Warpstone tastes like cheese- in fact, the whole thing is a 'rats like cheese' joke. Morrslieb, one of the moons of the Old World, was made of Warpstone; a reference to the 'moon is made of green cheese' folklore.
holy... shit. I never realized that until right now. I mean, I got the pied piper of hameln joke, the black plague joke, etc. But never this one. Thanks!
The funny thing is, rats are not particularly fond of cheese in real life, and neither are mice. They'll eat it (well, some do. Some of my pets rats were not very impressed, but I imagine no wild rat or mouse will actually turn it down), but it's not a preferred food item. Grain, nuts, seeds etc tend to be very enticing to them. The belief stems, reportedly, from how cheese was historically often one of the more easily accessible stored foodstuffs (and it also has a strong smell, generally, so it's very easy to locate), so seeing evidence of rodents on your cheese was rather common.
@@goblinrat6119 Another funny thing is, the moon is not actually made of cheese. Unless NASA are lying to us... Thanks for the cool facts about rodent friends though!
Lmao that "skaven society is a tyranny moderated by assassination" quote is a parody of an old description of the Tory party as an "absolute monarchy moderated by regicide"
Holy shit what a reference. Me having finished that book and finding Warhammer fantasy aligned perfectly in my childhood. I had one little plastic monopose Skaven swapped at school
A funny bit of lore from their appearance in the Vengeance of the Lichemaster scenario is that the ceremonial salute the skaven do towards the great horned rat is showing their bare asses at him. Im not joking, the entire reason the wizard Bagrian was able to steal the black ark was because he caught all the skaven in skavenblight looking the other way bending over mooning the great horned rat.
As an aside, given that the Skaven are super-often described as "an entire faction of Starscreams," can we agree that it's a minor tragedy that Chris Latta left us before someone could get him to voice Thanquol? Tho, at least they could get Tom Kenny or Matt Chapman doing his Blue Laser voice...
Ikit Klaw, learned magic from all the races, master of technology, burned himself in an accident and built a suit of armour/equipment to cover it up? Ikit Claw is Fantasy Dr Doom, this is canon now and I will not be taking questions.
Then he went on to AoS living for over 10,000 years years where he lost many memories & forgot his name and goes by Ikrit (though he’s trying to get his memories back) and escalated his tech stealing from every god(including the Dark Gods) so they’re all after him as he escapes on his interdimensional burrow while experimenting with Stormcast immortality to perfect his own long-lived existence. Basically evolving from Doctor Doom to a malevolent Doctor Who.
Inspector Gadget - Volume 1 is a UK VHS release by The Video Collection on 21st September 1987. Warhammer Armies (Fourth Edition): Skaven (1993) I'm just saying.
I always liked how, whereas 40k only had the orks as a comedy faction, the fantasy game had at least two and arguably five or six. The one-upmanship of skaven being an even more hordey, randomly effective bunch of arguing backstabbers than the orcs and goblins says a lot about how seriously WFB takes itself.
I'd honestly advise 40k Ork players looking to get into Warhammer fantasy take a look at Skaven maybe even more than fantasy Orcs. Sure maybe there is more cunning than brutality (though the Rat Ogres bring a lot of that) but the weird unique engineering, lots of dark comedy and just general anything and everything can go wrong mentality is very much there.
Skaven are kind of amazing in how their whole vibe, lore, and most of their units solidified in early WFB and have barely changed since because it all just... works. They even had a copyright-friendly name from the start, so have never needed renaming something terrible with a Y in it! ... God, imagine if they'd been called "Ratmen", and they'd been renamed... like... "Vermynkyn" for AoS.
Thanquol and Boneripper is a complicated story. The model in 4th edition is the 1st Boneripper, which is killed by the slayer Gotrek in one of the novels. He then has 5 other rat ogres also called Boneripper, of which most are taken out by Gotrek and his associates in novels. - They have, lets say a frequent run in. The 7th rat ogre he then gets is a mechanical construct, built on the corpse of the 1st one, which has a model in 6th edition (Where you also see it having the skull once split by Gotrek's axe). Then there are 8th to 12th, of which not much is known, and XIII which was too killed in a novel, but since GW chose, to retcon out the Storm of Chaos timeline non canon. And finally there is the Endtime one, that is then also used in AOS. I do not know, if that ratogre is supposed, to be the same one, or just a new one with the same name. He doesn't look however very dead/ corpse based to me, like Boneripper VII did. So I guess, it is just, another, very large, rat ogre, Thanquol called Boneripper.
