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The thing that killed beastmen for me was when they went from being a crazy/chaotic mixed unit skirmishing horde army, to brown orcs. They are too organised now, and not unique enough.

It wouldn't have been hard to write them such that they stayed as half block unit half skirmisher as the previous book had them

At least it's an army of orcs. The orc codex has 5 different kinds of ork-based units in an armybook of 16 categories of goblins. Beastmen starts with orc boyz and goes UP from there, rather than down.

Though I guess that begs the question why not play WoC...

 Ailaros wrote:
At least it's an army of orcs. The orc codex has 5 different kinds of ork-based units in an armybook of 16 categories of goblins. Beastmen starts with orc boyz and goes UP from there, rather than down.

Though I guess that begs the question why not play WoC...

Ungors are worse than orcs, I think?

WoC is a different army now thats why beastmen players dont play Warriors. Bit like saying "if you like Wood Elves but find them bad why not just play Dark Elves?"

Quite simply, the book feels rushed and incomplete. Reading the book, I feel like they spent all their time on the fluff then at the end forgot they needed to actually make some rules.

Beastmen has always been a smaller list since they spun off of RoC, so that's not really the issue. It has more to do with point costs and rules within the current edition. GW has shown they can do good pre edition books like with Skaven, or Necrons/GK in 40k, but Beastmen feels like it was rushed and poorly thought out.

Their core, which pretty much has to be the mainstay of your army is over costed for what they do, has no real options, and their main mechanic relies on passing relatively low leadership tests. A lack of speed or covering fire hurts this even more.

Overall though, tweaking point costs on much of the book can turn it from being a bad book to a decent one. Throw in a couple better support units or a decent ranged unit and Beastmen are back.

I agree with a lot that has been said, and disagree with other bits.

I think core is priced OK for what you get: A single Gor is str 3 toughness 4, primal fury, and 2 attacks base (well, two attacks with AHW, which should be mandatory...) at 4ss per model. Its not UNDER costed, sure, but it is about right. I feel ungors/ raiders at 2.5 and 3 ss a model is, again, OK.

The issue with characters is one that has been fixed in the new WoC book in that gifts of chaos should come from a separate allowance as regular magic items. Add mount options and people would be happy!

Lore of the wild sucks, but a lot of army specific lores are laughable...

Rares are what really suffer in the book (and minotaurs) and why armies look so decidedly homogeneous. If the Cygor was maybe 200 pts (closer to the Hellcannon... which it is inferior to) it would be playable. If the Jabber was 225 points (closer to the Chimera... which it is inferior to), it would be playable. And, lastly, the Ghorgon... if he were lower points (maybe 240-250) with Regeneration and/or scaly skin 4+ he would be SO much better.

Around here, by the way, we always play Ghorgons with the above rules and it makes them much more resilient!

That's one guy's rant!
Hermit

Never enough "beasts" in the army-how about Arachnorock sized spawn as character mounts.