According to an interesting yet cryptic message on FFG's Facebook page, we got a hint that the Skaven are a'coming! And sure enough, the Skavenblight Battlepack is now listed as SHIPPING!!! WOOT!!

The only bummer is that it'll surely take several days to show up in stores, still. Sigh!

Hey, any new news is good news at this point! Sweet.

If that's accurate, then I'm anticipating end of next week, maybe middle of Thanksgiving...?

Better remind the LGS to put a couple aside.

Woot, I am excited. Lets rock some skaven. Hopefully Amazon gets it soon.

Great news! : )

So, are Skaven going to be playable as their own race? Or are they being treated like the Elves at the moment in that they can be added into other decks. Are we going to get a Skaven capital card?

Currently, all we know is that the Skaven in these Battlepacks appear to be Destruction-Only Neutral cards.

It is unlikely that we will get a full Skaven faction complete with capital et all. So it appears that they will be playable only with another destruction faction.

In this group of battlepacks all of the skaven are neutral cards.

I'm not sure that ALL of them are Destruction-Only Neutrals but I wouldn't be surprised if they were.

They might be their own faction, just without a capital board like the Dark Elves and the High Elves in the core set. This is what I am hoping for and it would make the most sense.

It seems from the comment in this week's Card of the Week that the Skaven might be Destruction-Favouring Neutral cards. I wonder if this might make them a bit more awkward to use than, say, making them Chaos would. Then again, it might make them more widely useful than they would be in a Chaos Faction slot.

They should make them their own faction, and just include a Support/Tactic like:

[unique] Infestation! [skaven Support]
Cost: 0
Loyalty: Skaven x1 [so effectively, cost 1 if you don't control a Skaven unit.]
- Infestation! does not play to a zone. Place it on your Capital.
- Your Capital loses all all loyalty icons and gains [skaven].

If they are neutral, I'm going to loathe the aesthetics compared to every other army with its own loyalty symbol and card frame.

From everything I have read they are destruction only neutral. Also, just to point out the High Elves and Dark Elves are getting their own capitals and full decks in an upcoming box set.

Yeah, stuff we've read has said they'll be Destruction-Only Neutrals...though admittedly nothing we've read says that every one of them is a Destruction-Only Neutral. But I suppose if one of them is, they'd all have to be.

Wytefang said:

I still hope they have a Skaven-specific card frame . . . it will annoy me immensely if we have six factions with gorgeous race-specific frames, and one with the decidedly meh grey neutral frame :/

I don't understand why the Skaven would not be a full faction. They are a major army in the table top game and I have heard are joining the MMO as well. Does not make sense to me to have an army like them and then make them neutral.

Toqtamish said:

Because this is not a table top game or an MMO where introducing a new faction only requires a balancing of stats, but in a TCG you have to balance distribution as well and each new faction you reduce the number of cards available for every other faction. You get to a saturation point where there is isn't even more than one card for each of the currently supported 14 Armies for WHF (that is putting both of the undead factions together and ignoring the Daemons of Chaos, Araby, or Kislev). I love this game but there is no way you could build coherent decks like that for the later armies, and certainly no way to be able to really tweak your decks with each chapter pack, or even with each cycle. Which means there wouldn't be multiple builds available for the races because you wouldn't have the diversity of cards. It would be the end of the game.

Actually, its easy enough to use cross-faction cards. Lets assume that instead of making a Skaven card neutral with cost 2, they gave it a cost of say 1 and loyalty Skaven Skaven. For the purposes of splashing this card, once you have a Skaven card in play its effectively cost 2 (and a second can make it cost 1, to balance the fact that it costs 3 if its the first card you played as opposed to a straight up 2). It's taking up exactly the same slot in the battle pack, and its still destruction only. Its not messing up any other factions cards, or any other factions diversity because these slots were always intended to be Skaven card s. I don't get why you wouldn't make Skaven a separate destruction faction from a design, logic and flavour standpoint.

You are missing my point and the large amounts of bold, underlined, and italicized text aren't helping in getting yours across.

If you add them as their own race with their loyalty symbol people will want capitol boards next, and then they will want continued Skaven in future packs. This will cause other races to get fewer cards in future supplements. If the Skaven get this then fans of Bretonnia will want all of this for theirs. Ditto with the Beastmen, Chaos Dwarfs, Dogs of War, Lizardmen, Ogre Kingdom, Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts, and Wood Elves. There is not room in a Battle Pack for each of those races to be represented. Even less if they continue to support the main six races.

So what is the difference between the playability of a Order/Destruction only neutral and an unsupported race? Very little at all, potentially some costing issues because of lack of loyalty (though this could very easily be solved by lowering the cost of a card by a certain amount when there are X amount of other cards with the race trait). What is the difference in expectation between them? None at all. The difference in expectation between a race with loyalty symbols and an aligned neutral can be huge. Managing expectations can be the difference between success and failure of a product.

I would prefer that Skaven were a fully supported race, they have always been my favorites. I can't see that being manageable however. Therefor my next desire would be for them to be a Capitol-less race with their own loyalty symbol. I could still manage to make a deck that was heavy on Skaven and it might even feel like playing a full Skaven deck. I see the problems that can bring up very easily. Seeing as how I really enjoy this game I'm willing to forgo that if it would cause problems later down the road. This means aligned neutrals gets me Skaven to play with and a game without unreasonable demands and expectations being fostered on it which could negatively impact sales. Yeah, I'm good. Not what I'd prefer, but a compromise I can live with.

dormouse said:

I am aware this is not a table top game, I am many things, an idiot is not one of them.