So, fun fact, my first EVER Warhammer models were that screaming bell & 10 monopose clanrats, which I found in a church jumble sale. Unopened, still on sprue. One of the boxes had a leaflet in it with a list of store locations on it, turn out there was one in Edinburgh. I went down to have a look, and that was me hooked.
1:46 The beautiful thing about Skaven slurs, of course, is that they don't really _sound_ like slurs, because somewhere between 80% and 90% of the nouns in Skaven vocabularies are in fact slurs, so it's difficult for a non-Skaven to understand which ones they really mean. (They mean all of them)
YES! My copy is falling apart but I got it signed by Andy Chambers at Australian Gamesday 1999 or 2000?! My most treasured GW book! Can't wait to see you both cover it! :D
I recall a run of articles with a Warhammer Tournament Champion around 98/99 who was mainly a skaven player. He used to represent his warpstone by using green jelly babies, and eating them whenever his warlocks used any.
11:59 I think I figured out why the old Screaming Bell sounds attractive. It's a battering ram... made into a suicide bomb. You're on a timer to run that thing at a blob of enemies or a big expensive unit before it rolls high enough to go Kaboom, while also giving a few buffs and debuffs on the way in.
I have a friend who collected a Skaven army. He tried to theme it around the Redwall book series, with it's great army of rats. The Skavenslaves he painted as mice taken as battle-thralls, painting them with gashes and wounds in their fur from being literally whipped into action.
I was a kid during that time (around 10 years old) and we all found those "unified army shots" that you mentioned, amazing. Because back then you had the time to treat every picture like a "where is waldo" search picture. You just look at everything and then back again and everything was amazing.
I got into WFB in 4th Ed and collected Skaven (as well as a few other armies). But I always remember the look of dread and the whispers around the table when someone spots Death Master Snitch on the board 😂 great times.
4:52 This mght be a reference to the quote " 'The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination" attributed to Voltaire. It also reminded me of a quote from William Hague, dscribing the Tory Party as "an absolute monarchy, moderated by regicide".
The codex/army books of that time have the most amazing covers. You can look over them numerous times and still find some new little details you hadnt seen before
Its funny to hear that their lack of shooting is one of their weaknesses since they definitely leaned into it more and more as ths game went on with them being the shootiest of the chaos factions in aos by far.
One of the moons of the Old World was made of Warpstone. Skaven can eat warpstone In Wallace And Gromit, the moon is made of cheese QED Warpstone is just really spicy cheese.
6th edition Skaven was the perfect army for me...if everything worked perfectly you where a lightningstorm of destruction with those crazy warmachnies, monsters and spells...but it nearly never did. More often than not you would kill half if your own army...and if just one unit started fleeing you where fucked. 4th edition was pretty fun too
Oddly enough, the Fellblade did in fact do its job, it's the cause of Nagash's first death at the hands of Alcadizaar, last king of Nehekhara (second depending on source to be fair). The big bone lord unfortunately has contingencies to bring himself back. Gotta love the Skaven for bringing that first big win against the old fella!
And was the first of a number of times that the Skaven screwed over Nagash. Yes, seriously. For some reason when Nagash victory looked imminent before the End Times, and nobody else seemed able to stop him, it'd be the Skaven of all people.
I remember earlier AOS editions also had a progressing table for the screaming bell if you managed to roll exactly thirteen you would summon a verminlord. The loss of fun rules like this in the name of balance is what soured me on the most recent editions of aos
Warp stone? It can produce a metallic, chemical, burning plastic, or even sweet floral fragrance depending on whether or not it is heated up and what it is mixed with. When warp stone is heated it can produce a chemical or even metallic scent. Raw unprocessed warp stone that is not cooked tends to have more of a flowery smell... um, I mean that's what I hear.
Skaven are simply despicably lovely. When I first got into Warhammer, I was definitely drawn to them due to that armybook cover... An absolute masterpieces for its time.
I remember being so weirded out reading the Thanquol story, since I had just finished his first novel and knew that the Gotrek and Felix books didn't start until 1999, so I was super confused as I didn't think they were created until much later! Skaven consistency is really amazing. Forget 1993, they were very well defined clear back in 1986, I highly recommend checking out that Citadel Journal. Not to mention the fact that while there are changes such as expanding the clan structure, ultimately they didn't change a ton into AoS either. I can't remember what I used to imagine warpstone tasting like. Though I think it was like something like slightly flavorless fundip powder mixed with particularly strong rainwater.
