I've been playing with and against Skaven for quite a while now. I am pretty convinced that they are the best deck at this point, but I would love to be wrong. There are a lot of ways to build the Skaven deck, but this is my best version. There are no Regionals anywhere near me, in case you are wondering...

3 Warpstone Excavation
3 Contested Village
3 Orc/Chaos Alliance
1 Chaos/Dark Elf Alliance
3 Choppa
13 supports

2 We'z Bigga!
3 Seduced by Darkness
3 Pillage
3 Innovation
11 tactics

3 Spider Riders
3 Crooked Teef Goblins
3 Snotling Pump Wagon
3 Lobber Crew
3 Clan Rats
3 Clan Moulder's Elite
2 Rat Ogres
3 Greyseer Thanquol
3 Deathmaster Sniktch
26 units

50 total

If you are allowed sideboards where you are playing, I would include Mob Up! (vs damage prevention decks like bolt throwers, cut the Rat Ogres) and Veteran Sellswords (sub in instead of the Pump Wagons against non-rush).

Ok, so why is this list better than the alternatives? Well, all the Skaven decks will be playing pretty much similar stuff and often the player who draws the most Deathmasters wins it, honestly. But this list gives you a slight edge.

a) Relatively heavy supports mean you don't just lose to sweepers & Flames of the Phoenix. That Chaos/Dark Elf support isn't a typo, it's just the best option as supports go since it gives you a point of Chaos loyalty.

b) Choppa, Spider Riders, Pillage and Lobber Crew are significantly better than the cards you get from Chaos or Dark Elf. Chaos gives you auto-free Seduces and maybe stuff like Firestorm, but nothing too exciting. Dark Elves have more useful stuff - We Need Your Blood, Chillwind and Shades are standouts. Still not as good as the Orc cards though. Lobber Crew and Pillage by turn 2 is backbreaking against many decks.

How to play it: you need 1 hammer in your kingdom and after that all the Clan Rats, supports, etc. go in Quest unless you are drawing 4+ cards a turn. Do not forget to abuse the Rat Ogres ability if you are fortunate enough to have them out at the same time as Clan Rats or Deathmaster. Against most opponents, you want to use Seduce offensively to burn zones - you normally do not want to attack into blockers. Against Chaos Control and Dark Elf Control, your best card is Clan Moulder's Elite. Against Order, your best card is Deathmaster as most Order decks just lose if you can keep him active for a turn or two. You normally only need 1 development for Innovation - but if you are drawing a lot of cards, don't forget to develop somewhere every turn since the extra HP on the zone can win you close games.

If you are not excited about your first and second turn plays looking at your hand, mulligan. Assume you won't draw anything useful when making that decision.

If you can post a list that is >50% against just this deck, you get a (virtual) cookie.

I'll test this out against the deck I want to (potentially) use at Regionals and see how it goes. My current deck won 2 of 3 from a similar deck but one lacking the Seduced by Darkness cards...

Looks feisty, that's for sure. Sorry you can't attend a Regional - I was disappointed at how few of them there actually were around the world. Sigh.

Seduce makes a huge difference, since often they get a key defender (e.g. Cold One Riders, Dragonmage, Mountain Brigade) into a zone right as you're about to burn it. I do not know how many games come down to having a Seduce to finish it but it's a lot.

And as for regionals: eh, it's still a young game. I'm in Seattle and there are a lot of gaming types here - it'll happen. I'm expecting a tournament or two next PAX for sure.

I think this is probably the best version of Skaven against a diverse field, but I might prefer DE/Skaven in a rat-infested meta. It definitely makes sense to start the Orc board over Chaos in straight rush because all you really want from Chaos is Seduced, and you won't be playing it on turn one or two.

You're certainly right that Pillage and Lobber Crew can take over games. From game one, I've felt that these cards are simply too strong when you go first. The second turn for the first player can create all kinds of unfairness with any sort of removal, especially cheap removal that doesn't care about HP. I should keep statistics on how much going first boosts winning percentage for Orcs.

I assume the We'z Bigga is supposed to be Waaagh!, since WB doesn't have any targets? I'm not sure, but I would think about trimming Innovation or Crooked Teefs, since you have a lot of ways to spend 3 on turn one, and neither of those cards is great later in the game. And I think I probably still like Gutter Runners and/or Globadiers over Snot Wagons. Other than that, I think you pretty much have the build.

