It might just be my love of Skaven talking, but it seems that since the Corruption Cycle ended, the Skaven haven't received any useful cards. Used to be that my Skaven made for a deadly deck, but now they're not even the best neutral race, falling well behind Undead and possibly Lizardmen. Do you think that the lackluster Skaven cards released by FFG for the last year or so have been intentionally poor? Or are they actually really good, and I'm just not using them correctly? Suggestions would be deeply appreciated! My metagame is very insular, so it could be that I'm suffering from tunnel vision.

Of course, I could always count my blessings. My Skaven are capable of winning sometimes , after all. The same can't be said of my Wood Elf deck…it is truly awful.

It's unfortunately true…but The Council of Thirteen is coming

To be honest I don't think the Council will change anything for Skaven really (players will rather use it combined with DE or Chaos decks). I completely agree that current and previous cycle were very poor in terms of Skaven cards. The latest Mutant Assasin is a good example of it. I wouldn't bother playing it even if I had to spare 6 resources. It has poor stats compared to its cost (2/4), restricted to Battlefield only (assasin working only in the battlefield?), comes into play corrupted (since it is restricted to battlefield he is delayed from the very start, in Kingdom or Quest it would at least give 2 hammers) and ability that is a joke. Why a joke you ask? Because Damage does not lower the Hit Points. So our great assasin is no better than typical chaos Warhounds and I prefer the latter.

I thought maybe new neutral quest will change things and Skaven will come back to the table. No, sorry they will not…

Only Clan Moulder's Elite is in the game, they are always welcome in the destruction decks

decado said:

Warpstone Experiments are too

decado, you misunderstand. "Remaining hit points" means "hit points minus damage tokens". So the ability isn't a joke. You can compare him to Wight Lord. He has some disadvantages, but his ability triggers both when entering and leaving play.

On the whole, I think it's wrong to expect the neutral factions to be as powerful as the six main factions. It's just not possible, due to the number of cards alone. The people who like the neutral factions or who want every Warhammer faction to be presented in Invasion equally might not like it, but I really wouldn't expect it to change.

This new Skavenbuilding seems to be very strong. The Skaven-Quest is also really nice in combination with Death Master Snitch.

I like the actual skavendevelopment but its just fun to play such a fraction pur

Mallumo said:

That's a fair point, I suppose. Though I do wish FFG would stop printing Skaven cards that seem to be intentionally poor. I used to look forward whenever Skaven cards were revealed to be in coming expansions, but four of five consecutive disappointments have stifled my boyish hopes.

Ughh…

This isn't just Skaven, it's a general problem with neutral races in WH:I. Personally I love Lizardmen, from the war game. However the representation in WHI:I is pretty bad. They only have 2 2-cost units iirc, and while they do have some stronger units they are all so expensive making a Lizard focused deck is disheartning. Also for the race with the most magical talent (yes they out do you HE, don't deny it) in the WH world, they are pretty poorly represented.

I don't think the chaos neutral races are as bad as the order ones. Skaven has the natural advantage of being around longer, even if the card pool is balanced by the custom expansion. Undead/Vampires (I presume these will stay as one category…) seem the strongest, atleast they have more reliable strategies. Wood Elves have a number of forest spirits that are just too expensive and some Wood Elf cards that are somewhat thematic, then a number of cards that don't make a lot of sense in relation to the original themes or tabletop game.

I understand the argument against neutral races - as they are playable in any deck (of the same alignment) they can't be OP or they will be overused. However I don't get why FFG hasn't explored tribal themes. Like the above Skaven unit (Warlock Engineer). Instead of making it cost 4, which renders it almost useless for a 1/1, make it cost 2 and have a requirement that it can only be played in a zone containing another Skaven unit. Similar things could have been done with Forest Spirits… which would make sense for a forest. The always playable theme is lost as the player needs to be running other units of the same type and enough of them to likely have one in play - so tribal strategies are the only forgiving way to play them (I don't believe we have keyword manipulation).

I think, as great as the game is, FFG just looses focus at times on the Warhammer world. It isn't a game with 6 races - there are more, and as FFG has brought these into the game they should be atleast playable instead of filler cards in a battle pack. I wish we would get more tribal cards - to lower cost of neutral units, infer bonus or conditions of playability that suit the both the thematic environment in Warhammer and the pre-existing playstyles originally introduced for each race. And please, don't just think 'we haven't produced any Lizardmen for a while, lets make one with some erratic ability that makes no sense, but since it's neutral it's ok'….

Sorry for the rant, the Warhammer world is something I love and have for a long time. Sadly my favorite races (Lizardmen and Wood Elves) seem like ideas originally placed then forgotten about and other random things thrown on top to make it look like FFG wants to develop the race, if only for the sake of having more neutral cards. The packs seem to be growing in focus, the next cycle looks good, so hopefully this can tie up some loose ends in these races.

I'm really hoping that the new ambush rules bring some badass Wood Elf Waywatchers with it.