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Ok, a little different direction for a list building thread here. I want to make an army that focuses on the aesthetic of Greek and Roman mythology, particularly centaurs, satyrs, maybe some nymphs and Baccus etc. Think converted centaurs with spear and sword, or bow, maybe some little goaty fellows running around with pipes and bows. Perhaps a dancing nymph or ten with wine etc. (the original Fantasia, only with the wild, savage character the Greeks initially applied to them).

Now here's the trouble, I don't really know what list to use. I am thinking maybe Brettonians or Beastmen, though I don't have the Beastman book at the moment. Here's my thoughts:

Brets:
Pros:
1: A list built for cavalry, with decent cav as core. I could go all centaur with out a problem.
2: Peasants could make decent rules for little satyr archers and what not. Not too tough, but annoying and support the centaurs.
3: Lore of Life and Beasts makes a lot of sense.
4: Mounted Yeomen make good light archer centaurs.
5: Grail Knights with GW make cool Centaurs with well, GW.
6: Knights actually work in lance formation; the army is playable with lots of Cav.
Cons:
1: Knights are maybe a little heavily armored for Grecian centaurs. I can model them up with breastplates etc. and some "Close enough" armor. Still, buy in might be a little tough, especially if I have naked centaur yeomen who don't look a lot less armored. (I can work around this.)
2: I am really limited in the troop types I can model. No monsters (minotaurs, chimeras etc.) and nymphs other than just foot maidens is a little iffy.
3: Old army book that might get redone and screw up the army. (weak argument.)
4: Something I thought about last night but can't remember.

Beasts:
Pros:
1: Well... obviously they have centaurs, goaty guys etc. Rules are built for savage and naked.
2: Monsters like Minotaurs, harpies, etc. Basically a transport of Greek myth to 1350's Europe.
3: Lore of Beasts and Wild (which sucks?) and maybe something else.
4: Chariots, yay!
5: Something I am missing?
6: Lots of different units for flexibility, compared to Brets.
Cons:
1: Not built for cav heavy. (Are centigors even core/special?)
2: Apparently a pain to play, and perhaps not flexible enough to even get enough centaurs on the table.
3: No lance formation.

Questions about Beasts:
What other lores can they take?
What options to centigors have?
Am I going to be scratch building 150 models to get a working army at 2000 points (this would be bad :()?

So what do you guys think? What's the better list for this? I know the Brets look like they have more Pros, but that is perhaps largely because I have their book and not the Beast book yet, so I had more to work with. I would be down with lots of other ideas too.

As an aesthetic point, I think I will make the centaurs from marauder horsemen, and the satyrs from either ungors or some other companies' satyr models (there are quite a few floating around strangely enough.) Other cool monsters and characters as I think of them.

I love the idea Wehrkind and have been daydreaming about it myself. I was leaning towards using the Wood Elf or Beastmen army books. Take a look at these images in the gallery, they might give you some more ideas.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-18254-8973_The%20Sylvans.html

Brettonians seem much too organized for the sort of list your describe. And the lack of any sort of big monster is a major con. After all, how could you do a Greek Mythic force without a cyclops.

Boogeyman: Ahh woodelves! That's a book I hadn't thought about using, but they probably do have some interesting tricks. They also have a huge hamstring, so I guess they are about as good as Beastmen
Those Faun skirmishers are pretty sweet too, and almost exactly what I was thinking in terms of conversions. I have a mess of woody elf archer bits floating around that I was thinking of using, plus a ton of wild rider horses.
Can woodelves take cavalry as core?

RanTheCid: Organization is sort of irrelevant, since all armies sans Woodelves run in regiments of rank and file instead of skirmishers. WHFB is sort of weird like that, with Chaos Marauders being as neat and organized as Empire State Troops. Though I suppose you could argue that a 20mm base represents more tightly packs troops.
I would be missing the big beasties though, as even though I don't have any monsters in mind right now, being able to toss some in would be really nice.

Here is a list I made a while ago that actually made me start down that theme.

Just for fun.

L: Orion = 575

H: Noble - wildrider, stag, dawnspear = 195
H: Spellsinger - level 2, glamourweave, unicorn, dispel scroll = 235
H: Noble - BSB, elven steed, light armor, talisman of preservation = 149

C: 5x glade riders with horsemaster = 129 (BSB rides with them, should probably lose the horsemaster to gain los!)
C: 5x wild riders with musician = 130 (everyone else rides here)
C: 20x glade riders with command = 516
C: 20x wild riders with command = 556

Total = 2485

Not a very competitive list, but could be fun.

