Lets chat: Beastclaw Raiders

[Naflem]

58 minutes ago, blueshirtman said:

  I also don't have access to other units listed by people, and am not going to buy a separate book just to use the butcher.

For what it's worth you don't need a separate book to use the Butcher.  You would just have to get his warscroll of the GW site.  (Indeed his faction doesn't even have a book.)  

[annarborhawk]

1 hour ago, blueshirtman said:

But the top of it was when the store owner offered me the wooden spoon, and told me to smile for the store event photo. 

More than anything, I am sorry that this is your experience with what should be a fun and rewarding hobby. 

 

 

For the record, you don't need another book to run a Butcher. The warscroll is free online, etc. Though he is not necessary to the army.

You said you started off playing aggressively but were losing, so you changed tactics.  I think you should go back to aggressive play, and now with more experience maybe you will know what things are most important to hit  on Turn 1. 

You said your opponent would have you go first and play  out of charge range. You should try that again. The Stonehorn can run and charge on the same turn. On average dice, he's advancing 15 inches before he charges.  Depending on abilities you select, he can re-roll the charge. I often give him Everwinter's master, and that let's him reroll the everwinter blessing to give him 2 shots at the +3 inches.  If you deploy him as far forward as possible (usually 12 inches from the back), he's often able to make it 36+ inches from your back - or 12 inches from your opponent's back.  

When my opponent deploys all the way at his back line, denying me the top of 1 charge, he's really just giving up board control, and depending on scenario, he is really putting himself in bad victory point position.  In such case I'll advance just outside his average  charge threat range (which is almost always INSIDE my average charge threat range).  If he gets the double turn - fine, I probably lose - I expect that 1/2 the time anyway with BCR. But if I win that roll for turn,  look out, he's taking everything BCR can dish-out on the face.  I'm eating the token of everwinter; I'm pushing the thundertusks in the middle or more across the board; the mournfangs and stonehorn are crashing into whatever they can reach.   Are you remembering the Stonehorn's impact  d6 mortal wounds on the 4+? the mournfangs?   Remember the token of everwinter lets the  frost lord reroll all failed hits and wounds (and saves). When you take the tokens and get the charge in, there's not much that can withstand it.  (On a target with a 5+ save, for example, on average dice, the buffed frostlord on stonehorn should be doing about 24 unsaved wounds on the charge).   Add in the probable 12-14 mortals from the thundertusks (use vultures), and let's say only one group of mournfang make it in and do only 10 wounds (use gargant hackers), you've done almost 50 wounds. That'll wreck 1/2 or more of many armies.   

I'm not trying to oversell this.  Played well (hyper-aggressively) you'll still lose a lot of games for all the well-known reasons, but you should win enough to make it fun.

I think in the end what I'm trying to say is I'm  truly sorry that you are not enjoying the game, but I still think  there is hope.  Especially now that you are resigned to lose, maybe it's time to take a "to heck with it" attitude and just play super-aggressively.   (Make sure too you are not missing some of BCR's key rules, e.g., blessings of the everwinter, husklard healing, impact mortals,  some useful artifacts, bonuses to charging - you need everything the book gives you).

 

Final thought - It looks from reading one of your earlier posts that maybe you are not running a stonehorn at all.  There certainly is plenty of room for debate on this, but if you chose to give it another go and adopt an ultra-aggressive style, I strongly recommend running  the Frostlord on Stonehorn as your general and give him the tokens buff and master of the everwinter command ability.  If you modeled your beasts only as thundertusks, most people will allow you to proxy one as a stonehorn - if no one lets you do even that, then I'd say it's time to find another place to play.

[PlasticCraic]

6 hours ago, blueshirtman said:

Event was nice, but the rules allowed us to recycle infantry and foot hero units,  our main general deployed my army as a meat shield and they died durning our opponents turn 1. Then I had to wait for 7 hours for the game to end, to be told that all participants will get pins with their faction on it, but not destruction, because they did not order any. So I more or less stood at the store for 7 hours doing nothing, when others were picking up their participation awards from all the months events. But the top of it was when the store owner offered me the wooden spoon, and told me to smile for the store event photo. Actually got me angry, and I though it was impossible with the drugs I take

Yeah that is pretty insulting.

Have you thought about setting up your own wargaming club?  You only really need 1 more person to get the ball rolling.  

There are a lot of resources out there - Ben Curry did a good show on it a while back (Bad Dice podcast).  Tales of Sigmar did one recently too.

Key thing (imo) is saying, "We are a wargaming club, and we meet on this night".  Not we are going to set up a club, we will try to meet on these nights etc.  It gives people a lot more confidence that it's a thing (however small). 

