Journey to the Beast (Part 1): Starting Beastmen Brayherd in The Old World

Garlic. Mushrooms. Imperial Fists. Beastmen Brayherd.All things I couldn’t stand as a kid, but now, as an adult, they’re weirdly appealing. Funny how tastes change with age, right?

Pointless Historical Ramblings

My journey with the Beastmen began earlier this year, back when they were still part of Age of Sigmar (AoS). I was flipping through old White Dwarf issues (you know, the classic rabbit hole), when I stumbled upon issue 284 where Gav Thorpe likened Beastmen to the Germanic tribes that fought against the Roman legions—Goths, Saxons, Visigoths, you name it. Suddenly, everything clicked. As a history buff and a long-time player of Gallic forces against my Romanophile friend, I couldn’t unsee the connection.

When The Ravening Hordes book dropped, I realized I could field Ogres with my Beastmen army. This was huge for me, especially because my AoS Ogor army already followed a Gaul/Celt theme. What if I combined the two?

And thus, the Celtigors were born.

The Playstyle

If you read my last post, you’d know my main Warhammer Fantasy army has always been the Empire. Unsurprisingly, this faction had a very specific playstyle: it was often a castle, with mobile ablative elements to bide time for the guns and magic to do the job. I’ve always found this playstyle strangely satisfying, despite my usual propensity for aggressive, high-mobility armies in most of my game systems.

But Beastmen? They’re the complete opposite—no shooting to speak of (shortbows and Cygors barely count!), are fast-ish but not too fast, and very much melee-focused. I was drawn to this drastic change in playstyle, wanting to experience something different from my usual sit-and-wait approach.

Buying Stuff!

Armed with this new inspiration, I dove headfirst. Over the next few months, I accumulated a healthy stash of Beastmen models, timing my final purchase just before GW announced they were pulling Beastmen from AoS. Admittedly a pity (as I had devised a method of double-basing them for both game systems), but I was content keeping them in TOW.

My first acquisitions were a brand new Beastlord (a gorgeous model, that one) and a bunch of Minotaurs. I realized early on that the internet wasn’t too keen on them, but there was nothing that would stop me from painting what I wanted to!

My Beastlord, Vercingoatrix, was actually a gift from a loved one; their timing couldn’t have been better! I decked him out in a stripey royal purple loincloth, with purple historically reserved for nobility. To make him stand out as the regal leader of my Celtigors, he is the only model in the army to use purple.

When building my Minotaurs, I went all-in on full command for both units (even though you can't quite see the belt-mounted, greenstuff-sculpted drum in the picture—it’s there, I promise!). In retrospect, I’m not entirely sure I’d go the same route. Then again, if I was really that obsessed with combat optimization, I probably wouldn’t have picked Minotaurs in the first place.

Of course, I promptly got burnout of painting flesh and fur, and got distracted by other projects. It wasn’t until my local league kicked off that I buckled down to get them painted, especially since many of their models overlap with Warriors of Chaos— so getting them painted means I’d be halfway through having a fully painted WoC list!

Due Diligence: Researching the Army

With renewed focus, it was time to do some research. I spent a fair bit of time going through every reliable source I could find on the matter, savoring every moment of the process (unsurprising, given by dayjob). This brought me several hypotheses that I would have to independently verify myself throughout this league.

1.      Minotaurs are genuinely suboptimal ☹ I’m expecting them to be highly disappointing.

2.      Gors are awesome, Razorgors even better, but Dragon Ogres are borderline worshipped. Realistically, I expect only the Dragon Ogres to actually do very much, while the Gors and Razorgors are there to perform as above-average core tax.

3.      Unsurprisingly, at least one level 4 was required, and Viletide is an insane spell. The question really is, “should I take two Level 4’s at 2,000 points?”, meaning that I’ll have to downgrade Vercingoatrix to a non-BSB Wargor if I wanted to use his model :/

4.      Beastmen mostly cap at a move of 7", and Swiftstride is rare. There are a few non-magical exceptions to this: Harpies (which I plan to pick up), Jabberslythes (that I didn’t pick up…), and Centigors/Warhoofs. The much-maligned horned centaurs are a curiosity of mine that will definitely be playtested at some point, but perhaps not the highest priority during the league. Most importantly however, speed combined with lack of shooting, and our best magic missile being 15”, means that Beastmen actually lack threat projection compared to faster-moving melee armies (e.g. Bretonnia), or shooting/magic-heavy armies. This means Beastmen can’t afford to play like a brainless melee army. I’ll need to carefully manage waves of units, using chaff and redirectors to force countercharges. Basically, it's a cagey strategy reliant on countercharging in an army with literally zero units with Counter Charge. Oh, the irony.