Orion makes all the wild riders core and glade riders are already core. I could see those conversions or a form of those conversions used as wardancers and waywatchers too. Wood elves and Beastmen may struggle to be competitive, but I love their theme and opportunity to convert to your imagination.

Hmmm that is pretty appealing! I might have to treat myself to 2 army books as a reward for completing mid terms this week!

What do glade riders vs wild riders do?

Nymphs riding stags would be pretty cool too...

Both act as fast cavalry. Glade riders are your harassing units, they come with bows and spears, but no armor. Wild riders hit harder, but don't have any ranged weapons. The also have light armor with a ward save. A musician is free and makes them cause fear when they charge. Normally these guys are a special choice. They have the same weakness as the beastmen in that they are poorly armored and they have a low toughness; however, they are fast cavalry.

There was an old white dwarf that had this same type of theme displayed by one of their readers. He used the old demonette(seekers) models instead of the glade riders. I think that would take more converting though, but it was still cool. He also used the deamonette models to convert into dryads also.

That would certainly be a fun list!

From a competitive standpoint, I'd be more tempted to take a standard Noble with appropriate upgrades rather than Orion. He suffers so much from that point cost. Honestly I'd be fine letting a WE player drop him about 150 points and go from there.

I really like the Wood Elf aesthetic and idea, many of their units are just plain awesome in concept if not on the table.

Imho, given your modelling on the WoC army, I think your abilities point towards using Bret rules as you originally thought.

Beastmen are not competitive enough that you won't be using your army especially with centaurs used as... well, centaurs.

If you want to make lance formations look unruly, you can easily do it with modelling. For example, some of them mounted up on rocks, looking to the side, etc. A stream of centaurs coming straight at you.

I think you can armor them up a bit (say breastplate, some sort of shield, some sort of barding) to be representative, and rule of cool will apply.

So imho, that's the way to go! The wood elf list is awesome but unfortunately, imho, just not viable. Wildriders were OK for me in 7th, but in 8th they were the first thing I parted with :-/

Hmmm this is going to be a tough choice, but perhaps one I don't really have to make at first. I suppose I can just build "stuff" and then call it various "things" to try out different rule sets. Let's see... 3 armies at 4-5 lists per army and 2-3 games a year, that puts me at around 4 to 7 years to figure out the army

I picked up the Beastmen book today, so I will see if that gives me any idea. The WElf list looks really neat too... maybe I will build for Brets, then just use them as other lists for fun. I dunno... between exams this morning and my nephew being all sorts of fussy this afternoon, my brain is basically a luke warm bowl of grits. With a slow leak...

Why don't you through Warriors of Chaos into the mix as well? They are chaos so they can be whatever you want them to be.

I'd go the other direction. An army of spearmen in Phalanx formation. A real shield wall. Very hero heavy. Not special characters, just make your own high value heroes.

That's a great point, Wehr, you really don't have to make a choice right now. And beastmen are the most obvious, and I might be tempted to go with them, too.

It really comes down to whether you want to throw in other monsters, or go all mounted. If it's all mounted, I don't think there's much of a choice in the end, though... brets are the only ones who can really put it off in 8th.

Not that that's necessarily a bad thing as they ruled the day in 7th. And I think you can catch people off guard in 8th as I haven't seen them much.

Boogeyman: I had thought about doing the conversion for my current WoC army, but I already had the naked wolf riding chicks and was going for more of a pict theme, so I stowed the idea for later.
The current downside, other than already having a WoC army , is that you can't take any sort of missile weapon on them, and I kind of want them to have bows, and you also are limited to OMG armored knights and marauders with flails or spears. It might still work, but at least previously I figured it was not worth the extra work to make another WoC, though depending on how I model these up a few might make it into the fold for larger games

RiTides: Yea, I think I will mess around list building for a few months in any case. I still have ~20 pounds of WoC I can paint up. I did pick up the Beastman book last night though, and after a few hours reading and a few more of not being able to sleep, came up with some ideas. Firstly though, wow, I can see why the army has issues. 1-2 points too many per basic model for starters. I have a list or two in mind though; I will post in a bit after some coffee and proper points counting.


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Ok, so messed about a bit with Beastmen points, and here's what I got:

Warning, this list is by no means "good" and it should probably be a considered a danger sign if your list accidentally looks like it.

