Ikit Claw Guide - Vortex Campaign: First 20 Turns Strategies & Tactics | Total War: Warhammer 2

[@DioSatyaloka]

"I don't want you to go the cheesy route." Man-thing not understand, we rat-thing like-love cheese yes-yes

[@ScheffCity]

Favorite quote: "You're basically a skaven pirate right? Take nothing and give it all back!.... wait that's not right"

[@Tentacl]

Ikit claw is probably my favorite lord so far. Such amazing units. The campaign starts a bit weird but once you get enough tech it's probably the most fun you can have with TW:WH2.

[@Ares42]

You just spent the first 7-10 turns taking one province and building some army. If you do this start correctly by turn 7-8 you'll own both the first regions, have killed the vampire rebels, got a friendly relationship with Harkon and an undercity in his capital and are close to taking the Altar (if you haven't already). Your starting army will crush both the first army and Mouth of Qurveza if you use your Doom Flayers to bait their army. Recruiting a lord immediately to take Fuming Serpent will prevent spending tons of time replenishing troops (he will also take Axlotl). As you point out, you have more than enough gold to pull this off. Your first challenge is beating the rebels, but you can either use your rocket or reinforcements brought by your second lord. After killing the first vampire army you should immediately send your Engineer out to establish your first undercity. Staying on top of undercity establishment will allow you to mostly ignore capturing provinces for food, giving you the freedom to do more strategical expansion. Also, always go tier 3 on the first settlement you capture as Skaven. Just like Skrolk Ikit has a discounted tier 3 unit producing building, and his is arguably even better. On one of my luckier playthroughs of this campaign I basically owned the entirety of Lustria by turn 80, with Skrolk and Harkon being my allies owning less than 5 provinces each.

[@MaSOneTwo]

my thoughts exactly. Ikit has literally no inital challengers in his part of the map. I took the two provinces to the west of Ikits start pos and then took my sweet time, expanding my Under-Empire and harrasing all my neighbors for easy food and cash.

[@user-mu8ok5xf8d]

After the last skaven dlc warp grinders are in the shop now. The first thing for them is plus 30 melee attack. Their normal amount is 22

[@darko-man8549]

My lore-friendly Ikit army is solely Skyre tech plus some clan rats and slaves, then his back up army is just slaves lol. I love theme armies. I faced a lizardmen army with a full stack of slaves and.....yeah....doomrocket made a meal out of the blob

[@Rukdug]

Honestly, I kinda save Ikit’s spell tree for last with the exception of Maxing out Warp-lightning and grabbing Musk of Fear. I also personally feel that the summons from the Menace Below aren’t worth it since the newest round of summoning changes, since summoned Clanrats now break almost instantly instead of being a stalling block to tie down an enemy unit. And something that might just be luck is that I’ve never not been friendly with Luthor since he ends of fighting his Lizardmen neighbors, who also attack me. So I end up with Luthor and Lokhir as my best trading buddies. I also like to use the DOOM Engineer almost solely for his Under Empire ability. Get a lab under the capitals of the other 3 Vortex focused races, build a food production and hiding building, then use a doom sphere on them when those capitals are fully upgraded Tier 5 settlements during the third or fourth ritual. The AI (for Lizardmen and High Elves at least) take a long time to recover from those blows. Dark Elves do a bit better thanks to their slave economy, but it still sets them all back about 20-30 turns.

[@MaSOneTwo]

Hey Spartacus, you said Warpfirethrowers don't do enough damage. But they break units' morale really fast. What I do is use them in tandem with Ratling Guns to slow enemy units down, break their morale and hit them with even more Ratling goodness when they flee. Try using one flamer in between two Ratlings. You might be supprised.

[@theblackneon5396]

Protip: Cheesebuilds are very scaven by nature. Get a bunch of mortarbois and some warplight cannons and munch your way through bretonnia.

[@georgesoha4725]

That trailer always gets me

[@sebastiankeltner7644]

Thx 4 the work done. Ikit rocks

[@Izznogood76]

More like Ikkit DOOMrocks

[@Romamon]

hmm, for my first time playing Skryre, i quickly went and fought the army outside and won that, searched the local ruins and went into the next turn to take it over, then set the taxes on and turtled out on the island for bloody 35ish turns, getting mountains of gold and upgrading buildings to get more weapon team units and so on, and then on turn 35, i had the issue of choosing who to go to war with first, had the annoying vampire coast above me who were not very friendly and bleeding my pockets dry more and more, and then my dear dark elf (friends) below me who had become very friendly with me and had set up quite a few trade deals and other nice things, i would have no issue with them besides them taking over a settlement that contained warpstone, of which i really wanted badly ill assume that it was not the best use of those turns and the time wasted sitting around deciding on who to strike out against first

[@broskyification]

The best pirates take nothing and give it all back. Love wins! Lol

[@Count.Saruman]

You fiend, you-you! You dare-dare play Ikit Claw campaign with direction-plan? That is not the Skaven way-way! MADNESS-LUNACY, DOOMROCKET SHENANNI-GUNS AND UNLIMITED POWAAAAAA

[@MaSOneTwo]