For DE/Skaven, I would probably go for something like:

3 Shades
2 Mortella
21 Rats

3 Warp
3 Village
3 Har Ganeth
3 Banner

3 Hate
3 WNYB
3 Chillwind
3 Seduced

I might go down to 2 on a couple things to make room for Dark Visions to dig for those Deathmasters.

No, the We'z Bigga are not a typo. You use them to play Deathmasters, Rat Ogres and Clan Moulder's Elite. We ended up with Pump Wagons over Waaagh - it makes the deck less explosive but more consistent.

If you're expecting to mostly play against other Skaven then the Globadiers are ok, but they're not that great. Maybe put them in the sideboard if you have one and no better idea.

In testing, we've found that the Orc disruption > the DE disruption in a straight matchup, which was a bit surprising. Lobber Crew and Pillage are just that good.

6 corruption effects in your DE build seems like it is probably too many. We've tried Dark Visions and it seems too slow.

Huh, for some reason I had it in my head that We'z Bigga specified Orc units. Definitely worth playing. And Waaagh! doesn't seem as good as it was now that there are so many damage cancellers floating around. I wasn't even really surprised to see that missing, I was just thinking you couldn't have meant We'z Bigga.

I took about thirty seconds to dream up that DE build, so I'm not saying it's the best version, but I don't think I've been disappointed to draw a Seduced, ever. In general, in non-Skaven-mirrors, the second corruption effect of a turn is actually better than the first, since it means somebody stays corrupted for two turns. Against Orcs, I also like to save one for any Bloodthirsters that might get flipped in front of an attack. Anyway, I don't have two sets of Skaven cards at my disposal, so I'll admit working with theory here. What was the DE/Skaven list you used to test?

Hi,

It's strange to me that you want a lot of powers in QZ... maybe you should run some Chittering Hordes to fill your hand. Innovation don't add much to this deck in my opinion.

Otherwise it's a very strong deck in a vacuum, but there are some cards out there (Nurgle's Pestilence, the Wyern, or the new non-unique Dwarf attachment) which could extensively punish you for having so many 1 HP units. Not speaking about Dark Elves.

Deathmaster and Lobber crew are the best unit removal units in the game, that's granted.

I've tried Chittering Hordes. Many times. The trouble with CH is that you need so many Skaven to make it work that you start having to play the bad ones. You also start wanting more hammers in Kingdom because now you're using resources to draw cards, and... things get slow.

More hammers in Quest is good just because you are drawing more answers to problems, drawing into a Deathmaster against Order, Elites against Chaos, Seduced for decks with blockers and just more guys. Try it before you knock it.

If you do not think Innovation is good in this deck, then I have to ask you whether you have actually tried it because I think you are wrong.

Nurgle's Pestilence is annoying but it isn't enough to beat the deck. That's why you have so many supports - 2 hammers in quest and 1 in kingdom is enough for you to instantly rebuild if they kill your whole team, even if one of the Quest hammers was a Clan Rat that died to Pestilence.

Alright, time for some deck lists. cyberfunk asked for a DE skaven list, so here's 3 of the ones I've tried so far, from memory (so pardon any slight mistakes). The overall idea should be correct.

First version (DE with Orc good stuff):

3 Contested Village
3 Warpstone Excavation
3 Dark Elf / Orc Alliance
3 Har Ganeth
12 supports

3 Chillwind
3 Innovation
3 Hate
3 We Need Your Blood
12 tactics

3 Spider Riders
3 Clan Rats
3 Clan Moulder's Elite
3 Gutter Runners
3 Lobber Crew
3 Shades
3 Greyseer Thanquol
3 Deathmaster Sniktch
2 Rat Ogres
26 units

50 total

Second version (DE, abusing Chillwind to restore Warp Lightning Cannon targets):

3 Contested Village
3 Warpstone Excavation
3 Warp Lightning Cannon
9 supports

3 Chillwind
3 Innovation
3 Chittering Hordes
3 Burn It Down
3 Hate
2 Dark Visions
3 We Need Your Blood
20 tactics

3 Gutter Runners
3 Clan Rats
3 Clan Moulder's Elite
3 Lobber Crew
3 Shades
3 Greyseer Thanquol
3 Deathmaster Sniktch
21 units

50 total

Third version (mono DE, "control deck" to try to win vs. other Skaven):

3 Contested Village
3 Warpstone Excavation
3 Har Ganeth
1 DE/Chaos Alliance
11 supports

3 Chillwind
3 Innovation
3 Hate
3 We Need Your Blood
12 tactics

1 Sack Tor Aendris

1 quest

3 Walking Sacrifice
3 Clan Rats
3 Clan Moulder's Elite
3 Shades
3 Vile Sorceress
3 Greyseer Thanquol
3 Deathmaster Sniktch
3 Poison Wind Globadiers
3 Cold One Riders
27 units

50 total

None of these are better than 50% against the Orc version but obviously they still win a fair amount.