2000 points, Beastmen
Lords:
Doombull: AHW, HArmor, Gnarled Hide, Slug skin, Ramhat, Talisman of End. (2+ save, free attack on armor save, Str3 hits in base contact each melee, 5+ ward.) 345 pts

Heroes:
Wargor: BSB, HArmor, Shield, Talisman of Preservation, Tuskgor Chariot (3+/4++ save) 161+80

Shaman (Beasts): Level 2 110

Core:

Centigors x15 + Ghorros : Full command, Spear, light armor, shield, 551

Centigors x 11: Full command Great weapons, light armor 332

Centigors x 8: Full command, light armor, shield spear 235

Ungor Skirm x 10 musician 63

Ungor Skirm x 10 musician 63

Special:
Harpies x 5 55 points


Yea, it will be neat to look at, but wow, no blocks? How do I deal with ranks of troops? My general idea is to put Captain Insaneo the Doombull into the front of a block of Str<5 and a 2 rank unit of centigors into the flank, and just win combat until they die. The hope would be that anything cheap enough to have a HUGE block of (marauders, empire troops, skaven) just can't kill the bull before being ground to dust, though they will probably tarpit for a REALLY long time unless he can force enough steadfast checks for them to break. Elite troopers will hopefully not have enough bodies left after one round of combat to be steadfast anymore after he wrecks them in terms of kills, though Doomey probably can't survive more than 1-2 battles like that.

What bothers me about the list, other than the fact that it will cry so hard, is that the cavalry really can't handle itself. I could load up on one BIG centigor block and use them almost as infantry, but even with 20 a block they can't hit hard enough with enough ranks. Well, maybe they can... on the charge they are basically WoC with halberds. 18 might be the perfect number there, in two blocks. Perhaps I will drop the great weapons as well. A 5+ save doesn't seem good enough for Str6 ASL on a 27 point model :(

Brets to come!

Of course the question I have to ask is, what do you do when you can't take SC? Probably play chaos ...

I dig the list, fits the theme and is crazy different in general Doombulls also scare the pants off me, and this is perhaps the best use of the ramhat that exists, on a solo-ing big dude who the enemy has to allocate attaks against, rather than poke his naked mino friends. Anyway, I of course have things to tweak:

L: Doombull - many-limbed fiend, gnarled hide, ramhorn helm, talisman of endurance, ahw, heavy armor = 335

H: Wargor - BSB, talisman of preservation, ironcurse icon, shield, heavy armor = 166
H: Bray [BEASTS] - ahw = 77
H: Bray [BEASTS] = 75

C: 15 Centigors - Ghorros, standard, musician = 551
C: 12 Centigors - full command = 335
C: 30 Gors - full command, ahw = 265
C: 10 Raiders - musician = 63
C: 10 Raiders - musician = 63

S: 5 Harpies - scout = 70
-------
2000

Doomy got +1A @ S6 over the 1-4 @ S3 tickles, for cheaper too. Otherwise unchanged. Gads, what a beast.

BSB lost his ride, but that's because he's now got a block to walk with. I really think going blockless is a mistake - you're avoid-y as hell I suppose, but 8th is about blocks and their friends (hence WE's big downfall: no block that matters, but lots of great support). I went with 2x level 1 shamans, purely to double up on Wildform, as it's a HUGE force multiplier for beasts, particularly your centigors and central block. If they roll something interesting otherwise, that's cool too, but easily cast buff is the name of this game.

Ghorros's block is unchanged, but I consolidated the other two into a single decent medium-sized unit. GW seemed cool for flavor, but ultimately are fraught with peril - AND you have to pay 2 points for them, crap. Like chaos lances, except you die easier too.

After buying the gors I had 17 points left, so a bray got another stick and I used the last 15 to scout the harpies. I've found scouting harpies to be a real bane, at least making me extremely paranoid and reactionary instead of focusing on the hordes of beasties thundering my way. But there are a huge number of uses for 15 points, so whatev.

- Salvage

I am SO glad you posted... just finished the Bret list and was worried I would have a huge wall of text appended

Thoughts on your changes first:

I am torn on the doombull. I like the Slugskin for it's auto-hit, sorta like an impact every turn, flavor. It is salty though. I don't like the additional arms, for a cheeky reason: The Berserker Sword costs the same, and means you NEVER lose frenzy, so you never lose Bloodgreed bonuses. I had noticed you can dump a 25 point item on your Minotaur Champs, and thought that would be a really neat one. Kind of like 30 Wound Powerklaws, you now have a champ that just keeps multiplying attacks. So I dunno, is the extra Str6 attack worth it vs 4-5 auto-hitting str3? One to play out.

The requisite block does make me sad, but you are probably right, which also makes me sad. 1, I don't want to paint that many men for a while, and 2 I kind of liked the all/mostly chariot force. I think you are correct though that it is needed to make the list playable, so I might just swallow my bile and deal with it. Besides, in a few months I am going to be without school and a job for a while, so I will have some time on my hands.

