AoS 2: Beasts of Chaos Discussion

[S133arcanite]

What do we think?

[Nin Win]

I'm still going to make my own herdstone, but that one looks awesome.

I'm doing a happy goat dance after reading the community article.  My goats are sort of Slaaneshi Goat Mother worshippers and I like the idea of finding a Great Fray that will make them feel right on the table top.

Sacrificing my own models to summon other needed models?  Sounds good too.  I'm definitely in favor of some sort of awful "warping wilds" existing parallel to the mortal realms out of which they arrive.

[peasant]

Wow Im Only Here to Say That im super excited! BoC!

[S133arcanite]

Do we know what the Great Frays are yet?

[Nin Win]

I've been reading old warhammer army books and in those the groups are basically just based on which great beast lord they follow.  So I imagine the Greatfrays are going to be totally new.

"You’ll be able to customise your army more than ever before thanks to a huge host of new rules – from unique Command Traits for the Brayherds, Warherds and Thunderscorn, to magical spells and extra abilities for dedicating your army to one of the Greatfrays. "

I think that's the total of what GW has published about Greatfrays so far.

 

[Kirjava13]

Greatfrays are- I'm willing to put a large amount of (admittedly non-existent) money on it- the Beasts equivalent of Stormhosts, Temples, Skyports, Enclaves, etc. Really wishing there was a Nighthaunt equivalent right about now...

[nuttyknatty]

So, this could be the first Battletome/Army Book GW have updated for one of the armies I have since.................8th ed High Elves???

 

It’s been worth the wait!!??

[Kaleb Daark]

if they can be dedicated to one of the chaos gods and receive a mark, that would be utterly amazeballs.  Why should tzeentch have all the fun!

The start collecting looks really good.  I do hope the brayherd and ungors can be bought in bigger than boxes of 10 but I doubt it.

Warherd... I can see me spending a lot on the bloodbowl minotaurs!

 

[adreal]

19 minutes ago, Kaleb Daark said:

if they can be dedicated to one of the chaos gods and receive a mark, that would be utterly amazeballs.  Why should tzeentch have all the fun!

The start collecting looks really good.  I do hope the brayherd and ungors can be bought in bigger than boxes of 10 but I doubt it.

Warherd... I can see me spending a lot on the bloodbowl minotaurs!

 

Just remember, you can mark them but bespoke rules like tzeengors I doubt you'll get, as tzaangors have models, khornegors and the like do not

[Scythian]

I wonder if the disappearance of ogre bulls off of the gutbusters section of the GW webstore means that a dual kit of bulls and chaos bulls is coming. 

[bsharitt]

So the warscroll card they have on the article for the Beasts of Chaos stuff has Beasts of Chaos as a keyword, so this is probably going to be a fairly full and permanent faction merge than Legions of Nagash. That makes me think even more that LoN was a stop gap place filler to make death playable when it was the primary focus of a major narrative event. Sure even if we do see more spin off battletomes, probably Soulblight, Legions of Nagash will still be a playable book for a while, but once non-Stormcast battletomes start getting second editions, I don't know if we'll ever see a second LoN book. Spin out the tomes for armies that can support a book(with new models) and then maybe an imperial agents type of book, a "death agents" to catch the odds and ends that don't lend themselves to full armies.

[Swooper]

8 minutes ago, bsharitt said:

So the warscroll card they have on the article for the Beasts of Chaos stuff has Beasts of Chaos as a keyword

Good spot. Hadn't thought to try and read stuff from the card. Other observations I can add for the Beastlord:

• Same basic profile and attacks stats with man ripper axes.
• No great axe or shield any more. Can't say I'm surprised as a model for that hasn't been officially available for years, but it does sort of invalidate the Avatars of War one (which I happen to own), and sucks because I like the rend -2 option.
• The Hatred of Heroes ability stays and seems to work the same, there is some added text but I think it must be flavour text.
• Still has a command ability called Grisly Trophy. The text seems to be longer than the current one so I think it must be changed. I damn well hope so, as the current one is pretty awful.
• No new abilities.

[Nin Win]

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my Beastlord with a shield.  Maybe just run it as if it has the two axes.  Yeah, that sounds fine.  Too lazy to undo the conversion I already did.

[Mandzak-Miniatures]

Are ungors even worth taking as a battle line option?

[Darkrich]

I'm curious what the herdstone rules are going to be. Ever expanding armor melting wave as they describe it leads me to believe it reduces armor of enemies in a growing turn by turn aura. That sounds neat.

[The_Yellow_Sign]

3 hours ago, Mandzak-Miniatures said:

Are ungors even worth taking as a battle line option?

They make a cheap screen. I used them to screen my Raiders in a game vs. Slaanesh I won yesterday. 

