The real play with Ratlings is a Ratmobile. Grab a transport with 10 Ratlings in it. Move said transport. Disembark. Shoot 10 S4 AP2 D2 shots at an enemy character. Shoot Sharp and Scarper to re-embark into your transport. (Yes this is legal, as this normal move is happening in your shooting phase and you disembarked in your movement phase). Completely gets around the Ratling's abysmal durability. Update: If you use a Chimera as your Ratmobile, after your ratling re-embark you can shoot two more sniper rifle shots from the Chimera because of Firing Deck counting as the Chimera's shooting rather than the Ratlings.
Feeling pretty clever for picking up a Mantic Halflings Ambush box... 20 halflings on foot, 10 on giant dogs for rough rider stand ins... Mostly thought they'd be a great match for the chem dogs thematically, but now maybe they'll do work too :D
It is also worth pointing out that the absence of force organisation charts and limited battlefield roles favours units like Ratlings, where it was hard to justify using one of your precious Elite slots on them
It's nice to see the Ratlings getting some love! I recently backed the Victoria Miniatures Bagshot Halfling Snipers Kickstarter, and I'm looking forward to painting up my short lads and lasses.
I think it's rare that we'll see them stationary hitting on 2s, more likely they'll be moving into line of sight, shooting sharp, and scarpering back out of sight so they can't take return fire. Any opponent who sees these things within range is going to shoot them immediately, given how important characters seem in 10th. There's plenty of firepower available at 36" range for most armies that can take out 5 models at T2 with 5+ save in cover with a single round of shooting. With them hitting on 3+ assuming they're ducking in and out of cover, the napkin-math changes a bit. Out of 5 shots you average 3.3 hits, wounding on 4+ means 1.6 wounds, with 5+ armor save after AP that averages 1.1 wounds which is 2.2 damage on average. Obviously you can't do 2.2 damage with a 2-damage weapon, but what that means is that the majority of the time you'll only do 2 damage and it'll take another round of shooting or a second squad of Ratlings to kill that power-armored character. We've also seen a lot of Indirect Fire weapons so far in 10th, and that might be the bane of these little guys given that artillery can hit them even if they're very well hidden. A Whirlwind or Wyvern will take out 3 of them in one shot, a Heavy Weapons Squad with mortars kills 3-4, a Basilisk takes out 4, and a Desolation Squad using just their Castellan launchers kills 4.
Ratlings don't just need love-love, they need a faction-clan yes yes. Great Horned One fighting flash-laser with warp-tricksees in grimdark-dark future yes?
Ratlings were pretty situationally good when 8th Edition first dropped, before there were widespread saves against mortal wounds. Made an Ultramarines player throw his own model because a bunch of Ratlings mortal-spammed his special snowflake Primaris Lieutenant to death. Sadly, sniper rifles have never been very viable. Even fhe Vindicare Assassin fails to eliminate characters most of the time. I hope we see that change now.
The Ratlings appear in the Codex Imperialis, which came with the second edition box set. That's as far back as I can trace them. They've been an "inefficient" unit (trying to be polite) since then.
I love my ratlings, I use two squads and a vindicare assassin as I am so glad they got a glowup this edition. If the cover is less than 12 inches away you can jump shoot and jump to another "board quarter" so great for boots and retriver battle data... if they are still secondaries in 10th.
So I just thought about the "Shoot Sharp and Scraper"-Rule in combination with the unit coherency rule. If the coherency is checked only at the end of a turn, it would be possible to move the ratlings left and right of their hideout and shoot while being not coherent. The Additional movement should then be used to restore the coherency in their hideout. In some situations this might be better than to move all to one place.
I had a small imperial guard army I called 'The Death Heads Penal Guard' ...The Ratlings where replaced with (Count as) Servo-Skulls attached to Sniper Rifiles like models (The Death Heads,that give the Penal Guard their name (lore) sniping enemies and cowardly or excaping Penal scum if needed)...I might have to re-make and revisit that idea...because yeah..those rules look good...
Don't forget that you can get +1 AP if you're on 6" high ruins -- easy to do with their small size. Infiltrate them onto a nice overlook position (up in a belltower lol) and now those SM lieutenants are saving on a 6.
Guard are my first army back in 3rd and I am planning to collect and play them ALOT more in 10th but I have never owned a Ratling...Might be one of the first new models I pick up when 10th launches
They seem better than they've ever been, but once we get their points cost I'm betting they'll be made more expensive to compensate. Might not be worth taking more than 1 squad of.
“Good news bad news time, boys. The good news is that Ratlings are now too valuable on the battlefield to be classified as emergency food supply. Unfortunately, that’s also the bad news. Rat-tion Wednesday will be on indefinite hiatus.”
