Give GW Our Ideas, Our own pure beasts temporary list

Beasts will be forcibly made into pure lists in June. We, as players, can get angry, complain or suffer silently, but that will accomplish nothing. I suggest we take the initiative and come up with an armylist that shows how we think beasts could work. This should be in general simple adjustments to our armylist with reasons for changes explained. I’ve come up with my own ideas, and in general, I think they should give us a nice starting point for this. Ideally, we will be making something to give GW an easy framework to release a temporary list for us.

Characters:
In general, the enchanted items restriction seems odd. This should be removed. Beasts should be no less inclined to take shiny magical trinkets than orcs or marauders blessed by the chaos gods.

Chaos armour should also be an option for characters, as it is odd that the most blessed of the children of chaos are not given gifts as much as a chosen warrior. Without real mount options, this shouldn’t but unbalanced, and it could be costed at the same price the empire pays for their full plate armour. If it is important to restrict the armour from bray shamans, the option could be left off them and allow a single unique magic suit of armour which they can wear.
This could either be done by giving an equipment option (8 pts for heroes, 12 pts for lords) or by making the magic item non-unique.

Bray Shamans and Wargors should be given the option to ride chariots. It is an odd exception that seems motivated by the wish to avoid mixing with other Chaos armies.

For doombull armies, and armies below 2000 pts, a hero level minotaur would greatly benefit the army, and make sense. Along the same lines as we have between beastlords and doombulls, this would offer a trade-off between leadership and ambush.
Minotaur Hero – 110 pts
6 5 3 5 4 3 4 4 8 Cause Fear, Bloodgreed
May be BSB.

It would also make sense to give Doombulls and minotaur heroes a “Look out, sir!” roll if they’re in a unit of 3 or more US3 models. As it stands, the changes in targeting rules for 7th edition have made bestigors into the best location to place a doombull, providing ranks, cheap command, protection and the ability to charge with the staff of darkoth at the cost of -1 MV.

Another minotaur character suggestion is to at least allow both magic armour and magic weapons.Minotaurs have access to the full range of magic items. Items are fairly priced, as are characters, so spending more on them will be no worse than any other army doing the same. As the guardians of sacred locations, they are surrounded with magical equipment, so could easily access it.

I also would hope for an option to remain for Daemonic characters to lead armies, as this makes sense. This could be included in the list, or refer to the daemonic armylist.

Core:
Beast Herds:
Rank 5 Wide: Considering the loss of marching near enemy units, the ease with which two units can open a herd’s flank, and the loss of marching from ambush, keeping beast herds ranking 4 wide was a final downgrade that really hurt herds to the point that they ceased to be used in multiples in many lists. For a list that already has psychology issues, ranks on the herds are needed to deal with monsters.
One unit may take a 25 pt magic banner: Many of the banners are intended for beast herds, but needing a BSB for them makes them all but useless. None of them would be particularly gamebreaking so I can’t see an issue with giving this ability.
May give all ungors in unit shields for +5 pts: Herds will tend to have between 5-10 ungors, and the option for shields is essentially useless. It’s only used for S3 shooting on the unit, because they’re not often in the front rank of combat, and anything stronger will negate the save. Removed to keep the changes simple.

Hounds:
Do not cause panic in other units: Other lists with low leadership are given a workaround panic rule on support units, yet beasts, who have the lowest leadership aside from pure night goblins do not.

Bestigors:
9 pts: Combination of a reduction in cost of other similar units, and the fact that there’s no real synergy for a block unit in a fast, skirmishing army.
May be given raiders for +2 pts: Because they could not fill up with ungors, units would still be expensive, but like this could compete in effectiveness with minotaurs.
Any number of units may be marked: With their inherent psychology issues, the single mark just meant that anyone who took them took one unit and nothing more.
Mark changes:
Nurgle: replace fear with nurgles rot. At the start of combat, non-nurgle models in B2B suffer a wound on a 6, no save allowed. +10 pts cloud of flies. +15 pts?
Slaanesh: +5 pts.
Tzeentch: +10 pts.
Khorne: +20 pts.
Considering the loss of undivided, particularly on beastman leadership, these should generally be balanced. Nurgle was changed because it was too big of a cost to pay for fear on both the unit and the character. This will encourage some use of the beautiful Pestigor models.

Centigors
Core: With heavy competition for special slots, these lost out to flyers and heavy hitters. As core, they are still a balanced unit, and provide some support lost from mixing lists.
May exchange spear for an additional handweapon for free.

