The_Yellow_Sign

Thanks! Will listen to this while painting my Dragon Ogres tomorrow. I'm really curious how Joel used his Wildfire Taurus, since it seems that he found it very useful.

I have a slight personal preference for units of 6, though it depends how you plan to use them. Doesn't really matter much how you equip them, since the choices are all fairly similar. Glaive deals the least damage (even accounting for rend) but have reach 2, so can be useful to have one or two glaive-wielders on the flanks. Crushers and paired weapons deal the exact same damage on average, with crushers being spikier and paired weapons being more reliable. Crushers are the best choice if you plan to buff them with the Gavespawn CA, though I think you will in general have a better use for that (Enlightened, Bullgors, or Bestigors).

The Bestigor warscroll actually did change, and was much improved (1 extra attack on the charge, reroll 1's to hit vs. order, +1 hit vs. 10+ model units) to bring it in line with modern 32mm elite infantry like Namarti Thralls. The Gor warscroll was changed with an inexplicable nerf to Anarchy, kicking in only at 20+ models and removing the possibility of +1 to wound. There were quite a lot of other changed scrolls---in fact most of them were modified at least a little bit (other than Cygor). But it feels like a lot of the warscrolls were done with little to no playtesting (or mathhammer), and I think that it was definitely low effort on that end. Poor pointing of units is a relatively minor issue when you can change points in the GHB, but bad warscroll design (Gors, Beastlord, Cygor) is a long-lasting problem.

Joel McGrath actually placed 4th at Cancon with a non-Tzaangor list (Bestigors, Ungors, and Raiders, mostly) to prove that you can do well without the Tzaangor stuff. But he's an extremely good player and most people would not be able to pilot that list to a strong finish. I've taken very similar sort of lists to a few tournaments but had mid-level finishes until I swapped in a unit of 6 Enlightened and 6 Skyfires into my army. It's analogous to playing Deepkin with all Namarti Reavers and Thralls, and no Eels at all. Unfortunately there's a lot of just plain bad warscroll design in the Beasts of Chaos book, with plenty of units that fail at their intended role, or have no role at all, and lack synergy with the rest of the army. And that's difficult to fix with points, and really limits what sort of lists you can build for competitive play. For example, the classic Gor (which was never even close to being OP) was rendered completely useless by the inexplicable nerf it received in the battletome that made it's role redundant with that of Ungors. It's difficult to fix with points since they are already pretty cheap at 10/30 for 80/210. The Beastlord, which is the only classic Brayherd unit that lacks run+charge, is also an example of bad warscroll design from a gameplay and thematic perspective. He's supposed to be a Bestigor that bested the previous Beastlord, but then he inexplicably lost the ability to run+charge? It makes him too slow to keep up with the army and buff the units that he's supposed to buff, with a CA that is already very situational and difficult to trigger. He just doesn't work in his intended role, because Beasts of Chaos units do not want to (and are not really able to) enter into prolonged combats. The Cygor is a good example of a bad design as well, with a warscroll designed for wizard-sniping before the introduction of Look-Out-Sir, that was inexplicably not updated at all for the rule. Even before AoS 2.0 it was an unreliable wizard-sniper, but now it's even worse. And even if they give it a huge points drop in the next GHB it just doesn't really do what it's supposed to do, and that's disappointing. tl;dr I wish someone thought more carefully about the warscrolls. Bad pointing can be fixed in the GHB, but bad warscrolls are sticking around until the next army update in X years. /endrant

Yeah the skinks don't look too bad, but I think the Saurus look a bit awkward and need an update.

Yeah GW either did no playtesting or no mathhammer on Beasts of Chaos. For example, it blows my mind that Bullgors are more expensive than Enlightened, but do an order of magnitude less damage, can't fly, and are half as quick. If I was being cynical, I'd say this was a ploy to get older Beastmen players to "upgrade" their classic armies to the newer Tzaangor models.

If you don't care about winning or losing then you don't need to take Stormcast in your roster...

Plenty of Order armies take Stormcast allies because Stormcast have some OP units (evocators/ballistas with ordinator/lord arcanum and comet).

The point is that unit balance is a problem with lots of armies. Lots of armies have cool models that nobody uses because they're just bad. DoK might be one of the exceptions where all but one unit (the shooty snakes) is very, very strong.

And Warherd have been bad since before AoS even launched...and Gors...and chariots...

