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Evening all,
been considering which army to start next and after a while of looking at models,tactics and reviews of battles have gone for beastmen. i love the idea of the army and love the new range of models for them.
im looking basically for any advice on the army before i spend too much money.i have got the battalion so far but am looking at getting a doombull for my lords choice with a nice big unit of minotors.
like the idea also of keeping stuff in reserve and ambushing them.
any help would be appreciated.many thamks in advance.

Minobus is what it sounds like you are looking for. You want to use a 3 wide formation with a Doombull and 2 Gorebulls in front. This way anyone attacking you is having to deal with the higher leadership and weapons as well as any defensive items, then you have 2ish ranks of Minotaur behind them for supporting attacks and ranks. The downside of minotaur and using the minobus is frenzy. Since this type of army uses so much of your hero and lord choices it may contain both your BSB and General and if they are forced to charge it could take you away from the rest of the army losing that leadership and BSB bubble. The leadership and BSB bubble are particularly necessary for Beastmen due to Primal Fury a nother negative of Minotaur is they cannot get a magic banner and the general in a unit of Bestigor with the Standard of Discipline is a must for the LD9 or LD10 bubble, LD8 with rerolls is good but I've failed my PF roll on LD9 with reroll before.

Ambush is kind of gimmicky you don't want to invest too many points into something that may show up at bad spot on the battle field away from the action or not at all (unlikely but could happen). Ambush is best used for cheap units of ungor raiders of 10 or less.

Battalion is a good place to start, 2 or 3 is better, you really want a unit of 40-50 Gor with extra hand weapons and 30-50 Bestigor. Ungor raiders you can probably get away with 10 maybe 20, and blocks of 50 ungor 5 wide are good for tarpitting. Herdstone is a good way to go letting you dominate the magic phase a mix of beast lore and shadow for Wyssan's and Miasma are great for buffing your troops and hexing the enemy, you can run like 3 level 1s around the herdstone giving you +3 power dice before channeling each phase, and remember hexes and buffs do not require line of sight so park them behind it if you want blocking Line of Sight from your enemy. Razorgor and Harpies are also could, you can convert your own with different kits, check The Herdstone website for examples.

Typically the most competitive build uses a block or 2 of the gor a block of bestigor with flaming bacnner of banner of discipline with a GBS or Beast Lord in it with a BSB in with a Gor block with beast banner and defensive items. Other shaman sit back in a bunker or just alone near a herdstone generating power dice and buffing and hexing. Ungor raiders, harpies and razorgor are used as "chaff" holding down units as you divide and conquer with your Bestigor and Gor also war machine hunting and mage hunting with the razorgor and harpies.

Minobuses and Centigor are viable but the army lists need to be worked around them, like I said check out The Herdstone for more info.

wow,thank you very much for such a detailed response.yeah for the ambushers i was thinking of very small units as they aer going after warmachines mainly and to maybe cause a distraction too(oh hell,where did they come from etc etc).yeah was thinking along the lines of a doombull as my lord choice(will kit bash my own from the minotor kit).how is best to load him out.there is a forum topic that lists him with heavy armour,gnarled hide,shield,ramhorn helm,the asf sword and the item that gives you re rolls to your save(the last 2 from the rule book) this would give him a 1+ save which you can reroll and for every save he makes you get an extra attack.the only fault i can see is no ward save.what do you think?

Harpies and shaman w/ Staff of Darkoth (magic missile, 5D6 S1 hits!) are way better for warmachine hunting than ambushers.

The Brass Cleaver is a good weapon for a doombull, since you will get at least 4 extra attacks, otherwise your build sounds good to me.