Chariots:
Do not count as a core choice: Avoids all chariot armies
May be given marks: Here are my suggestions
Tzeentch: May reroll impact hits. +10 pts
Nurgle: Poisoned attacks, fear. +10 pts
Khorne: Same, +25 pts.
Slaanesh: Immune to psych. Free.

Special:

Minotaurs:
Come with undivided and can upgrade marks like normal.
One unit may take a 50 pt magic banner.
Champion only costs 10 pts: As a single rank unit, champions can actually be a drawback to the army against many armies, and even if not, the price is too high for a single extra attack.

Ogres ironguts, maneaters or bulls. Magic banners are taken from the BoC book.
Trolls -15 pts cheaper, units of 1+ (cheaper than O&G get because they get less leadership, and less use of vomit)

Harpigors – 12 or 13 pts
Stats of gor, 2A (no weapons options): Replaces lost furies, but have psychology issues like dark elf harpies.

Giant – as is

Shaggoth - +1 attack, +1 T, magical attacks (lightning based) -60 pts, only takes a rare slot. T6, does D3 wounds against large targets. -75 pts

Dragon Ogres – T5, +5 or 10 pts As is.

Spawn – as is

Chimaera: as I listed in another thread, a US4 terror causing monster.
WS5, S5, T5, A4, W4, Ld7? Flying, Large Target, Terror, 4+ save, Breaths S3 Fire 150 pts

Ambush Change:
+1 if there’s a character joined to the unit.
May march onto the table.
If there is a unit preventing the ambushing herd from entering the table, the herd counts as immediately charging them.

I think we should discuss this and change it for a week or two, then playtest it ourselves, likely using Lorenz a fair bit, then I will send it to GW with our results.

edit: Updated list Feb 18

This post has been edited by decker_cky on Feb 18 2008, 10:27 PM

Hm. This listis nice, but a couple things:
All characters should be auto chaos armor, just needed.
agreed on the daemon leading rule
Will nrgle rot only applyto MoN bestigor, or anything MoN?
Shouldnt beast herds have marks, atleast gors?
What about taking off the 0-1 mark on bestigors, and them being permitted to outnumber herds?
Why ogre stuff? Why cant thy be reglar ogres? Other than that, I am really interested in this, and want to help in any way i can.

Herds should not be markable; beastmen with marks are bestigors by definition.

I agree that you should be able to have more than one marked bestigor unit, would be fun to try.

First off

Hi all, i've been thinking for a long time about starting a BoC army

second off

Decker i like those ideas, even though i've never played BoC, from everything i've read about them, those ideas sound like they would still be balanced

still very tempted to start a a beast army though

Come on Thor, you know you want to. The first taste is free.*


*As free as anything in the "Games Workshop hobby" can be, i e not at all...

Oooh, Thor. My parents considered naming me Thor, cuz im 100% Norse, 50% Norweigan. Anyway, what do you think decker?

I think that'd make you 150% of a person. Otherwise known as a beastman.

Not needed, I'd say it certainly doesn't work as a general item on every bray shaman. I like the option, as it's the simplest adaptation of our current rules. Being a simple change to our current rules should be done as much as possible for these to be realistic.

Just pestigors. Characters keep fear and +1 wound, minos get scaly skin and chariots get fear and poisoned attacks. That means everything has a worthwhile set of rules, nothing overpriced.

Not really. Gors are to beastmen what marauders are to mortals. They worship the gods, but they aren't truly blessed by the gods.

I suggested no limit on marks for them. I'm not sure about outnumbering herds. All you need is a 55 pts herd per bestigor herd, so it's not much of a limitation. I think it might even be worthwhile to have 1 herd per centigor unit too, so you can't take all centigors.

To be honest, for simplicity's sake. Chaos ogres aren't really chaos, and the OK fluff even supercedes ours with how they join chaos bands. Letting us take special unit OK ogres deals with us having more ogres than most, and with ogres not comparing well to minotaurs.

Well, for now I'd like to see healthy debate, get a list we can live with playtesting, then do some playtesting and take some notes as to how things work. You have a lorenz account, right? I'm going to try to get a few games played on there to test this.

Intressting changes and I like what I read. The Demonic Character could as well be a mighty beastlord blessed by his/her patron to daemonhood. As Unliving Idol it sould both follow the current chaos fluff and be a intressting addition to the beasts avaliable leaders.

Also you dont included if you want he shaggoth to still be avaliable as a general?

I dont know about the Nurgles Rot on pestigors, sure it might come handy but it feels a we bit like a gamble at best scoring hardly one wound per round of combat.

Overall I like the changes and they should do until we get ourself a new and, hopefully, proper armylist.

As to Pestigors, if people don't like Nurgle's Rot, how about Cloud of Flies? Not that I really remember what that does, but anyway... Need 6s to hit?

