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Any fun and challenging armies you can recommend? I'd prefer something that has fairly tough units with ok/good CC capabilities, and possibly good magic. I'd overall prefer a tougher horde army, something that offers good CC, strategy, and can be fielded with an ok budget. Also, no point-and-click armies. Thanks.

(Lastly, while I do like armies like High Elves, I just don't want to play with their fragility. I once made the mistake of going into an army because it offered challenge, even though I didn't fully like it's playstyle, and ended up quite unhappy with it. So, I guess I'm trying to find a heavy hitting horde faction).

I don't think there is any way to achieve that precise combination of traits. Horde armies are, by definition, not possible to field on a reasonable budget, and they're generally not very tactically complex.

The closest thing to what you're requesting, as far as I know, is probably Orcs and Goblins.

If you want good CC and hordy, why not try the beasts of chaos? You'll hear a lot of bad juju on them but they're not too bad. They have great CC core (either gors, M5 and T4, ungor M5 and as cheap as skaven), bestigors M5 T4 and 2 handed weapons, or if you like big'uns you can go mino's, Giants, etc. Magic is at or above average if on the evil side, and your mages are durable at T4 and T5. Basically they're faster then orcs and tougher then skaven, while costing almost the same. They're not perfect but I like'm.

Slann nailed it, looks like you want a beastmen army. Here is the breakdown. Horde of 40 gor with extra hand weapons, with a bsb with beast banner giving them 40 WS4 S4 attacks. Horde of 40 Bestigor which have 30 WS4 S6 attacks. Both of these guys have T4 with the bestigor with heavy armor 5+ armor save. In your bestigors you stick in a beastlord, you also give them the standard of discipline, you put the beast lord so it's within 12 inches of the gor unit for inspiring presence and the BSB so the bestigor and gor unit get leader ship rerolls. Now most people think Beastmen and they think Ambush. Yes we have it's OK, our big thing is Primal Fury. Primal Fury is a leadership test you take at the beginning of each combat, if passed you have hatred so all those attacks mentioned before have hatred so rerolling misses, not just the first round of combat like regular hatred but you take the test every round. With leadership 10 and rerolls I think the fail rate is less then 5%.

In addition you can take a greater bray shaman which can go death to snipe out characters and take down big threats or lore of beasts to boost your characters and units abilities. For 50 points we have access to Shard of the Herdstone, which lets you deploy a piece of terrain at the beginning of the game, every shaman within 6 inches generates a power dice before channeling, you park 3 75 point shaman around this stone. You roll on average a 7 for winds of magic, well now you have 10, with channeling from the 3 shaman and greater bray shaman you are looking at 10-12. These level 1s sit back casting miasma on enemies making them so your gor are hitting first and bestigor and gor are hitting more often. Maybe 1 of those goes beasts for wyssans, augments can stack so if your GBS is lore of beasts you can put 2 wyssans on the gor making them S6 T6.

You support the 2 hordes with what we call chaff units, ungor raiders, razorgor and harpies all very solid units for redirecting, holding up units or warmachine hunting. This really allows you to pick your battles, really a lot of strategy involved, divide and conquer. You could also make a competitive Minobus which consists of a doombull and 1-2 gorebulls with minotaur behind them providing supporting attacks. So you have 2-3 characters in front that are doing d3 impact hits each, stomps and units have to direct attacks at high WS T5 troops with magic weapons and armors. Minotaur are frenzied and each time they win combat they gain an extra attack so by turn 6 you could have 9-10 extra attacks per doombull/gorebull in front.

They are a fun and challenging army that really shine at 2k+ points whenh you can really make use of a good minobus or have the points for shamans around the herdstone while still having the points for a GBS, BSB and Beastlord leading the troops. Now to start I would get 3 battalions, this gives you 60 gor, 30 ungor which you can make 4 units of 5 raiders and use the other 10 and use tyranid gargoyal wings to make 10 harpies, 30 bestigor is a good start and you can convert a BSB and Beast Lord with them you may want to do unit filler to even it out to 40 or grab a box, though $42 for 10 models stings. Grab some chaos spawn bits on ebay and some boars from the boar riders from the orc army to convert some razorgor. Here is a link to my army diary for inspiration: http://z2.invisionfree.com/herdstone/index.php?showtopic=23168 As for a GBS Malagor works well and so does the Dark Emissary, you will want 1 GBS and 3 shaman. This should be enough to get you to 2500 which isn't bad as the battalions are still priced at $90 sometimes, I find them as low as $70 on ebay.

Beastmen sound up your alley, except they can still require alot of models and that will hurt a budget.


Ogres fit your description a little better. Don't let the internet fool you, ogres are still a fairly tough army to get right as far as tactics, unit composition, and selection. They are a good solid book(and newly released), but its by no means an easy to use army.

Ogre Hordes are prehaps the most brutal hordes in the entire game. practically nothing can take 54 Str4 attacks and survive it and it gets even scarier when buffed. It is however vulnerable to magic, specifically the "I test or die" spells. Mindrazor from Lore of Shadow just wrecks ogres too. its a risky proposition, but it can pay off big.

The book also sports huge variety, you can run MMU, Monster Mash, or even Gunline(yes, Ogres can actually compete with Dwarves and Empire on this level, although its difficult to pull off)

Beastmen is your friends, they are fun but challeging to play. And they are very good in larger games past 2k.

So...I read your post, and I was like "Beastmen!" Then I saw that Hargus beat me...like usual. While Ogres MAY be a little cheaper, Hargus is 100% correct that three battalions will get you a long ways without needing much else.

Anyways, Beastmen are good in combat and have above average Magic ability. They are also not easy to play well. I believe that meets your criteria