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Hello! So, I have learned recently that aparently not many people use hellions or scourges. reavers are obviously amazing FA units but how are beast masters? Does anyone have experience using them? If so how did they stand up. Also which beasts would you all take with beast masters. Advantages vs disadvantages as well as tactics opinions please.

Fan-fething-tastic.

They're about the only assault unit in the DE codex worth taking these days. On their own, they're relatively cheap (156~ points for a solid loadout) missile that's fast enough to kill the crap out of anything not in cover (as they lack grenades) They're not for hunting death stars, and thankfully, are fast enough to avoid most of them. If you throw the baron in there though, they become extremely good at clearing backfield units hunkered down in cover, or troops camping objectives. Again, still not good at killing draigo, but fast enough to thumb their nose at him while he shakes a fist and howls in impotent anger.

They can't kill tanks for gak, and are decimated by death stars (this really does bear repeating) unless Baron is attached (in which case you can hit and run before you suffer terminal losses) but they will tear a massive swath through almost every troop unit and backfield fire team in the game.

Surely incubi deserve mention in DE assault units, as well?

Corollax wrote:
Surely incubi deserve mention in DE assault units, as well?

not really. With no shooting and no reliable delivery method they are unlikely to make it to their target. Then they are too expensive and frankly good at killing cheap marines to make them much use. Against more expensive things they can't get through the 3++ SS save. In the end why bother.

Pretty much.

Beastmasters are great because they are self-sufficient. You don't need to buy them a transport, you don't need to sink points into making them good enough, they're good enough on their own. You can buy a cheap HQ unit which will fulfill your obligatory pick for our worst FoC slot which will not only make them even better, but will buff your entire army in the process by giving you more control over deployment. With Incubi, well. Exergy covered it pretty well already.

I've had great success with them. I run 4 beastmasters, 9 khymerae and 4 razorwing flocks (I only run 9 khymerae because thats all I've got! otherwise I'd probably run 10) and I put the Baron with them.

They soak up alot of fire power and throw out a lot of attacks.

Which beasts are the best to choose?

Only way I've effectivly delivered my incubi is sinking massive points into the webway portal and tearing apart a deathwing terminator squad. AP2 klaives are nice but having no shooty capability on such an expensive T3 unit kinda sucks.

razorwings provide the damage
khymeras provide the 4++
beastmasters are there to die.

 Exergy wrote:
razorwings provide the damage
khymeras provide the 4++
beastmasters are there to die.

perfectly summed up right there

 Exergy wrote:
razorwings provide the damage
khymeras provide the 4++
beastmasters are there to challenge scary characters so they can't put wounds on the squad

Beastmasters are characters. Remember this. It is a huge advantage in your favor to sacrifice one of them, to keep that one jackass with the lightning claws and bad attitude from doing more than a single wound to you.

Beastmasters are also there for the leadership. Without a beastmaster your beasts are running away.

they just seem cumbersome to use

 Shredder wrote:
Beastmasters are also there for the leadership. Without a beastmaster your beasts are running away.

yes and if you have 1 beastmaster alive and 3 pain tokens you are fearless.

Or put a fearless IC in there. In 6th, you dont have to move at the speed of the slowest model anymore, just maintain coherwency. I have seen Phoenix Lords attached making these units fearless and becoming a very potent unit.

 Sarigar wrote:
Or put a fearless IC in there. In 6th, you dont have to move at the speed of the slowest model anymore, just maintain coherwency. I have seen Phoenix Lords attached making these units fearless and becoming a very potent unit.

how many fearless ICs does DE have? Drazhar and....

Vect is fearless.

All Phoenix Lords from codex Eldar are fearless which was thw IC I was referring to.

Well one Phoenixlord comes as jump infantery?

No. It's not overly necessary in 6th edition as units can continue to move at their normal rate as long as they retain coherency.

Which would lead to this long tail of beasts dragging behind because you keep having to leave guys within coherency of the dude moving 6", so when you do assault, you're only hitting with a fraction of your actual models.

It's not a good idea.

It's been implied in the thread, but avoid Clawed Fiends. They aren't intrinsically bad, but you just can't bring enough of them to make the unit effective, and even if you could, it would be too expensive.
Razorwings tend to kill most of the heavily armored enemies, and they also provide the small arms shield of the unit. With five Wounds each, they're pretty hard to chew through. Khymerae absorb more brutal things like Battlecannons or anything that would ID your Razorwings, so it might be a good idea to put them up front. Never buy upgrades for the Beastmasters, and keep them as Challenge insurance.
There are other things you have to be aware of, too; most importantly, beasties hate Barrage weapons and/or a bajillion of dice being rolled from small arms. Barrage weapons can and will ID your precious Razorwings and Beastmasters without benefiting from Khymerae cover. In that case, you have to make sure there's plenty of more interesting things around to shoot at for the enemy artillery. Putting the Khymerae up front to avoid ID by S6+ exposes them to death by weapons that fire a lot of mid/low S shots, which force them to simply roll too many dice for the 4++, while putting the Razorwings up front risks ID by Supa Shootas, Assault Cannons, Multilasers, etc. You must keep in mind that wound allocation shenanigans are gone.
But that said, beasties can screw over anything that doesn't have a reliable invulnerable save and/or ridiculous amounts of armor. I like to run multiple units of 3 Masters, 4 Razorwings and 5 Khymerae, but larger units work well too.

 Lokas wrote:
Which would lead to this long tail of beasts dragging behind because you keep having to leave guys within coherency of the dude moving 6", so when you do assault, you're only hitting with a fraction of your actual models.

It's not a good idea.

In actual gameplay, that is not the case at all unless the player does not know what they are doing. You are in assault by turn 2 in most cases. How many models do you actually need to string around in this case? It also doesn't need to go in a linear motion straight back.

It does get the notion of being a bad idea until you see it in action by a competent player and it then gets scary.