Verminlord

Much as the Horned Rat is effectively the Chaos God of the Skaven, so to does he have his daemons. But unlike his enemies, the Horned Rat has only a single breed of Daemon, the Greater Daemon/Daemon Prince like entities known as Verminlords.

These daemons are feared even by the skaven, to the point that not even the most insane and egocentric of Grey Seers will consider summoning one lightly. They are the embodiments of all that is truly vile and repulsive about the shaven. some of them are true demons brought into existence by the horned ones thoughts. Others are Skaven heroes who made such on impression on the horned rat that he decided to raise them to daemonhood.

So much so, in fact, that whereas past editions made them fairly vanilla, "8.5th edition" gave them a revamp by splitting them into four variants in "nu-White Dwarf" #49: the Corruptor, the Deceiver, the Warbringer and the Warpseer. It also gave them a special character, Skreech Verminking.

8.5 Verminlords all cost 500 points and have Movement 8, Weapon Skill 8, Ballistic Skill 8, Strength 6, Toughness 6, Wounds 6, Initiative 10, Attacks 5 and Leadership 8. The exception is the Warbringer, who costs 550 points and has Attacks 6. They share the following special rules:

• Immune to Psychology
• Large Target
• Scurry Away!
• Terror
• "Horned Rat's Blessing": This unnamed rule means that all Verminlords are 4th level Wizards who can generate any combination of three spells from either or both of the Skaven Spells of Ruin and Plague. Their fourth spell is chosen automatically for them based on what kind of Verminlord they are.
• Daemonic Attacks: All attacks this model makes, including Stomp, count as magical.
• Protection of the Horned Rat: 5+ Ward Save.
• Rat-Daemon: Verminlords count as daemons for any special rules, abilities, weapons, spells and so on that affect Daemons. They may never be the army's General.

Verminlord Corruptors have the special rules Frenzy and Plaguemaster (Plague is automatic spell, can re-roll failed casting rolls when casting Plague), and wields the Plaguereapers (Magic Paired Melee Weapons, Always Strikes First).

Verminlord Deceivers have the special rules Shrouded in Darkness (enemy units suffer an additional -1 penalty when making shooting attacks against the Verminlord) and Shadowstrider (Skitterleap is automatic spell, can re-roll failed casting rolls of Skitterleap, can cast Skitterleap on itself). It has the magic weapons Warp Stiletto (Magic Melee Weapon, Armor Piercing and Poisoned Attacks) and Doomstar (Magic Ranged Weapon, Range 12", Strength User, Arcing Death [may make as many shots as the number of models in the front rank of the target unit that are in range], Poisoned Attacks, Quick to Fire).

Verminlord Warbringers have the Verminous Fury (Death Frenzy is automatic spell, can re-roll failed casting rolls when trying to cast Death Frenzy) special rule and wields the Doom Glaive and Punch-dagger (Magic Paired Melee Weapons, Killing Blow, Multiple Wounds D3).

Verminlord Warpseers have the Master of Lightning (Warp Lightning is automatic spell, can re-roll failed casting rolls of Warp Lightning, always counts as rolling a 6 for number of hits inflicted with Warp Lightning) special rule. It wields a Doom Glaive (Magic Melee Weapon, Multiple Wounds D3). It carries the Scry-orb (Enchanted Item, +1 to Ward Save, can sacrifice the item and thus the ward bonus to make a once-per-game attack that forces D6 models under the small round template within 12" + scatter to pass Initiative or be destroyed automatically).