"Feelings on Old Hammer Beastmen Herds.... " Topic

Greetings all. I don't wanna put the horse before the apple cart too much as I'm still deciding between 6th and 7th edition rules, but that said i had a quick question about Beastmen armies.

So I should mention that Beastmen are may favorite Lore army and along with Vampire Counts are pretty much the reason I got into Old Hammer so I'm definitely going to put an army of them together.

In doing research for building a Herd army though I've come across a large number of posts that state that by 7th Edition Beasts were largely unplayable. Some of these complaints revolved around ranking rules and others regarding the changes to Ambush rules.

I was just wondering what thoughts people who have played 7th edition Beasts (or even people who have played against them) would give to a Noob looking to collect and play them.

Thanks for any tips. I'm still in the very early stages of army collecting, having bought a few boxes of Gors, Ungors, & Minotaurs.

As always, Cheers for any help.

For me personally – I've left WFB behind – never to revisit again.

My beastmen are now a Herd army for Kings of War (KOW).

My WFB minis had sadly laid around without use since the mid-90s with no love until a friend dragged me kicking and screaming into KOW.

Great rules set – great gaming community – can use any minis you please – finding local players can be an issue but so would finding players for old old editions of WFB

Just my respectful $0.02 USD

In doing research for building a Herd army though I've come across a large number of posts that state that by 7th Edition Beasts were largely unplayable. Some of these complaints revolved around ranking rules and others regarding the changes to Ambush rules.

Which army list are you thinking of using for the Beastmen – Ravening Hordes, 6th edition army book or 7th edition army book?

Ranking rule is only an issue if you are combining 6th edition army book with 7th edition rulebook, and only causes issues when a beast herd engages an opponent with a frontage narrower than than 75 mm. Furthermore, it is easily countered by a little house rule making the beast herds always rank at least five models wide (rather than the four models wide stated in the army book).

As for changes to ambush rules, I am not sure what that is referring to.

Thanks Grief. I won't be using RH. That's one thing I know for sure. As to the rules edition I like the 6th Edition army book for beasts slightly better than 7th though 7th has some cool units (Ghorgon, etc…) that are not included in 6th.

Regarding Ghorgon/Cygor, if you like the model you could simply use it as a giant in a 6th edition beastman army (possibly with the Mutant Monstrosity upgrade).

Grief, what type of Herd army did you run in 7th? Was it heavy on Gors/ Core type troops or more reliant on specialty/ rare units?

Did you use magic or stick to blunt force?

I have to say that I have never played a beastman force, or even owned figures (other than three old Grenadier minotaurs), though I own the 6th edition army book.

That said, if I would have to put together a list from that book, I would probably try to go pretty heavy on the core troops.

I don't think you lose anything with the ambush in 7th edition. You still can have units entering from other table edges- it may not be as loose though.

I like 7th edition, since i play those rules & think they should have bows (which 6th edition doesn't), but i pulled anything that was discontinued from 6th to 7th into my roster. So my Characters & Bestigor can still be marked.
I think 6th edition Gor & Ungor cost more points, so i pay the extra if i want to run them in a loose, mixed formation like you could for 6th.

Warhammer is no longer officially supported, so throw the shackles off & play with what you want. It's refreshing to pull discontinued units off the shelves & put them into battle again

Wiz, you kinda hit the nail on the head as far as my thoughts. I am indeed thinking of mixing aspects of both 6th and 7th as Khornate Beastmen are one of the themes that got me started collecting this army in the first place.

I won't be playing any tournament games, just friendlies, so I have a lot of leeway as to what I want to do.

This weekend I start on my first Beastie unit of 40 Gors. I look forward to joining the Beastmen nation.

Cheers.

Although there is much handwringing about the compatibility of the various editions, remember Games Workshop often phased in army books so that there was overlap. I recall several months passed where you had to play the 6th edition army book with 7th edition rules until the updated book came out. With that in mind I do the same thing blending my Skaven, Vampire Counts, Chaos & Dark Elf armies together.

I've found that Warhammer easily fits in whatever era army books people use. The variations between the rules, army books, etc were more about refreshing the game play.
IIRC, Beasten were patterned after Gallic and German warbands facing Rome.

The combination of army books should be possible as long as you don't intend to play tournaments, and as these are not supported anymore: Do what you want! I own both armybooks and still like them a lot, though I never got to play, I now consider playing Warhammer in 15mm with the excellent Demonworld minis.

I went to the 2007 Hillbilly Indy GT with a Beastman army and got Third place, another Beastman army won First! What I liked about the list I had was I could use Warriors and Daemons in the Beastman list too. Mine was mostly my old 6th edition Beastmen with some re-basing, I added in a unit of Khorne Hounds for some fast hitting power. Marks were a blast back then too, I went Khorne mostly for the melee bump. I've been toying with playing WHFB again in either 6th or 7th, still have my books, just haven't found anyone around locally that still plays. Just takes two though!!!

Enakan, that's exactly what I would like to do. Build a Beast army with the mark of Khorne and add in some Daemons where available. Obviously this would be for friendlies, not competition. Thanks for the input.