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Hi,

I used to play WHFB all the way from 5th edition up until the End of Times. Then I just switched to 40k. Now I have the opportunity to try a game of AoS against a friend. I have two huge armies of Tomb Kings and Beastmen, and a large collection of Empire (Cities of Sigmar?).

I understand that only Beastmen are actually supported any more as an army? If that's the case I would need some help to build an all around list that will help me understand how the game works. I don't care about perfect comp or waac stuff, I want a tutorial game.

This is what I have:

All kinds of characters (shamen, wargors, doombulls, named guy on chariot (Gorthor???), the spawn loner character (Morghur??)

80+ gors
40+ spear ungors
30 archer ungors
20 chaos warhounds
90+ bestigors
7-8 beastmen chariots
10-12 minotaurs
15-20 centigors
4 dragon ogres
1 giant
2 Ghorgons
2 Cygors
1 Dragon Ogre Shaggoth
1 herdstone

Might be forgetting some stuff too.

Additionally, Since I think that modern goatmen are also part of the army, I also have the following models:

50 tzaangors on foot
9-12 tzaangor with bows on a disc
1 new tzaangor shaman on disc
2 Mutalith Vortex Beasts.

I also have a ton of Daemons of Tzeentch but I understand that's then a different army? (Disciples of Tzeentch instead of Beastmen?)

I also got the beastmen endless spells but they're still in the box.

To my understanding I have most of everything I need to build a list, but absolutely no knowledge how to build one.

So, can anyone help me?

Here's a list I threw together in a hurry last week. 1200 & some pts if I recall.

*Herdstone
*Shaman #1
hiding behind herdstone, happily sacrificing ungors for summoning pts & screaming for help (playing Allherd & using the howl ability to get more summoning pts by spending CPs)
*Shamen #2
No real plan here, it was just the only other HQ at hand. Tried to snipe things from the front lines via spells.
*10x ungors (spear)
clustered about the herdstone waiting to be sacrificed.
*10x ungors (bows)
*x5 individual chariots
*x40 ungors (spears) - fielded as 4 units of x10 ungors each.
*3x Skyfire Tzangors
*x2 Cockitrices

The idea was to keep as many of the Ungor spear units (other than the sacrifice squad) in ambush. See how the other player deploys, & then rush the objectives easiest to claim on his side.
Meanwhile the bow ungors would take wichever objective on my side gave them the best option for long range sniping (if such a thing exists when armed with an 18" weapon)
Meanwhile the chariots, cockitrices, & Skyfire Tzangors on discs would zip about to where ever they were needed & keep the enemy busy/tied up in melee so the ambushers could do their job.
And at the beginning or the turn? I'd use those Summoning pts to summon in whatever I needed atm. In practice this was actually just more small units of ungors (spear), chariots, & cockatrices as most of my stuff was in the car & I was too lazy to go get it.

For the most part this worked. I kept the (sky)dwarves fully engaged on their side of the board. They never even crossed the center-line, let alone any of the objectives on my 1/2 of the board.
This is also where my lazyness worked against me. If I'd walked out to the car & pulled the 2nd case? Then I could've summoned something either more effective or slightly more durable than Ungor spearmen.
The end result was ALOT of summoned ungors were hurled on to the objctives , wiped out, & re-appeared the next round.
The score btw? A draw..

Beastmen can summon? Summon what? like daemons? gak I am so outdated on the rules.

Beastmen can summon more beastmen.

This is AOS. The game of summoning. You get your 2000 points. Then you get more points to freely summon.

** insert oprah gif "you get some free stuff you get some free stuff everyone gets some free stuff**

 auticus wrote:
This is AOS. The game of summoning. You get your 2000 points. Then you get more points to freely summon.

** insert oprah gif "you get some free stuff you get some free stuff everyone gets some free stuff**

Or, you could look at it as

"Unlike in 40k where GW decided that if you wanted to play a horde faction you needed to own 90 squillion models for every single space marine your opponent put on the table, they added mechanics whereby horde armies would get to summon more of their units, thereby lessening a perennial problem of fantasy having a gigantic buy-in to play a game."

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Beastmen can summon? Summon what? like daemons? gak I am so outdated on the rules.

You cant think of Fantasy when you play AoS, they are two different games.
The core rules for AoS are avalible for free as pdf on GWs site, along whit codex compendiums for your old Fantasy armys. In open play, you can allmoust use whatever you want. (you determin the size of armys in open play by how many warscrolls, aka units you both shall bring)

https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/AoS_Rules-ENG.pdf
https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Warhammer_Legends_Beastmen.pdf

How do the points work?

