Getting Started with Beastmen, Guide to collecting beasts

Getting Started with Beastmen:

Collecting Beastmen has become easier than ever with the release of 8th edition. We now have one of the better battalions in the game. Maybe not the best value, but a good value and every unit is something useful in multiples. As a general start for any Beastmen army, it’s easy to say “get 3 battalions, a shaman, a beastlord and something to convert into a battle standard bearer.” In all honesty, that would be a great core for an army, but isn’t the most interesting way to build your army and doesn’t include many fun toys.

For people wanting beastmen armies based primarily around minotaurs and/or large monsters, I’m still going to recommend starting the army with the following base. Those units are tough to make work below 2000 pts, and even then, tend to need support from infantry and your basic characters. Below that, the units are such point sinks that they really weaken the army.

First Purchase:

The absolute first thing you need to collect Beastmen is a battalion and the armybook. I would add an extra box of ungors to that purchase, since ungors are great in armies of any size, but 10 tends to be an awkward size. A chariot will give you a little variety for the initial army, and chariots fit in beastmen armies of all sizes.

With the 20 ungors you got, you have enough for 20 ungors with a command. Spears have a use in some lists, but in general they compete with gors in that role. I prefer handweapon and shield ungors because they’re the cheapest steadfast unit in our army. Some players start out by assembling their ungors as raiders with the short bows. While raiders are a fine unit, that’s something I’d do later when expanding the army. A big block of ungors fits in every beastmen army, while raiders are something that may or may not make the cut in a given list.

20 gors is a great block for starting out. Give them additional handweapons, and a full command (champion, musician, banner). Shields look great, and are nice for mixing into the unit, but additional handweapons perform much better. As gors tend to be the core of the Beastmen army, I’d recommend using these to figure out the colour scheme for the army.

Now you’re left with 10 bestigors. They’re a unit that becomes great once you add a few more (units of 20+ minimum), and are beautiful models, but focus on your gors and ungors initially.

Along with this purchase is the starting characters you should get, as detailed below.

Starting Characters
While Gorebulls, Doombulls and special characters can be fun and useful, you should make sure that you have three key character types available for your lists.


1.) Beastlord: The highest leadership character in a list which has leadership as it’s weakness. Doesn’t make every list, but they tend to appear in at least 85% of larger lists. Because wargors tend to be a little expensive for what you get and a second lord choice is rarely another beastlord, you only really need one beastlord model.


2.) Bray-Shaman: Can be used as either a hero level shaman or as a lord level shaman. I’ve used as many as 4 shamans in a 2500 pt list, but a single shaman is generally enough.


Limited edition Wargor BSB by decker_cky

Wargor Battle Standard Bearer (BSB): Some will swear by Gorebull BSBs, and they’re great when looked at in a vacuum, but most often you want a Wargor BSB with the Beasts Banner to give you a unit of S4 gors. You only ever need one of these, but unless you can find either the old armybox battle standard on eBay, you’ll need to find a proxy or convert your own.

Luckily, there are lots of options readily available, either out of the box, with a little hunting, or with a little converting. If you love any of the basic beastlords (including Khazrak), or shamans (including Malagor and even Gorthor) then by all means use them. The additional handweapon beastlord is popular because it’s easy to equip him with a handweapon and shield – a popular set up. Along with those options, I’ll suggest a few more:



Wargor BSB from Mordheim Beastlord by Sherlocko

1.) Mordheim Beastmen Warband: For about the price of two characters you get a Beastlord, a Shaman 3 cool gors and 3 cool ungors (including one with a bag of kittens!). Not only that, but these models are somewhat rare even in Beastmen armies, so the novelty factor is there. The beastlord is particularly handy as it’s posed perfectly for a simple BSB conversion.


