Ok, so now I'm hooked on hordes of mean infantry...it's your fault, Mikey!...and Jason’s got me thinking about the Beastmen…
So looking at what I’d come up with above, let's say we drop one of those Mino units and the Gorebull. I know, I know….more cowmen is better, but they’re just so many points!
We take the points saved from that, and by dropping one of the Ungor bricks and kick up both Gor units to Horde size
We change around the BSB to be a bit more survivable (as Tim had suggested) and forego our Ld9 shenanigans and give him the Beast Banner (bearer and unit gain +1S); we tweak the Bray Shaman to be a bit more survivable and have a fun melee toy, and soften up the Doombull a bit (to fit in Lord allowance)...which also solves the problem of zero magic weapons....
Great Bray-ShamanLevel 4; xtra hand weapon;
Jagged Dagger; Talisman of "Please Save Me 4+ Ward!"; Lore of Shadow
DoombullShield;
Armour of Fortune; Sword of Might; Many-limbed Fiend
WargorBattle Standard Bearer;
The Beast Banner; Heavy Armour; Shield; Gnarled Hide
6 units of
5 Ungor Raiders44 UngorStandard, Musician
38 GorStandard, Musician, XHW
40 GorStandard, Musician, XHW
1 Razorgor1 Razorgor5 Harpies7 MinotaursGreat Weapons
2500I have 13 deployment drops + characters.
The GBS and BSB would go in the unit of 38 Gors, no surprise there. The GBS is surprisingly good for a wizard, with WS5, S4 base (so S5 while in the unit with the BSB), with the xtra hand weapon he’ll have 3 attacks. The Jagged Dagger he uses will allow him to use the things he kills as power dice…fun! He’s T5 with W3, so his 4+ Ward and natural resilience should make him tough for R&F to bring down, but he’s still moderately squishy.
The BSB has a 2+ save and 6++ parry, but is otherwise just T5 with W2. Again, tough for rank and file to kill, but still pretty squishy. But ya know what, that’s a theme in the whole army, so I might as well embrace it!
The Doombull is a LOT softer than the original one I’d made. He goes from 1+/4++ with an extra attack for every save he passed to only a 4+/4++ and no extra attacks. Still he’s putting out six S7 and one S6 attacks, plus impacts and stomps, and T5 W5 with a 4++ isn’t going to die too easy!
The six units of Ungor Raiders serve a lot of purposes. First, they’re dirt cheap. Second, they’re a ton of ‘chaff’ deploys…or, if opponent has very few deploys, I can ambush up to 3 of them to be a pain in the neck! Third, they’ll be invaluable as charge redirectors…remember the trick I talked about awhile back, where one unit flees, so the charger redirects in to another unit that flees, leaving the charger stranded? Yeah, that’s what these guys are for!
And they all have shortbows…I don’t expect a lot of damage out of them, but if the enemy refuses to charge or tries to hang back I can pelt 30 shots at them…that should be good for 2-3 wounds a turn, right? I think these guys are going to be vital to getting the army to work the way I envision. Flee! Flee! Flee!
The big Ungor unit is supposed to be an Anvil. I talk a lot about hammer/anvil, but don’t actually have an army that does it. This is me eating my own cooking. I did some math-hammer, and figured out that against the meanest “deathstars” I could think of (the meanest being a horde of Savage Orc Big’Unz with XHW…followed closely by a Horde of Ironguts) I would lose ~ 25 models in two rounds of combat. In order to keep at least 4 total ranks, then, I need to have ~45 models to start with…I couldn’t quite make the points work for 45, so…44.
Now these guys are expected to do nothing but die and not run away. They’re there when the enemy has a unit that I need to tie up for a few turns, to either give me time to get to it’s flank, or just to get out of it’s front so I can go bash other things. The ‘ideal’ would be me setting up so the Savage Orc Big'Unz charge the Ungor on their turn; the Ungor stay on Steadfast, and the Minos charge the Orcs on my turn. The Ungor die horribly, but remain steadfast on both mine and the enemies turn…then the Minos hit and do really nasty things (something like 17 wounds after impacts, swings, and stomps), they break and die…something like that, anyway
Now the Gors. The unit with the Characters is pretty beefy. The Gors and Ungors have Primal Fury, if they pass an Ld test at the start of each combat round, they get to reroll misses. Since they’ll be testing on General’s Ld 8 with a BSB Reroll, they’ll be passing this more often than not….8 with reroll is 92% (for those inclined to Math-hammer as I am:
www.scribd.com/doc/49702077/MathHammer-8th-ed ) Without any magical benefit, they’ll be doing mean things too…If I can get 6 in base to base (like, for example, the flank of a Horde of Orcs…), then I can expect them to dish out 9 wounds, give or take. Not shabby! But when you factor in some of the mean things that can be done with Shadow…like reducing the enemy WS, or their T, or increasing my Str with Mindrazor, then things become a lot more interesting.
The second unit of Gors is really, well, redundancy. I don’t know if they’ll work or not, might not be worth a shit at S3 with no magic support…but I think what I’d aim for is the meaner Shadow spells would go to support these guys while the S4 guys do it on their own.
The Razorgors…
now wipe the image of the GW model out of your brain, and never summon up the thought of it again…is really a great little unit. He’s got S5 and T5. He’s got W3 and A4. He’s a monster, so has stomp, and is a beastly thing, so has Swiftstride with M7. I think of these guys as more deployment drops; great for clearing out enemy chaff (they’ll munch most fast-cav units!), great to get in to a flank for extra CR and damage, great for warmachine hunting…and I’ve found much better models to use, at a much more attractive price than the GW…
This guy:
www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/dire%20boar/latest/03435And this guy:
www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/dire%20boar/latest/02527I figure stick a few spikey things on them from Chaos Spawn sprue, and they’re just right…without the ugly eye-popping skinlessness.
I think they’re a super great value at 55 points…like a Chaos Spawn that I can actually control!
Harpies are weak and squishy, but fly and dish out 2 attacks each. They’ll mostly be going after war machines, and dealing with enemy soft support, but will also be great supplemental charge redirectors along with the Raiders. Now I’d like to have the points to let these things scout….but can’t scrape up the 15 points.
And last the Minotaurs! You guys know I’ve got a man-cow fetish…I want as many of these in the army as possible! I think this unit will be just right…hits hard enough that it should break any non-stubborn thing it runs in to, has enough bodies to take a few punches on the way in, has high enough str (7) that it will smash high-armour meanies. The trick with these guys though is that they absolutely must not go head-to-head with anything. They’re just T4 with a 6+ save, they’ll die by the handful before fighting if they have to take a full unit’s attacks.
A glaring weakness I want to try to resolve is no Champion in the Gor unit that will house the Characters. I’d hate to not be able to accept a challenge with the scrub and get the Shaman beat up, but I don’t know where to get points. I don’t think I can take away from either Gor unit nor the Ungors, as they’re barely big enough to do what I want now. The Minos…could go down to XHW (or maybe Shields to add an interesting Parry to the big beasties!) but I’m counting on them to deal with High AS enemy. I really don’t know where to get the points.
I’ll be ready to test his on the 17th, unless the wife has something planned for me on that day that I don’t know about yet!