Here's a Chaos control deck that tries to just blow up all the Skaven. Over and over.

3 Innovation
3 Seduced by Darkness
3 Tzeentch's Firestorm
3 Flames of Tzeentch
3 Nurgle's Pestilence
1 Will of Tzeentch

16 tactics

3 Warpstone Excavation
3 Contested Village
3 Chaos/Orc Alliance
1 Shrine to Nurgle
2 Ancient Waystone
2 Armoury

14 supports

2 Wolves of the North

2 quests

3 Festering Nurglings
3 Lobber Crew
3 Clan Moulder's Elite
2 Bloodsworn
3 Deathmaster Sniktch
3 Chaos Knights
1 Bule, Lord of Pus

18 units

No, that's not a typo, I really am playing Deathmasters in the Chaos deck too. It's often just a double hammer guy in quest, but against Skaven he starts going nuts and killing their team. As a bonus, sometimes you'll have an Elite or two out and then he can go to town on non-Skaven decks too.

This deck is harder to play against for Skaven since they are really worried about Pestilence - but it is still not at 50% and its matchups are much, much worse than Skaven against other archetypes. For example, it has roughly 0% win rate against any reasonable unitless bolt thrower deck. It really needs a good way of dealing with supports but the double loyalty on Pillage means that it's way too slow - and I'm not a huge fan of Burn It Down, since this deck will often want to Innovate for more than 1 (unlike Skaven). The other problem with Chaos is that your cheap units are terrible, so Lobber Crew can be problematic. LC will often take out a Chaos Knight and then you probably lose.

RE: Innovation, lets consider an example...

Compare game state A:

• Turn 1: Lobber Crew to Kingdom
• Turn 2: Alliance to Quest, Clan Rats to Kingdom, use Lobber Crew
• Turn 3: Clan Moulder's Elitex2 into the battlefield, hit Quest for 5

To game state B:

• Turn 1: develop + Innovate, Lobber Crew to Kingdom, Alliance to Quest
• Turn 2: Clan Moulder's Elitex2 into the Battlefield, use Lobber Crew, hit Quest for 4
• Turn 3: Clan Rats to Kingdom, hit another zone for 5

By turn 3, B has done 4 damage to their Quest and 5 damage to another zone, and is down only a single card (remember B draws 2 on turn 2) compared to A, which has done 5 damage to Quest only. B is in position to burn either of two zones and can now comfortably sit back and prepare their hand to play around the opponent's interaction. A still has at least 3 turns to victory, B can win in as few as 2.

Is this kind of tempo advantage by turn 3 worth being -1 card? Up to you. For my part, testing has shown B wins more often from this game state than A does, and we're pretty much sold on Innovation.

What he said.

There's also a big, win-or-lose difference when it turns out that someone Needed the Blood of your Clan Rat in Kingdom (or even worse, a Deathmaster killed the Rat) and now you can't play the Deathmaster that you really were kind of planning on doing. 3 cost vs. 4 cost in this game is pretty huge.

Clamatius said:

Since this is pretty much just trying to win against Skaven and random decks that roll over for the Deathmaster, how about Corsairs instead of Vile Sorceress or Cold One Riders? And what about Altar of Khaine? It seems like playing exactly three supports that Orcs will want to Pillage is not ideal. And if you can keep either Altar (with the DM) or Har Ganeth in play, you should be removing a guy per turn. Admittedly, Altar is not a card you'd want to float out on turn two having seen no Pillages. I have to think that this deck is pretty close to being able to beat Orc/Skaven better than half of the time, though I realize it is giving up a lot of BF hammers to play all of that removal and cutesy stuff.

Corsairs instead of the Cold One Riders seems ok. I'd drop the Riders before the Sorceresses just because I've found the Riders to be too slow anyway and I think having the Sorceresses helps your % against other decks more than the Riders. I particularly like the fact that the Corsairs is a unit that their Deathmaster doesn't actually want to kill.

Altar of Khaine has a nice effect but it seems pretty slow for this metagame, especially since you need spare resources up to actually trigger it and it won't work when you lose units to Lobber Crew. Oh, and to actually use the special ability it has to be in Kingdom, whereas you usually want extra hammers in Quest.