Also, looks like we'll need to sacrifice our own troops to summon, and who better to sacrifice than dirt-cheap Ungors?

[The_Yellow_Sign]

4 hours ago, Swooper said:

Good spot. Hadn't thought to try and read stuff from the card. Other observations I can add for the Beastlord:

• Same basic profile and attacks stats with man ripper axes.
• No great axe or shield any more. Can't say I'm surprised as a model for that hasn't been officially available for years, but it does sort of invalidate the Avatars of War one (which I happen to own), and sucks because I like the rend -2 option.
• The Hatred of Heroes ability stays and seems to work the same, there is some added text but I think it must be flavour text.
• Still has a command ability called Grisly Trophy. The text seems to be longer than the current one so I think it must be changed. I damn well hope so, as the current one is pretty awful.
• No new abilities.

Yeah I really hope the Beastlord's command ability is improved. Losing the shield option is a pretty big nerf to his survivability. It's the only way I could get the Beastlord to live long enough to use his command ability until now.

I tried running a makeshift high-pass filter on the warscroll card in gimp to see if I could get the text to be a bit more readable, but no luck.

Maybe someone with more photos editing experience could give it a go? I'm so keen to know what the command ability says!

[Kadeton]

1 hour ago, The_Yellow_Sign said:

Maybe someone with more photos editing experience could give it a go? I'm so keen to know what the command ability says!

With a fair bit of Photoshop and some good old-fashioned squinting, this is how it reads to me:

Quote

Grisly Trophy: With a roar of triumph, the Beastlord raises a severed head into the air.

You can use this command ability in the combat phase if any attacks made by a friendly BEASTLORD with this command ability resulted in an enemy model being slain that phase. If you do, until the end of that phase, you can re-roll wound rolls for attacks made by friendly BRAYHERD units wholly within 18" of that BEASTLORD. If any attacks made by that BEASTLORD resulted in an enemy Hero or (Monster?) being slain that phase, you can reroll hit rolls and wound rolls for attacks made by friendly BRAYHERD units wholly within 36" of that BEASTLORD instead.

I'm reasonably confident on most of that, but numbers are always tricky so those ranges could be way off.

[Dirtnaps]

8 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

Grisly Trophy: With a roar of triumph, the Beastlord raises a severed head into the air.

You can use this command ability in the combat phase if any attacks made by a friendly BEASTLORD with this command ability resulted in an enemy model being slain that phase. If you do, until the end of that phase, you can re-roll wound rolls for attacks made by friendly BRAYHERD units wholly within 18" of that BEASTLORD. If any attacks made by that BEASTLORD resulted in an enemy Hero or (Monster?) being slain that phase, you can reroll hit rolls and wound rolls for attacks made by friendly BRAYHERD units wholly within 36" of that BEASTLORD instead.

Wow that sounds ridiculously cool fluff wise and rules wise as someone who knows nothing about Beastmen/ Brayherds and Warherds but has gotten very interested once the battletome was announced. I think I'm going to be painting up a Beasts of Chaos army soon if there's more really flavourful stuff like this and the lore grabs me.

[The_Yellow_Sign]

2 hours ago, Kadeton said:

With a fair bit of Photoshop and some good old-fashioned squinting, this is how it reads to me:

I'm reasonably confident on most of that, but numbers are always tricky so those ranges could be way off.

Awesome, thanks so much for doing that!

It's certainly an improvement over the the old command ability since you can activate in the combat phase, which helps you to actually get it off.  But the effect is a pretty big nerf compared to what it used  to do (unless you kill a hero, which is tough since he only has -1 rend and 1 damage): +1 to hit, run, and charge rolls. And the issue remains of keeping the Beastlord alive long enough to get it off. Now that he lacks a shield option, he's more vulnerable than he used to be.

[Ajay29]

25 minutes ago, The_Yellow_Sign said:

And the issue remains of keeping the Beastlord alive long enough to get it off. Now that he lacks a shield option, he's more vulnerable than he used to be.

Just run more Beastlords I guess.

Though with that damage profile either he’s going to be finishing off wounded hero’s/monsters or he’s going to need some damage increases from an artefact...

[The_Yellow_Sign]

18 minutes ago, Ajay29 said:

Just run more Beastlords I guess.

Though with that damage profile either he’s going to be finishing off wounded hero’s/monsters or he’s going to need some damage increases from an artefact...

Yeah it just feels like a waste running another Beastlord just because he deals so little damage and is so squishy. He deals an average of 1.78 wounds vs. regular troops 4+ save troops in the combat phase, and 2.37 wounds to 4+ save heroes, which is pitiful. Against elite armies like Stormcast he will probably fail to trigger his ability at all. Hopefully the army has some really good command traits and artefacts to justify using him, or maybe a serious points drop.

[Gaz Taylor]

+++ MOD HAT ON +++

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