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Hi all,

I've lurked for a while here but finally registered as I am about to start my first AOS army. I've been set on the beastmen, and I am finally going to pull the trigger. With that being said, I now am torn between Brayherd and warherd.

I will be starting at 1k points and plan to be there for a while. The old fashioned pick which you like better won't work as they are both equally appealing to me. So my question (and determining factor) which is stronger overall at 1k points? What about 1500-2k?

I do plan on playing in a somewhat competitive environment, so viability is somewhat important.

Thank you all in advance javascript:emoticon('');

Why not use both? They are the same Grand Alliance. Get some cheap Brayherds for bodies and let the Minotaurs, Doombulls and Ghorgons do the heavy lifting?

drek wrote:
Why not use both? They are the same Grand Alliance. Get some cheap Brayherds for bodies and let the Minotaurs, Doombulls and Ghorgons do the heavy lifting?

Would not be able to do that at 1k points, unfortunately. I feel missing out on those formations would be somewhat of an issue. For warherd at least. I'm sure I'm wrong though lol.

Warherd is pretty awesome. They move a lot slower than brayherd but are still fast. At 1000 points you can take the bare minimum of the bullgor stampede which is 3 units of 3 bullgors, a ghorgon, and a doombull. They get impact hits that deal a mortal wound on a 4+ for each model and 2 attacks instead of 1 for bloodgreed. At 2000 they can make the bullgor units 6 man each and add 2 random ghorgons. This is brutal. The brayherd is extremely fast. Standing next to a shaman and with a banner they go 10+d6 inches and can then charge. If the beastlord has his power off its 11+d6 and +1 to the charge. At 2000 I am currently building towards the formation in the grand alliance chaos book. I think its the burious brayherd or something. It will have 3 units of 30 goes, 4 units of 30 ungor raiders, a beastlord, a shaman, a unit of 10 bestigors, and a chariot. Everything but the ungors will probably start off and come in on any board edge on my turn one and go nuts from there due to the battalion. They also get bonuses for being near the two heroes but I forget what. That list plans to drown the enemy in wounds and attacks. The ungor raiders have a ton of damage potential like this too because there are 120 shots a turn hitting on 4s or 3s with the beastlord and rerolling 1+2. Then wounding on 4s. So that averages 70hits and 35 wounds which would hurt any unit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I should note that I feel bad playing the warherd since it is currently at a 18/2 record.... It isn't hard either. Just get good at choosing what to attack and when and they will destroy. Also I run all the minotaurs with the great weapons. Same with the doombull. With the allegiances I normally take either the great destroyer to give a better chance for buffing the to hit roll or the +1 to wound for the doombull so that he gets more attacks on 4s to wound. You NEED to protect the doombull though. He is what makes it easy to win so hide behind a rock and give the 16 inch radius buff out. If he dies it is much more difficult but still very doable. The ghorgon is great because he does a ton of potential damage and while he hasn't normally done much for me that is because he eats all the shooting turns one and 2 so the minotaurs mince people. If they ignore him he can take entire armies out alone as well. A big strength of this list is that everything is fairly durable and hits so very hard that people sometimes have problems picking what to shoot and kill. Also since its also on the faster end of the spectrum that's even better. I highly recommend it because it is soooo cool but if you are trying to teach someone the game or just going for a close battle you may need to ignore the army construction to tone it down.

 cranect wrote:
Warherd is pretty awesome. They move a lot slower than brayherd but are still fast. At 1000 points you can take the bare minimum of the bullgor stampede which is 3 units of 3 bullgors, a ghorgon, and a doombull. They get impact hits that deal a mortal wound on a 4+ for each model and 2 attacks instead of 1 for bloodgreed. At 2000 they can make the bullgor units 6 man each and add 2 random ghorgons. This is brutal. The brayherd is extremely fast. Standing next to a shaman and with a banner they go 10+d6 inches and can then charge. If the beastlord has his power off its 11+d6 and +1 to the charge. At 2000 I am currently building towards the formation in the grand alliance chaos book. I think its the burious brayherd or something. It will have 3 units of 30 goes, 4 units of 30 ungor raiders, a beastlord, a shaman, a unit of 10 bestigors, and a chariot. Everything but the ungors will probably start off and come in on any board edge on my turn one and go nuts from there due to the battalion. They also get bonuses for being near the two heroes but I forget what. That list plans to drown the enemy in wounds and attacks. The ungor raiders have a ton of damage potential like this too because there are 120 shots a turn hitting on 4s or 3s with the beastlord and rerolling 1+2. Then wounding on 4s. So that averages 70hits and 35 wounds which would hurt any unit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I should note that I feel bad playing the warherd since it is currently at a 18/2 record.... It isn't hard either. Just get good at choosing what to attack and when and they will destroy. Also I run all the minotaurs with the great weapons. Same with the doombull. With the allegiances I normally take either the great destroyer to give a better chance for buffing the to hit roll or the +1 to wound for the doombull so that he gets more attacks on 4s to wound. You NEED to protect the doombull though. He is what makes it easy to win so hide behind a rock and give the 16 inch radius buff out. If he dies it is much more difficult but still very doable. The ghorgon is great because he does a ton of potential damage and while he hasn't normally done much for me that is because he eats all the shooting turns one and 2 so the minotaurs mince people. If they ignore him he can take entire armies out alone as well. A big strength of this list is that everything is fairly durable and hits so very hard that people sometimes have problems picking what to shoot and kill. Also since its also on the faster end of the spectrum that's even better. I highly recommend it because it is soooo cool but if you are trying to teach someone the game or just going for a close battle you may need to ignore the army construction to tone it down.

