with new brighter paintjobs in the new publications and they fit in really well due to how timeless those Jes sculpts are. Let’s take a look at the new models next.
The unit pictured above is composed mostly of just that one monopose plastic model, but with varied paintjobs, the variation in the shields (there were multiple shield sculpts), the metal command and the addition of a couple metal Clanrat models, the unit looks really great and surprisingly varied. It’s a great example of how you don’t always need to pack your units full of the best and most unique models and how much you can accomplish with just small variations in how you paint the models, especially for a horde army like the Skaven. This is a definitive step up from the 1987 plastic Clanrat, although still really just a unit filler to help make the army more affordable, I doubt anyone prefers this plastic model compared to the metal ones, but it looks good enough alongside them.
As pictured above, the 80s Jes Goodwin Skaven models look just as great in the 4th edition style, there was really no need at all to update them. Great look too with the pale yellow and the ubiquitous early 90s red.
These superb Skaven Stormvermin were released in December 1993 around the same time as the new army book, although that was only the “troopers” with the Stormvermin Command being released only in May 1994. Not sure what happened with that, likely just the usual vagaries of businesses. These were sculpted by the late Colin Dixon and I think it shows as he was a master of packing character and detail into models while still maintaining a grounded look to them, certainly models of this period have a slightly more cartoony look to them compared to later models, but these don’t stray too far into that direction. Colin was a model design and sculpting apprentice under Jes when he trained to become a full-time miniature sculptor and I think it shows clearly in his models as his Skaven most clearly continue the legacy of the original Goodwin Skaven models. From the pictures above you can see how much the paintjob can affect the look of the unit, with the original 4th edition paintjob they look more fantastical and slightly cutesy, but with the later paintjob they look like brutal murderers. These models have that armour with the interlocking armour plates that to me give off slight Medieval Japanese Samurai armour, although it’s just those plates and that kind of plates were used in Europe and elsewhere as well. It’s not just those armour plates, it’s the polearms, the helmets and some general look that to me are somewhat reminiscent of Medieval Japan. Maybe this is some childhood fancy of mine that I originally thought when I saw these in the 90s that has never left me, but I do think there’s something to it. In any case, these are a really great looking unit, one of my favourites from this era. I really also appreciate the fact that there’s 10 distinct sculpts here with 3 command models and 7 trooper models, I really wish they had continued with that amount of variety into the 6th edition era as well.
Just for completeness sake, here’s a picture of 4th edition Skavenslaves, again original 80s Jes Goodwin sculpts looking great in their new context.
Warhammer 5th Edition (1996)
There was no new army book for the Skaven during 5th edition or any other publications, but there were multiple model releases out of which 2 fall under the topic of this article. The great metal Skaven Slave models sculpted by the absolutely talented Colin Dixon (see my article in honour of his memory here) and also the plastic Skaven Clanrat set which was designed by Aly Morrison and Colin Dixon. That was a game changer for the Skaven as now players had a kit of fully posable great looking plastic Skaven models to fill in all those ranks so badly needed by the Skaven army. As a sad side effect of that is the fact that these metal Skaven Slave models are rare nowadays even though they aren’t that old and were sold during the heyday of Warhammer Fantasy when it was the most popular it ever has been (late 90s early 00s), that is because you needed a lot of models in a Skaven Slave unit to make it useful in game terms as they are used as disposable troops and it was much cheaper to just use the plastic Clanrat models as Slaves instead of buying the superb but much more expensive metal models for them. The majority of my favourite Warhammer Fantasy models were released right around this time (about ’96 to ’01) and in time I’d like to purchase the majority of them, I’m not looking forward trying to source enough of these models, especially if you want to have a unit with just models equipped the same way. More than anything related to me personally, I just find it sad that such great models were sculpted but they never really got widely used, even more so as these are the late great Colin Dixon’s sculpts.
Anyway, let’s take a look at the glorious Skaven Slaves and the utilitarian but still great plastic Skaven Clanrats!