Also - don't underestimate how much people like an officious title!  You can probably get some people to help you get started by offering them a position on the club board, making them an Admin on the FB group, let someone run the Twitter account or give them the password, etc.

[Malakree]

If you don't mind me asking, where actually are you? It might help us findout if there is another community around you could join.

[blueshirtman]

Quote

When my opponent deploys all the way at his back line, denying me the top of 1 charge, he's really just giving up board control, and depending on scenario, he is really putting himself in bad victory point position. 

Ok, I will try it. Can't use the stonhorn though, my dudes are assembled and the person selling them to me didn't give me any spare parts. As the hanging back thing goes, I wasn't precise, it is not that all armies hang back at the far end, maybe KO did that to me twice, but their ships seem to be very fast. In most cases, as most people are order here, am facing something like 30-40 skinks making a buffor line, and the rest of the army behind them. It is not always skinks though, I still don't know what to do with a slyer army. They swarm objectives and I can't kill them or their heros fast enough. Plus one guy playing them always take riggers ally with his list, so they also are deceptivly fast with some units.

[annarborhawk]

Sounds like you just happen to be in a very competetative store.  Again, though, see if your opponent will let you proxy a Thundertusk as a Stonehorn with Frostlord.  Shouldn't be a problem in a friendly non-league non-tournament game. And again, make sure to go over all the BCR special rules in the book.  I'd go with Everwinter's Master and give him the Tokens to eat. Remember he can use BOTH his command trait and command ability in the hero phase (as well as eat the tokens).  Try to get the Everwinter at 3-4 on Turn 1 for the extra 3", that and the Lord's command ability should get you're guys where they need to go.  

 

And turn the page on how you feel for now.  Don't worry about winning just yet.  First just try to kill as much stuff as you can.  Once you get a feel for what you can reasonably expect to destroy with hyper-aggressive play, then you can start to make calculations about where/who to attack, etc. .

 

And just have fun taking your opponents' models off the table for now.   

[blueshirtman]

I have been playing more games the last few weeks, sadly I see no improvment, even when some people let me proxy units. Normally I had stuff to play at the end of turn 2-3, depending if someone got back to back turns or not, now when I try to play aggresive I just lose one sometimes two of my thundertusks, and now not just to shoting, but to melee too. I know that the tusks and horns are behemots and all, but for the points they cost it feels as if they should have been given at least a few more attacks. Units that are cheaper, can cover more ground, have more wounds and more attacks.

I am really at the point when am starting to wonder, if starting AoS was a good idea at all. Two starter sets cost a hell lot of money and I practicly paid those to kick myself. Does anyone know when beastclaws are going to get updated rules. I could even stomach a big points drop on our models by now. Playing against new people 1k pts list would be kind of a lame, but at least I would get to do something with the models. 

Bit off topic does anyone know a good argument to make a store owner let someone participate in an event without a new army or being a new player? We are going to have ton of events starting may, and going through all of summer, but the orgeniser for it told me that because I play for too long to be a new player, I have to get a new army, and I don't have cash for that.

[FatherTurin]

On 4/4/2018 at 8:23 PM, Malakree said:

Unless you are playing malign portents he's only moonclan so a normal BCR army (not MP) couldn't ally him.

The FAQ for Malign Portents states that harbingers can be allied into any army that shares their GA.

[FatherTurin]

On 4/23/2018 at 11:27 AM, blueshirtman said:

I have been playing more games the last few weeks, sadly I see no improvment, even when some people let me proxy units. Normally I had stuff to play at the end of turn 2-3, depending if someone got back to back turns or not, now when I try to play aggresive I just lose one sometimes two of my thundertusks, and now not just to shoting, but to melee too. I know that the tusks and horns are behemots and all, but for the points they cost it feels as if they should have been given at least a few more attacks. Units that are cheaper, can cover more ground, have more wounds and more attacks.

I am really at the point when am starting to wonder, if starting AoS was a good idea at all. Two starter sets cost a hell lot of money and I practicly paid those to kick myself. Does anyone know when beastclaws are going to get updated rules. I could even stomach a big points drop on our models by now. Playing against new people 1k pts list would be kind of a lame, but at least I would get to do something with the models. 

Bit off topic does anyone know a good argument to make a store owner let someone participate in an event without a new army or being a new player? We are going to have ton of events starting may, and going through all of summer, but the orgeniser for it told me that because I play for too long to be a new player, I have to get a new army, and I don't have cash for that.

I have to be honest, this sounds like a pretty ****** place.  It really sucks that there aren’t many (or any) other options for you.  Outside of calmly explaining your situation to the event organizer, I don’t have much advice in that regard.  It really does sound like you got tossed to the lions in a very competitive environment.  AoS definitely favors hordes at the moment, and it negatively impacts people who don’t play horde armies or can’t afford them.  Heck, I’m an attorney and I can’t afford a horde army like Fyreslayers or the like.  There’s just not much that can be done except pray for Duality of Death as the scenario  (which is DEFINITELY in the BCR wheelhouse) and wait for the pendulum to swing away from horde play.

