"Just Play Better"

[heywoah_twitch]

45 minutes ago, bonzai said:

Maybe convert [a forgeworld troggoth hag] to be more icy and wintery?

Yeah I should've been more clear, I mean I'll probably proxy one just for testing purposes, like even just use an empty base in a few games to see how she plays. But really I'm not down for a huge conversion project to ally-in some other faction's behemoth (while mine sit on a shelf) when it could very well be that in 6 months ghb18 might make bcr great again  

[Turragor]

1 hour ago, bonzai said:

Maybe convert one to be more icy and wintery?

What's the base size like? Converted hag shaman rider on a tweaked Ttusk or Shorn? Magnetise the rider so it could be a normal frost lord or stonehorn. 

I'd be cool with it but I'm relaxed that way. 

[Malakree]

1 hour ago, bonzai said:

Maybe convert one to be more icy and wintery?

I think its more to do with, you're using a faction which is built around big beefy monsters then allying in a big beefy monsters from another faction cos yours are ******.

If you're doing that just take 10x10x10 greenskinz orruks for 270 points to fill your battleline and that way you can take 3 Hags since you've obviously decided they're better than the BCR monsters.

[Somanlius]

Loving the posts here. My best friend plays beastclaws and we have been discussing the changes after the new handbook too. I used to lose all the time to his army but now it seems like his win/loss ratio has changed dramatically. I'll have lots more to discuss with him now after reading your battle reports.

[Aexae]

I am still unsure what to build out of my start collecting boxes. After reading this Thread i think it should be wise to build a huskard on thundertusk and a frostlord on stonehorn? Or do i want to "spam" Thundertusks to buff my huskard? 

I will definetly Ally in a Butcher! 

Happy New Year and keep on crushing!

[heywoah_twitch]

9 hours ago, Aexae said:

I am still unsure what to build out of my start collecting boxes. After reading this Thread i think it should be wise to build a huskard on thundertusk and a frostlord on stonehorn? Or do i want to "spam" Thundertusks to buff my huskard? 

I will definetly Ally in a Butcher! 

Happy New Year and keep on crushing!

Depending on how new to the hobby you are, I recommend a long term approach. Thunertusks are too fragile and hyper-specialized, stonehorn are worse than mournfang. But after ghb18 that will probably be different and you have months of fun building and painting ahead of you with a gorgeous and characterful army.

So build what you think it's the coolest, and magnetize if you want to be safe. 

If you're asking from a competitive standpoint and your plan is to rush to tabletop to get serious games in asap, avoid bcr entirely for the time being. (If you're stubborn like me then make a huskard on stonehorn that can count as a frostlord in a pinch, then go on a 6 month tactical journey of learning and 90% major losses, and proxy stuff to see how it plays).

So i guess my vote is huskard on stonehorn that can work as a frostlord is the safest long term choice. 

[Aexae]

I am more of a casual player, but as already stated BCR lack a lot of punch atm, so i wanted some advise on what to build. I definetly will build a stonehorn. How does the Huskard ability on Stonehorn fair? I charge with him and some Mounrfangs and after the Huskard attacked i can immedialtely attack with my mournfangs? Sounds really nice, but does it work out? After all i think i will go with a Stonehorn and a Thundertusk and magnetize both riders, because i love healing effects! (and both beasts are really great models)

Thanks for the advise though!

[Turragor]

I got ice wind assault 1 yr ago and am still building and painting bcr (my fun side army). 

I went with frostlord on  stonehorn. It's a classic. It's also the main guy the Lord celestant on  stardrake of bcr. It will be the baws again. 

I'm in this long term. I want bcr to be my main eventually. Big beasts are cool! For now I  have adjusted my bcr fun to modelling and painting and open play (and I'm gonna add a 3rd force to my hobby plate while I wait: nurgle). 

[heywoah_twitch]

2 hours ago, Aexae said:

I am more of a casual player, but as already stated BCR lack a lot of punch atm, so i wanted some advise on what to build. I definetly will build a stonehorn. How does the Huskard ability on Stonehorn fair? I charge with him and some Mounrfangs and after the Huskard attacked i can immedialtely attack with my mournfangs? Sounds really nice, but does it work out? After all i think i will go with a Stonehorn and a Thundertusk and magnetize both riders, because i love healing effects! (and both beasts are really great models)

Thanks for the advise though!