With that preamble I had to go with the Slaves first in this case, even though that breaks the continuity of the article in terms of the order we are going through these units, simply because I really like these models. Just look at them! What a masterclass in simplicity, character and impact. Being Slaves, these are nearly naked or in rags and with just few details here and there Colin has managed to create very characterful models. The vicious faces, the slave rings and the crude weapons all tell the story very effectively. The musician didn’t even get supplied with a proper drum and has had to scramble one together from a skull and a femur bone! Interestingly I think that’s likely an Orc skull, that’s a nice choice by Colin to make it a bit more interesting than just another human skull and to enforce the narrative of rivalry between the Skaven and the Greenskins, although it’s usually more with Goblins.
Already in the 6th ed Skaven army book that came out in March 2002 the Skaven Slave units pictured there are made of the plastic kit and not of these metal models, so they were never featured in any army books which certainly didn’t help with their popularity. At first I only found them in the 2000 Citadel Catalogue so I suspected that they were only sold for around a year, but later on I noticed that they were featured also in the 2010 Citadel Catalogue which is obviously a decade later, so clearly they were available for much longer than I thought. They were likely a mail order and later webstore exclusive for much of that time though as they weren’t featured in most of the catalogues and as mentioned they weren’t pictured in any army book.
In February 1999 the plastic Skaven Clanrat Regiment box set was released, it was one among many new plastic regiment box sets released by Games Workshop within around a year. This was their first big push for plastic miniatures, they had previously released plastic miniatures but those were always monopose models and mostly meant to serve as “fillers” for units of metal models to make them more affordable, this time around these were full multi-part kits that were posable to a very high degree. In fact the almost all the later plastic kits are nowhere near as posable as the kits of this era, which is a real shame. They had already released the first multi-part plastic kit for Chaos Warriors in December 1997, but then there was a break of nearly a year before they went all out with the plastic kits. Here’s a few release dates of similar plastic regiment box sets for context: July 1998 Empire Soldiers (halberdiers etc.), October 1998 Skeleton Warriors, November 1998 Empire Handgunners, January 1999 Night Goblins & Empire Crossbowmen, February 1999 Clanrats, July 1999 Zombies, September 1999 Orc Boyz. I prefer metal miniatures, but this generation of plastic miniatures was great — nearly fully posable models sculpted in the classic style!
The plastic Skaven Clanrat Regiment contained parts to equip the models with either hand weapons & shields, spears and shields or just hand weapons (for slaves for example). There’s 5 distinct torsos, 5 legs, 5 weapon arms with hand weapons, 5 weapon arms with spears, 5 shield arms (one with a dagger), 5 tails and 8 distinct heads along with a few extra parts (a rat, a sword and a spear). It’s really a very simple kit, but that’s where it’s strength lies as that allows it to be very posable and customizable and there’s still plenty detail on the parts to give you the character and visuals of the unit. These models are always meant to be a part of a unit anyway, so too much detail would just take away from the whole effect of the unit and make painting frustrating. There’s only this one sprue in the kit for the Clanrats themselves and one sprue for the shields, which include 3 different symbols that can be glued on the shields like in most plastic kits of this era. Those are the only sprues in the original 1999 kit, 4 Clanrat sprues and 5 Skaven shield sprues along with the metal command parts that were later replaced by the plastic common command sprue (shared by Clanrats, Skeleton Warriors & Night Goblins). Just like in all the other plastic box sets of this period, the metal command parts are really cool and really help to personalize the command models and make them look really cool. They had a really limited space with the common command sprue, so they only included parts for a banner and a musician, there’s no parts for a champion and the banners themselves are also shared between all 3 armies although there are parts to make them more army specific. I do like the plastic command parts as well, it’s not like they are bad, but the original metal command bits are so great so it makes the plastic ones a disappointment. If I ever build a Skaven army and use these Clanrats, I will certainly try and track down a few sets of the original command parts.