Not that powerful, but at least -1 to hit for enemy units in btb. And that would be really nice to have, I think. And putting in a character, so the units becomes immune to fear aswell, and the re-roll panic banner, plus a shaman or two with Shadow (+ one with SoD) could make the unit quite worthwhile, and a threat to be reckoned with...or so I hope, as I really like my pestigors, but realise they at the moment aren't that good for what they cost...

I would make minimal suggestions to changing the list, targeted specifically to address the split of the chaos armies, isues with 7th ed rules, and a couple fundamental issues with the list.

With that in mind, I would:

Add ~12 magic item options. Every other list has ~35=40 items, while a stand-alone BOC list would have 23. Specifically, filling out many of the standard items a list gets, that were excluded from the BOC list because they were availible through the HOC book-- like power familiar, spell familiar, and an item that gives regeneration. We're also lacking magic weapons in the 20-45 point range, and armour choices. I'd also add a new category 'chaos gifts' or some such to replace enchanted items, and include some god-specific items. All these would be in the 25-30 point range, with some of them being bound items.

I'd only suggest a couple 'new' unit/character options, which would be analogous to choices we are losing. -- like adding harpies in as a 0-1 special choice, and adding in a monstrous mount/horse equivalent option for wargors and beast lords. I wouldn't look for a heavy cav-type option, as it really is outside the flavor of a beasts-centric list.

General list fixes:

Re-write the third bullet under 'raiders', replacing four with five. (i.e., fix the 4-wide problem)

Allow chariots as an optional mount for wargors. Allow marked characters to ride chariots--maybee just change the rule to 'a chariot with a marked character in it counts as having the same mark as the character, following the same psychology rules. --so a slannesh character in a chariot would make the chariot immune to psych, a nurgle character makes the chariot immune to fear,a khorne character makes the chariot immune to psych as long as the character is frenzied.......

Allow Doombulls access to all magic items, just as a beastlord is.

Allow multiple suits of chaos armour availible to the list, but keep it as a magic item.

Allow multiple bestigor units to have marks/have all of them start with the mark of chaos undivided.

Allow minotaur units to carry magic banners

Allow ONE herd to carry a 25-point banner.

All this could be a 2-3 page White Dwarf article (cover page, explaining changes and why necessary, with a nice picture, one page for unit/character changes, one for magic items), and wouldn't require a whole lot of playtesting to determine if it's fair and balanced, as most everything has an analogous option currently (or had at some time in the past), and the beast list was never considered over-powered.


I think asking for anything more would probably delay its realease, and could delay the release of an actual armybook. As of the end of the year, there's only Tomb kings, Bretonnia, Skaven, Lizardmen, and Beasts to be updated in 7th (I'm counting WE and Dwarfs as 7th ed lists... ) So I'd bet we'll cycle through to beasts at the latest in 2010. Given that they will most likely not change the models too much (more b/c of light demand than need), it might be sooner rather than later....

Decker: I dont have a lorenz account, but i could try this out against stuntie slayer. Hes been inactive since his mom found out he called me a very[U] bad word. I meant Im 100% Norse, and 50% of that is Norweigan. Sorry if I didnt clarify that. Ill try to get a game in with him, should I use all the Beast items, or make new ones?

Well, first we would have to get some enchanted items outside HoC, so this would affect anything.



I really like these ideas. And as I'm on holiday for the whole week, I will try to test these changes against my friend, if we can get something done. ^^

This post has been edited by Warhound of Chaos on Feb 17 2008, 02:41 PM

One more thing that i forgot to mention. That mino rule for only the same mark as the general in the case of undivided makes no sense. What about that?

Its supposedly because minotaurs are not true beastmen. They are guardians of chaos shrines and artifacts and so forth. They can be persuaded to join a beastman warband though if they can be convinced it serves the purpose of the god they worship.

So an undivided army would not attract khorne or nurgle minotaurs because the minos would not want to fight for anyone besides their own god.

However that fluff can easily be changed just be rewriting a paragraph of fluff. Right now it is really stupid, it makes undivided armies a bit underpowered and makes us give up the undivided bonus in god-specific lists even if we don't want to upgrade the mark.

All of these are good ideas. I think the shaggoth needs major rebuilding as I've said alot, however your suggestions should help us.

Centigors as core, unnerfed herds, buffed shaggoths (even if its only a bit...atleast they will be usuable maybe), magic banners on herds, and a wider selection of equiptment than we have in our current book.

The one thing I disagree with strongly is moving chariots to special. Chariots are so incredibly important to our army, especially against high elves...we can't afford to be limited by special choices with them.