Yeah, whatever happens in the future, the Huskard on Stonehorn is intended as the leader of most armies and required by the main two battalions and interacts favorably with mournfang - and so it's as close to a sure-bet for being good later as we can get. The next best bet is Frostlord on Stonehorn, as turragor is right, he's 'our stardrake' when he gets a mystic shield (although obv way worse lol), and in the future surely he'll probably be, well, what he's intended to be - the powerful and expensive monster leader of the powerful monster army. As for thundertusks, they have one of the most complained about abilities in the entire game despite being fairly easy to counter, so who knows what their future will be? GW sent a clear signal that they do not want them spammed in any capacity with ghb17. At their best against top-heavy opponents who play no ranged units using cheap but integral buff heroes or a big expensive centerpiece model, the mileage you get out of 'tusks tends to be inversely proportional to the skill of your opponent. I think it's risky to double down on thundertusks looking ahead, but totally get one because they're fun to paint!

The huskard's Line Breaker ability is a little deceiving. Early on it seems bad, because you have two groups of units, one with 9" move and another with 12+1d6" move, so in almost all cases, the first man into combat will be the huskard alone with mournfang lagging too far behind to participate. So for early rushdown, Line Breakers doesn't do anything. Then your opponent gets a turn (or two with prio) after that and kills the stonehorn with a bunch of damage 1 attacks that get around Stone Skeleton and you move on with your life.

But the more I played against Ironjawz (with their smashin' and bashin') the more I learned about the 'activation game' (where one unit of 4 mf are often better than 2x2, simply because you activate one, your two gargant hackers miss, then your opponent activates his big unit and kills the other two before they can go), the more I felt like Line Breakers could work as a mid-game finesse combo. Activating stonehorn and then mournfang before the opponent gets a chance to hit you is very good, if you can line it up. It's a lot harder to get it to work than in Ironjawz since smashin' is army-wide, but the activation game is real.

The main downside is you're "wasting" such a high movement stat (and run&charge) on your huskard by holding him back behind advancing mournfang, jockeying for an opening to crash in. I think the intent with the stonehorn is that he's a mack truck whose speed allows him to crash into his first combat right away, and then whose durability allows him to survive, to move on to help other fights, like a little ambulance galloping around to help mournfang stuck in combats. After the nerfs and the advancing metagame you have to choose between getting in there right away (and then getting killed by 1 damage idiots), or hanging back to help out mid-game (and wasting a lot of your warscroll budget spent on 12" move and run&charge ability). 

Sorry this is getting long, but to help out with the lack of reliable damage, use two butchers w/ cauldrons to fish for the +1 to hit buff, which brings most of our warscrolls up to a playable consistency (3s/3s) while also giving access to mystic shield and the hilariously random voracious maw (aka "I'm the juggernaut b****" of spells). Hitting on 4s is fine for high volume of attack armies, but when each mournfang has 2 good attacks and they have a 70% miss-rate it's just brutal - you have to do something, even if it's to spend most of your ally budget overpaying for lolrandom chances at a buff.

Plus it gives you a fun challenge to convert/customize/kitbash up everwinter themed butchers, and they're flavorful (though frustrating) on the battlefield - always eating and choking and healing and choking. I tend to like lists with lots of healing apparently since you have all these mongolian sumo wrestlers with 6 wounds each, topping them off becomes very helpful.

Edit: Note: you play with a frostlord on stonehorn or a huskard on stonehorn, never both at once, which is why I suggested the magnet plan. And you're right about huskard on thundertusk being almost strictly superior to beastriders version, as for only 20 more points you get the blizzard speaker heal!

[Malakree]

One thing which always gets to me is how the frostlords just seem worse than the huskard versions. Someone srsly ****** up when that happened.

[heywoah_twitch]

I get what they were thinking. "We want frostlords of both types to be the same cost, huskards of both types to be the same cost, and beastriders to be the same cost" - which is a fine and elegant sentiment in a vacuum, except when you compare the warscrolls for one second and you're like, 'these shouldn't cost nearly the same points, though'.

It's like when they increased the battalions across the board by "like a hundred" each, except many of them were unplayable before doubling in price - it made me wonder like how little thought is really put into this stuff?

[Malakree]

1 hour ago, heywoah_twitch said:

It's like when they increased the battalions across the board by "like a hundred" each, except many of them were unplayable before doubling in price - it made me wonder like how little thought is really put into this stuff?

I liked when they did that with the Ardfist. That battalion could be free and it would be unplayable hahaha.

[heywoah_twitch]

21 minutes ago, Malakree said:

I liked when they did that with the Ardfist. That battalion could be free and it would be unplayable hahaha.