" what aboot rations?" "We already had them." "We had one yes wot aboot second rations?" * walks away towards the battlefront * " don't think he knows about second rations pip"
ive ordered 5 kharadron overlords bodies off bitzbox and im gonna have a rummage through the spare parts for some gas masks and rifles to finish them off 😆
Surely by the time we get a codex, there will be a rule that command squad models can take the shots made at the platoon leader. (edit: I'm meaning the precision shots)
If their points are anywhere near the current points then even if they don't manage to kill a character they will still be able to get their points back killing standard infantry as well as being a deterrent for the opponents movement phase. However I find it hard to imagine they will be staying at 50 points a squad.
I've got old 1992 metal ratlings, I love them so much more than the new ones. The old retro ones are hobbits with sniper rifles, while the more recent ones are more like gollums with sniper rifles
Yeah don't you guys have a jackal sniper on a motorcycle? Here I am with my OG cultists, suffering under the yoke of Mere Mortals keyword and no real units.
@@attemptedunkindness3632 yeah and the Sanctus, arguably one of the best snipers. Probably get anti-psych in 10th if they’re trying to keep within the lore.
RIP foot guard. If sniper rifles are good ratlings and good space marine scouts are good. A big block of 20 DKOK is durable but officers are not going to stay alive for very long outside of a Chimera with sniper rifles being that deadly.
It's all coming down on June 16th. When the points are revealed... You can praise a Datasheet beyond and above heavens or condemn it down to hell... it doesn't matter if the point costs are imbalanced! And given GW's history, I fear that day... Though, I DO wanna hope. I wanna trust in the Game Devs. Yet, my hope is faint. 😞
I almost always use them... And use lead ones that I have had since the 90s. Not worth it, but still play them. I don't see how they can be useful in 10th, really...
Disagree. The ratling metals are very nice and the Ogryn plastic kit is relatively new and does not need a refresh when so many other 40K units need a new plastic kit more.
But Mordian What are there points?.......... Ratlings in 2nd ed hit on 3+(bBS4) and sniper rifles auto wounded on hit's and was AP-1. Gw whays the points? Oh we're not using points values in 10th ed! Rrrreeeeeeeeeeee........
@@grimbyrne195 I know, it's a meme after what they did to AoS! Until we see points it's hard to buy into any of the hype. I'm currently painting 85 Kasrkins to use as stormtrooper's so it not like it'll matter too much anyway. Roll on Guard index rules drop.
I dunno I think they still kinda suck. Any shots go their way and it’s game over for them pretty much. I’d love to be wrong and inside I hope the time of the ratling has begun.
‘But I can carry you!!’ (Samwise carrying entire Guard Army)
He won’t have to carry our tanks. They are good on their own.
...but can it take Glock Magazines?
The real play with Ratlings is a Ratmobile.
Grab a transport with 10 Ratlings in it.
Move said transport.
Disembark.
Shoot 10 S4 AP2 D2 shots at an enemy character.
Shoot Sharp and Scarper to re-embark into your transport.
(Yes this is legal, as this normal move is happening in your shooting phase and you disembarked in your movement phase).
Completely gets around the Ratling's abysmal durability.
Update: If you use a Chimera as your Ratmobile, after your ratling re-embark you can shoot two more sniper rifle shots from the Chimera because of Firing Deck counting as the Chimera's shooting rather than the Ratlings.
That’s some wrinkle brain thinking there , like it. I wonder if GW will errata that out ? Don’t let them know !
Haha my marine leutinent survived on one wound, one wound you say, ^_^.
It's this kind of twisted thinking that keeps the Guard grinding. Well done, soldier. o7
Chimera? lol no. Use a banehammer with 2 squads of ratlings doing that. it has firing deck 12
Can be fun but at 225 pts it's still expensive not in competitive I think.
Feeling pretty clever for picking up a Mantic Halflings Ambush box... 20 halflings on foot, 10 on giant dogs for rough rider stand ins... Mostly thought they'd be a great match for the chem dogs thematically, but now maybe they'll do work too :D
It is also worth pointing out that the absence of force organisation charts and limited battlefield roles favours units like Ratlings, where it was hard to justify using one of your precious Elite slots on them
Ratlings have been around since rogue trader. Quick skim of the old catalogs I see them from at least 1989
Those old catalogues are amazing to leaf through. So many amazing (and terrible) sculpts lost to time. o7
It's nice to see the Ratlings getting some love! I recently backed the Victoria Miniatures Bagshot Halfling Snipers Kickstarter, and I'm looking forward to painting up my short lads and lasses.
As my old gaffer used to say, “two in the head, and you know they’re dead.”
old gaffer must not have seen a chaos spawn before!
@@johnj.spurgin7037 Easy. Count the heads.