Beastmen book be like:

Bestigors: Size 10-30. Points 120.

I guess that means they're 12 points per model?

the_scotsman wrote:

 auticus wrote:
This is AOS. The game of summoning. You get your 2000 points. Then you get more points to freely summon.

** insert oprah gif "you get some free stuff you get some free stuff everyone gets some free stuff**

Or, you could look at it as

"Unlike in 40k where GW decided that if you wanted to play a horde faction you needed to own 90 squillion models for every single space marine your opponent put on the table, they added mechanics whereby horde armies would get to summon more of their units, thereby lessening a perennial problem of fantasy having a gigantic buy-in to play a game."

I could but in most of the games I played in, the extra points were on the table WITH the base 2000 (or close enough), not replacing casualties.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

I guess that means they're 12 points per model?

You don't pay by model. You pay for a squad of 10. Or 20. or 30.

 auticus wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 auticus wrote:
This is AOS. The game of summoning. You get your 2000 points. Then you get more points to freely summon.

** insert oprah gif "you get some free stuff you get some free stuff everyone gets some free stuff**

Or, you could look at it as

"Unlike in 40k where GW decided that if you wanted to play a horde faction you needed to own 90 squillion models for every single space marine your opponent put on the table, they added mechanics whereby horde armies would get to summon more of their units, thereby lessening a perennial problem of fantasy having a gigantic buy-in to play a game."

I could but in most of the games I played in, the extra points were on the table WITH the base 2000 (or close enough), not replacing casualties.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

I guess that means they're 12 points per model?

You don't pay by model. You pay for a squad of 10. Or 20. or 30.

So what happens when your list -inevitably- ends up being 1960 pts or something? Do you play with 40 pts less because you cannot fit anything else in there?

Usually you can squeeze in a Warscroll Battalion, unless you've got a weird list.

If you can't, you might be 40 pts less but get some Command Points added into your list. CPs are way more hard to get in AoS than 40k.

Also, Endless Spells. They cost points to add to your army but then it's yours to play with.

topaxygouroun i wrote:

 auticus wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 auticus wrote:
This is AOS. The game of summoning. You get your 2000 points. Then you get more points to freely summon.

** insert oprah gif "you get some free stuff you get some free stuff everyone gets some free stuff**

Or, you could look at it as

"Unlike in 40k where GW decided that if you wanted to play a horde faction you needed to own 90 squillion models for every single space marine your opponent put on the table, they added mechanics whereby horde armies would get to summon more of their units, thereby lessening a perennial problem of fantasy having a gigantic buy-in to play a game."

I could but in most of the games I played in, the extra points were on the table WITH the base 2000 (or close enough), not replacing casualties.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

I guess that means they're 12 points per model?

You don't pay by model. You pay for a squad of 10. Or 20. or 30.

So what happens when your list -inevitably- ends up being 1960 pts or something? Do you play with 40 pts less because you cannot fit anything else in there?

There is a lot of Endless spells you can buy, and for a 1 time buy you can buy a extra command point for 50pts. Finally if you are lower points the your opponent you get a free triumph which is a bonus to a unit for one phase (like re-roll all hits, or wounds, or saves). Many endless spells are cheap 20-40pts, even Beastmen has a cheap one.

It is common to be 10-20pts under and you don't care b.c you will get a Triumph, which is well worth 10-20pts for most armies.

So, got to go reading the rules. Gotcha.

topaxygouroun i wrote:
So, got to go reading the rules. Gotcha.

Yes you do. The rule book followed by your Beasts of Chaos tome.
In the Beasts tome, pay particular attention to the page with army wide rules. That's where you'll find the rules & chart for summoning. Then several pages later you'll find various factions of Beastmen. That's where you get your god dedicated herds, several others, & the generic Allherd.

On pts.
The pages in the back show the min. size of a unit, the max size, & a pts cost. The pts cost is for the min #. After that you add models to the unit in blocks of the min. at that cost.
So if my ungors said 10/40 for 60 pts, I'd buy them in blocks of 10 @ 60pts each.
Sometimes you'll see a unit where if you buy the max # you get a bit of a discount.
The only real way to buy less than the min. # of a block at whatever the individual points work out to is by discussing it with your opponant.