If you do tough it out and stick with the awesome monster riding ogres, I have to offer a word of caution.  This hobby is EXPENSIVE.  Even going for bundles and getting a discount at my local store, my Imperial Guard army in 40k cost me around 700 dollars.  My Beastclaw clock in at MUCH cheaper, but my next army is going to be Kharadron Overlords, and even their best deal (the Battleforce) has a not great unit and a bad unit mixed in to a box that STILL needs another unit of Arkanauts to be a legal 1000 point army.  Building it on the cheap (and without an ironclad for the moment) will run me around 500 bucks.  ****** is expensive.  You need to be aware of that, and realize that that is why A LOT of players start with a more slow grow style of play.  Get about 500 points, play some games, buy another unit, etc.

The TL;DR is this.  Calmly explain to the organizer that you haven’t been able to really learn your army because of the hyper-competitive nature of the level of play there.  For all intents and purposes you ARE a new player.

Alternatively it may be worth seeing if it is financially doable to pick up a start collecting set for another army to try out in the new player events.  Check for online deals and you’d be surprised.

Finally, there is also the option of selling off or trading your army and starting fresh.  You will almost never get what you paid for it, but I am known in my store as one of the guys who just can’t for the life of him decide on a faction, so selling off a faction helps defray the cost of a new one.  I managed to fully finance two armies in 40k by selling off my Stormcast and Tzeentch stuff.

Also if you don’t do this already, try and have “debriefings” after games with more experienced players.  Ask their opinion on what went wrong and what plan would work better next time.  And if people are jerks about it, you know not to play them.

[blueshirtman]

Talked to him, he told me everyone else either is new and bought new stuff or is old player with new army, and that it wouldn't be fair, if I played with an old army. The ramp up in points is rather quick too. they start with 1000pts but in 4 weeks you need to have a 2000pts army to participate, or you lose the entry fee and are not eligable to any of the prizes.

I tried selling my beasties, but no one is intersted in playing a bad army. I even got scolded for trying to sell it to a new customer by the store owner. the next batch of money am going to be getting for christmans, plus I am going to be missing half the money from this year as some fests are once in a life time thing here. The strange thing is I don't know what am going to be doing all summer now. I end school sooner this year in may, and my plan was to play till september, now I have a ton of models and no one to play against.

But you did point out something out to me, I never have talks with people after a game. People here generally try to have as many games within the time they have the table, so chit chat is minimal unless they are from the same friend group or know each other well. Although it is strange that my friend from school that started two days ago seems to have get in to the whole community group thing much better. It took me like 1 month of standing around the shop to get my first game in. And he bought his models yestarday, glued them up and already has like 6 games in, he even draw one of them.

 

Quote

 Get about 500 points, play some games, buy another unit, etc.

We play a bit different here. Under 1000pts you will never get a game in, and most games will be vs people that just started or who have unfinished armies or send parts of their armies to be painted. After around 2 months everyone expects you are going to have as close as 2000pts as possible and people like me that got their armies on christmas are considered to be playing long enough to know everything, have all the updates and legal armies etc.

[Malakree]

Gotta be honest that sounds like an absolute shithole, I couldn't play there...

4 hours ago, FatherTurin said:

The FAQ for Malign Portents states that harbingers can be allied into any army that shares their GA.

They only gain the Harbringer keyword if you are playing with all the malign portents rules.

[Pitloze]

Wargaming without the social aspects is a total waste of time imo. Find a new group asap.

[blueshirtman]

Only one store in my town, it is either playing like that or not playing at all. By the way I don't think it is that bad, the one friend I have from school just started stormcasts, with a small help from people around this forum on what to pick. He not only got games day one, but after all of them some guys also got him a ton of stormcast heros, which truth be told me a bit salty, but is an example that people in my country aren't bad, I just think that we play the game very different from how GW thinks it is played.

[AthlorianStoners]

Having a load of success with my BCR atm, running them with a Troggoth Hag really helps. 

[blueshirtman]

I am either stupid or my battletome lacks pages, where is the hag listed ?

[PlasticCraic]

@blueshirtman She is an ally, her warscroll is on the app or the FW website.  

https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-AU/Giant-River-Troll-Hag

@AthlorianStoners Interested to hear what she brings?  At a superficial level I'd have thought BCR were already good for big durable heroes that specliase in getting through high armour saves, but struggle on objectives?  It's cool that you're having success with her, how are you using her?

