The Book of Deathreavers

[zcythe]

I was playing a friendly game a couple nights ago against one of my friends. He was using the "Vydar range pod" and I felt like using a different type of army. I was using Rats x5, Krug, Kaemon Awa, and Zetacron.

When we started I got intuitive and placed all of my order markers on the rats and sent them off. He then moved up raelin to a nice high point. I then grabbed an attack glyph and moved up more rats. He responded my attacking my rats with the KMA killing one and getting engaged by three rats.

On my turn I attacked raelin with two of my rats and I dealt two damage, my other two rats successfully killed a krav magma agent. The next few rounds I got really cocky and placed all my order markers on the rats. After five rounds I had four rats left and had successfully killed Raelin, Laglor, all of the Krav magma agents and had three damage on Q9. My friend then followed by quitting and blaming the game on dumb luck.

I too thought that game was a complete spoof. Until I did the math and found out that if the rats have an extra attack dice from a glyph or height that they can do a considerable amount of damage relative to there cost.

I showed the numbers to my friend and he was still in doubt, so we tried the game again this time he used the rat army and I used the vydar pod, the only thing we changed was the attack glyph which we swopped for a defence glyph.

The out come of the game still ended with the rat swarm winning, although he had to use kaemon awa to finish off the last of the Krav and Q9's last two lives.

We continued to try the rat swarm against many of the most successful tournament armies, including 4th Mass/Stg Drake, Knights/Gilbert, and a Stingers swarm army. Every army we played against twice and the rats had an 80% win rate losing only to the Knights and an army with Braxas in it.

As you can see, I have had great success using the rats as a offensive force. They are fast which allows them to easily obtain height, they are a squad of four, they can almost always get in all four attacks because they can scatter, and the can disengage to get to support units or get past defenders, and they cost a mere ten points per figure. As long as they get that one extra attack dice, they can make a quite potent offensive force.

So next time you get your hands on a large number Deathreavers, instead of using them as a measly net, use them like an incredible swarm of locust.

['Scaper94]

I'm scared of them, to be honest.

[Mr Migraine]

Originally Posted by zcythe

I was playing a friendly game a couple nights ago against one of my friends. He was using the "Vydar range pod" and I felt like using a different type of army. I was using Rats x5, Krug, Kaemon Awa, and Zetacron.

Sounded fun, but I rarely see the word "friendly game" with "rats."

[ParaGoomba Slayer]

Nothing in Heroscape is funnier than Scattering your Rats away from your opponent's melee figures after the first one is attacked.

[Mr Migraine]

Originally Posted by ParaGoomba Slayer

Nothing in Heroscape is funnier than Scattering your Rats away from your opponent's melee figures after the first one is attacked.

That is what puts holes in my walls.

[killercactus]

Originally Posted by ParaGoomba Slayer

Nothing in Heroscape is funnier than Scattering your Rats away from your opponent's melee figures after the first one is attacked.

Nah - it's more fun to spend the first round or two exclusively on Rats, setting up a wall across the entire map that a melee army just crashes into. They break against the wall like water on rock (go Theoden!). Then Nilfheim and Q10 or some Stingers just shoot them all.

Actually, its also really fun to disengage from a ranged unit that has 2 rats attached to it to go grab height advantage against a lonely ranged unit still sitting in the starting zone and bite it, because your opponent never expects you to put OM's on the Deathreavers once they're out there and engaged, especially if you've been putting the X on them in prior rounds.

I play Rats too much.....

[Lancewholelot]

I think I've been playing these guys wrong. Whenever a rat holding a glyph failed defense I would remove it and then do my scatter with two others, reclaiming the glyph if I could. But I've now noticed that Skahen's Rulings and Clarifications states "Scatter activates after rolling defense dice, Cover Fire activates after inflicting the wound (after attack/defense dice are counted). Scatter activates first, then Cover Fire."

Reads like damage is delivered after the scatter movement. Does this mean that the doomed rat on the glyph would have to be one of the scattering figures if I mean to replace him with another rat in the same scatter?

[Revdyer]

Lancewholelot, you've been playing correctly. The scatter comes after the wounding (death) of the rat on the glyph and that rat is removed from the map. You can then scatter another one onto the held glyph (if close enough, of course).

[nyphot]

What Rev said. And from the source:

Originally Posted by Grungebob

1) The rat is first killed and removed from the board
2) Then you scatter with 2 other rats

I think it might be worth putting that in the FAQ section of the Book as there has been a decent amount of confusion on the matter, in particular because of the Cover Fire ruling.

Which comes first, Scatter or rat death?

[Astronaut Jones]

Ok, I hate the rats... Mainly because I don't have any and one of the people I play with uses them like every game. They drive me crazy. I've been scanning through the pages to pick out good counters to them. I'm going to make a quick list of the ones I know/have thought of. Add to it please if you have any ideas.

- Tagawas - Eat rats for easy experience and then they hit like trucks

- Gladiatrons - Work well in tying them up/blocking them from getting to your ranged units.

- Grimnak and Gruts - Gruts don't get tied up and Grimnak can eat them without scattering them

- Q9 - Because he's Q9

- Omnicron Repulsors - Equally cheap and can wreck soulborgs

- Braxas - Seems expensive to me, but may work as long as he serves purposes beyond just countering rats.

- Nakita Agents - I'm not crazy about this idea but the thought is that engagement strike could keep rats off of you and prevent scatter.

- Brunak - Good for killing multiple squad units. But couldn't the others just run away?

any others?

[1Mmirg]

You've got some good ones. The only main point you don't seem to be mentioning is that Rats don't Scatter against Special Attacks. So, yes, Q9 does well against them, as does Brunak and any other unit with a special. (The downside, of course, is that you are still using up your attack to kill Rats instead of high point/value enemy targets.)

I love Gruts (and other disengagers) against them, b/c you can just walk away from them. That is perhaps the best way to deal with Rats...

[Astronaut Jones]

Originally Posted by 1Mmirg

You've got some good ones. The only main point you don't seem to be mentioning is that Rats don't Scatter against Special Attacks.

Oh yeah good point, I wasn't thinking about that for Brunak.