2.) Khorngor Command: These are the very characterful bestigors released last edition (along with Pestigors). The command includes a wonderful banner which is perfect for a BSB, a champion who’s a solid Beastlord fill-in and a musician who can play for your Bestigors. These were either packaged with the standard and musician in a blister and the champion in another blister, or in a box of 5 including a champion, standard, musician and 2 rank and file troops. These are still available from some non-GW local gaming stores, and are otherwise regularly on eBay.


3.) Pestigor Command: Similar to the Khorngors and with the same packaging options, if they fit your theme, Pestigors are a great idea. Much like the Khorngors, they include a perfect BSB model, but they also include musicians and champions who are perfect for bray-shamans with little to no converting. Depending on the package you get them in, you might find a beastlord from one of the rank and file troops, covering your basic troops at a great price.


Wargor BSB from Plastic Bestigors by Saintspirit

4.) Convert from plastics: Last but not least, you can convert your characters from the plastics. Depending on your skills/patience, you can come up with great shamans, beastlords and BSBs from the plastic kits.

Here are some threads where you can look at the characters some of the Herdstone members have made:
Show us your…Beastlords!
Show us your….BSBs!
Show us your…Bray Shamans!

Starting Army at 700 pts

I’m going to assume that you got the a Beastlord model and the Mordheim Warband since it fleshes out your units by a few models and fits nicely in to a round number at 700 pts. In general, lists tend to fit in multiples of 250, but this gives you a list you can use to test out the army.

Beastlord w/ Heavy Armour, Shield, Gnarled Hide (169 pts)
L2 Shaman w/ Lore of Beasts, Additional Hand Weapon (112 pts)
23 Gors w/ Additional Hand Weapon, command (209 pts)
23 Ungors w/ command (130 pts)
Tuskgor Chariot (80 pts)
Total: 700 pts

Play this list a few times, have fun and learn what you can about the army, and try to get all that painted. It’s tough to get the time for it, but if you can do it, you’ll be a lot happier later. It sounds strange, but the more you have left, the harder it is to paint.

Second Purchase:

Once you have the first portion of the army together, you can expand the army. This is mostly filling out units, increasing your bestigors, and adding more support. This should include at least another battalion, along with some support like another chariot and a Razorgor.



Much like you did previously the gors should be assembled with additional hand weapons and include one full command. The ungors will be expanding your unit to 30 or more, so just make 10 ungors with handweapon and shield. Now is the time to convert/make your battle standard bearer along with the 20 bestigors you have.



Razorgors are great support units, much like chariots, but some don’t like the model. If you do, it’s a solid purchase. If not, I’ll suggest the Mordheim “Thing From the Woods” or one of the many other suitable alternatives used by other members: Show Us Your....Razorgors

For the second chariot, you might swap the rider with a spare bestigor for a little extra variety in both your chariots and your bestigors.

Expanded Army at 1500 pts

L4 Great Bray-Shaman w/ Lore of Shadows, 4+ ward, AHW
BSB Wargor w/ Gnarled Hide, Heavy Armour, Shield, Beast Banner
25 Gors w/ AHW, command (225 pts)
15 Gors w/ AHW, command (145 pts)
30 Ungors w/ command (165 pts)
20 Bestigors w/ command, Standard of Discipline (285 pts)
Razorgor (55 pts)
Tuskgor Chariot (80 pts)
Tuskgor Chariot (80 pts)
Total: 1500 pts

Great Bray Shaman is the general, and goes in the bestigors for a Ld9 bubble. BSB goes in the large gors for some S4 attacks. Solid blocks, nice support units and a unit you can learn about ambush with. This army is at a size where you can really start to get a feel for 8th edition Beastmen. This is the point where you really can expand the army as you like. Another battalion would be good to give you up to 40 ungors, fill out the gors some more, and bring the bestigors up to the ideal size of around 30, but you could equally expand it in another way to add minotaurs, or a large rare choice to the army.

Good luck on the battlefield!



This post has been edited by decker_cky on Jan 16 2011, 01:07 AM

Nice guide, informative and interesting .

