Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Deathmaster Snikch - Skaven Campaign Overview, Guide And Second Thoughts
Hello everyone. In this guide I will cover:
- Victory conditions, faction and climate;
- Starting location;
- Diplomacy and outposts;
- Mechanics of the race and faction;
- Province edicts and army stances;
- Buildings and research;
- Lords and skills;
- Army compositions;
And give you my final notes on the specific faction. Hope you enjoy it.
If you prefer to watch the video, it also helps to support me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I68NDHS_Gk
If you prefer to read, here:
VICTORY CONDITIONS:
Short victory:
- Perform 8 Eshin Actions
- Destroy the factions of the Dimmed Sunz, Celestial Loyalists, and The Northern Provinces (Miao Ying);
- Occupy, loot, raze or sack 30 different settlements;
The reward is +3 recruit rank for all armies, like always it is useful to ensure you have better recruits than other factions.
Quite a quick short victory, enemies are nearby and it should be easy to achieve overall.
Long victory:
- Achieve the short victory:
- Occupy, loot, raze or sack 75 different settlements;
- Control 7 of a list of specific settlements, mainly Dwarf, Skaven or Greenskins capitals.
The reward is +2 Global recruitment capacity, decent to ensure you keep having full armies as you replace with better units.
This is a bit harder long campaign, mostly because the specific settlements are in the old world and it may take sometime to achieve that, depending on your rate of expansion.
Snikch is the Chief Assassin of Clan Eshin, and he benefits from:
- Has access to Clan Eshin Shadowy Dealings;
- Recruitment cost +200% for all non-Eshin units;
- Clan Loyalty: Eshin Lords never defect;
- Night Runners and Gutter Runners use armor piercing projectiles.
These bonuses allow Snikch to focus on the Eshin and Night/Gutter units, but nothing really stops you from having others. There is a way to minimize the recruit cost later for other units.
Climate is quite good, one of the best factions to dominate the map with, and certainly an interesting to try out for the whole map completion.
STARTING LOCATION:
Your starting location is a 4 settlement province, but you do not have a capital settlement. Still, considering that you gain recruitment slots with each settlement in the province, it is a great one to get fast armies from.
It is a decent start, although you are surrounded and with few friends nearby. It will not be long before other factions declare war on you, so you must be aware of possible attacks.
Typical expansion is simply put to take over the whole Cathay area, and then decide how to proceed towards your long victory objectives. There is always the possibility of using the sea lanes for that matter, so you do have options of transitioning to different parts of the map.
DIPLOMACY AND OUTPOSTS:
Diplomatically, you are Skaven, some will hate you, some will let you live. Enemies initially will be Greenskins, Cathay, and maybe Dark Elves. You may have some good friends with Dark Elves, other Greenskins, or Vampire Counts, but it is always a difficult endeavor. They can either become your friends or your foes, so be wary.
Still, outposts could be formed for some melee units from the Dark Elves, some frontline units from the Greenskins and cavalry from the Vampire Counts.
MECHANICS OF THE RACE AND FACTION:
Undercities are a nice idea. They provide vision and you can generate food and income, as well as other bonuses for your faction. The biggest idea is to suddenly shift into a Vermintide, but that costs a lot of resources and may backfire.
Food is your unique currency, and it is important to keep finding more; this is mainly to avoid penalties than to actually receive buffs. Food can be used to capture a settlement and turn it into a higher level, which ensures good strategic advantages over other factions.
Skaven corruption allows you more uses of the menace below, and grant you bonuses on that province. It provides food and public order when low, and public order penalties when high, but nothing too detrimental.
An additional mechanic is how the Skaven ambush on their natural stance, every battle you initiate has a chance to become an ambush. Some army compositions are entirely possible just because of this stance.
Rites:
1 - The Dominating Scheme, giving you 3 food per turn, +40 growth in all provinces, +2 control, -25% recruitment cost;
2 - The Revitalising Scheme, which restores all units in your armies to full health and returns all wounded and recovering lords and heroes to the faction.
3 - The Thirteenth Scheme, giving you +13 diplomatic relations with Skaven, lords have a chance to gain 2 loyalty, hero action success +13%, enemy hero action success -13%, and an army ability that is an area direct damage spell.
4 - The Sudden Kill Scheme, which gives you armies Snipe, Stalk, +10% speed and +20% missile strength to Night and Gutter runners.
Shadowy Dealings - are split into Eshin actions and Clan Contracts.