The current list is definitely close to 50% but it's not there - the Orc disruption and speed seems better than the DE stuff, which is more like pure disruption. A lot of the games come down to who has an active Deathmaster, anyway - which was why I played for quite a bit with Chittering Horde in case that helped. Answer: not a lot.

I don't really think the fact that the Altar has to go in Kingdom is that big of a deal, since you can use those barrels to scoop up dudes, which is as good as card draw. Unless the dude you are scooping is the Deathmaster, in which case it's about twenty times as good. And you've even got Hate and Innovation for emergency barrels. This deck is already trying to put the brakes on other Skaven decks, so it seems like you want to have some kind of plan for winning the 'Deathmaster's dance' once you succeed in pushing past the first few turns. Otherwise, you're just working to claw your way into the coin-flip situation of who draws the most Deathmasters. It would be nice if Altar could save guys from Lobber Crews, but with 3 Walkings Sacs, 3 Corsairs, 3 Har Ganeth and 3 WNYB, you're pretty much doing all you can on that front. If LC is going to hurt you, it's almost certainly going to be before you would have the Altar out anyway.

Har Ganeth is pretty much never going to bounce an opposing Lobber Crew. Interesting point on the Altar though, since if they aren't killing your team then they probably just lost anyway (unless you played the Altar and didn't have any gas left, in which case you'd probably stick it in Quest anyway). The big exception that I can see is that in the cases where you are playing against other Skaven decks and noone's drawn a Deathmaster, you're pretty much just racing anyway, so that may mean that it's not worth it.

I'll give it a shot anyway. 2x Altar, 3x Corsair instead of 3x Cold One Riders, 1x Sack Tor Aendris, 1x Vile Sorceress.

As a sidenote, the Chaos deck isn't better than the Orc/Skaven deck, but it is really fun to play that matchup - you get a lot of nailbiters out of it one way or the other.

Yeah, the last time I got some real games in I played some Skaven v. Chaos(/Orc) control and they were pretty entertaining. A few games were landslides but most of them were real chess matches. Especially for the control player.

I am often that control player, so yeah.

Having said that, my opponents playing Skaven tell me that they are having a lot of fun figuring out what to do (ok, he has 1 resource, but 2 developments, so pestilence possible but probably not firestorm, etc).

I've often tried it playing as the Skaven player too and yes, then I win a lot, so I don't feel like it's just me playing badly. It's certainly possible to throw away games via "trivial" mistakes like not developing a zone though.

Clamatius, you never did mention what flavor the virtual cookie is we get if we can win consistently against this deck?

Clearly chocolate chip, still warm from the oven.

I think the best bet to get >50% against the list (not the field, just that one deck) is one of the other Skaven decks. I do not think anything else will do it, sadly. And I would guess that that hypothetical deck would be worse off against the rest of the field, so you'd still most likely be better off running the Orc/Skaven version anyway in terms of what to actually play in a tournament.

The classic problem (at least in MTG tourney structure) of "decks that get to the top 8" vs. "decks that win in the top 8".

Not that I think there is a deck out there right now that consistently beats Orc/Skaven. To your point though, I think you'd rather be armed with the Chaos build in this thread if you're going into top 8. Based on our testing, if the Skaven and Chaos are both played at 90%+ efficiency with knowledge of each others' decklists, the Skaven has a pretty clear edge, probably 60-65% win rate. But there is just so much more room for error on the Skaven side of the table in that matchup than in the mirror that, unless you are playing against world class people and you expect them to know what to play around immediately, Chaos is probably a pretty competitive choice, assuming it doesnt take a dirtnap against the rest of the field.

Only really a consideration if you expect most of the field to show up with this Orc/Skaven build though.

You and I are definitely on the same wavelength. The top-8 deck vs. field deck is definitely a problem - one method of "solving" that problem in Magic was to keep a high enough rating that you get 3 byes in Grand Prixes and avoid a lot of the noise. For PTQs and so on you pretty much just had to cross your fingers and hope for good pairings in rounds 1-3.

Yeah, the Chaos deck I posted is pretty good and it will certainly let you beat most bad Skaven players if you play it well. But it dies horribly to the unitless bolt thrower decks since it has so many dead cards and its clock is so slow. Even with a sideboard it's pretty bleak, honestly. I think the Chaos matchups against the general field are much worse overall, especially since you don't get a sideboard. Without being able to bring in something like more Will of Tzeentch or scouts will probably mean you end up losing to random_judgement.dec too since they'll get time to draw into double Will + Judgement. Having sideboards would be a big help for the "answers" type decks, but without them you are much better off with threats (as David Price had it, there are wrong answers but no wrong threats).

