The Beginning

When I first started playing Warhammer I was playing the Brettonians. They were the perfect army for me. Knights, Dragons, and magic. They rocked.

The primary problem was my competitive nature. Without the Internet, we did not know they were a borderline broken army, much too strong. Add to that my advantage in strategic and tactical knowledge over my gaming partners and they simply never lost a game.

After a while we drifted away from Warhammer. When we came back to it, I promised not to take the Bretonnians again. I had long wanted to play the Wood Elfs for their Wardancers. I also wanted to play the Empire and High Elfs. And Lizardmen. I wavered back and forth.

Eventually I went in to purchase the High Elf Army, got a wild hair and bought the Wood Elf army instead.

They proved highly effective for me. I never lost a game with them. Unfortunately, the entire reason I wanted to play them, the Wardancers, were so bad that I hated them.

Example; the first time I used them I charged into a depleted Night Goblin regiment (in 7th edition: this meant I should have wiped out their front rank, taken no attacks in return, and should have routed them handily), did no wounds, a couple of them died, they broke and ran.

I tried them three more times. I combo charged them. I flank charged stuff. I charged in alone. I went war machine hunting.

And three times in four games, they ran without doing a wound.

When the primary reason you want to play an army is useless, it really takes away the desire to play that army. Sure, the maneuver/shooting routine was fun. But every time I looked at the Wardancers I just wanted to hurl.

I tried the Dwarf army, but they were too slow and too boring. Because they are so slow, to deal with stuff like Hydras, H-pit abominations and so  forth means a couple cannons, preferably with Rune of Flaming, are mandatory. Add a unit or two of Thunderers and suddenly you have a gun line.

Sitting back waiting for your opponent to come into your warriors after passing though a kill-zone is effective, but boring. Furthermore, their flavor unit, the Slayers, are brutally bad as well. If they had something like a 5+ Ward save...MAYBE they would be playable. With just T to protect them? Brutal. they never survive to attack the monsters they are supposed to have a fighting chance against.

Much like the Wardancers, they really are not worth taking.

So I settled on the Warriors of Chaos and absolutely love them. They are my favorite army by far.

I love the epic, back-breaking charges the Knights put on. I have had some success with Magic, though never enough to make back the points I put into it. I would be best off just taking it defensively, as it has been marginally effective at best. But I love it.

I like the look, I like the feel, I like the play style. The Warriors fit me to a T, except for their lack of shooting.

Every list looks basically the same, though, so I have been trying recently to change up, play some different armies.

First I played with the High Elf army. I will probably continue to tweak them a bit but the army is just missing something. I am not sure what it is. They are fast, have Knights, good magic, some shooting. They have all the tools to be spectacular. I suspect I will grow to love them.

I think part of the problem might be the look of them. Individually I like each model, but the overall look of the army just...whiffs. I cannot put my finger on why. So we will see what happens with the High Elf army.

Went back to the Dwarf army. I had forgotten how slow they are. I did manage to pull out a win, but it was based almost entirely on shooting and I found the army lacking. they have no wizards and no Knights, so they are missing a couple key things I am looking for. Plus...they are ssssoooooooo slow. 3/6 pales in comparison even to the Warriors of Chaos 4/8 movement. And that is so slow I learned to hate WoC infantry, even though most people love the Marauder and Chaos Warrior blocks.

I like fast, hard hitting armies.

Ironically, my last two games were played as Dwarfs and Warriors of Chaos. I played a guy using my Wood Elf army. He loved the look and feel of the army. He had some Beastmen. The relative values were pretty close so we traded.

Part of my impetus was listening to The Bad Dice podcast in which Mark Wildman discussed how he built his Beastmen army.

He pointed out how even Gors and Ungors could be made into guys with S4 or S5. Yet because of their near total lack of armor, they are not the rock-hard troops I am used to using. Thus they are a vastly different style to what I typically play, but they have the ability to be outstanding in close combat and magic.

They also have an element I really need to develop. All to often, when I take a casualty or two, it tends to alter my plan of attack. With their complete lack of armor/ruggedness, the Beastmen do not allow that. I have to learn to stick them in.

So the Beastmen have a couple of elements I am looking for. They are fast, have the potential to do some nice magic, and are a vastly different play style to my typical Warriors armies.

That last is more important than you might think. The idea of playing a second army more frequently is to make the games more varied which keeps them fresh and exciting. Playing an army that dies on looking at it, expects to take over 50% casualties and is more of a grind army than anything is something new and exciting.

So with the trade in place, I started playing around with a list.

This is where playstyle matters. Wildman did a good job of bringing to my attention an item the Beastmen have I was not aware of, specifically the Herdstone.

Typically my magic phases end up with me having the same or fewer dice than my opponents. So typically, magic phases have come down to "throw six dice at a spell hoping for irresistible."

With the beastmen, it will be more "spam the spell you want until it goes with a variety of less powerful casters".

Unlike Wildman, however, I like the mix of having hard-punching Minotaurs, plan to have a Ghorgon (though I expect him before seeing combat far too often to make him a SMART choice) along with the Gor and Ungor herds.

In the next post, I will go about explaining how I came to conceive my first list.

For now, I am just excited to have a new army i am excited to build.

Welcome to the herd, I tell myself. Here come the Beastmen.