Given that warpstone is treated like a kind of drug by the Skaven, I'd imagine that it's horribly bitter but the effects offset that horrible taste and get them absolutely hooked on it, much like humans tend to find alcoholic drinks and hard drugs disgusting on first contact and then get more and more accustomed to it to the point of actively enjoying the flavours. It's probably also a really good material for grinding down their teeth, which might otherwise grow indefinitely if they're not constantly finding things to gnaw upon, so I imagine that they take it like Betel, constantly chewing and gnawing upon it until it mixes with their saliva and then gets absorbed through any cuts or mucus membranes in their gums.
Way I always made an elevator pitch for Skaven was a race of temporarily embarrassed millionaires with a god complex. God I love those silly traitorous bastards, best faction
Plague Censer Bearers were so so broken when this book came out. If you ran them as shock troops instead of just screening your plague monks (I ran 2 units of 40x plague monks and 2 units of 20x censers). Free wounds from papa nurgle; and 2 attacks each of S6 flails with hatred rerolls. They would mulch everything from chaos knights to dragons into a fine red mist.
Skrolk was actually one of those models that refused to die, same with the Globadiers. They've only now been remived from the store with the Skaven line getting a huge refresh. Skrolk was just sold as a generic Plague Priest. Ikit Claw, Throt and Queek got refreshed in fantasy 8th, Snikch could be run as a Deathmaster before being refreshed in AoS 3 and Thanquol and Boneripper are just the exact same.
Great timing as I am currently listening to the audiobook version on skavenslayer, where you get a great insight into the skaven. Especially the books main antagonist grey seer Thanquol (although he helps the heroes to as much as he is trying to kill them)
I started collecting in 1998. Skaven remain my very favorite little bastards of an army even though they were not my first. I play/collect them in every various WH game in which they are available (and also ‘Nids, which I mean. Next best thing) I have this book, the one from the edition that followed, and an AoS one. I have only two novels of a Skaven-centric subject matter but I love them both immensely. The Skaven are by far, the LEAST altered army in the story and mechanics leap from FB to AoS. They are the same assholes with the same goals, and the closest translation of units (debatably not in tactics) and literally the only army to retain the same name. In my very non-humble and aggressive opinion. They are the most iconic and most narratively representative army in all of the “fantasy” setting for Warhammer on the whole, and I am so glad that this amazing channel has begun a deep dive into them. If perhaps, their fans were interested in hearing me talk-speak about the greatness of the Vermintide, I would like-love to be told so
I think it's fascinating just how intact a concept they have been since right Spring 1986 Citadel Journal. Right down to the four big clans. Nothing else in Warhammer has been so consistent in concept. It always amused me that Deathmaster Snikch was a more terrifying and dangerous assassin that his Dark Elf counterparts (who also had the "appear out of a friendly unit" rule). Likewise that it was the Council of 13 who saved the world from Nagash. (Warning: frothing about my own game.) So much so that I'm currently running a AoS Soulbound TTRPG campaign at the moment. Based around The One Good Skaven (TM) invented; A Clan Skryre renegade named "Rattimedes Goodsqueaker" (Oc feel free to steal). Who is inspired by the fact that the Skaven have saved the world from Nagash at least twice (once in The World that Was and again with the Necroquake) and has created a device that allows my players to be the only non-skaven use Gnawholes.
6:40 wow, old Skaven Lore gives Fimir Lore a run for its money. I wonder if the various colours assigned to Warpstone, are a reference to Octarine, from the 1983 Terry Pratchett book, the Colour of Magic; "a fluorescent greenish yellow-purple"?
4:20 Skaven: they're like the wh40k universe Humans, but more in touch with technology. Also, warpstone is just like super-Parmesan on the right meal, or Jarlsberg as a nommy yum, or that cheddar you eat on pizzas when you're not yet drunk (or after, or when you are). Warpstone is delicious!
It looks like a the champagne jelly that my old chef taught me. It had candied lemon and lime zest through it and the trick was to balance the gelatine so it melts as you eat it but holds its shape on the plate. Love to you both and your loved ones.
15:20 FUN FACT- Lord Skrolk's model (later renamed to plague priest with the release of AOS) was only made unavailable to purchase from GW with the release of 4th ed, making one of the longest serving Warhammer models. (1993-2024)
Age of Sigmar _is_ nine years old, isn't it... :C *NINE GODDAMN YEARS* xC I've always like the names of old school Skaven locales, like Crookback Mountain, Gnaw Pit and Queekwell. If I ever found my own country I'd like to give it town and city names like that ;p On the subject of warpstones flavour, I've always imagined it as a mixture of those sour warheads and licking a battery.
