The Red King

That is a good reminder yes. I'm not sure who to make the general really. The shaggoth is the toughest cookie but has a big enough target on his back. The doombull benefits me the most as far as having an extra unbind (on a different unit just increasing my coverage, as well as fitting the theme of him being khornate and hating magic) and he can make the most use of the increased range to issue commands since he'll be right up at the front BUT making my general a backfield shaman is a good way to have him survive or to lure the enemy into over committing to kill him but hes very easy to kill hmmm. I'm leaning towards the doombull I think. 3rd edition may have changed my army comp but in my head canon the doombull is still the leader of the skullfray. And I know you werent talking to me pop but in every game I've played I've been pleasantly surprised by the ghorgon. At one point I asked my opponent why his keeper had less attacks than the other one and he was like "he's taken 10 wounds" and I just kind of looked confused and said "from what??" Becaue in my mind the fact my Ghorgon had hit him for 9 damage just didnt even register because I thought Ghorgon don't deal damage (and 1 from the wildfire). Titanic duel felt like a huge boost to them for *free* and against smaller things he'd have stomp and potentially all out attack.

Got a game of 3.0 in last night against Hedonites and will try to write a brief report from memory. Ultimately due to a combination of unfamiliar rules and my opponent spending a little too much time talking to other people and not focusing on the game we had to call it at the bottom of 2. Slaanesh: Pretneders w/ lurid haze Grand strategy: sever the head KoS×2 one with amulet of destiny Dexcessa Lord of pain 5 twinsouls ×3 Mesmerizing mirror Wheels of excrutiation Beasts: Gavespawn Grand strategy: hold the line Beastlord w/gnarlblade Shaggoth w/ hailstorm Doombull Brayshaman w/eye and stranglethorn Brayshaman w/ wild rampage 10 gors ×2 10 bestigor ×3 6 bullgor 5 centigor Ghorgon ×2 Wildfire Taurus Playing rising power. Hedonites outdrop me placing a keeper on either flank (amulet keeper only right), dex in the middle, 10 twin souls on my left and 5 on my right. With the lord of pain all alone by his fame. He then picked up dex and a keeper to deep strike later with Lurid haze and gave me turn 1. My deployment was a bit cagey because I knew he had deep striking and so I ended up with a ghorgon slightly right of center and a ghorgon slightly left. My headstone was to my right with 1 shaman w/knowing eye within 3" and the other shaman closer to center. Shaggoth was to my right with 10 bestigor strung out as best they could to push his teleporting stuff further out. My left-center flank contained the bullgors and doombull with centigor strung out in front of them. The furthest left flank was more or less ignored which in hindsight was an odd choice since rising power has an objective on that side. I also expected him to take first turn which he did not. I ambushed the beastlord, 20 gor, and 20 bestigor. Top of turn 1 I choose hold the center as my battle tactic for the turn. My hero phase goes very poorly. I manage to miscast with both the shaggoth and the headstone shaman (leaving the latter on one wound). I successfully cast wild rampage on my bullgors and that's it. In movement my centigor (who gained bestial vigour from the shaman) moved and ran ending easily outside 3" of his lord of pain (intending to block him in for a turn). My ghorgon push slightly out left and right to screen teleports while my bulls and bullgor go up the center. On the right flank I also moved up the bestigor before ambushing in 20 bestigor plus beastlord in his backfield behind the LoP and then 20 gors in my backfield to keep him from teleporting behind me. In the charge phase (using one reroll) both bestigor and the beastlord charge his lord of pain. My beastlord deals 4 damage to the lord and is killed by the reflecting ward save of the LoP (so that was unimpressive). His lord kills 2 or 3 bestigor and dies to their return swings. Beastlord becomes a spawn but I forget until his movement phase and hes kind enough to let me drop him down since it didnt change where or how he moved. I score 1 for holding 1 objective. 1 for holding 2. 1 for holding more. And 2 for my battle tactic putting me at 5. Bottom of turn 1. Hedonites choose to kill a unit from my starting army as their battleplan. In his hero phase he gets off mesmerizing mirror right next to 4 of my 5 heroes and puts out 5 mortal wounds between them. He then moves the keeper up on my right, moves 5 twinsouls towards my bestigor in his backfield and 10 towards my centigor. KoS#2 and Dex teleport onto my left flank as expected preparing to charge my ghorgon and gors respectively. He successfully charges the ghorgon on my right with his keeper (pulling in the bestigor) and charges my centigor and bestigor with twinsouls (wiping the centigor while losing 1 and a half twinsoul). The keeper on the right puts the ghorgon down to 2 wounds and kills 2 bestigor who pass their battle shock in the end. The teleporting keeper and dex both fail their charges which is big. He scores 1 for holding 1 objective and 2 for his battle tactic. Hedonites win the roll and take the double going into the top of 2, choosing to kill a unit wholly within his own territory as the battleplan. In the hero phase his mirror does no damage but he summons the wheels on my left dealing chip damage to the bullgors and ghorgon. Moves his twinsouls to charge the spawn and my bullgors and moves the keeper and dex to charge my left flank ghorgon and gors. He makes all of his 3 inch charges unsurprisingly. In combat on my right he splits his attacks and rolls poorly only taking 1 wound off the ghorgon and killing 2 bestigor. He kills one unit of bestigor in his backfield, the chaos spawn and 7 gors. His keeper on my left utterly flubbed his rolls and deals no damage to the ghorgon. In return my bullgors murder the twinsouls that charged them. I take some wounds off the keeper on my right (locus meant I could only swing with 2 bestigor) and I put 10 wounds on his keeper on my left thanks to the unwoudned ghorgon. He scores 1 for holding 1, 1 for holding 2 and his battle tactic making it 7 to 5. Bottom of 2. My battle tactic is take an objective he controls (the one on my left with the ghorgon and severely wounded keeper). Hero phase I dispel his mirror, put out some MW with stranglethorn and successfully cast the taurus hitting his keeper and dex on the left for minimal damage but more importantly "fights last". I then moved my bullgors, and shaggoth back to kill dex. My doombull to help kill the right side keeper and my bestigor to engage his twinsouls (a mistake ultimately). I then summoned a spawn near dex to use the progenitor of devolution on the bullgors. After charges and combats the brightside ghorgon is dead and the keeper took some wounds. My bestigors in his backfield are wiped to 2 (and then run to battleshock). My left side ghorgon overkills his KoS and the bullgors kill Dex without the shaggoth or spawn (who made a long charge for no reason) even swing. I score another 5 points. We called it at that point with my opponent fairly sure he could win if the game went to 5 due to summoning. I strongly disagreed as he had almost no chance of scoring his grand strategy or stopping me from scoring mine due to the far flung location of my remaining gors but most importantly he just didnt have the bodies to stop me scoring and he'd already fallen behind on points while I still had all 6 bulls, 4 heroes, a ghorgon and roughly 20 gor/bestigor compared to his one wounded keeper and a grand total of 7 twinsouls. Ultimately we both agreed he had the potential to win the game still it wa highly unlikely and called it a win for the beasts. I don't have any concrete thoughts on 3.0 yet as it was my first game but against a faction as nerfed as Hedonites we are certainly at least playable. My only observation so far is that units with small frontage and concentrated damage such as twinsouls and bullgors are far superior to anything larger than 5 models due to how coherency works to drastically limit the number of models you can swing with. I'm considering turning one group of bestigor into gors allowing me to not make the beastlord my general because hes very easy to kill in case my opponent is using the vendetta grand strategy. The remaining 60 points are a bit weird to work with though. I'm considering an emerald lifeswarm to be summoned by my headstone shaman to heal up any wounds he takes and return sacrificial gors. Any thoughts?