“if it has more than 1, it’s 2 taps till your done”
I can see them being useful in smaller games. In fact, back in Kill Team 1st ed, they were AMAZINGLY good.
I think it's rare that we'll see them stationary hitting on 2s, more likely they'll be moving into line of sight, shooting sharp, and scarpering back out of sight so they can't take return fire. Any opponent who sees these things within range is going to shoot them immediately, given how important characters seem in 10th. There's plenty of firepower available at 36" range for most armies that can take out 5 models at T2 with 5+ save in cover with a single round of shooting.
With them hitting on 3+ assuming they're ducking in and out of cover, the napkin-math changes a bit. Out of 5 shots you average 3.3 hits, wounding on 4+ means 1.6 wounds, with 5+ armor save after AP that averages 1.1 wounds which is 2.2 damage on average. Obviously you can't do 2.2 damage with a 2-damage weapon, but what that means is that the majority of the time you'll only do 2 damage and it'll take another round of shooting or a second squad of Ratlings to kill that power-armored character.
We've also seen a lot of Indirect Fire weapons so far in 10th, and that might be the bane of these little guys given that artillery can hit them even if they're very well hidden. A Whirlwind or Wyvern will take out 3 of them in one shot, a Heavy Weapons Squad with mortars kills 3-4, a Basilisk takes out 4, and a Desolation Squad using just their Castellan launchers kills 4.
I really hope this is going to be a thing for all sniper rifles in the game.
Most basic sniper rifles have been lackluster for too long.
Ratlings don't just need love-love, they need a faction-clan yes yes. Great Horned One fighting flash-laser with warp-tricksees in grimdark-dark future yes?
After seeing this comment, I'm going to 3d print some Skaven ratling sniper proxies. This is hilarious.
ratlings are humans tho. but yes space skaven would be awesome
@@the_average_canadian hear me out, you could just convert some skaven jezzails.
Mordian Glory: Confirmed Hairy Foot Lover. Somebody call the Commissar! We've got a live one! o7
Ratlings were pretty situationally good when 8th Edition first dropped, before there were widespread saves against mortal wounds. Made an Ultramarines player throw his own model because a bunch of Ratlings mortal-spammed his special snowflake Primaris Lieutenant to death.
Sadly, sniper rifles have never been very viable. Even fhe Vindicare Assassin fails to eliminate characters most of the time. I hope we see that change now.
Farseer need to hide or die. Toughness 3 and a 4+. Only need a couple of shots to go through
half way through painting a squad of these when i started this video..... hope i want to finish them by the end.
6" move means you can proc Plunging Fire terrain rules with shoot sharp scarper. This will make sniper rifle ap-3 against eligible targets.
The Ratlings appear in the Codex Imperialis, which came with the second edition box set. That's as far back as I can trace them. They've been an "inefficient" unit (trying to be polite) since then.
Glad I picked up 2 packs of ratlings when I went to warhammer world a few months ago. Just need to get then painted! Haha
I’m thinking of making Jawa ish Gilly suit ratlings
Shadow Sniper Ratling Gang?
@@coltonlong7562 oh, that would be fun; necromunda squad and rattling gang
I love my ratlings, I use two squads and a vindicare assassin as I am so glad they got a glowup this edition. If the cover is less than 12 inches away you can jump shoot and jump to another "board quarter" so great for boots and retriver battle data... if they are still secondaries in 10th.
I had the Rogue Trader blue tracksuit Ratlings. Got them some time in 1990
So I just thought about the "Shoot Sharp and Scraper"-Rule in combination with the unit coherency rule. If the coherency is checked only at the end of a turn, it would be possible to move the ratlings left and right of their hideout and shoot while being not coherent. The Additional movement should then be used to restore the coherency in their hideout. In some situations this might be better than to move all to one place.
I had a small imperial guard army I called 'The Death Heads Penal Guard' ...The Ratlings where replaced with (Count as) Servo-Skulls attached to Sniper Rifiles like models (The Death Heads,that give the Penal Guard their name (lore) sniping enemies and cowardly or excaping Penal scum if needed)...I might have to re-make and revisit that idea...because yeah..those rules look good...
Don't forget that you can get +1 AP if you're on 6" high ruins -- easy to do with their small size. Infiltrate them onto a nice overlook position (up in a belltower lol) and now those SM lieutenants are saving on a 6.
Lore explains why you don’t see them often on the board.
What do you think Frodo got upto after leaving Middle Earth?
Becoming a hero of the imperium
Guard are my first army back in 3rd and I am planning to collect and play them ALOT more in 10th but I have never owned a Ratling...Might be one of the first new models I pick up when 10th launches
They seem better than they've ever been, but once we get their points cost I'm betting they'll be made more expensive to compensate. Might not be worth taking more than 1 squad of.