However your logic is unsound. Whether the Skaven are released as destruction neutrals or their own destruction cards does not really change how much of an impact on the game/balance they will have. Either way they are being released and will take up slots away from other factions. Also I do not and never said that all the other factions in the Warhammer universe will be released, how they keep them all in the table top games sometimes boggles my mind. Too much diversity is as bad as too little.

dormouse said:

I apologise for bolding etc, I only did it so my main point wouldn't be lost in my block of text. Looking back it wasn't necessary.

I understand your point, but a destruction-only neutral would have the same problem as a full faction (bar the capital board) . Saying that you will discontinue them in the future in favour of some other race means that their effects would need to either be a) generic or b) only reference corruption. You wouldn't be able to have cards that mentioned effects for Skaven only units otherwise exactly the same thing would happen. People would want to make Skaven decks, and moan when they don't receive further support. For a fully-fledged race, having them as generic support would be a smack in the face flavourfully (sp?) and mechanically, especially when both the Ogre Kingdoms and Dogs of War exist.

What FFG needed to do was either come forward and say in a big announcement we'll be doing Skaven hardcore in the corruption cycle and intend them to be a support race (a la Dark Elves and High Elves at the moment) with a mention of diminished future support but a possible companion set in the future (so we know where we stand), or b) replace them with a race that actually is neutral (Dogs of War/Ogre Kingdoms); or tell us exactly what their intentions for Skaven are.

Or they can just release them as they always intended and the fanbois will ***** and moan or cheer and rave the same way they would with an announcement. My point has never been that aligned neutral was better for the game than unsupported loyalist, but that it was better for the meta-game and a better business decision.

Look at the movies that have been made off comic book IP for example, those that were huge blockbuster successes and get good reviews from critics often had groups of fanbois and grrls writing scathing reviews on any blog that would have them because of the smallest details or changes, with as much vitrol as the retconning that was done. You can satisfy all the people all the time, and some group will never be satisfied unless you cater completely to them... though doing so almost always results in an epic failure.

I heard the same things from Warhammer fans when the MMO was coming out. How this race or that race wasn't being supported or how the game shouldn't even exist as an MMO and should have been a RTS, or squad based combat. A ridiculously large amount of any fringe group feels entitled, superior, that only they really know the way the IP should be handled. If you go on Board Game Geek and read some fo the negative comments about the game you will see just that. The two most vocal sides who are negative fall into the GW fanboi and M:tG fanboi sides about how the game fails to live up to this or that expectation of theirs and therefor the game is terrible and they'll only play it if these changes are made. It is ridiculous.

Even here you get people who refuse to look at the business side of the game, who rather than taking a long term realistic view state they want all the armies instituted as playable races.

BEfore anyone makes claims on what this game must do and can't do they should check out the other two LCG's and see what FFG can and has done. Skaven are unlikely to exist only in this cycle. Having cards that involve Skaven in future sets is easily possible in the same way that neutral cards with one trait based sub-faction or another pop up in their other LCGs. This would be a much more difficult thing to do with a loyalty based race.

As to loyalty, I don't think it would be that difficult to have a generic order or destruction icon, or even just a completely generic loyalty marker, meaning you must have X amount of cards in play with loyalty icons or pay this as an additional cost. Then again I could see Skaven and all aligned neutrals being more of the special units so their cost is just a touch higher and forgo vanilla cards with no abilities, or have the cards cost a touch less, but their abilities cost a touch more. There are a number of ways of handling the loyalty issue without Skaven having their own icon... but again if I get a choice, I'd rather they had their own, I just fully understand and would support a decision by FFG not to do so.

Then I have got the wrong end of the stick entirely, and am sorry if I came across as confrontational at all. I understand why they would indeed make the Skaven neutral (however I do disagree with your points about lowering expectations for future consistent support, and that loyalty makes making future content any more or less difficult) and it's nothing I can change, my initial point was a kneejerk reaction to the discovery that a race that should be a fully fledged race was being portrayed as a generic splashable neutral army when they are not, and two such armies (Dogs of War and Ogre Kingdoms) could have filled this gap.

All in all, I've still three copies of the battle pack on pre-order and I'll be trying to make a Skaven deck as best as I can.

I can't help but agree with Dormouse here, for the most part.

I do and I do not agree. I don't think anyone is trying to make this discussion confrontational, but trying to bash your point thru is not very effective. Everyone is entitled to their points, but be nice about it.

Would I prefer better support for Skaven, absolutely. If anything I think adding the Skaven or any race is a bit too early, but the Corruption expansion is already planned and will be what it is. I certianly hope they at least make an Alliance card for them and the other Destruction factions. I also suspect that the next expansion will add a race for the Order side of things similiar to the way the Skaven are being released.

I also think that with buying enough copies of the battlepacks that a full on or largely Skaven deck should be and will be possible. Heck I am considering buying a second copy or two of the Core set to try to make Elf decks.

I really hope that these start arriving in stores soon so that we can at least see what we are getting in the pack for the Skaven. I am looking forward to Thanquol, not as much as I am looking forward to Deathmaster Snikch in his battle pack in around February(happy birthday to me!)

I for one hope to see at least one more special character for the Skaven as the core races have two each in the core set and are getting at least one new one in the Corruption cycle. I hope that if there is another Skaven Hero that it will be Clan Pestilens based.

Toqtamish said:

Plague Lord Nurglitch (or Skrolk) and then give us Throt the Unclean for Clan Moulder!