How to expand my skaven army?

My bunny decing how to expand his army

Browsing the forums i found out a lot of new players are struggling with decision what is best way to expand/start their army. I guess this might be quite difficult for new players judging from various questions about "what should i buy next" scattered across the internet. In fact, it isnt. First thing you have to do is to decide your priorities. Are you interesting in assembling and painting?Or is gaming part of this hobby your priority? Lets say you want to purchase small army and start playing asap. Starter sets like island of blood are perfect for this. In just one box you ll get small skaven and high elves armies and small rulebook. U might say "i dont need small high elven army, i want to play skavens", but dont worry, u can ebay them with ease as they are selling realy good or you can do something better with them. Atract one of your friends to warhammer as well and offer him nice starter amry! But if you are reading this i guess u allready have your starter set ready and thinkink how u should expand your army. Go for skaven batalion box as you cant go wrong with it. It contains 40 clanrats, 20 plague monks, few rat ogres and giant rats with packmasters.

With just those two boxes you ll get:

Part of my army after half year since i purchased iob starter

80 clan rats
20 plague monks
4 rat ogres
6 giant rats
4 packmasters
1 chieftain/warlord model
1 warlock engineer

That gives you army around 1000 points to play with!At this stage you should star thinking about grey seer/warlord model to lead your army as a general so you ll have iob chieftain free to carry battle standart and for example storm banner, giving your plague monks plague banner and those two little things ll make a huge difference on the battlefield. What to buy next is up to you. At this stage you should start thinking about doomwheel/abomination, maybee warp lightning cannon? Hard to say, as it depends on your playstyle and personal preferences. Now you should be closing to 2K points worth army and its even harder to give you any general advice as im in this phase as well, but with army in this state you can finaly start buying models you like and experiment with them on battlefield to found out whitch play style suits you best.
This is not meant to serve as a purchase list for newcomers to warhammer hobby, but an example of aproach i found out as easiest and very cheap, as this hobby can be quite money draining.
If getting in to gaming asap is not your priority and you just enjoy painting and collecting various models(like i do)and have a strange feeling from ordering battalion and painting another 40 clanrats just after you finished painting iob set then dont worry, you are not alone. I had the same feeling and did not purchased skaven batalion box till now, but keep in mind building army this way will cost you a way more money and your army list ll not always be as effective as it could be with iob and batalion boxes. But anyway, this hoby should be about having fun, even when losing a battle so it does not realy matter if you belong to "gamer" or "painter" group. Fun is in first place so dont force your self in to painting another batch of clanrats, you dont have to;-)
Still unshure what to purchase next to your iob starter set?Check out skaven articles on gw page as there is excelent article about skaven sample armies and that shoud finaly give you idea. See you next time!