I also think you are probably correct with the centigors. Paying 2 points for the privilege of striking last after the enemy stabs my now softer belly is a bit of a stretch. Especially when they have a fair chance of having decent I, when they are sober.

And I just cry if people don't allow special characters in the tournament. Or whine about "but, but, it's a unit upgrade!!!!!!"


Ok, on to the Brets!

2000 point Bretonians

Lords:
Lord: Barded Horse, Shield, Virtue of Heroism, Sword of Swift Slaying, Cuirass of Fortune, Questing Vow (2+/5-6++ save, Heroic Killing Blow, Reroll 1s to wound, ASF) 270

Heroes:
Pally: BSB, Shield, T of P, Barded Horse (2+/4++) 146

Damsel (Beasts): Level 2, B.Horse, Dispell Scroll 144

Damsel (Life): Level 2, B.Horse, Crown of Command 154

Core:

Knights of the Realm x 13: FC, Flamming Banner 346

Knights Errant x 12, Full Command 262

Bowmen x 20: Musician, Standard, Burning Bra 140

Special:

Questing Knights: x 12: FC, Gleaming Pennant 368

Mounted Yeomen x 10: Musician 157

13 points left over.

Yea... no Trebs. Until I can figure how to model them appropriately, I don't really want to use them. Damned Greeks not figuring out siege warfare until the Peloponnesian war!

Basic idea, Lord and Beast Damsel rock with KotR for 5 ranks of sex, Pally with the Errants and Life Damsel with the
Questing knights (I guess) for 4 ranks + 1. Bowmen shoot and die, Yeomen shoot and hope to not die. The Lord can prance out by himself and thwack monsters or characters with his ASF rerolls and rerolling 1's in melee to hope for those 6's.

At least, that's what I got. The Bret book really throws me for a loop, so anyone who has played these horse riding nutters who can offer advice is greatly appreciated.

The big bonuses seem to be that I don't need blocks (or Rome, for that matter) telling me what to do; the knights can deal all by themselves (or sometimes with two units). It is funny what a difference 5 man ranks vs 3 man ranks really makes... units 40% smaller for equal effectiveness, for instance.

Please, all crits welcome!

Is there a special character in Wehr's list, I'm not seeing it?

I agree that it's probably not too good . Just imagine those centigors in a disarrayed lance formation! Looks better on the table than them all strung out in a horizontal line, imho.

But it will be awesome to see you modelling this no matter which book you choose! And you might as well give it a try with beastmen, if you're really leaning that way (despite my efforts to the contrary )

Ghorros, the guy who upgrades a Centigor unit and makes them core (and the army work) is a special character. Sort of annoying, but I guess at least he is in the unit so he counts as core too then. :-/

I just like to throw out more ideas just to make it more difficult. What about dark elves? They have core cavalry, cavalry for special, chariots, witches (nymphs), harpies, and a hydra. I haven't given up on wood elves quite yet, but I have to admit that I think beastmen may be the best bet. Any chance of fitting Cerberus into the army or any of the bigger mythological beasts?

Hrm... how effective/cheap are the DE cav? That would be kind of a cool list with the hydra and all, and stupid centaurs would be kind of funny Plus naked elf chicks dancing around a cauldron of blood (of grapes of course) is a good plan as well.

I guess what a lot of this is going to come down to is whether I REALLY want the centaurs to be the focus. If so, I almost have to take Brets, as Beastmen just don't have the cav chops, essentially being 25 point WoC, Woodelves seem to play a fast cav game without the room to maneuver and power to actually kill off units, and DE I don't know about... could be cool.

Of course, I have plenty of time, and always enjoy reading a new army book

Any opinions on the Beastmen and Bret lists above?

Wehr wrote:I guess what a lot of this is going to come down to is whether I REALLY want the centaurs to be the focus. If so, I almost have to take Brets, as Beastmen just don't have the cav chops, essentially being 25 point WoC, Woodelves seem to play a fast cav game without the room to maneuver and power to actually kill off units, and DE I don't know about... could be cool.

I have prevailed in my mission . That's all I really wanted to point out, if centaurs ARE the focus, i.e. having as many as you listed above, it has to be brets imho.

Somehow I missed that you posted a brets list! I got all emotional over the beasts one that I saw. Jin is also starting brets, I believe he just invested a bit in them, but he's also in Brazil atm... so when he gets back I think he could comment.