Sounds pretty awesome. I was having a hard time choosing between warherd and brayherd. I really like the look of bestigors/gors and The beast lord, so I actually went ahead and ordered about 1k pts worth of brayherd. Went with the following
1 beastlord
1 great bray shaman
30 gors
20 bestigors
10 ungors
20 ungor raiders
Running furious brayherd formation.

Does this look okay?

Running furious brayherd, it's well advisable to run 2 Beastlords. One acting as your general, and one for the buff from the Battalion. They are quite fragile, having only one would make for an easy target and once he is down your whole army goes down the pan. Another advantage is getting that extra character in for the anarchy and mayhem roll, turning your normally rubbish gors into 3 attack killing machines quite easily. On the case of Gors, definitely go bigger. You will need 3 units of them, 3 units of 10 will last maybe 5 minutes on the battlefield, get them pushing 30. Same applies with the ungors. at 1000 points, the amount of points you have to sink into getting that formation going, you want every bit of it working for you. Personally, I don't think it's worth playing Bestigors with Furious Brayherd in a 1000 point list, sure you get a deathstar unit, but the rest of your army is just useless. Tuskgor Chariots are dam useful tactically too, and can fight stuff on their own. The only downside of removing the Bestigors is you are lacking a big punchy rend unit, but minotaurs, a giant or a few Razorgors could fill that gap nicely.

Don't take my word for gospel, I am after all a guy on the internet, but this is just my experiences after playing a few games of 1000 points with Brayherds.

Dolomedes wrote:

Running furious brayherd, it's well advisable to run 2 Beastlords. One acting as your general, and one for the buff from the Battalion. They are quite fragile, having only one would make for an easy target and once he is down your whole army goes down the pan. Another advantage is getting that extra character in for the anarchy and mayhem roll, turning your normally rubbish gors into 3 attack killing machines quite easily. On the case of Gors, definitely go bigger. You will need 3 units of them, 3 units of 10 will last maybe 5 minutes on the battlefield, get them pushing 30. Same applies with the ungors. at 1000 points, the amount of points you have to sink into getting that formation going, you want every bit of it working for you. Personally, I don't think it's worth playing Bestigors with Furious Brayherd in a 1000 point list, sure you get a deathstar unit, but the rest of your army is just useless. Tuskgor Chariots are dam useful tactically too, and can fight stuff on their own. The only downside of removing the Bestigors is you are lacking a big punchy rend unit, but minotaurs, a giant or a few Razorgors could fill that gap nicely.

Don't take my word for gospel, I am after all a guy on the internet, but this is just my experiences after playing a few games of 1000 points with Brayherds.

I appreciate the feedback. So with 2 beastlords (and I assume a bray shaman?) what would you recommend in a 1k pt game? Should I replace the bestigors with gors? On paper they seemed pretty good. I will see about picking up some chariots but they are actually kind of hard to find atm.

You may be able to use what you have but I agree you need more than 10 in a unit. Bestigors are pretty good though.

 cranect wrote:
You may be able to use what you have but I agree you need more than 10 in a unit. Bestigors are pretty good though.

Aren't I able to run the gors as 1 30 model unit? Would that help? And bestigors as 1x 20model unit?