On summoning:
The chart allows you to pretty much summon any unit in the tome (except characters/heroes) - provided you have enough summoning pts. 3-6 pts per turn isn't too hard to achieve. 7+ is harder & you might have to bank a few pts in the earlier rounds.
The weak link in this? The Shaman back there by the herdstone sacrificing ungors or whatever (he deals d3 mortal wounds to some friendly within range). He has a save of 6+ & 5 wounds - so he's quite squishy and it's really easy for many armies to perform some sort of outflank trick, get him in site, & wipe him out. (took a some people in our AoS group a few weeks to realize this. They figured "hero, probably pretty tough. "Um, no. That's why I painted him to match the herdstone & surrounding Ungors - so that you might overlook him". Now that his trick is known & his secret out he's on the endangered species list in my group.)

Doesn't the character get some sort of look out sir protection?

Look out sir is only a -1 To Hit modifier applied to shooting attacks made against characters under 8 wounds that aren't monsters.

It's a decent protection... however, any army with significant shooting can blow a squishy shaman off the board even with the Look Out Sir rule. Your best bet is to physically block line of sight by hiding behind a big enough piece of terrain. Even the Herdstone himself.

Only a few armies can handle shooting characters tuns 1-2. When against though armies you just hide your heroes out of LoS. All tables should have some LoS blocking terrain (well 6-10 pieces at least, with some of them for movement, some for LoS, etc..).

Terrain plays a larger part of the game compare to Old fantasy (yes old fantasy terrain rules are harsh, but i mean its more than 1-3 pieces that just is avoided by most players, you actively want to be in and near terrain a lot of the times).

the_scotsman wrote:

 auticus wrote:
This is AOS. The game of summoning. You get your 2000 points. Then you get more points to freely summon.

** insert oprah gif "you get some free stuff you get some free stuff everyone gets some free stuff**

Or, you could look at it as

"Unlike in 40k where GW decided that if you wanted to play a horde faction you needed to own 90 squillion models for every single space marine your opponent put on the table, they added mechanics whereby horde armies would get to summon more of their units, thereby lessening a perennial problem of fantasy having a gigantic buy-in to play a game."

So instead they made so that you get to bring even more models on board than before. 3k rather than 2k ;-)

So One of the potential battalions states:

"If the unmodified hit roll from an attack made by a unit in this battalion that is wholy within enemy territory is a 6, this attack inflicts 2 hits instead of one."

What is enemy territory? Is it the opponent's table edge or his half of the table? Because I don't see how I can have a whole unit of goats wholly within the enemy deployment zone to be able to benefit from this battalion's ability.

Also: Suppose I play two fat units of goats. Make them shadowherd, add a bray shaman. The shaman can give them +3" movement, then they get +1 run from their banner and +1 run from the herd, then they can charge from the instrument? So in total I can have my foot goats go 9+d6+2+2d6 charge in a single turn?

Yeah. AOS is the game of get in combat in turn 1 where movement is more of a thing that they brought in from the old game because to totally get rid of it woudl have made it assume its full form of board game / ccg a lot quicker.

Tons of things in AOS can cross the board in the first turn. AND terrain doesn't hinder movement.

Player Territory is their part of the table deployment is usually 12" away from Enemy Territory. So if you were playing on a standard 6x4 table with both players taking the long end then each player's territory would be 6x2 and you deploy 12" away from Enemy Territory. This leaves you with a 12" deployment area. (this is assuming you are playing a normal game. Some narrative games have specific zones for the mission.) So in this case you would need to get your unit completely over the center line of the table to get the bonus.

As for the movement, yes you would get 9+(d6+2) if you run. If you have a rule that lets you run and charge, you can charge the 2d6.

gak goats are fast. If you can do this kind of movement (and yes you can run and charge practically with the whole army), what's the point of putting them to ambush?

In case you don't get first turn and don't want to get shot off the board.

To have a unit come from an unexpected angle on an opponent who otherwise has you blocked in.

Aaaand I got completely obliterated by ogors.

When I left this game system, goats used to hit on 3's and ogres on 4's. Now it's evidently the other way around. Also TIL that one Irongut will kill 6 bestigors with 3 attacks.

Should probably stay back, wait for the herdstone to grow and play under the battleshock immunity umbrella, but I was blinded by the 11+3d6" movement. I charged him with everything and I simply lost everything to battleshock.

Getting in combat fast doesn't mean anything if your guys are weak, and goats definitely are. Gors are a joke and even bestigors hit on 4+ (?????)