 

[blueshirtman]

Ok, we don't use FW rules at my store. But I would love to hear how she is used in beastclaw armies.

[Malakree]

4 hours ago, PlasticCraic said:

@blueshirtman She is an ally, her warscroll is on the app or the FW website.  

https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-AU/Giant-River-Troll-Hag

@AthlorianStoners Interested to hear what she brings?  At a superficial level I'd have thought BCR were already good for big durable heroes that specliase in getting through high armour saves, but struggle on objectives?  It's cool that you're having success with her, how are you using her?

 

At a guess she provides the wizard support, is more tanky than any of the beastclaw units, spellspite provides counter threat to enemy wizards which normally go uncontested, doesn't suck after taking 3 wounds and has a solid attack profile to go with it. All for the same as a Beastclaw Riders model, plus if you decide to use destruction allegiance abilities instead of BCR she's the only hero who can still make use of things like battlebrew.

Oh and if you get lucky on a double turn she can heal herself back to the top damage table from only a single wound. Compare that to the Huskard on Thundertusk and she's just so solid at 20 points less.

[AthlorianStoners]

@PlasticCraic as @Malakree said, she’s a very durable, tanky and versatile unit. Her ability to debuff units or act as a mortal wound or mystical shield are useful, as is her ranged attack. 

I run her as a backline unit early because her movement is not huge, supporting my other units and throwing debuffs out.  

Once she hits combat she’s just as tanky as anything else with the benefit of her unique spell and huge healing potential.

[blueshirtman]

Sounds cool. I never understood why GW never made a butcher on a thundertusk/stonehorn.

[Mincemeat]

 

2 hours ago, blueshirtman said:

Sounds cool. I never understood why GW never made a butcher on a thundertusk/stonehorn.

They wanted to keep the butcher in gut busters most likely, as hes more a fit for the old eat everything gut busters than the (still hungry) but more kind of "wise savage" beastclaw. My 2 cents anyways. 

 

Totally agree that we should have an actual wizard or priest, the thundertuskard should have had the priest keyword and would have been nice to have our own prayer list like SC and khorne. 

Sorry to hear you're having a bad time at your local club @blueshirtman, hope things pick up for you

[PlasticCraic]

12 hours ago, AthlorianStoners said:

@PlasticCraic as @Malakree said, she’s a very durable, tanky and versatile unit. Her ability to debuff units or act as a mortal wound or mystical shield are useful, as is her ranged attack. 

I run her as a backline unit early because her movement is not huge, supporting my other units and throwing debuffs out.  

Once she hits combat she’s just as tanky as anything else with the benefit of her unique spell and huge healing potential.

Cool, that makes sense.  She does have a lot of utility. 

I do use her to good effect in my Ironjawz list but that's a different situation, because she is my only real source of output in the shooting phase, and provides an opporunity to get through tough armour saves that Brutes bounce off.  Furthermore she complements the list in that she is one of only 2 Behemoths and Ironjawz don't suffer from a chronic shortage of bodies in the same way Beastclaw does. 

I don't think I've ever got mortal wounds from her unbind, so I don't keep her in the list for that - but I do keep her in the list.

I guess there is an argument that with Beastclaw you have to use 400 points to try and fix the 1600 rather than complement it - you have to band aid so many gaps in the army that you can't have everything.  I'm glad she's working well for you.

[AthlorianStoners]

17 minutes ago, PlasticCraic said:

Cool, that makes sense.  She does have a lot of utility. 

I do use her to good effect in my Ironjawz list but that's a different situation, because she is my only real source of output in the shooting phase, and provides an opporunity to get through tough armour saves that Brutes bounce off.  Furthermore she complements the list in that she is one of only 2 Behemoths and Ironjawz don't suffer from a chronic shortage of bodies in the same way Beastclaw does. 

I don't think I've ever got mortal wounds from her unbind, so I don't keep her in the list for that - but I do keep her in the list.

I guess there is an argument that with Beastclaw you have to use 400 points to try and fix the 1600 rather than complement it - you have to band aid so many gaps in the army that you can't have everything.  I'm glad she's working well for you.

I can defitnely see that argument, for my part I’ve found that going all in on what makes BCR themselves, both good and bad, means you either win big or lose big. 

[blueshirtman]

5 hours ago, Mincemeat said:

Totally agree that we should have an actual wizard or priest, the thundertuskard should have had the priest keyword and would have been nice to have our own prayer list like SC and khorne. 

Sorry to hear you're having a bad time at your local club @blueshirtman, hope things pick up for you

Huskards in the fluff seem to be a bit like priests or shamans of our world.

[AthlorianStoners]

Agreed on the priests, a lot of BCR have been very vocal about this so maybe it’s a change they’ll implement