I wish you could run the gors in a 30 man, but you gotta have 3 units of gors to get the formation. Trust me, units of 10 gors are next to useless. It might be worth considering dropping the formation and having a massive unit of gors and a big unit of bestigors, both of which can pump out some good damage if supported correctly. The army really is about the character placement, I've been toying with the idea of a Beastlord with Lord of War trait in a big pack of gors, giving them +1 to hit, inspring prescence and a character for the anarchy and mayhem roll. Get the command ability off for +2 to hit if you really want to push out some pain. You could then run your bray shaman with the crown of conquest with the bestigors, equip the bray shaman with crown of conquest to make them immune to battleshock, and give them a +1 to save with mystic shield. Hammer and anvil.

It's a shame that for Beastmen to be in any way effective you need a ton of them, because I love me my Bestigors too. I've got a few lists for 1k pts games, but I'm struggling to get them in there. Thing is, Brayherds arn't supposed to be played as a big hitter army, it's more about using their horde mentality and superior movement to choose the fights.

If you are struggling to get a chariot, here's a great idea for using sprues to make your own!

http://z8.invisionfree.com/herdstone/ar/t27537.htm

If you're after Beastman stuff, that's the site to be on as well.

Oh boy. upsetting :(

If you want to run some Bestigors, you can run:

1 Beastlord 80 pts.
1 Great Bray Shaman 100 pts.
30 Gors 240 pts.
30 Bestigors 420 pts.
20 Ungors 120 pts.

Probably the most ridiculous herd army we can run with a limited point cost, but I imagine that's going to turn some heads. You will dominate deployment just by covering so much of the board, use your characters as support and just sweep in whatever direction seems appropriate.

If you aren't worried about using the formation at 1000 points what you have already isn't bad at all I think. You could just build towards the formation at 2000 points. Personally I will be using the wildstalker brayherd for my horde at 2000. I just need 5 boxes of goes and 8 ungor boxes to use the formation well. Then I need a few chariots but I like the look of the actual tuskgors so for at least 3 ill use the actual model. I also just picked up gorthor and khazak.

I am also thinking about starting a Beastmen army, mainly because I recently found a ridiculous amount of old metal minotaur models in my basement (I was planning on making a Nurgle-themed minotaur army some 10 years ago, but never got around to it). I normally play TK and HE, so I figure a brute force army such as the bullgor stampede suggested above would be a nice alternative.

At 1000 points the list would be:

Doombull
3x Bullgor
3x Bullgor
3x Bullgor
Ghorgon
Formation: Bullgor Stampede

This list is pretty straight forward, you run at people and smash their faces in. It also helps that I would only have to buy the Ghorgon, and possibly the Doombull - the rest I have already.

At 2000 points I would expand to:

Doombull
Doombull
Great Bray Shaman
6x Bullgor
3x Bullgor
3x Bullgor
10x Ungor
10x Ungor
10x Ungor
10x Chaos Warhound
10x Chaos Warhound
Tuskgor Chariot
Ghorgon
Cygor
Formation: Bullgor Stampede

Now this list is still mostly about smashing faces in, but adds some nuances in playstyle. The Ungors are for the Battleline requirements, and will serve as objective campers and charge screens for my Bullgor units, ensuring that I get the counter charge. The Warhounds would serve as fast harassing units and flankers, while being able to double as objective takers and screens. Both the Ungors and the Warhounds are completely expendable. The first Doombull will be my General, while the second one is included in the formation - that way, my opponents will not be able to snipe one character and ruin my whole list. The Great Bray Shaman, Tuskgor Chariot and Cygor all add tactical options, while the Bullgor units and Ghorgon are the main work horses in the list. The list as a whole is extremely fast and packs one hell of a punch, while at the same time having a fair amount of models in it. It lacks in the magic and shooting departments, but should hopefully be making up for that with its speed and damage output.

Once again, a big boon is that I already have a lot of the models. In addition to what I need to buy for the 1000 point list, I only have to buy a second Doombull, 30 Ungors and the Cygor.

I'm interested to see how you guys would rate a list like this - is there anything that can be improved?

Funnily enough, I've started the gears moving on my own Warherd, to give me a break from the occasional disappointments of Tzeentch

Solaris wrote:
At 1000 points the list would be:

Doombull
3x Bullgor
3x Bullgor
3x Bullgor
Ghorgon
Formation: Bullgor Stampede

Yep, that's the 1000 point Warherd list. Extremely brutal, if fairly meh because it really builds itself

At 2000 points I would expand to:

Doombull
Doombull
Great Bray Shaman
6x Bullgor
3x Bullgor
3x Bullgor
10x Ungor
10x Ungor
10x Ungor
10x Chaos Warhound
10x Chaos Warhound
Tuskgor Chariot
Ghorgon
Cygor
Formation: Bullgor Stampede

Nice variety and impressive number of units! When I was looking at the GBS I remember wishing he did more to support the Warherd elements of the army, but having a shield to toss out or a laser to blast stuff with is still cool.