The models themselves I think are really good looking and really fitting for Skaven, I really don’t have anything bad to say about them. In my hypothetical dream army I would certainly use the earlier Jes Goodwin metals for my Clanrats (who wouldn’t?) but here in the real world I wouldn’t mind using this generation of plastic Clanrats either but I wouldn’t use the more recent set which will come up later.
Warhammer 6th Edition (2000)
With 6th edition it was time for another shake up of the game system, although it really wasn’t that big, it was more of a change of emphasis with bringing the focus back to the core units and trying to make armies look and feel more like armies again. The Skaven have always been a numbers heavy army, so for them the changes weren’t as big as for some other armies.
On the lore front concerning the core units there isn’t any changes, the Clanrats are still described as being not very effective by themselves and being cowardly alone, but gaining courage and strength from numbers. The Stormvermin are said to be Skaven with darker furs as those Skaven are said to be naturally stronger and better fighters and the Slaves are still disposable troops send in to swarm the enemy and soak damage.
The rules do not have any major changes either, but there are a few changes in the details. The biggest one being the rule about leadership and ranks, which is now called Strength in Numbers and it’s now tied directly to the rank bonus of the unit which is capped at +3, meaning that the highest bonus to leadership a Skaven unit can get from ranks is +3. That’s different from 4th and 5th editions where they could go all the way up to leadership 10 with just rank bonus. However, that’s still possible in 6th edition as well, but not with just ranks. The rank bonus to leadership is added on top of the modified leadership value of the unit so if your army general is within 12″ of the unit, the unit can use the general’s leadership which in the case of a Skaven Warlord is 7 and so with the full rank bonus of +3 you get to leadership 10. The bonus overall is still capped at leadership 10, so you can’t go over that with any shenanigans. The other scenario where a unit can have a modified leadership is if it’s directly lead by a character, usually a Chieftain with a leadership of 6, going up to 9 with full rank bonus. The basic leadership for Clanrats and Stormvermin is still 5, so without any characters they can go up to leadership 8 which is quite good, but that obviously falls away with casualties. Skaven Slaves however now have just leadership 2, so even with full rank bonus they can only go up to leadership 5! Luckily even the Slaves can still use the leadership of the general as without it they are almost sure to fail their Break tests and even with that it’s bound to happen. Luckily the other units are not shaken by that, the rule that allows them to ignore Panic caused by breaking or fleeing Skaven Slaves is still here. There’s a few other new Special Rules for the Skaven army as a whole, like being able to shoot into combat as Skaven life is cheap, Skaven adding +1 to the roll of how far they flee and Skaven characters being able to lead from the back of the unit.
Otherwise the units remain the same as in the previous edition, although the Clanrats have an added rule called Mainstay Unit meaning the number of Clanrat units you take limit the number of any other units you can take, so if you take just one unit of Clanrats, then you can take just one unit of any other unit, if you take two units of Clanrats, then you can take two units of any other units so two units of Stormvermin, two units of Gutter Runners etc, so it’s a limitation on the number of units per type, not the total number of units. Clanrats now also have a unit size of 20+, meaning that you have to take at least 20 per unit! Usually in 6th edition the minimum unit size for Core units is 10+ or there’s a range like 10–40, although at least Goblins and Night Goblins also have a 20+ unit size. This edition has much stricter rules on army building to ensure armies feel like armies and this is one of those rules in addition to the general army building restrictions. Some may feel this is too restrictive, but personally I really like it as those are the kind of armies I enjoy anyway, so these rules ensure I get to play against such armies as well. There’s still plenty of loose in the system to be able to build very varying armies anyway, the restrictions just cull the worst excesses that were possible by the very loose limits of 4th and 5th editions (so called Herohammer). The statline for Clanrats is exactly the same, but their points cost was brought down to 5 points per model including the same equipment as before and they can still take spears for +1 points per model. Now they can have attached units of Warpfire Throwers or Ratling Guns as Poisoned Wind Globadiers are a separate unit now.