Very helpful indeed. Just thought I'd point out: the links to the BSB- and the Shamantopics are mixed up.

And you spelled my name wrong (but thanks anyway for including my bsb!).

Fixed and fixed! Sorry about that.

props on the post.

This is a fabulous guide, Decker. It's obvious you took your time with this. Much appreciated.

For those who are looking to cut costs, it can't be stressed enough to take some of the shortcuts that were mentioned. Conversions for characters, etc. Do your research, look online for your purchases, there are deals to be had out there. You'd be amazed at what people are looking to sell or practically give away.

Stretch your purchases, you can easily turn 1 box of Minotaurs, into 3 units worth on the cheap if you look at sites that sell unit Bits, or even online auction sites like ebay.

Damn, only mid January and there goes my "thread of 2011" award!

Brilliant work

Nice guide. One question about the 1500-point list though. How does the Shaman get a 4+ ward save? I can't find that as an available upgrade anywhere in the book. Is it an effect of some item that I'm missing?

common magic items

Nice guide, answered a lot of questions I was going to ask as I am planning on starting Beasts here. Couple questions if you don't mind:

1) I notice no minotaur, do you not use them until after 1500 points?

2) Overall I enjoy playing under-represented and so-called "weaker" armies. (My main is Bretts). Looking at the Beasts book I can see where they qualify as that, but at the same time I can see where they simply cannot win against a lot of opponents. Would you agree this is true?

Couldn't disagree more. First, I'll qualify by saying that beastmen have probably the hardest learning curve to 'get' the army. You'll likely struggle as you figure out the units that work for you, and how they work together to achieve victory. Obviously the internet lets you shortcut some of that with advice and unit reviews, but nothing compares to tabletop experience.

However, once you get past all that, beastmen have a strength that in my opinion makes them incredibly enjoyable - a well built beastmen list doesn't have bad matchups. I've found a lot of the 'top' armies have rock-paper-scissors matchups. They're great, unless they face X army, or Y spell (dwellers in a lot of cases). There's two things that protect beastmen from those matchups:

1.) No terrible stats. Lizardmen have a ton of I1 making them vulnerable to pit of shades and purple sun, and they have a S3 wizard that the army depends on to function. Most armies are depending on that S3 wizard. Beastmen's worst stat for a super spell is I3, which means the spell sucks, but you can shrug it off. Most importantly, all the key characters in the army can be boosted to S5 (beast banner), and are at least S4. Either join your great bray shaman to the beast banner unit (though this risks the BSB) or run him solo (1/3 chance he dies, but 2/3 chance your opponent wastes their magic phase.

2.) Nasty tricks in the magic phase. Beastmen are dependent on magic, probably not much less than undead are. A single spell is the difference between a unit being slightly overpriced to a unit being underpriced (compared to other units with that spell cast on them). Good thing beastmen can easily overload the magic phase by using the Shard of Herdstone for extra dice, and can use the Stone of Spite (likely with Power Scroll) to knock out enemy magic phases (removing their defences and nasty tricks or even wizards).

As for minotaurs, I wouldn't take them before 2250 pts at least. A solid minotaur unit is going to take at least 2 gorebulls, 6 minotaurs and full command, this is likely to run 800 pts. Strong unit, but strong units are useless if the rest of the army doesn't funnel key units into that strong unit.

Thanks for the reply!! You have made me want to play Beastmen even more. I love a challenge, it is what got me into Bretts and I see what you are saying.

I am new here, but I assume it is considered improper to continuously post in these "pinned" topics so I will move my questions to another thread, but I wanted to thank you for your response.

Only just noticed this thread Decker! Fantastic effort mate

Now that I'm getting perilously close to actually playing a game for the first time in years, I'm definitely going to tweak my army in line with your tips.

Plaguebeast

good guide insightful and informative

Hi

I dont know where most of you are from, Im from the UK, is it possible to make all of this (or a 1500 point army) for £150?

Thanks
Merx