Call me super negative but: Eh everything except the shows (painting, battle reports, lore) I can probably get better from YouTube (incoming copyright strikes by GW legal on every non GW affiliate channel?). The shows themselves look like they're almost all 40k right now. The exclusive model requires a YEAR wait time. Like seriously? Can we not just pay for a year and get the darn thing? Lastly if I recall wasn't the overhaul of the 40k app an absolute disaster? If it turns out great then I'll be very pleasantly surprised (but I have been before by GW so maybe it will be fine.) Of course I'm happy for anyone who enjoys it but my biggest worry is that most of this stuff is just things the community already provides but behind a paywall. And does anyone honestly think that the official battle reports will ever feature real tournament level play or a fair and objective view of the game? It will probably serve as the closest we can get to a look at how the designers think the game is played though so it will be nice to extrapolate their mindset on rules changes since they dont tell us themselves.

Plus the very unreliable "heal d3 if you tie the roll for priority" thing but yes basically 2d3+1. I agree hes more of a "can kill support heroes or non-combat squads with little fear" than an actual combat beast? but really I'll be bringing him almost solely to have someone who doesnt mind going upfield and controlling a wildfire Taurus. His own stats are almost secondary to the MW's and "must fight last" effect of the spell. I don't think the gnarlblade beastlord is entirely dead even if he did lose out on the rerolls. He COULD kill a mega-gargant in one turn if every one of the hit rolls was a 6 and they all wounded and the gargant failed all his saves which is of course statistically never going to happen but a potential 36 damage to heroes from a 95 point model is fun if not competitive.

I've been exiled from this forum by GW T_T I was actually 3-1 (I'd have won that last one if I was more careful with placement in the last round) with my blades of khorne army (using almost exclusively beasts) so this was mathematically speaking my best and most played army and now it doesnt exist anymore. I could proxy but I'll probably just go back to my lonely beasts of chaos corner of the forum. I'll miss you guys lol

Yeah but his spell and the 2+ heal plus the unreliable heal plus the leadership one represents multiple different ways to heal him so if one or two fail hes still likely to get some amount of wounds back every turn.

It's one spell for every wizard in your army per enhancement (including the one free one)

I'm lucky they didn't appeal to me for some reason (the UH one did but the unit doesnt) Now if they release khorne minotaur from Total war and they're also drek then I'm going to GW headquarters to ask them why they hate beasts.

