Jamopower

Beastmen aren't (and have never been) very popular army, so the results have high volatility. The player in some certain tournament might be very good, or a beginner, and thus the results can be whatever. My personal experience on playing few (casual) games with beastmen is that they are very good. Some of the units, such as dragon ogres, are clearly undercosted on what they actually do. The list also has options on doing almost everything in the game well besides shooting, but on the other hand they have a really nice magic item that allows the re-rolls to wound on magic missiles, so that's not a big issue either.

In addition, 6 wide monster unit will many times mean that three of them strike only once as opponent can easily charge them with a narrow frontage unit like a ridden monster, fir which they could be a very juicy target

I’m hoping for 5th edition metal beastmen. They are some of the best models, but very hard to get nowadays (and I sold mine for cheap back in the day).

I also have a strong feeling that the other army of infamy would be the imperial dwarfs. Which I have to say would be very tempting for me to get some Imperial units to accompany my stunties.

I don’t really think there’s universal ”optimum size” anymore. There are so many possibilities for free reforming, that the units will change their setup many times over the game. So marching to the enemy in more narrow frotnage to make the manouvering easier (maybe even in marching column). And then reforming/collapsing into wider battleline as the lines contact. And there the width is thenagain influenced by lots of variances. What you are facing, are you trying to be flanked, is there room, is there enemy skirmishers harrying the flanks and limiting your options to bring more fighters to the front etc. it actually sort of feels like more formalized version of AoS or Mesbg battlelines.

To be honest, the bugman’s rangers don’t look like actual rangers either. ’Ranger’ gives me a hooded Aragorn feel, I believe there aren’t any GW Warhammer dwarfs with those looks ever made. Well maybe some in 3rd edition or so.

Well older in this context would be more around 40 year (or 30-50) olds (where I fit neatly myself).

I have felt that The Old World and Horus Heresy are catering for a bit different target audience than 40k and AoS. HH and ToW are more akin to "wargames" (i.e. related to historical wargames, and try to have some sort of resemblance on actual battlefield) while 40k and AoS are more of "strategy battle games" which are closer to playing Starcraft on tabletop. So in very straightened curves version ToW and HH are for older (and higher income, but smaller) audience than 40k and AoS.

I believe drilled is mostly an option for the elite infantry (e.g. many dwarf units) that have pretty high Ld to start with. It has some use, but I'd say quite niche for the additional cost.

Maybe in 8th, but in 6/7th edition they were really strong. Especially the Tzeentch dragon with the 3++ against shooting. There was just a big tradeoff between having magic or monster lord, that usually was favoured for magic. edit: and by very strong, I mean not un-killable, but so strong that it needed to be dealt, and one of the reasons those cannons (or 4 bolt throwers) were there to start with, were the (high) possibilites of facing a dragon, or some other strong monster such as stegadon, treeman, greater daemon or a steam tank. The chaos dragon was particularly strong, because it was so hard to kill and there was hardly anything else in the army (common set-up was lord on dragon, one or two disc riding exalted champions, three chariots as core, some screamers and a hellcannon, (which was also very hard to kill and expensive). The army was very strong because of points denial, they didn't need to kill that much, because it was so hard to get more than few hundred victory points of them. I'd imagine the current dragon lords (especially when you can get two in 2000 points), would work in very similar fashion, though it changes things that it is in general more difficult to get points in this edition.

Reading the drilled rules feels that it is supposed to be possible to first make the redress and then charge, but it's just written bit messily as "move" is not defined properly. It's also how it works in Warhammer Ancient Battles. Also, if it doesn't work during charge, it is pretty seldomly useful ability.

Yes, this would be exactly what I have been thinking as well. In overall having dragons with 2+ save (and ward saves) is very strange design choice when they have made lots of effort on having the 2+ save otherwise for very few cavalry units and reduced the saves (and armour piercing) in general over the whole game. Especially as in the past editions having any additional protection for flying monsters was very limited and they were usually pretty formidable even then. The Tzeentch Eye that gave 3+ ward against shooting is the only one that comes to my mind from 6th, and it was very broken.

I’m pretty sure it will eventually be erratad to something along that way (i.e. Mounted monsters to use their own save always). It feels such an oversight in the rules.

Most monsters luckily have quite bad armour save, so they are not that difficult to kill. It’s only the dragons and such that are very hard, and I don’t think Skaven (or other Legacy lists) are in particularly different situation to any other army out there in dealing with them. Hordes of expendable troops with high leadership (remember that your general spreads ld10) should at least be quite good on making them work on getting their points back.

Almost everything in the game has been nerfed, so I wouldn't give up to soon. Especially compared to the 8th edition.