I am very disappointed with the beasts codex. Went through it and it seems outside characters and the ghorgon, nothing else hits on 3's. And even the ghorgon and doombull have 4+ on some of their attacks.

The battalions don't offer anything meaningful, the allegiances are gimmicky at best and the character buffs outside movement bonuses are super situational (+1 to hit if you are wholly within 18" and you entered via beastmen ambush this turn (so 6" from table edge) AND made the 9" charge.)

I understand the game wants me to play tzaangors, but I would like to bring my old guys outside the shelf for a change.

tneva82 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 auticus wrote:
This is AOS. The game of summoning. You get your 2000 points. Then you get more points to freely summon.

** insert oprah gif "you get some free stuff you get some free stuff everyone gets some free stuff**

Or, you could look at it as

"Unlike in 40k where GW decided that if you wanted to play a horde faction you needed to own 90 squillion models for every single space marine your opponent put on the table, they added mechanics whereby horde armies would get to summon more of their units, thereby lessening a perennial problem of fantasy having a gigantic buy-in to play a game."

So instead they made so that you get to bring even more models on board than before. 3k rather than 2k ;-)

What you summon (and how many pts it'd cost) depends upon what army you play & what you need it to do. Sometimes you're limited by the units you actually have access to....
In that game I played? I only summoned 300 pts worth of Ungors (x10 man units, x5) & a single chariot (pts=?) - over 5 turns of play. So only about 400pts worth. I guess I could've walked out to the car & grabbed the 2nd case. But it was raining & I was feeling lazy....
My Karodin foe didn't seem to have too much trouble dealing with any of them. The running joke was that any ungor who managed to survive to my next turn would get painted (or re-painted, better, in some cases).
I don't have any ungors lined up in the painting queue.

My experience playing against Beastmen is very limited, so I'm only speaking to what I've heard as hearsay, or seen in online battlereports.

It's difficult for beastmen to win by slaughtering the enemy, and they're not the only army that plays like that. Beastmen win by surrounding the enemy with cheap bodies, controlling their movement, and winning via objectives. Beastmen CAN win games through fighting against some other armies, but usually they're looking to win on Objective control and movements.

I won't mix words, Beastmen are in a rough spot balance wise. They're on the lower end, even against casual non-optimized lists that other armies have. It takes a particular style of play and tactical movement to win, that will take time and/or research to learn for yourself.

Chase that meta.

I have a better (and far less co$tly) idea than meta-chasing.

Rather than pitch a fit about how the tome sucks, your goat guys are all useless, and listen to people telling you Beasts of Chaos "are in a bad place", "weak", etc after a mere 1 game?

Play your army a few dozen more times.
Try out various mixes/combos, different herds, & different spells/endless spells. Use everything in your existing collection a few times. Maybe proxy something? Learn how to use your command abilities/Command Points. Check out the rules on taking allies. And realize that AoS is not WHFB. Don't try & play it as if it is.
And somewhere in there? I'm betting you will find a mix that'll work for you.

It can work. So long as his regular opponents aren't playing meta lists.

If his opponents are playing meta lists, then you need to realign what you want out of the game and be ok with jobbing to your friends to make their armies look good.

Barring that if you can start tackling meta lists with a sub par book, you need to set up a twitch account or patreon and start giving lessons because there is a lot of $$$ to be made since no one to date really does that and show with some reports how you do it.

Because seriously. Lot of $$$ can be made by someone that can do that.

Many on here know this, but my main is BoC, i play against meta lists and even go to events and have gone to 250+ man majors with BoC.

I Freaking love BoC, while i do well with them at events (3-2 or 4-1) and many other top BoC players average 4-1 moreso than I do. The book IMO is nearly perfect in playstyles. The problem is 1/2 the book is supported less than units not even in a battletome, and many units are shared with other armies and are nerfed b.c they are better in XYZ battletome. Finally 1/2 the warscrolls just need to be changed b.c the only way they are playable is if they are so cheap you take them only for more wounds (which BoC does not need help doing). A a lot of the sub types (Monsters, Behemoths, Dragons, etc..) just don't work. Luckily for me my favorite way to play BoC is what works, lots and lots of Brayherd coming from all angles of the board flooding you in bodies running at neck breaking speed! The problem is, a lot of people want to us the other 2/3's of the book.

I like the BoC so much and after seeing what GW did to Sylvaneth book 2, i am worried they are going to ruin BoC even though they need some help.

Another good thing about BoC is they can literally play out of 5 books right now, so if you don't like BoC but love their models, pick the book you like and have fun!