The Stormvermin have had a few more significant changes, which are also reflected in their models as we’ll see soon. Unfortunately they have been taken down a peg with their strength reduced to S3 again, but now they come with hand weapons, halberds and heavy armour by default at a cost of 8 points per model so clearly cheaper than before although arguably they are comparatively more expensive due to the loss of 1 point of strength. They can take shields at +1 point per model or have attached weapons teams like the Clanrats. They can also take a magic banner up to 50 points.
The Clanrat Slaves remain exactly the same as previously other than their leadership being cut to just 2 and their points cost down to 2 points per model, they can still be equipped like before but the points cost of those upgrades have gone up. They only have hand weapons by default, but can take shields at +1 points, spears at +1 points or slings at +2 points per model. They also have a unit size of 20+.
On the models side there was one major update during 6th edition for the mainline units of Skaven, although there were many other updates and additions for the whole range including plastic Gutter Runners and many new metal models, but we’ll look at all those in a future article when ever I fancy coming back to the Skaven. The big update was a whole new range of metal models for the Stormvermin, let’s take a look at these brawny rat models next.
Just take a look at the muscularity and brutality of these ratmen! These aren’t the silly ratboys of yesteryear, these are psychopathic murderers out to get you. Now if you’ve read this far you know how much I love the older Skaven models and overall I do prefer the 4th edition models by Colin Dixon, but there is something special in these newer models by Mark Bedford and they are a very successful iteration on the concept. Whether you prefer these or the older ones is a matter of taste, but what’s clear is that both versions are very well designed and sculpted models. They really embody the change in tone, themes and aesthetics that happened with 6th edition when the whole game and setting turned a shade darker. These models still have that interesting conflict between been quite silly with their almost cute ratfaces and massive front teeth, looking almost like something from Sylvanian Families, while at the same time looking like they’d love nothing more than to gut you and gnaw your entrails while you are still alive! The biggest visual factor for that sense of threat is that very brutal, crude but effective looking set of heavy armour they now have on them and the clearly increased size which makes sense as they are Black Skaven and should be a bit larger than the average ratman. This is the only iteration of Stormvermin that do not really have that segmented armour that gives me that slight Japanese feeling apart from the musician having a bit of segmented armour dangling at the front and to be sure, these do not give any Japanese vibes to me at all. The armour is almost more reminiscent of something a Black Orc would be wearing, but it does work very well in my opinion and these are Black Skaven after all. The paintjob on the studio models pictured above is particularly nice as well, a very nice example of a more realistic almost scale modeling style, that would later be used heavily with early Horus Heresy models featured by Forgeworld although later on they sadly moved back to the general ‘Eavy Metal style.
Warhammer 7th Edition (2006)
The 7th edition army book would be the last one ever published for Skaven during the 8th editions of the game, which has always struck me as a bit strange due to the popularity of the army but then again they likely needed the update least of all the armies as they had a big update in 7th edition in terms of models and the army book itself remained almost fully viable for 8th edition as well. We’ll take a look at the new plastic kits released soon, but let’s first take a quick tour of the army book to see if there’s any interesting updates.
