My Skaven Army – Slaves Unit A

To my knowledge, Only two armies make use of Slaves in Warhammer Fantasy Battle (3ed-4ed), The Skaven and the Slann/Lizardmen but I would need a bit more research to double check this.. (technically Slann only use Human slaves who have been lobotomised and turn into eunuchs, probably via some old Slann tech.. gee, they kinda really downplayed the fact that Slann are an ancient species from space who have degraded a bit while being on ,.. whatever planet for soo long. In fact, It was meant to be that the Space Slann pretty much wiped out the Lizardmen and what was left of there race was used kinda like slaves… much later, the Lizardmen seamed to take over and only a few Slann in the high ranks were left)

[Well, I did a quick run through of the 3ed Armies book.. could you class alot of the undead as Slaves as they are mindless reanimated corpses?]

Using 4th Edition Army Book, Skaven slaves are used as Slave labour and the main labour source they have. They are used for fetching and carrying, mining, tunnelling and producing food. Slaves are also used in battle where the slave regiments are made up of the dregs of Skaven Society, slaves too unskilled or stupid to be of better use elsewhere. It also says that nearly all Skaven slaves are Skaven from clans which have been defeated and enslaved in the various clan wars between each one. Other races are seldom used because they might escape or start fighting the Skaven partway through the battle.

There are 2 points of note in that I think.. “Nearly all are Skaven” and “other races are seldom used”. that means, other races are and CAN be used… hehe

For this first unit of Slaves, I’m planning a mixture of figures, so Skaven and non-skaven. I’ll have to see how it goes. The 4ed Stat line for slaves will apply to all anyway:

Name	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	PV
SkavenSlaves	5	2	2	3	3	1	4	1	4	2.5

Slaves are low cost and expendable so they don’t panic unless another unit breaks in combat or flees past them during the turn. They are armed with hand weapons and have no saving roll, but can be upgraded to spears, slings and/or shields. I decided I’ll give this unit spears which is half a point per model. basically Spears just means that instead of just the front rank being able to attack, the front 2 ranks can. Well. with my movement trays for 30 figures, that means 12 can attack instead of 6.

This gives me a total of 114.5 points for the unit (as it’s 2.5 each, plus half again for the spears making 87) with an extra 27.5 points for the champion in the unit and his spear… Of course, technically it’s 87 points because the champion’s points come from the characters side but… the total points cost of the whole unit of 114.5 points.

The unit size is planned for 30 figures with a Champion in the unit.

I could have sworn someone on the oldhammer forum had done a non-skaven Skavenslave unit but… a quick search didn’t pop up with anything I thought it was.. probebly getting confused with a slann unit..

Anyway. Right now, I have sorted out 18 ratty slaves, and 1 Goblin. I have in fact been working on the goblin as it’s kinda something I’ve wanted to do for a while.. It’s nothing fancy but… Yeah, I’ll probebly talk about that goblin next time and a bit more on this Slave unit. It’s gonna be a bit more interesting then a normal Skaven unit cause of the mix. Gonna be fun trying to see what figures from other races which look like they would make slaves. Of course, they all use the statline for the Skavenslaves.. they have been demoralised and forced to be slaves, Skavenslaves are disposable so you better toe the line or else you’re gone.

I won’t put the points into the Running Total cause it’s not complete and done.