Orcs & Goblins Smash the Skaven Renegades
The second duel of round one
The second match of the first round of our first neighbourhood Cinquecento gave us exactly what we wanted from Warhammer: The Old World: chaos, funny rules interactions, dramatic leadership tests, and a game that suddenly went from “pretty even” to “absolute disaster” in about a turn and a half.
This time Stas brought Orc & Goblin Tribes, while Michał fielded Skaven Renegades. Someone immediately noticed that we were basically playing King of the Hill, and honestly… fair.
The lists
Orc & Goblin Tribes — Stas
- Orc Bigboss with great weapon, heavy armour, shield, Trollhide Trousers
- 19 Orc Mob with warbows, light armour, shields, full command
- 20 Goblin Mob with shields, 2 Nasty Skulkers, musician
- 20 Goblin Mob with shields, 2 Nasty Skulkers, musician
- Orc Boar Chariot
Skaven Renegades — Michał
- Skaven Chieftain with halberd, heavy armour, shield
- Warlock Engineer with warplock musket, Level 1 Wizard, Battle Magic
- 20 Clanrats with Ratling Gun
- 12 Giant Rats
- 11 Night Runners with slings
- 3 Warplock Jezzails
A proper 500-point scrap: lots of bodies, a few nasty tricks, and enough randomness to make everything feel dangerous.
Opening volleys
The first turn started with Skaven shooting doing at least something. The Engineer’s musket dropped one of the boyz, Night Runner slings and Jezzail shots removed four goblins, but the Engineer failed to cast Warp Lightning. Very Skaven opening: some sparks, some noise, and one key thing not working.
As Michał later summed it up perfectly: shooting happened, hitting… did not.
The lines close
After the opening exchanges, things got much more direct. The Night Runners ended up in a very bad place, getting pinned by Night Goblins and the chariot.
Then we got the kind of turn we all love reading about afterwards: multiple combats breaking out at once. Giant Rats hit the orc boyz, while Clanrats got stuck into Night Goblins.
Stas described it best afterwards: this was a duel between brutal and cunning orcs and cunning and brutal rats, with deadly technology, impulsive green charges, and some spicy dice backed by spicy pizza. Honestly, that is the exact energy we want from club night gaming.
The rules interaction that turned the game
From turn three onward, things got properly brutal.
The key moment was a rules interaction that Michał discovered mid-game: if a unit falls back from combat and passes through another unit, then the winner can pursue into that new unit and end up fighting a second melee in the same turn. That changed the whole shape of the battle.
The retreating Night Runners effectively dragged the Night Goblins along, while the chariot overran and ended up behind them.
On the eastern side of the table, the Giant Rats lost against the orc boyz and had to take a leadership test modified by combat resolution. They needed 3 or less.
Which, incredibly, they made.
That was the good news.
The bad news was that they fell back behind the Clanrats, which then opened the door for the Orcs to charge them as well.
The collapse of the Skaven line
Once the Skaven line started folding in on itself, it folded fast.
Caught in combat with Night Goblins and Orcs, the Clanrats managed to kill three Orcs, but still lost the fight. Because of Scurry Away, they fled a full 7 inches — just enough to clip the chariot by an inch and effectively disappear off the board.
A moment later, the Ratling Gun did the same.
Then, in the following turn, the Night Runners were also gone.
At that point the Skaven force was reduced to Jezzails and 11 Giant Rats, and Michał conceded. Final score: 575:0 on battle points.
A small Skaven moral victory did happen somewhere in the middle of all this: the Jezzails managed to put one wound on the chariot. So, technically, warp-engineered firearms were not entirely decorative.
A quick note on scoring
There was also a funny post-game discovery: because of how matched play scoring works, this massive result still translated to 5:1 tournament points, not 6:0.
As Stas noticed, according to the official scoring breakdown, 6:0 starts at a 750+ point difference, which is… not exactly easy to achieve in a 500-point game.
We are very much in “lesson learned for future Cinquecentos” territory here, but we also agree with Stas: it is probably best to just leave this one as it is.
Round one standings
And with that, round one of our first local Cinquecento was done.
There was also some immediate post-table reflection from Michał, who admitted being a bit intimidated by just how fragile the rats felt — but also said that after the first emotions settled, he could still see the army’s potential and wanted to keep trying. And honestly, that is exactly the right attitude for Skaven.
Thanks to Stas for the game, and respect to Michał for taking the beating in good humour and immediately looking for the next way to make the rats work.
Bonus: mysterious weapon identification
To close things out, we also got two extra photos from the aftermath, including one excellent example of image recognition apparently deciding that some miniature element counted as a weapon and therefore probably deserved to run away.
Final thoughts
This was one of those small games that somehow contained everything:
- early potshots,
- failed magic,
- packed melee turns,
- weird but important rules interactions,
- absurdly clutch leadership,
- and then a catastrophic chain-reaction rout.
So yes: brutal, sneaky, educational, and very funny in retrospect. Exactly the kind of battle report we like the most.