My 2k Warherd is purer and dumb simple:

Doombull - gw
Doombull - ahw
Doombull - ahw
6 Bullgors - shields?
6 Bullgors - shields?
6 Bullgors - shields?
6 Bullgors - shields?
Cygor

I'm not that sold on keeping the formation, as I'd rather have more bull than I care to stuff in three units, and I'm more interested in the Cygor and his weird rules (and his unbinding) than wedging the Ghorgon in there, as pimp as he is. List is intended to be very aggro, but not in the "Destro Turn 1 Victory" sort of way Unsure on the bullgor armament, as my minis could go any way right now, as long as they're all the same. Thinking shields because AOS is a game of grinding? And I know I struggle against 4+ armor in combat.

- Salvage

My 2000 point warherd is also very simple.
Bullgor Stampede
Doombull
6 Bullgor with great weapons
6 Bullgor with great weapons
6 Bullgor with great weapons
Ghorgon

2 more ghorgons

Very simple and a ton of damage and good speed. Inspired by the blood schorched bull tribe from the godbeasts book since that is how I am painting them all. Takes the same principle behind the 1000 point list and just ramps up the damage by a lot. If something survives being hit by any of those minotaur units I will be surprised.

Also Triple Ghorgons!

- Salvage O_O

Oh yes the triple ghorgon. I think it shall be beautifully brutal.

Shields and great weapons are the best options, both for Doombulls and Bullgors. The extra hand weapon doesn't really do a whole lot - I'd would argue that the extra rend you get with a heavy weapon is always superior. The only time the extra hand weapon is better is when you face something with very little armor.

Salvage, with your list I would probably take a mix of shields and heavy weapons, maybe two units of each?

Is there any advantage to having one unit of 6 over 2 units of 3, apart from being able to keep them in the formation? It seems like it would be difficult to get all 6 of them into combat, and you would suddenly have to worry about bravery, which you don't care about when you have only 3 in each unit. With 2x3 Bullgors you also get and extra champion =) I could be wrong though, do you guys have any experience with this?

Now that I think about this, I might even reduce my 6x Bullgor unit to 3x, and throw in a Gargant instead. I have one lying around anyway

The reasoning is for the formation. Although bravery wont be a problem if there are enemies heavy since you get +1 bravery for each enemy unit within 12 inches with the banner. At least so far as I have seen there is no cap at 10 bravery so you can easily get 13 or so bravery... At that point battleshock still doesn't matter. I think my record was 19 bravery... Also since you don't technically have to charge all 6 into one unit you can deal tons of damage to multiple units with one of yours. In a lot of units the downside is having to worry about battleshock but bullgors don't care. Really it is just because of the formation that I go units of 6. That and for any games that have the player going first due to unit count you'll win the choice.

Smart on chaining the larger units into multiple enemy. I'm looking at 4x6 because I have 4x command models, though I could forgo standards / musicians on half of them and try 8x3 some day ...

- Salvage

Ya 6 minotaurs is going to be overkill on most stuff. For large monsters it feels about right to guarantee their demise in one round of combat.

Appreciate the help guys. I feel less bad about my purchase now.

Had a bit if buyers remorse, but in going to probably drop formation and go straight up gor, bestigor and ungor raiders in mass.

That should work fairly well. Ungor raiders are cheap for a ranged unit.

So how about this:

1x beastlord
1x great bray shaman
20 bestigors
40 gors
20 ungor raiders

I have 60 pts left over, not sure what to do.

How does this look and should I tweak anything?

You guys have been very helpful, thanks again.

Well you can either keep it down some points and take advantage of the table that gives a little bonus for being a little down or you can add 10 ungors with spears or something to be fodder or whatever.

Quick and cheap 60 points? Chaos spawn!

But if you want to go pure Beastmans, spend money and paint more things, I guess distraction chariot?

- Salvage

What about this?

Furious Brayherd
2x beastlord
1x great bray shaman
3x 20 gor unit
10 bestigors
1 ungor unit (for formation )

I think that could do pretty well.

Make that Ungor unit 10 man and use it for camping objectives and things like that. You can then also add a Tuskgor Chariot for 60 points. Looks like a solid list to me.

Edit: Nvm, forgot about paying for the formation. No chariot.