Eshin actions are a variety of actions that affect a settlement, and army, or even a whole faction. You have to select an agent to perform the action, and then you have some cooldown for that scheme. You can unlock further schemes by committing to the Nightlord's Say-So action
Clan contracts are similar but are issued by other Skaven clans. This is important for you to increase your Diplomatic relations with them, and it will give you decent buffs as it increases, such as reducing the recruitment cost of specific units (which basically counters your faction negative trait). Therefore, you have ways to recruit all units eventually or use every unit without an issue if you focuse well on the contracts.
PROVINCE EDICTS AND ARMY STANCES:
Edicts:
+3 control; -2 corruption;
Growth +20, construction cost -10%;
Recruitment cost -5%; local recruitment capacity +1;
Skaven corruption +3; Food generated +2;
Army stances:
Stalking, which allows you to have a chance to ambush an enemy when you attack;
Underway, which gives you the tactical option of going through difficult terrain, just be careful of interception;
Channeling, giving you +15 winds of magic per turn, at the cost of -10% movement;
Encamp, costing 50% movement, enables replenishment and global recruitment, as well as giving immunity to attrition
Raiding, costing 50% movement, giving you 3 food and immunity to attrition;
Ambush stance, which is the normal, waiting and hiding in ambush idea, costs 25% movement;
Forced march
Overall, you have both good edicts and army stances to allow some flexibility in the campaign map, and the stances even give you some possible variety in terms of army composition and playstyle if you focus on ambushes, underway, etc.
Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Deathmaster Snikch - Skaven Campaign Overview, Guide And Second Thoughts (continuation)
BUILDINGS, RESEARCH:
You have additional recruitment capacity with each settlement in a province. This implies your best provinces for recruitment will be 3 to 4 settlement ones, but there are very few with 4 settlements nearby (other than your starting one).
For the buildings, undercities: there is a unique requirement which is discoverability, which you have to keep an eye out. If it reaches 100, the enemy can discover your undercity and demolish it.
Xing Po has 2 special buildings, one that gives you Night Runners, income, food, control, and growth. The gem mine gives you income and reduced corruption, which is nice to have.
6 military buildings, 4 of which must be in the capital for their fullest effect.
They have good combinations of units at tier 3, though, including Stormvermin, catapults, rattling guns, rat ogres. For Eshin, you have all the Eshin building units too, which helps tremendously.
All buildings generate income and Skaven corruption. Infrastructure gives:
1 - Growth, casualty repelnishment rate;
2 - Food, income from buildings;
3 - Corruption denial, recruitment cost;
4 - Control, hero and lord and unit recruitment rank;
These are all decent ones, which you also should consider just to unlock the necessary research.
Speaking of research, it is fairly extense, with many techs locked behind buildings. They do benefit a lot of your units adequately, your campaign as well, and many techs add units to the Vermintide to make it very powerful.
LORDS, SKILLS, ARMY COMPOSITIONS:
Blue line does not have replenishment; however, most lords have that skill in a better way in their specific skill lines.
They have ambush increase, which plays into the faction very well, as well as upkeep decrease which allows you to get better and more armies in the long run.
Redline allows crazy cool combinations for a relative cheap cost of skills there.
Should be noted that the second part of the line mixes some units, so be on the lookout to ensure that you maximize this.
In general, there are specific ones for Weapons Teams, all elite infantry, artillery is joined by Doomwheels, and you do have a Monster dedicated skill line.
Snikch goes great with all the Eshin Units, faster, concealing, so most of the time your whole army will have either stalk or even better ways to conceal. This implies an amazing playthrough where the enemy does not even know where to go to.
Warlock Masters have some upkeep bonuses for weapons teams, so makes sense to benefit from those. Some basic weapons teams stacks are always nice in any Skaven playthrough.
Assassins favor Night and Gutter runners, so you can have some compositions with them, specially considering your faction bonus.
I leave you some other compositions with other lords, and some based in monsters if you wish to add to the variety.
In terms of Lords and Heroes there is a lot of choice; always note that I only recommend that you get at least one caster hero and one melee/support hero, but you can definitely just go Hero crazy if you prefer. They all have specific bonuses to specific units, and you have 2 heroes that provide replenishment.
FINAL NOTES:
Snikch provides a wonderful playthrough, and quite unique. Not only he starts with fairly different enemies, he also has unique mechanics and a unique playstyle possibility, into ambushes, sneakyness, and uses different units.
This means you will be having a completely different campaign than with other Skaven lords, adding to the replay value of the faction and the Skaven as an entire race.
Your army consists of:
1 - Good infantry;
2 - Great missile infantry and artillery;
3 - Good monstrous infantry and single entities;
4 - Great heroes, and varied;
5 - No flying units;
6 - No real cavalry;
Replenishment is great considering the climate, heroes, lords, and that you can recover yoru forces quickly with so many recruiting options.
Time to be a masterful Assassin, with Deathmaster Snikch of the Skaven.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3019173991
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