Lots of armies' players are dissatisfied with the type of lists they have to run. If you look at the Beasts of Chaos facebook page a lot of players are annoyed that the best Beasts of Chaos lists are Tzeentch 2.0 with Enlightened spam, Ungor screens, and occasionally Skyfires. Ghorgons, Bullgors, Jabberslythes, and plenty of other classic models are just not competitive, and GW inexplicably nerfed the classic Gors into uselessness with the battletome. And Beasts of Chaos is a brand new battletome, but we still have these problems where GW did not balance the units correctly.

He came 11th, I believe. He didn't crack the top 10 because he lost the final match to the champ. The tournament was almost 200 players, so he was still near top 5%.

Here's the list: https://thehonestwargamer.com/aos-list-rundowns/alexander-krohn-kharadron-overlords/ They have the final match on the Honest Wargamer YouTube channel.

KO did pretty well at CanCon though. The final was KO vs. Gore Pilgrims.

Do you know if they're planning to update Beastclaw and unite them with Gutbusters?

I thought that Sigmar possessed the body of Karl Franz during the End Times? So isn't Sigmar's current body Karl Franz?

Yeah it was actually hinted that the monster might be a Shaggoth, and I think that's the most likely creature as well. Could be a Chimera, Ghorgon, Cygor, or Jabberslythe though. You never know!

I follow Creature Caster on facebook so it will probably show up in my feed. I'm sure someone will post it in the Beasts of Chaos facebook group as soon as the news comes though; everyone there seemed pretty excited about it. If you haven't seen their models, this is their amazing Zombie Dragon:

Please GW, don't do it...

Man, soon AoS will be just like 40K with a glut of different Stormcast chapters. Stormwolves, Bloodcast, etc.

It's mostly because Joel McGrath wanted to make a point that he could do well without Enlightened. I think he just prefers traditional Beastmen lists, based on his comments in the Beasts of Chaos facebook group in the past.

So Joel McGrath just took 4th place at CanCon with his goats! No Tzaangors in his list. https://aosshorts.com/cancon-2019-results-and-awards/?fbclid=IwAR3oWM3wp91VomTeBQ71UeiV37C2Fti73W0WLypM5cseTpixHNNb2Y9q6SY

So unfortunately Beastlord is not very good at all in an Allherd list. A Beastlord is basically an artefact-delivery system, so you should generally only run him if you can equip him with a good artefact (e.g. Gavespawn Mutating Gnarlblade, Volcanic Axe, Sword of Judgement). And the best way to play Allherd is to take Aetherquartz Brooch as your second artefact (taking a Battalion to get a second one) so that you can generate loads of command points for summoning. Similarly, Bullgors are less ideal in an Allherd list. You generally want to buff your Bullgors with a Doombull's command ability, but in Allherd you want to be using your CP either for generating summoning points, or for ignoring battleshock. If you want to run those particular units that you have in your list, then Gavespawn or Darkwalkers (or no Greatfray at all) would be better choices from an optimization point of view. With regards to summoning, most commonly I summon Ungors, Raiders, Bestigors, Enlightened on Disk, Chariots, Warhounds, or a Chimera. Ungors and Raiders are good for stealing poorly defended objectives just by outnumbering your opponent, and Bestigors are good for challenging a small unit defending an objective. Chimera is good but I usually only summon it if I'm already comfortably ahead in the game and can safely bank summoning points. Each summoning point is worth roughly 20 points of units, and you get an average of 3 points per turn by sacrificing at the Herdstone. So on average you can summon 10 Ungors per turn. Allherd gives you an extra summoning point per CP spent, and Atherquartz gives you on average 1/2 a CP per CP spent. For strategy, check out the Doom & Darkness youtube channel. He runs a Tzaangor- and Dragon Ogre-focused list, but has a lot of excellent advice regarding screening, movement, summoning etc.

Enlightened certainly have a much higher ceiling in melee, but their output seriously drops when they are not going second (e.g. screen is destroyed, or they are attacking a strong behemoth like Vamp Lord on Zombie Dragon and can't do the clip charge trick). The gap in damage is not so large when Enlightened and Skyfires are both activating first. And Skyfires have long range shooting and MW output, which is extremely useful for dropping screens and 5 wound heroes.

It's mostly wishful thinking on my part because Dragon Ogres used to be part of the same faction as Warriors of Chaos back in WHFB. I just really want a plastic Shaggoth...