Finally! A chance to use my favorite unit!
“Good news bad news time, boys. The good news is that Ratlings are now too valuable on the battlefield to be classified as emergency food supply. Unfortunately, that’s also the bad news. Rat-tion Wednesday will be on indefinite hiatus.”
" what aboot rations?"
"We already had them."
"We had one yes wot aboot second rations?"
* walks away towards the battlefront *
" don't think he knows about second rations pip"
ive ordered 5 kharadron overlords bodies off bitzbox and im gonna have a rummage through the spare parts for some gas masks and rifles to finish them off 😆
Surely by the time we get a codex, there will be a rule that command squad models can take the shots made at the platoon leader. (edit: I'm meaning the precision shots)
Got 10 Ratlings that I bought during 2:nd. Might see some games now =)
I always liked the models so I guess I'll get a squad or 2
If their points are anywhere near the current points then even if they don't manage to kill a character they will still be able to get their points back killing standard infantry as well as being a deterrent for the opponents movement phase. However I find it hard to imagine they will be staying at 50 points a squad.
I actually just bout a squad of 5 ratlins 2nd hand for 10 dollars so I'm super glad I got them now haha
Data sheet I'm nostblooking forward to from guard is stracken i think
Since listening to the Magiatratum Mundanus I'll never underestimate ratlings
I mean, I figured they were so prevalent because only an absolute fool would put Sniper Rifles in their precious Special Weapons Teams
I've got old 1992 metal ratlings, I love them so much more than the new ones.
The old retro ones are hobbits with sniper rifles, while the more recent ones are more like gollums with sniper rifles
Do they still sell LoTR hobbits? I'm thinking conversions might be in order.
As a gsc player I wish I could field ratlings as brood brothers. Easily my fave guard unit.
Mate we have some of the best snipers in the game. I’m sure it’ll be alright.
Yeah don't you guys have a jackal sniper on a motorcycle? Here I am with my OG cultists, suffering under the yoke of Mere Mortals keyword and no real units.
@@attemptedunkindness3632 yeah and the Sanctus, arguably one of the best snipers. Probably get anti-psych in 10th if they’re trying to keep within the lore.
Yaaay for the hairy footed boys!
I currently use them to screen back line shit and pick off light infantry
the loss of Dev wounds is more than compensated for by RoF with AP-2 and precision.
Put them in a tall building and they get another pip of AP in tenth
RIP foot guard. If sniper rifles are good ratlings and good space marine scouts are good. A big block of 20 DKOK is durable but officers are not going to stay alive for very long outside of a Chimera with sniper rifles being that deadly.
who wants to play extra hungry ogryn or slippery ratling got in the kitchen XD
I've got El Ogryno in my squad, whatchu know about that 😏
It's all coming down on June 16th.
When the points are revealed... You can praise a Datasheet beyond and above heavens or condemn it down to hell... it doesn't matter if the point costs are imbalanced!
And given GW's history, I fear that day... Though, I DO wanna hope. I wanna trust in the Game Devs.
Yet, my hope is faint. 😞
Short Kings stay winning
I’m really hoping they get new models in 10th. I don’t want to paint these old metal minis.
I almost always use them... And use lead ones that I have had since the 90s.
Not worth it, but still play them.
I don't see how they can be useful in 10th, really...
Always loved sniper rifles. Glad they are no longer trash.
Yes yes it is :)
HERESY!
Of course rattlings are great, its Frodo with a glock. What's not to love?
They need new models... ogryns too.
In plastic.
Definitely in plastic
Disagree. The ratling metals are very nice and the Ogryn plastic kit is relatively new and does not need a refresh when so many other 40K units need a new plastic kit more.
@Grim Byrne They look so off with the new refresh. Also not everybody wants metal.
Finally 😂
But Mordian What are there points?..........
Ratlings in 2nd ed hit on 3+(bBS4) and sniper rifles auto wounded on hit's and was AP-1.
Gw whays the points?
Oh we're not using points values in 10th ed!
Rrrreeeeeeeeeeee........
10th edition has points but power levels are gone.
@@grimbyrne195
I know, it's a meme after what they did to AoS!
Until we see points it's hard to buy into any of the hype.
I'm currently painting 85 Kasrkins to use as stormtrooper's so it not like it'll matter too much anyway.
Roll on Guard index rules drop.
meh, in 9th they do mortal wounds xD
Are you trying to get me sectioned? you are aren't you! If you section me I'll section you so fast it'll make your head spin.
I dunno I think they still kinda suck. Any shots go their way and it’s game over for them pretty much. I’d love to be wrong and inside I hope the time of the ratling has begun.
Sniper rifle good=>ratlings good