Hey y'all! Asking for a friend: is it possible to build a decent AoS Skaven list (using the new battletome) without having to paint 60+ rats? A friend considers playing that army, perhaps 1k to 1.5k, but he doesn't like hordes that much and of course he wants to avoid buying the BT and starting a collection if it isn't possible.
It seems to be highly possible if he uses Stormvermin as his Battleline choices - they come at 140 points for 10 at minimum size and one box contains 20, so buying a single box can satisfy all your Battleline choices if you have 2 units of 10. You can then go wild on having whatever gribbly monsters and crazy war machines you want to get the most devastating combination. One 1000 point list I've just cooked up on Warscroll Builder is: Allegiance: Skaventide Leaders General: Grey Seer On Screaming Bell (200) Clawlord (100) Battleline 10 Stormvermin (140) 10 Stormvermin (140) Ratling Gun (80) War Machines Doomwheel (160) Warp Lightning Cannon (180) Total: 1000 on the nose I've left all the artefacts and options for you to choose at will and I don't know the full extremities of using Skaven in AoS yet, but essentially this army will revolve around using the Skryre goodies and the Seer to blast the enemy with magic and Warpstone bullets, the Doomwheel zooming about running things over and the Stormvermin and the Clawlord simply holding the line to protect the machines and objectives. If your friend likes this list or similar, he can then choose to expand the two Stormvermin units to 20 each with another box (probably a good idea if you want to use the Gnawholes to make them pop up onto objectives and hold them) and/or spend them on more mad machines of mass destruction to achieve the big 1500. Hope that helps somewhat.