 If Torrbad gave you 60 points for taking it instead of costing 160 , it would still be bad.

[Malakree]

9 minutes ago, heywoah_twitch said:

 If Torrbad gave you 60 points for taking it instead of costing 160 , it would still be bad.

Really thinking of starting a thread which is a discussion about all the things which need changing/updating with Ironjawz. Could be cool to see one with BCR aswell but I suspect you would be talking to yourself  

[heywoah_twitch]

yo that's probably a great idea, GW takes honest critique and feedback seriously now, so who better than people playing all the time with an eye for game balance and mechanics?

[Malakree]

1 hour ago, heywoah_twitch said:

yo that's probably a great idea, GW takes honest critique and feedback seriously now, so who better than people playing all the time with an eye for game balance and mechanics?

Mainly because I was bored and couldn't sleep after all the caffeine I had late last night, designated driver and no caffeine free coke , I started it. I imagine it's going to be a monster by the time I'm finished 

Not sure "eye for game balance" applies though, more like tendency for whinging!

When's your next tournament/game due. Looking forward to any changes you make and the results! 

[Karchev23]

Loving this blog man. I started playing BCR when they first came out, played them for a year solid then gave them up. 

HOWEVER 2018 will see their return and i will watch this thread closely

[heywoah_twitch]

Say hello to my for-testing-purposes counts-as Troggoth Hag!

Isn't she cute? 120mm base same as thundertusk so let's get crackin'. I did some skirmish testing and run-throughs at the lgs over new years weekend, but now it's time for a full-on 2k game:

Starstrike vs Ironjawz.

My list: Jorlbad: Huskard on stonehorn with pelt and winter, 1x troggoth hag, 1x icebro hunter, 2x4 mournfang, 1x stonehorn riders. 2k

His list: Mawkrusha with cunnin and the Dab, megaboss on foot with damage weapon, grot shaman, 2x chanters, 30-boy ardbois with rend, 2x5 brutes, 1x3 gruntas, chariot, ironfist

I out-drop and let him go first, waiting for the stars to fall. Set-up is thus (hunter in ambush):

T1, opponent rolls a 6 for mighty destroyers, tossing the left brutes up 6", then rolls another 6 for the megaboss to toss them another 6" up, then moves them up another 4" from ironfist move. After moving everyone else up, he charges brutes into my 4 mournfang on the left there in front of the huskard and puts 18 wounds into them, killing 3 and the last one flees after returning 1 damage. My t1, hag puts mystic shield on the 4 remaining mournfang and everyone (except the hag) run up. Huskard goes around the brutes to line up a charge into mawkrusha and be 10" away from mournfang for line breakers as they run up on the other side. My opponent asks if I meant to activate a command ability on Huskard and I inform him that he doesn't have that, I only have one in my whole battletome and it's on the 500pt dude and it sucks, and we both have a good chuckle "god your army is so bad lol".

Hag vomits onto chariot and hits with all 6 shots, then rolls five 2s and a 3 for one wound, which does a d3 (one) damage. On my charge phase maw krusha rolls a 5 for brutish cunning and charges the mournfang for 4 mortal wounds. Huskard rolls a 5 for charge and so can't make it within 1" of the maw krusha, and so needs to put his d6mw on the chariot, finishing it off. Huskard misses most of the attacks, but connects with one horn hit and a stomp for 5 damage, mournfang miss gargant attacks, mounts do 2 damage, maw krusha kills two and a half mournfang, who pass battlehshock with a 1.

T2, the star falls between stonehorn beastriders and the 30 boyz. Opponent wins prio and initiative follows proper order. 5 brutes charge Huskard and easily kill him from full life with a third of their attacks still unrolled for. maw krusha kills last two mournfang. Everyone else moves up. At this point the game is well and truly over, as I am 2 models from being tabled and the stars will be leisurely scooped up in the last 3 turns, but we play another turn since I'm trying to test out this hag. Beastriders get befuddled. Hag fails the cast roll on shielding up, then pukes on the brutes and charges in, killing three and a half of them, who return 1 wound.

T3 opponent wins prio and we call it, though hag would've killed the last brutes, lived and healed to full again and beastriders would've been dumpstered by the boyz. The icebro hunter, who was waiting for turn three to ambush onto an objective, surveys the catastrophic scene below. He slinks away into the blizzard, dropping his three mismatched, non-rend weapons into the snow behind him and lets the everwinter take him with open arms. Major Defeat.

