How do you thwart Malekith as Skaven?
I'm playing Warhammer 2 on Very Hard as Skaven (Clan Mors).
Obviously I can't contest the dark elves so they've done their 5 rituals, however I have a level 40 Queek Headtaker and a full stack so I assumed I'd be able to win the Vortex Battle and stop Malaketh that way.
Well boy was I wrong.
My original army composition had 4 siege weapons, a mix of decent tier ranged units (Death Globes, and Poison Gutter Slingers), and a screen of stormvermin.
My army just got rolled over in seconds by massed spells and Dragons/Hydras/Cavalry that rampaged straight through my lines and destroyed my arty and ranged troops.
I tried to focus fire the dragons and the skaven range is so low that it just didn't work, they hardly seemed to fire at all before they were run over.
I swapped out all my arty and slingers with another stack and went in with just stormvermin, a couple of death wheels/abominations and a bunch of deathglobes. No better.
I then swapped out again going in with 7 stormvermin, 7 hellpit abomninations, 3 death wheels and a couple of ranged. This went better for a while but then all just collapsed.
So how do you win this battle? What army composition can Skaven field that even has a chance vs Dark Elves? I've never even seen Dark Elves in campaign (just been fighting Lizardmen and humans mostly) so have had no chance to practice.
I won it comfortably with both Lizardmen and High Elves on their campaigns so I'm a bit surprised by this.
Do I need to try and lift this stupid food situation out of starving for the few turns it will take to win the battle to get the leadership buff?
Solution 1:
After many many attempts I finally found a composition that did it, if a bit crazy.
First I discovered Poison Wind Globadiers, they were a bit short range but excellent anti-large, so 6 of those formed the core solution.
I then tried a mix of different meat shields and other units to screen, but even Stormvermin were just too fragile and abombinations and doomwheels didn't kill things fast enough.
So I went back to the artillary plan, the final army composition being:
- Queek
- A Level 15 Warlock Engineer with the artillary and ranged boosting
- 3 Warp Lightning Cannon
- 3 Plagueclaw
- 6 Poison Wind Globadiers
- 3 Abominations
- 3 Doomwheels
I set up right on the edge of my artillery range, out of his arty range thanks to the engineer, and just bombarded his army to hell. When his cavalry came down to flank an abomination and doomwheel held them off for long enough that I could just keep pounding.
The poison globes focus fired down any large targets as they approached. Queek and the Abominations and Doomwheels intercepted anything going for the artillery and then the allied High Elf and Skaven also acted as a bit of a meat shield.
It was a close run thing but I was victorious losing only 2 abominations.