To be even fairer Slaangor might literally be the worst unit in the game and they got a point increase so I can understand their anger. I offered a HoS friend to try playing with the 2.0 points against my 3.0 beasts. If he takes it up I'll let you know.

Makes pretty good use of Flaming weapon too. This is tempting me so much lol. But my current "30 sotw unleashing hell for ungodly numbers of shots" seems fine too.

I wasn't really considering the annointed as part of their cost and was just thinking of them being your anvil for the annointed on frostheart with arcane tome to fly around. Not sure what would fill out the rest of the battleline though.

I worry this will get a bit spammy by the time I post a primed and then hopefully painted picture but I'm too excited about my shaggoth conversion not to share. Nobody tell him he's a wizard...

I personally like revenants over dryads. They aren't as good at taking/holding objectives but they are phenomenal at making your opponent leave things on objectives so you dont steal them and can also be useful in picking off lone artillery or casters or teleporting to form a screen for your shooters.

I love the thoughts on the phoenix stuff but even better than a rally on PG is the emerald lifeswarm. Moves every hero phase, keep control of it with a wizard and it seems to heal an extra d3 the first turn you cast it (when summoned and when it finishes a move which you move it the turn you summon it) you're getting a lot of points back at 2d3 Phoenix guard a round. Combined with all out defense it seems like a good time to try making the 20-30 elf block of converted guard I'd considered.

I've always liked the tzaangor and might end up getting some just to paint and summon but as for raiders, their max size 20 and no desolating brayherd makes me see no reason to ever bring them. I wouldn't even spend the extra primordial call to get them over regular ungors. Interested to see how the cockatrice perform though.

I can't see a list here on my screen? My current plan is to take Gavespawn Warlord regiment: Beastlord w/ unraveling aura & mutating gnarlblade Shaman w/ stranglethorns & knowing eye Shaman w/ wild rampage 10 gors ×2 Alpha beast pack: Ghorgon ×2 Battle regiment: Doombull Dragon ogre shaggoth w/hailstorm 10 bestigors ×3 6 bullgor 5 centigor Wildfire Taurus. The plan is to drop in an order to give as little information as possible to the opponent ambushing all the gors, bestigors, and beastlord while the beefiest units march up the table. Alpha beast pack gives the ghorgon just a little more speed to work with. Centigor start near a shaman for a 17"+run+charge threat range, not that they threaten anything but a backfield unit, and what they are really there for is running around screens and tying up shooters to prevent unleash hell on more important targets. Seems like they'll play the same as ever. Distract them with bodies on objectives and try to get some ideal bull charges. Oh and the shaggoth makes a perfect delivery system for the wildfire Taurus since he can stay in range to control it quite happily.

No no no I think you meant you bought one for all 20 of your mates as Christmas presents but they actually already bought a copy too so here you are, egg on your face, and if anyone wants to buy one off you it's only a 50% upcharge for uhhh shipping yeah that's it, shipping.

I'll absolutely be hiding warpfires in my clanrats now and the thought of using unleash hell on a 4fire thanqoul is hilarious. Does anyone know the points on our endless spells I cant find a screenshot that iant clipped off. Edit: found it. Bell 85, tide 80, WLV 90

I'm not going to be spearheading any boycotts myself but this reads like an abusive relationship. "You cant expect them to be good when they never have before, just be happy that they are only as bad as ever!" "Considering what they've done before this is actually a good thing in comparison." "You can't be upset that you got punched in the gut because they could have hit you lower." Yes I think some people are over reacting with the hate on GW and sky is falling attitude but you are definitely on the furthest point in the opposite direction of that scale. I'm not gonna applaud GW everytime they successfully resist the mistake of reverting to AoS 1.0 rules lol. They're a large preeminent company that charges premium prices. Each individual consumer is entitled (a dirty word I know) to decide whether or not the product being sold to them is worth the money being charged. So "better than the worst they could possibly do." Is not the bar I'm setting for my hobby budget personally.

Wait what's the source on that rumor? I hadnt heard it and it elates me.

If we even can. This is a fluff snippet from the latest core book and it makes it seem like there are no worshipers of the chaos gods I hate it.

So they intended to raise the points of HoS before they released them? They preemptively prepared the ghb nerfs to fix how broken they were DEFINITELY gonna be at launch? Lol

We cant even be allied IN to other chaos armies. Somebody legitimately just doesnt like our army I think.

Anybody snap a screenshot of the points values?

"Allies: slaves to darkness." Cool. Cool cool cool. They couldve just wrote "nobody in the studio plays beasts" because theres no way anyone with a passing knowledge of the army didnt realize they invalidated every god marked army and then didnt even allow them to ally. Sure maybe the book will fix it. Eventually. But in the meantime I just can't play the army they sold me. Cool. Tangentially related but Soulsnare shackles now completely denies charges to anyone within 6 inches of it so its official. Someone on the design team lost his sentinel bunker to a turn 1 charge from gore gruntas and decided that nobody gets melee anymore.