The Warhammer Armies Skaven 7th edition supplement was published in November 2009, that was just around 8 months prior to 8th edition which also helped it to remain at roughly the same power level as most 8th edition army books. It’s main writer was Jeremy Vetock and it’s visually a quite nice looking army book, although it lacks the full colour of the 8th edition army books and the great styling of the 6th edition army book. It contains easily the most lore for Skaven in any published book except for The Loathsome Ratmen and All Their Vile Kin (2004), but that was dedicated just for lore so it’s to be expected. There’s nice quite long sections of lore dedicated to Clanrats, Stormvermin and Skavenslaves (yes, they are called that again) as well as of course all the other units in the Skaven bestiary. There isn’t anything groundbreakingly new here, but there are some details I haven’t seen mentioned in the previous army books or rulebooks although they were most likely mentioned in the above mentioned dedicated lore book. For example, the Clanrats are described as being between 4 to 5 feet tall (122cm to 152cm) so somewhere along the height of a 7 to 12 year old boy. They are also said to range from lithe to scrawny and being possessed of a nervous energy that manifests in the twitching of their hairless tails. Their cowardice is expanded upon by describing how a single Clanrat will only attack a visibly weakened or crippled foe and even then preferably from behind, only when driven by Black Hunger or in numbers will they attack enemy formations. They are said to lack so much determination that they are afraid to go forward and too cautious to go backwards, lacking any determination or discipline and preferring to skulk in the shadows unless packed together in a large formation where the numbers naturally bolster their courage and drive them feral. The Black Hunger mentioned above is also described here, it’s the first time I’m seeing that term so it might be a new concept but I didn’t scour all the previous lore closely enough to know for sure. It says that after the adrenaline burst of melee combat Clanrats need to feed or suffer the unbearable pangs of Black Hunger and that they scour the battlefield immediately after the battle feeding on the dead and wounded of both sides.
The physical characteristics of the Stormvermin are also described in more detail here, they are said to be often a head taller than Clanrats with thick muscular necks and powerful builds. Most of them are marked at birth due to the darker coloured fur and larger size and if they survive the brutal litter period when the weaker members of it are devoured by the stronger, when fully grown they are assigned into regiments of Stormvermin. They are given the best equipment and they usually form the retinue or bodyguard for Chieftains or to the mighty ruling Clan Warlord himself. They are awarded the honour of feeding first after the battle and if anyone else dares to feed before them, the elite rats gently remind those of their position by making them a part of the meal. They often also have their own legions of Skavenslaves to cater to their needs.
Similarly there’s a bit of extra detail about the Skavenslaves, the whole Skaven society is built upon slave labour and the slaves perform all menial tasks like mining, tunneling and food production (even up to becoming the food themselves during lean times!). The majority of them are Skaven born into bondage, their ranks are also filled by internecine wars amongst the Skaven clans and they can also include captured slaves from other races although that is uncommon as most do not survive under the brutality of the ratmen overseers. The life of these slaves is short and brutal, food is very meager and cannibalism is the norm, any even slightly injured or weakened slave will be devoured by his peers unless they can somehow hide it long enough to recover which almost never happens. In battle they are thrown deliberately towards the enemy en masse to absorb missile fire and to overwhelm the enemies with numbers, sometimes the strongest of the slaves even manage to take down a few of the foes, but that is just a pleasant bonus. In fact the purpose is to cull down the numbers of Skaven as most of the time Skaven cities are totally overpopulated due the massive Skaven rate of reproduction. In desperate times the strongest and boldest of Skavenslaves may be granted the status of a Clanrat, but that is a rare honour and only happens in exceptional circumstances.
The special rules concerning Clanrats, Stormvermin and Skavenslaves remain the same for the +1 to fleeing rolls and for rank bonus and leadership, but now it’s no longer possible to fire ranged attacks to close combat with friendly units other than for Skavenslaves. Skavenlaves panic is still ignored by other units except other Skavenslaves but they now have a new special rule called Cornered Rats which describes how desperate slaves can become vicious and lash out. In game terms this means that always when a Skavenslave unit breaks in combat, all units within 6″ (friend or foe!) take D3 S3 hits plus an additional hit for each rank after the first one that the Skavenslave unit had when breaking so if a unit of 20 breaks then they take D3 + 3 S3 hits. This is meant to demonstrate the slaves attacking anyone in their way when they are trying to scurry away from the combat.