What I learned:

Ironjawz are sweet and play very flavorfully to their lore. They aren't overpowered or anything (far from it man) and have their own problems as well - but this is really the typical outcome.

Troggoth hag is pretty good, man. The initial impression checks out. 16 wounds is a proper big-monster amount for 360pts, considerably more than our guys with the same save (at a 20pt discount). d6 heal per turn is great, she has thundertusk's -1 to hit her in melee which is nice, and she doesn't instantly chart into oblivion (it was so great not having her be terrible after 3 wounds). Her spell is great (didn't get to cast it this game - too short), though the downside is it's got a short range (only 12"), but she's durable enough to run up and throw down. If a huskard on thundertusk had her exact warscroll and was just a huge shaman ogor on a mammoth, I'd take that over the current tissue-paper one-trick pony 'tusk in a heartbeat. Four things hold me back: I don't know if she's actually good, or just seems good compared to our weak stuff, she eats up our whole ally allotment, her sculpt is off-theme gross and resin, and I'm not about to buy some other faction's behemoth when I have three lovingly painted beastclaw behemoths sitting unused on my shelf.

At a record of around 6 wins / 23 major losses / 4 minor losses in serious games, I think I've finally been beaten down into submission. Of course I'm still making mistakes, we all do, but man losing so consistently just takes it out of ya. We have fun at the table and I'm not a salty player or anything, but besides writing (hopefully) helpful reports and getting to see nicely painted armies face off, I haven't looked forward to actually piloting BCR in awhile. I have 4 extra white-primed mournfang that I just don't feel like putting base coats on.

@Malakree had a pretty good idea, I think I'll follow his lead and do a big write-up or youtube vid about the beastclaw battletome/warscrolls review with balance suggestions and stuff from all my testing. Just fiddling with points won't solve this (a fast example is due to thundertusk's glass cannon warscroll, it's either an overpriced noob-slayer that gets jobbed by decent players or totally OP if too cheap).

[Turragor]

Bravo for all the work! You need a break now. I'd suggest what I'm opting for up until the end of the summer with the new GHB (and scoping out what changes we get then) - Nurgle! They seem very novel but ofc information is a bit thin on the ground so far.

Seeing I've personally played only a handful of games with BCR I'm still full of painting "pep" and energy. No burnout. So my plan remains unchanged - paint up my tasty big monster dudes and see how the winds of chance and balance blow!

What that means is I'm stuck playing stormcast in serious games until I get Nurgle bought and painted up (or tbh, if I get 2000 painted bcr done in another 6 months I'll happily test them out, when the rolls are with  you they're still pretty stompy!)

[Turragor]

I dreamt of Yhetees. Their rules are, after all, sick.

Pros

-1 to hit in combat

6" activation and pile in -

• run and pile in or
• run charge and pile in within range of a thundertusk
• retreat to 3.5" and pile in again (prevent opponent activating first for all yhetee units at all times on your turn)
• retreat and run and pile in to a target far from the combat you are in

Pretty decent attacks (still that 4+ to hit)

Cons

• bad save
• bad bravery
• 3 poses
• Finecast

Anybody tried them en masse - or considered it? Are they just too weak against the top lists out there? That's one thing but are they better than other BCR lists?

They work well with Thundertusks so you'd have that going for you.

Probably not take Torrbad, it's quite restrictive for the placement of your thundertusks.

[SolarBur]

Since this is pretty much where all the Beastclaw Raiders discussion is going on, i thought i would ask a question and see what kind of response i would get, hope that's ok. 

So i'm starting to build up my haul of models i got from over christmas, slow progress but actually going pretty steady. Managed to lose track of time last night building up a beastrider team, realised it was 4am by the time i finished building the main body ^^;;;
I have a 1000pt starting army in mind, but i can't decide which monster i want to use, they are both really good, and really interesting models to stick on the board with the rest of the army. Right now what i'm planning is something like this:

Hunter

4 Mournfang Riders

6 Frost Sabres

Stonehorn or Thundertusk

I prefer my frost Sabres to be in packs because it just looks more interesting than a couple running around by themselves. Might not be tactical choice wise, but i'm all about the fluff

But out of both of the monsters, which one would be a good one to take for a beginner with this list, to help learn the army a bit ?

Oh, i should probably mention what i have. I have the Icewind Assault set, the Beastclaw Raiders Starter, and 4 extra frost kitties.  

[Kessler]

On 05/01/2018 at 12:17 PM, Turragor said:

I dreamt of Yhetees. Their rules are, after all, sick. 