@@u.s.1974 To be fair I do like many of the models, and I personally don't have anything against the setting - other than not knowing much about it. I have to keep reminding myself that certain characters aren't around anymore and the nations/locales of the old world aren't pertinent to The Realms or whatever they're called.
I'm glad to see the book I sent you was put to such good use! Watching your video while working on my Stormcast half of the skaventide box to kick my friends skaven behind ❤
Ahhhh yes. 4th edition. When army rules were thematic and made gameplay unpredictable but in the best ways. The way warhammer was meant to be! Skaven and greenskins epitomized this idea. The best part is, it honestly didn’t matter if you won or lost. Everyone was having too much fun just laughing at all the ridiculousness of watching your orcs charge your goblins, only to have fanatics come out and kill both units at the same time. Or watching your warp lightning cannon fire into your slaves and an enemy unit, only to do more damage to the slaves and then explode a turn later due to a misfire.
I think people enjoy the Skaven precisely because they're horrible. In an era of the mythos when Orcs were comic-relief bovver boys, Chaos a creeping cosmological doom and Dark Elves sinisterly seductive combat strippers, the Skaven were just cartoonishly, selfishly vile. I remember coming across them for the first time in an ad at the very end of 3rd ed and immediately being struck by the paradox that these horrid little bastards were really cute. One friend more into Star Wars than Warhammer said they put him in mind of Ewok crack-heads. Also warpstone tastes like a really sharp, citrus-infused rock candy, but slightly, delightfully greasy, like a ripe brie. I defy anyone to stop eating it before their jaw starts rotting. Totally worth it.
I started playing warhammer with this army book back at the turn of the century. I'm so excited for the new skaven models, especially the globadiers, whose previous model has stuck around since the 80s
So I just started the gotrek and felix novels recently and this short story about Thanqol actually exactly bridges the gap between the book I finished last night and book I started this morning. Truly he is the chosen of the horned rat
I have fond memories of Queek Headtaker offering a challenge to the enemy General and my opponent realising, that he's a beast. Hacking the General to death.
Lovely video, as usual. I agree the army book cover is great, nothing beats actual, hand-made physical art. I love how you added a warpstone glow to the entire vid, looks great. I have a future entry for Codex Compliant to propose: Warhammer Siege from 1988. Contains rules for WHFB and Rogue Trader both, great art, confusing, impractical rules - perfect for this segment. I can lend you my copy if you like.
Another excellent review of the greatest era of Games Workshop. The Codex and Army books were full of detail, law and colour. We could also afford them too. 😅
I knew this guy, he was a wizard. He seemed to carry quite a bit of warpstone (or as he called it, "wyrdstone") on his person and sort of ate it like some kind of chaosy trail mix. Big dude, heart of gold. I wonder what became of him...
Warp Stone tastes like Poprocks, except when they pop, you have a good chance to just die on the spot. Do not mix with Warp-Pop, you will 100% explode.
"The Enemy Within" is an adventure published by Games Workshop in 1986 for the fantasy role-playing game Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was President of the Oxford Union for Trinity Term, 1986, and kept appearing in the papers then with various opinions, as well as attracting some adverse comments about his administration of the Oxford Union, which was less than exemplary. "Boris Goldgather" aka "Boris the Incompetent" was a satire back in 1986.
This book is the only Army Book I managed not to displace when moving house. I love the Skavens' anarchic and unpredictable style, so managing to actually hang on to the book is a miracle. And yes, "Globadiers" sounds good. For those among us who like to use euphemisms, "a unit of Globadiers" sounds better than "a bunch of tossers". As for the taste of warpstone: nothing one would like to use in a Bonggg. Cheers.
I love these vids, as they take me back to a time when I completely ignored fantasy battles to focus on being bad at sport. Warpstone may taste like a bag of used socks, sat in the sun two or three months after they were used.
Three blister packs of Empire Helbizen or Handgunners and a command unit was a pretty standard way of building an Empire Army back then too. Actually maybe you would want a few more than three blister packs , depending on the size of army you were trying to collect. Obviously it has all changed now since the advent of plastic regiment boxed sets for most armies.
Please definitely check out the Hell Pit army list which was in white dwarf: it is really inspiring and has loads of extra detail + personality + conversion ideas, too.
I think warpstone tastes like Szechuan Pepper is just so full of chaos and energy that is tingly and faintly metallic and makes your tongue fall asleep
I can't imagine anythng crystaline to be delicious, but I am reminded of some lore from my uni days regarding Midori and the feminine reaction to green drinks (which I won't repeat here).