5.      Beastmen are often called a glasscannon faction. The “glass” part is definitely true; but “cannon” is arguable. While there is no doubt that the Beastmen army would have few issues fighting most things in the game, having crunched some numbers, there is very little in the army that does well against behemoth-mounted heroes. This issue isn’t unique to Beastmen of course; but one would hope that an army which prides itself on damage output would have enough punch to actually bruteforce some of the toughest targets in the game.

Getting Started with the League

For the league, we kicked off at 500 points. I dusted off a box of Gors and a Beastmen Vanguard box from my storage shelf, and hit the painting table. My goal for Month 1 was modest: finish a unit of 20 Gors and a Bray-Shaman. Of course, I’ll be forced to field Minotaurs for now (thanks to my playing-fully-painted-only personal rule), but I'm definitely fine with that.

My Gors were armed with extra hand weapons, though I snuck a few shields into the mix just in case I wanted to run a tiny five Gor unit of shields in the future, for whatever reason. For their paint job, I decided on a suitably wide palette of colorful stripey loincloths, and a smattering of bright blue tattoos. The use of the bright blue, along with the recipes for skin, hair, metal, bone, and basing, is meant to tie the army together aesthetically while I go crazy with the colours of their clothing and armour.

As for my Bray-Shaman, I christened him Goatafix the Bray-Druid, a playful nod to Getafix from Asterix. As he didn’t have a lot of skin showing, I figured I’d use the same blue as the tattoos (albeit, with more shading and highlights) to give his eyes a glow; again, to thematically tie their colours together.

Battle Report 1

At 500 points my army was usually a level 2 Bray-Shaman with Elementalism and a Ruby Ring of Ruin, 16 Gors with full command, a unit of 3 Minotaurs, and a unit of 2 Minotaurs. This gave me three solid combat bricks and major threat projection since my caster would always essentially have a Fireball and Viletide! I sometimes shook this up by substituting my Bray-Shaman for a Wargor, but I only did this sometimes when my opponent didn’t bring their own caster.

Not picured below: my second unit of Minotaurs, and four too many Gors!

For my first battle, I went up against Khi-Jon, a seasoned wargamer who's a regular across various game systems. He took his Soulblig-, I mean, Vampire Counts against me. His list was approximately five Black Knights with a mounted Wight Lord (with a Crown of Command), and a unit of Skeletons with a Vampire.

With only two blocks on my opponent’s side, I deployed my Gors centrally, and intentionally baited his knights with my unit of three Minotaurs, gambling that he’d be tempted to overextend his knights in an attempt to kill my Minotaurs. This was slightly risky, as if he took the bait and dice spiked one way or another, I could lose a sizeable chunk of my army. However, I also knew that mathematically they were improbable to kill the Minotaurs outright, and gambled on the fact that a purely average set of rolls would only kill one; leaving two to fight back.

The first couple of rounds were relatively uneventful, with us jockeying for position. He killed a couple of my Gors with his magic, I killed some of his Black Knights with magic, but being undead they were back up as soon as I killed them.

The first charge of the game was unsurprisingly made by the knights, who ended up going for my block of Gors instead. Rolling into a WS 6 with his Crown, my opponent expected the knights to win handily against the Gors. Unfortunately for him, when the dust of trampling hooves settled, they found that only two Gors were skewered. Even my True-Horn defied death itself, with the Wight Lord stepping up to face the Gor champion’s challenge, only to utterly fail in killing him.

This left Khi-Jon’s knights vulnerable, pinned in front of my two Minotaur units. They charged in and, despite both units failing their Primal Fury, wiped out the entire knight regiment.

This left only his Vampire-led block of skeletons, who were out of charge range in the following round, giving me an entire turn of magic missiling. When all was said and done, only the Vampire was left standing.

In a last-ditch effort, the Vampire charged my remaining Minotaurs, hoping to show them the true power of a lord of the night. He managed to wound one, but in return, the Minotaurs swiftly brought him down, ending the game in a decisive victory.