I don't know about effectiveness, especially of the non-knights-of-the-realm, but I think the other mounted units are awesome. Would be hard to show all the different gear, but you seemed to do that well with the WoC so I believe you can make it work . I'm a big fan of the list idea, hopefully someone more knowledgeable will discern that this is a brets thread and check in with more input.

Edit: Also, one word... pegasii.

+1 on the pegasii. Dark elves have those too for characters.

Dark riders are probably the best fast cavalry in the game and cold one knights can be stupidly drunk.

boogeyman wrote:Dark riders are probably the best fast cavalry in the game and cold one knights can be stupidly drunk.

Note though that dark riders strength resides largely in high volume of missile fire, and cold ones are very heavily armored - and both are T3. In my mind, neither of these archetypes works very well for centaurs ... but who am I to step in front of Wehrkind's creativity train?

- Salvage

Hmmm maybe if I do well on my next bout of exams I will buy myself the DE army book!

Pegasi knights are a good idea, maybe with some nymphs on them... gotta think of some ideas there.

Do you think fewer knights errant exchanged for equal points of KotR would be better? Maybe fewer Questing knights? I honestly can hardly make heads nor tails of the Bret book. I had the Beastmen book for ~5 hours and came up with 2-3 lists (one rather silly) but have had the Bret book since Dakkacon and still feel like I don't know what I am doing. :(


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Well, shooty can be good. Topless centaurinas (wtf?) with bows obviously figure highly in the plan, and armor is roughly toughness...

Honestly, I have no idea how cavalry is supposed to work. My brain is bleeding out. I will probably just end up building stuff and figuring out rules for it later. My modeling to gaming ratio is roughly in the triple digits now anyway, though Philly is a richer field to plow for... I don't know where that metaphor was going.

Boss_Salvage wrote:but who am I to step in front of Wehrkind's creativity train?

Stay off the tracks!

We definitely need to meet up in Philly to game again sometime... although it would be nice if one of us wasn't using WoC

I really don't know about the bret knight choices, going to dig a bit and see if I can't find something on that. Also, Army Builder is fantastic for hypothetical lists, and you can even get by with the demo (you can only put 3 units at once, but just by copying what you need over to Word for unit costs you can easily add up lists).

As I recall, you don't have a single Warrior in your army, and Salvage plays little green Skaven poops, so I think we are pretty varied

I currently have a decent Excel worksheet built for army lists. Not exactly as convenient as Army Builder, but it does the trick. Plus being able to share them on Google Docs I can annoy Salvage into making adjustments I am sure at this point he is wishing more people around Allentown played fantasy.

I am picturing centaurs as being tougher than elves, but I just feel like Brets are too heavily armored. Granted, I have no business picturing your theme. Anyway, I can see nymphs riding on horses as glade riders, nymphs on pegasii or warhawks as warhawk riders, gor torsos with horse bodies as wild riders, dark elf witches/nymohs and gors/woodelves/satyrs as wardancers, and more waywatchers/satyrs as waywatchers. I just picture the skirmishing wild look of the wood elves wood fit the theme better. But if you choose wood elves, I am sure there will be a new book by the time you are done modelling your army. Anyway, I babbled enough. Post pictures when you ever get to doing them and if you get the chance.

Oh gods, don't even mention THAT likelihood! That's actually exactly what happened when I started WHFB some 4 years ago. I bought a bunch of models, and then a month later the new WoC book came out. Granted, at that point Salvage had already moved to the frozen north and the primed chaos lads moved to the Glass Box of Forgotten Models. Still, a repeat of "Sorry, knights are not core anymore" sends shivers down my spine.

I really do like the idea of wood elves. Do you know of any battle reporters that play cav heavy WE, or even WE in general? I never too many around. It would be nice to have an army list for the race of my favorite blood bowl team at least

Wehrkind wrote:As I recall, you don't have a single Warrior in your army, and Salvage plays little green Skaven poops, so I think we are pretty varied

My chaos list has 58 warriors in it, but my ogres are more likely to be painted (and so road worthy) than the chaos dudes. And we know what I think about my ogres

Wehrkind wrote:Do you know of any battle reporters that play cav heavy WE, or even WE in general? I never too many around.

I really enjoy WE batreps, but yes they are pretty sparse. Warseer has a few up currently - mostly of X army vs WE, as in the reporter doesn't play them - and Asrai.org has a good number of 8th edition reports (some of them solid, some little blurbs of nothing), but once you read all of those don't expect it to ever be updated. Total graveyard over there.

- Salvage

Problem with the wood elf list at
"C: 20x glade riders with command = 516"
Glade riders max out at 10 per unit. But cool forum so far.