New Skaven Renegades Draft and a Small Poisoned Surprise
We got one of those very Warhammer moments this week: excitement, confusion, a rules re-read, and then the sudden realization that the draft had changed in a way that accidentally matched how it had already been played at the table.
Michał dropped into chat with big news: there’s a new Renegades draft for Skaven. And honestly, that was immediately followed by the even funnier part — he had already noticed that he had misunderstood one of the rules, only for the updated version to now work more like the way he had been playing it anyway. Peak hobby-gaming energy.
The specific bit that caught our attention was Poison Wind Globadiers and how their attacks interact with misses.
As Michał pointed out to Pegie, the self-hit mechanic had apparently been handled incorrectly for a while. Up to now, the misses from poison wind shots weren’t really “hitting him automatically” in the way he had assumed. Instead, the correct approach should have been to re-roll the misses to check whether the shot actually hit the firing unit itself.
But in his game that day, he had been playing it much more brutally: every miss counted as a hit on his own unit, and only the wound roll gave him a chance to avoid the damage. So yes — he had been making life harder for himself than necessary.
And then came the second punchline: the Globadiers got nerfed anyway, and now they’ll be taking -1 to hit at long range.
So even though one misunderstanding got cleared up, the unit still came out of the update looking a bit worse. That’s the Skaven way, really: unstable, dangerous, and occasionally exploding in your own face.
For us, this is exactly the kind of thing that makes army-building and list tinkering fun. A draft update drops, one small wording change sends us back into rules discussion mode, and suddenly we’re re-evaluating how a unit fits into the roster. Even a seemingly minor tweak like a long-range penalty can shift how attractive a unit feels when we’re putting together a list.
If you want to follow the wider rules and army update context, check out the official Warhammer site:
Right now, our main takeaway is simple: if you’re testing Skaven drafts, it’s worth double-checking the exact wording on those weird weapon rules before you punish your own rats more than the designers intended. Or, apparently, wait a moment and the draft might shift under your feet anyway.
Very Skaven. Very funny. Very on brand.