The mirror or near-mirror Skaven match isn't a complete coinflip - there's still a decent amount of room for error - but for sure, it's much easier to lose to a worse player who is better at drawing Deathmaster than you than it is to lose the Chaos vs. Skaven.

I would be really surprised if most of the field showed up with something close to the Orc/Skaven list. Given the small size of the player base, I would expect a healthy number and probably a majority of totally random decks but overall, a lot of rush decks.

I do not expect that the Orc/Skaven deck will totally sweep the field and win every Regionals - there's way too much luck and player skill in the game for that - but if people play it I expect it to do really, really well compared with the other archetypes.

I just had this deck face a fun little Dwarf deck I built and it went 3 out of 4 against the Dwarves. Pretty solid so far.

Played a fair number of DE Skaven vs. Orc Skaven games. Dark Elves won a lot because I am better at drawing Deathmasters than my opponent. Seriously, it seems around about 80% of the games come down to that. You would think that that means that the Chittering Hordes would be good, but I've tried Chittering and Dark Visions and neither one seemed very impressive. DV seems ok in theory for drawing more Deathmasters, so maybe I should go back and try it again.

The Altar and Corsairs were pretty much moot - the Altar is too slow to matter against Skaven and the fact that the Corsairs have to be in the battlefield for their -2 hp trigger to work is a serious strike against them.

I think that the Altar could be really good against some other decks though, especially Chaos, so I'm going to keep a couple in there.

Yeah... this is why testing Skaven variants is so frustrating. You have to play dozens of games for the minor cards to have enough impact to noticeably overcome variance around your powerful ones. When your powerful cards completely dominate the matchup its hard to evaluate the advantage offered by each board.

Turn 2 pillage + lobber crew, or cheap spider riders/choppa, sure does seem powerful. So does Chill Winding your offense, untapping my Deathmaster and flaying your board, or Hate into WNYB on turn 0. But which set is actually better in the mirror? My gut says a lot of the DE stuff is "win more", e.g. Har Ganeth, Altar, Chill Wind... in that you're only getting a huge advantage out of it when you're already ahead on board. Orc stuff seems more broadly powerful as a toolkit.

But, I think it might be completely legit to ignore tuning for the mirror and focus on beating the rest of the field, since I agree that literally some 80+% of mirror matches just devolve into who can draw the most Deathmasters. Errata for Deathmaster to have him only count Skaven you control would actually go a long way toward "fixing" this problem (and of course by fixing I mean completely neutering every destruction strategy that doesnt play the full 12x Skaven package... but yeah, separate issue).

Having done extensive testing the past couple of days, I'm starting to find myself swayed by folks who are making the point that the Skaven & (other race, usually Orcs, here) decks are brutally powerful. I can't seem to find any deck (no matter how linear or overly-dedicated to defeating a Skaven+ deck) that works to stop 'em.

I have built one last deck to try tomorrow (too tired tonight to do anymore thinking, deck-building, or play-testing). I'm extremely hopeful that it might work or at least win 50/50 of its Skaven/Orc match-ups. I'd really like to have a more original deck than what 90% of them probably will be. Sigh.

If I'm being honest with myself, I'm starting to think that maybe side-boarding could be a good thing for the game's overall "meta," at this point. But perhaps the last Battlepack in this current cycle will start to balance things out a bit more. You never know. I guess for now I'll throw myself into the category of being "unsure" about the benefits of Side-boarding but of being fairly sure that the Skaven/Orc or Skaven/DE or Skaven/Chaos decks are consistently the best (with my pick of the best of those bunches being Orc/Skaven). Ugh!

I agree that Dark Visions also seems like it should be relevant, but trying to prove it through playtesting would be a pretty heroic task. It basically gives you a single-digit chance to draw a Deathmaster with a consolation prize of shuffling non-Deathmaster cards away from the top of your deck. But, if you're making less than five barrels, you probably can't afford to play it. I might actually prefer Chittering Horde since you can play it with a Hate barrel on their first turn.

@ wtefang: Sideboarding would be a great fix if there were something to sideboard in for the Deathmaster. I started maindecking Zealot Hunters in Order decks about three or four minutes after reading that guy, for all the good they do. After that, you're pretty much out of hate...