Anybody tried them en masse - or considered it? Are they just too weak against the top lists out there? That's one thing but are they better than other BCR lists?

I think they are very decent and could potentially alleviate some of BCR weaknesses. They are as good as Ogors, with rend but worse save. And that 6" pile in looks great!

But unfortunately they are not battleline and therefore require at least 480 points on mournfang battleline. If you add in two big beasts there are not much points left for mass yhetee.  

You could take Frostlord on Thundertusk for yhetee battleline, but he is just so much worse than huskard and 80 points more...

I think balanced list of mournfangs and about 12 yhetees would be fun and pretty good. 

And wasting 160 EUR to 12 ugly models... ouch! 

[Turragor]

38 minutes ago, Kessler said:

But unfortunately they are not battleline

Aren't they battleline with a Frostlord on Thundertusk general? Weird choice though!

[Salarath]

Hi!

 

Latest list that I have been working on uses Eurlbad to help with drops and increases mortal wound output quite a lot

Huskard on stonehorn

Huskard on tusk

Butcher

4 mournfang pack

2 mournfang pack

20 grots

stonehorn beastriders

eurlbad

2k on the nose!

[heywoah_twitch]

Update but without any battle reports this time, just a current list dump and some shop talk.

So on one hand it's pretty disgusting to think about going all in on yhetees (from a financial and modeling position, or if you use a counts-as and then spam it that's awkward as well). On the other hand you could make sort of a "beastclaw does flesheater courts" style army except without the great buff spells&abilities, and crucially no regenerating units like:

Frostlord on Thundertusk w/ master, pelt

Troggoth Hag ally

9 yhetee, 6 yhetee, 6 yhetee, 3 yhetee, 3 yhetee, 4 frost saber

1980

Maybe the -1 to hit turning off opponent's exploding 6s is enough to make up for getting no saves against rend?  Probably not, and FEC isn't exactly in an enviable position currently either so making a worse version of it as beastclaw is questionable. If yhetees were a new model in plastic it would be more tempting to try it.

@Salarath is right to like eurlbad.  The problem with our battalions is you sort of break even on them. You're down points and value by taking stonehorns, then you're up on drops and an ability, whereas normally an army would take great units and then just be up twice. The problem with jorlbad is that you basically get to 'get your charges off' in the 'get your charges off' army, but then once in combat you mostly just fizzle out (unless it's like my one game against free peoples where you roll insane for the rest of the game. An important note is on average I would've lost that game even having lined up all the great charges I wanted). Eurlbad helps with not fizzling out.

Crush, Mangle, Tenderize is a good source of mortal wounds (esp from mournfang mount and punches and kicks attacks). A Eurlbad huskard is almost as killy as a frostlord due to Eating Hand improving mount damage!

I mostly play two lists currently, a eurlbad and a 'don't try this at home' list:

Eurlbad, Huskard on Stonehorn w/ tokens, master

2x Butcher w/ cauldron

Stonehorn beastriders, 4 mournfang, 4 mournfang, 2 mournfang

1980

Huskard on Stonehorn w/ tokens, master

2 butchers

2 frost sabers

16 mournfang 

1980

Tokens over pelts since stonehorn die in one turn when attacked. 

On 1/11/2018 at 9:15 AM, SolarBur said:

I prefer my frost Sabres to be in packs because it just looks more interesting than a couple running around by themselves. Might not be tactical choice wise, but i'm all about the fluff

But out of both of the monsters, which one would be a good one to take for a beginner with this list, to help learn the army a bit ?

Oh, i should probably mention what i have. I have the Icewind Assault set, the Beastclaw Raiders Starter, and 4 extra frost kitties.  

Packs of sabers are fine, people tend to ignore them for juicier targets, the risk is their low bravery when they're finally attacked then tend to all flee. Of the two monsters I'd recommend a stonehorn, as you can practice setting up Linebreaker ability. Thundertusk is overpowered and frustrating to play against for very new players, but then once they figure out more about the game he becomes an impotent 380 point anchor holding you back imo.

On 1/2/2018 at 2:41 AM, Turragor said:

What that means is I'm stuck playing stormcast in serious games until I get Nurgle bought and painted up (or tbh, if I get 2000 painted bcr done in another 6 months I'll happily test them out, when the rolls are with  you they're still pretty stompy!)

I played one game with my unpainted stormcast and it was terrifically fun, does that make me a drone? I love paladins!