I'd say Ikit probably has the easiest Vortex starting location and overall campaign across all factions that participate in the run for controll over the Vortex. His starting position is easily defendable, pretty isolated, has (only) two settlements, that are pretty close to each other and as in my experience the AI doesn't often attack from the sea in any situation, the isles are exceptionally easy to defend. Secondly, the early access to Ratling Guns and Jezzails makes pretty easy to deal with VP, as you can mow down vast numbers of already very slow Zombies and literally snipe the Fleet Admirals to cause a mass crumble no problemo. Next up are the LM, which normally gave Skaven a relative hard time due to high HP pools (Saurus units), high weapon damage and decent garrisions which can cause some problems for Ratmen. But all you need is a couple of Ratling Guns, Doomflayers, some Rat Ogres to chase down or off Skins and a number of Clanrats/Slaves to hold the enemy down. Through a Plague Priest in for buff/debuff and an Assassin to deal with the enemy lord and there you go. Might wanna throw in some Death Runners and/or Censer Bearers later on. Another race that I often had some issues in dealing with are the HE due to the fact that HE could force you to advance through pretty heavy missle fire. But once again the new units cancel that out nicely. A couple of Jezzails fore the HE to advance while you can pick of their vulnerable archers. Then advance your Ratling Guns behind a screen of Slaves or Clanrats and shred them arrogant buggers to pieces. To wrap things up, Skaven always where a nasty and pretty powerful race no matter what the player chose to field, but the additions turn that up to eleven and then keep on crankin'. They are my absolute favorit right now.

[@Rukdug]

Also, you can never have enough doom flayers. As someone who was never a big fan of the doom flayer before, this DLC has opened my eyes to the folly of my ways.

[@stephenmemelord2303]

Minigun Doomstack. That is all you need.

[@BerserkxELF943]

Doom rocket in the back pocket... EPIC.

[@krucafuks123]

itza with gor rok, that you kill every turn but he comes back with other full stack with temple guards and unbreakable rites at turns 20-30, you cant go south at all, itza or you lost

[@Drunk_Viking1]

is there any tips youd give if you are doing a co-op campaign and your playing as clan skyre/ikit claw and your friend is either another skaven or your doing a head to head and they choose their own race? love the vid im jus getting into warhammer total war 2 and i bought the dlc purely based off of the trailer and the awesome units being the snipers and ratling guns xD anyway the tips are always appreciated! keep up the good work!

[@necasperaterent29386]

Weirdly, I'm on turn 45 and I already have trade agreements with the Dark Elves and Skrolk and a trade agreement/defensive alliance with Luthor. Don't know how or why, but I'm kinda best bros with everyone around me. Except Clan Spittle. Fuck Clan Spittle.

[@colossusslayer1234]

seems you skipped the turn where you took the mouth. any tips on that? cuz when i just tried to go there, turn 6 the VC somehow had a 20 stack army with 4 mortars camping it. not sure how on earth you dealt with that. Would love some advice.

[@kuglefang]

you can actually conquer the entire starting province on turn 1. Dont bother with your warlock hero for now and just take out the vampire mutineers army then immediately attack that settlement (if you embed your hero into Ikkit's army, you won't have enough action points to reach the enemy settlement). If you choose to upgrade your settlement to level 2 immediately you can build those building that unlocks ferocious plan or another one that I forgot what its called that way you can start learning your tech trees earlier

[@dimitripetrenko7337]

Your infantry will be crushed in the initial fight, though. VC Deckhands have surprisingly good stats for fighting Skaven infantry. Fear, high health and model count, good weapon damage.

[@AnimePigeon]

Dimitri Petrenko you can avoid unnecessary casualties by using your Doomflayer well :D Ratling Guns and Sniper Rats should target units together - get rid of the bats and then you have nothing to fear

[@whitecreamymilk8436]

@@dimitripetrenko7337 on auto resolve maybe. Without it just snipe the commander. And snap down loads of engineer lightening combod with ikits orb. Its hard to lose if you play it out.

[@vicnedel02]

I get absolutely crushed by lizards all the time.

[@mrdvcapj]

Prolly shouldn’t have started with ikit…never really played skaven and lord it’s a transition. Not used to losing massive amounts of troops tho it really doesn’t matter lol just diff but still so fun I’m determined to learn skaven

[@TheSabrel2]

i cant seem to get past turn 60 without getting completly overwhelmed by armys

[@napukapu]

Non-aggression pacts with the pirates, confederate the NPC rats, battle the Lizardmen first. This gets you entire south part of Lustria and it's GG from there

[@AnimeNoel]

Im new to total warhammer 2 and i saw many videos stating that ikit claw is one of the best but when i use him i have no idea what i m doing. XD I need to stick with the high elves and the empire

[@mrxrocknroll6672]

I know I'm late to the party, but StormVermin actually aren't really worth it. They are def better stat wise but all your killing force is literally everything else in your army. Throw your massive hordes(Clan Rats) to the line and spray them down with Ratlin Guns and Hammer them with Doom Flayers. The cost efficiency of Storm Vermin just aren't worth it.

[@joshpeck9266]

Actually I just had a thought I should do a background and come out that could help a lot with the star assuming there’s any updated ones anyway there are used to be a really really good taco smell like that I loved but someone took it off the workshop! There are no updated teclis mods! I could learn how to mod when I get my new windows computer but I’m not getting it for like 2 1/2 months!

[@TheSabrel2]

units feel so weak i dont know how they expect you to manage 7 units of routing rats while trying to get ratlings into a position where they will shoot and not just stand there

[@Deaiden]

"just take over the Altar of the horned rat" Mf skipped all the guide