Afterward, we played a second round where Khi-Jon swapped his knights for Grave Guard. The Grave Guard put up a much stronger fight, even managing to take down a unit of Minotaurs, but I still managed to table him in the end. Undead factions definitely seem to struggle a bit in smaller games, given their reliance on heroes, but Khi-Jon put up a fantastic fight.

Battle Report 2

My second match was against Richard from Far East Wargaming, another veteran gamer who primarily plays 30k and Blood Bowl. This time, I faced the cold-blooded fury of the Lizardmen, with his list consisting of five Cold One Riders, a Scar Veteran, a unit of ten Saurus Warriors, and a unit of twelve scouting Skinks with Javelins. I realized at the time of writing this article that Scouts is limited to one unit of Skinks per 1,000 points; so in theory this shouldn’t be allowed, but that’s fine as we are all learning!

Round 1 started with him aggressively deploying his Skinks 12” to the right of my block of two Minotaurs. They moved around, careful to ensure they weren’t themselves within the LOS of my Minotaurs, and opened fire. They managed to land two wounds on my Minotaurs in the opening round, but that would be the last damage they dealt. In my turn, my Bray-Shaman stepped up and unleashed a barrage of magic missiles that wiped the Skinks off the table.

Although it seemed like the imminent threat was gone, throwing all the magic at the Skinks meant that the Cold Ones were unmolested as they charged into my Gors. The Cold Ones utterly annihilated the Gors, and overran the fleeing survivors; no surprise for essentially four-attack cavalry! Unfortunately for the Cold Ones however, my Bray-Shaman (who was watching all this unfold by the sidelines) was ready to do some casting.

And some casting, he did. With a successful Viletide, Fireball, and Wind Blast, the Cold Ones were completely wiped out. This left only the unit of Saurus and their Scar Veteran to face down my three Minotaurs.

Thanks to their greater threat range, my Minotaurs charged in first, demonstrated the raw unbridled brutality of an ideal Minotaur combat. The Saurus didn’t stand a chance.

Although the game ended here, given how the Bray-Shaman was single-handedly responsible for killing most of my opponent’s army and he couldn’t take a Wizard at 500 points, I swapped out my Bray-Shaman for a Wargor with Slugskin and a few more Gors. This second game was a much closer affair, as I was forced to have to ignore his Skinks (who I could never draw LOS on) as they single-handedly took apart my unit of three Minotaurs over the course of the game. However, Slugskin proved to be a brutal upgrade, as it meant that my unit of Gors and two Minotaurs actually managed to beat everything else in combat (including the dreadful Cold Ones), with my Wargor eventually taking the head of the Scar Veteran himself in a challenge. Overall, a couple of great games with Richard!

Lessons from the First Month

Although this point scale is a lot smaller than regular games, I think some of the lessons here are still generally valuable and scalable into larger games.

1. Minotaurs are genuinely suboptimal ☹. Sure, sometimes you get Frenzy off on a flank charge and it’s glorious. But I’ve had games where they’ve been killed by skinks, did absolutely nothing for most of the game, or failed Primal Fury two games in a row. They cost a lot and are exceptionally squishy.

   
   

2. Gors are amazing. At this point level, their T4, WS4, and two attacks per model make them a nightmare for most core units. I’m certain their advantages will taper off a little more at higher points games when everyone can bring more toys to bear.

   
   

3. Magic is crucial in smaller games. This is unsurprising given the importance of magic at 2,000 points, but you really feel it when certain factions (e.g. Lizardmen) cannot even take wizards at this point, or if my opponent decides to go for a non-caster.

   
   

4. Gor chariots aren’t particularly exciting. I didn’t use any myself, but faced one during the league. True to expectation, its predictability and middling threat range meant that it seems better-used as a later-wave unit, to charge things that are already stuck in combat. It made me reflect on the role of chariots in TOW in general, as in the few cases I’ve faced them at 2,000 points with my Empire army, I’ve never seen them do anything particularly exciting. Heck, even Settra (arguably, the ultimate chariot in the game) was very perishable to a few choice cannonballs and a level 4 Battle Magic wizard.

What’s Next?

My plan is to update on my army progress every month, and probably (with enough motivation) also post some new pictures on my Instagram and do a quick league review on my Youtube channel.

For my second month, heading into 1,000 points, I intend to hopefully get three Razorgors and a unit of Dragon Ogres up. Realistically speaking, I foresee the Dragon Ogres replacing my Minotaurs, but we’ll see how that goes.

Got any thoughts on the Beastmen Brayherd, or on the league overall? Leave your comments down below!