There’s no changes in the statlines and only small changes in equipment and points costs for these units. Clanrats are now 4 points per model, but only come with hand weapons and light armour, for shields they need to pay +½ points per model which means that in practice they cost +½ points less than in 6th edition. They brought ½ points back in with 7th as in 6th there weren’t any, not at least in the Skaven army list and I don’t remember seeing them for other lists either. The Clanrats can still take spears of course, they cost +½ points per model as well. Now there’s a choice of 4 different weapons teams that can be attached to the unit, but only one of them can be attached per unit. They are Poisoned Wind Mortar, Warpfire Thrower, Ratling Gun or a Doom-flayer. The cost of command models is slightly reduced as well at 4+ points for musician, 8+ for standard bearer and +8 points for champion (used to be +5, +10 & +10 in 6th).
The Stormvermin remain exactly the same as before still with only strength 3 and coming with the same hand weapons, halberds and heavy armour and being able to take shields for +1 point per model. Their cost is now down to 7 points per model and they have the same cost for the command models as previously (+5, +10 & +10 points). They can select one attached weapon team from the same 4 as Clanrats and can carry a magic standard up to +50 points as before but there is a slight update with the champion (Fangleader) of the unit being able to choose a single piece of equipment woth up to +15 points from the Scavenge-pile. The Scavenge-pile is a short list of 5 different pieces of equipment, in practice low-powered magic items that are meant for heroes and as an exception the Stormvermin Fangleader. The cheapest item is +5 points, then there’s 2 items at +8 points and another 2 items at +15 points. There’s a Warpmusket, a Warplock Pistol, a Tail Weapon, Poisoned Attacks and a Rat Hound Bodyguard. The Poisoned Attacks is self-explanatory with the addition that it also affects attacks from Tail Weapons, Tail Weapon is an additional S3 attack made with the users initiative and weapon skill, the Warplock Pistol is a pistol with 10″ range that is Armour Piercing and uses Unstable Ammunition and the Rat Hound Bodyguard is a rat hound that does a WS3 S3 attack at the owner’s initiative (a To Hit roll of 1 will result in an automatic hit on the owner). All except the Warpmusket (move or fire, 24″ range, S5) could be useful for a Fangleader and overall I think that’s a really nice addition to the army list, I don’t remember seeing this kind of option in army lists other than I think for the High Elves at least in 6th edition and of course back in 4th edition and earlier days you could equip champions with magic items. Customization is always a fun thing, at least when it’s suitably limited and having a champion of one or a few specific elite units being able to use such a limited list of equipment certainly isn’t too convoluted.
The Skavenslaves remain exactly the same, except the cost of their extra equipment options have been reduced, now the spears, shields and slings too are all +½ points per model like in 4th edition, which is a significant reduction from 6th edition as the slings used to be +2 points per model.
With all that out of the way, let’s take a look at the shiny new plastic kits for Clanrats, Skavenslaves and Stormvermin that were released together with the 7th edition army book and 5 other model releases in November 2009.
The most recent plastic Clanrat kit was released at the same time with the 7th edition army book in November 2009 and it’s still the most up to date Clanrat kit, it’s still sold and used currently in Age of Sigmar as the Skaven range was transferred almost wholesale to Games Workshop’s new venture after End Times (I mentioned the words, nooooo!). I’ll just come out straight out of the gate and tell you that these are my least favourite Clanrat models, but that’s predictable for anyone who has read any of my articles as I’m a pure Middlehammer guy with huge love for Oldhammer (for me Middle hammer is 5th and 6th ed and Oldhammer is everything before that). That’s not to say it’s a bad looking kit, not at all and it looks quite versatile as well. There’s certainly some elements of the aesthethics of the kit that I really appreciate, like the lean, mean and somewhat angular look to them (especially compared to the 1999 plastic kit). I also really like the banner bearer bits, the varied heads, the spears and some of the hand weapons. You can also clearly make really ragged looking Skavenslaves out of this kit as pictured above, although I’m uncertain whether you could create 20 models that looked like that or is there only parts for a few ragged looking models so that you have to purchase multiple kits. Well, as a Skaven player you are going to purchase multiple kits anyway, but still. On the negative side to me is that modern look that they have, I suspect these are already digitally sculpted or at least partly digitally sculpted as Games Workshop was doing some of that going as far back as 2004 where they did some digital scans of hand made models and then made some finishing touches digitally. I might be wrong about these being digitally sculpted, but in any case they no longer have that classic miniature look that I dearly love, which was present in all the previously featured models in this article even though stylistically the previous models ranged quite a bit from the 80s models to the early 00’s models. Yeah, it’s partly the grognardy nostalgia hound in me, but I do think there’s something objectively superior in hand sculpted models. Now if it turns out these were hand sculpted, then I guess my argument falls totally flat here! In any case, they are very cool models, but personally if I ever do a Skaven army, I will stick with older Clanrats.
