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I am fairly new to AoS but whilst reading through the core rule book I got to the part concerning special rules for battles taking place in Ghur. I suspect that these rules often get ignored, but there is a possibility of adding roaming MONSTER units that can wander around attacking both sides.

However, looking through the handfull of Battletomes that I own I am struggling to identify suitable candidates for these roaming beasts. Most MONSTER units seem to be either crazy monstrosities that clearly belong with specific factions in their own realms, or giant mounts with a whole bunch of sentient riders. Why would a Gothizzar Harvester or a Skaven Hell Pit Beast be randomly wandering around in Ghur? Why would a Slann imagine a bunch of skinks riding a Stegadon into being just to that they arbitrarily harrass anything that walks near them? How is it possible that Morathi or a Verminlord have nothing better to do?

The only unit I managed to find that fits the role of a mindless roaming beast is the Skitterstrand Arachnarok. Can anyone think of any other good candidates?

A few of the mounts without riders would work. You might not get a steggadon with skinks atop; but you'd get wild ones (indeed the new Seraphon Lore has had them step down from their ark ships and settle on the realms as living breathing seraphon not just as bodies created by Slaan and driven by the minds of those lizardmen sleeping in the protective arks).

The same is true for several other mounts. Carnisors, Mammoths, hoarfrost cats, zombie dragons (ok that might be more a death realm thing).

It would be better represented if the monster was assembled without riders. Some kits allow for that more than others. But the good ole giant or any of the BoC monsters are great staples to use for this sort of thing.

There are no stats given for roaming beasts so you would have to use an existing warscroll, but I guess it is easy enough to ignore that attacks and abilities belonging to the riders. Probably fairer if they aren't too deadly

I did consider Aleguzzler Gargants. I feel like the roaming beasts are supposed to be more animalistic, but I guess a Gargant would still be a suitably indiscrimate threat if it was drunk enough

Within Grand Alliance Destruction, you'll find a whole host of fairly unaligned monsters to use. Various dragons, beasts and such. There are also some new monsters for Chaos that could fit in Ghur, without strictly being chaos. I've also seen Treelords used for the Ghur feature.

Before I traded it off to a friend to let him make a pretty sick Mega-boss on Mawcrusha, I had a Forgeworld Magma Dragon that I'd pull out for battles in Ghur. Then just give the other person or myself 520 points (or whatever the Magma Dragon costs, it's a big beefy boy) to place down, instead of following the rules and giving just one Monster.

Another option, you could give an approximately same points value, and not be forced to use Monsters for both players. You could include different beasts found in books, like wolves, birds, gryph-hounds, ect ect. For games where I'm using Realm features, my opponent and I are usually flexible when it comes to the additional fluffy rules as long as it makes for a better game and makes sense.

Sadly around Christmas FW pulled a good number of models including the awesome magmadragon :(

 Overread wrote:
Sadly around Christmas FW pulled a good number of models including the awesome magmadragon :(

Well that sucks. I'm glad I gave mine to a much better home then, instead of having it sit half-painted on my shelf and only used rarely.

Manticore, Cockatrice and Chimera come to mind, as does the DE Hydra. The Archnarok should work too. All of these make sense as "just hanging around somewhere in Ghur".

Sadly most monsters have some kind of "civilisation signs", by which I mean a sculpted saddle, or chest/leg armour, stuff like that. I think the DE Dragon can be built without those, making it another candidate.

A squad of trolls also makes for a good monster replacement, if not going for a trogboss outright.

I also think it is worth mentioning the Everchosen book has updated rules for wandering monsters that (IMO) work much better than the default Ghur ones.

Lots of good ideas here. Thanks all