Games Workshop also came out with a Skavenslaves Sling upgrade pack, as far as I know this pack was released around the same time as the new plastic Skaven Clanrat box set or at the very least close to it (2009 or 2010). This upgrade kit was sold as a webstore exclusive or alternatively you could order them from a GW store or by calling their customer service, it was sold at least until the end of Warhammer Fantasy and might have carried on for some years with Age of Sigmar too but I couldn’t find exact information about that, the last trace I found was from 2014. The kit contained enough parts to equip 10 slaves with slings and pouches, the upgrade parts were originally cast in good ‘ol white metal, but were likely converted to Finecast resin along with other white metal kits after that whole travesty started in 2011. At least the other metal upgrade kits of this period were converted, so I assume this one was as well, although it’s possible this one wasn’t due to the delicate nature of the parts as so thin parts cast in soft Finecast resin would snap if you looked at them in anger! It’s a nice looking upgrade set and it’s always nice to have more options for your units.
The most recent Stormvermin plastic kit was released alongside the Clanrats and the army book in November 2009 and it was designed by Seb Perbert. This kit is also still in sale and in use in Age of Sigmar, although of course on round bases (the horror, the horror!).
For the most part I have the same praise and the same criticism for this kit as I had for the Clanrat kit, but I do think the Stormvermin are superior models. They have a cool and menacing look to them, Seb Perbert has managed to combine the cool style of the 4th ed Stormvermin with their segmented armour plates and cloth elements with the absolute menace of the 6th ed Stormvermin and the outcome is very nice. Mind you, they aren’t as menacing as the 6th edition models or as characterful as the 4th edition models, but they have a nice balance of both characteristics while still bringing something new to the design. I’m getting the slight medieval Japanese vibes from these models again, for some elements even more so than for the 4th edition models and for some less. Especially the banner, the increased cloth and the helmets have that feeling, but the halberds / polearms look more European compared to the old ones. It’s also very nice that for the first time the kit seems to come with shields as well since taking shields have been an option for the Stormvermin all the way from the 3rd edition days, but I don’t particularly like the shields. I think round shields would have suited them better as that would have been a nice contrast to the otherwise very angular models. All in all I would say this is one of the best plastic unit kits of this period, they are very nice models, but as always I’ll stick with the older stuff — thank you very much!
Warhammer 8th Edition (2010)
As mentioned previously in this article, the Skaven never got an 8th edition army book and neither did they get any new models for the units covered in this article as they had just been updated at the end of 7th edition. The Skaven did however feature as one of the two factions in the 8th edition starter box set Island of Blood along with High Elves and they did get multiple other model releases during the last few years of Warhammer Fantasy Battles. It featured two sets of the 2009 Clanrat kit with other models, which I think might all be new for this set or at the very least they were very new at the time of it.
The Skaven army book was powerful enough that it did quite well during 8th edition, being around the mid tier competitively to my understanding and certainly well enough to be enjoyed among friends. They got a few new models during the End Times craziness, but the less written about that, the better.
That’s it for this time, this was supposed to be a bit lighter than the last article, but true to form I ended up with an even longer and more detailed article! Oh well, hopefully you found it enjoyable and informative, as this took me easily over 20 hours to research and write. If you’d like to support me to see more articles like this, you can do that here and don’t forget to follow me here on Medium to make sure you won’t miss the next one.
Thank you so much and all the best!
