Warhammer 6th ed. changes to the Beastmen army list
(with comments from the Beastlord of the Herdstone)

With the release of "Ravening Hordes" it appears that of all the army lists, Beastmen have undergone the most drastic changes to their core troops.  In this article I hope to outline these changes and I will add my own commentary (everyone's a critic don't ya know!)

Army lists are now divided into four sections:

A closer look at:

Characters

Beastlord: 3 less BS, 1 less wound, 100 less points
1 less wound but for half off the price a good deal

Shaman Lord: 1 less toughness, 1 less wound, 2 less initiative, 1 less attack, 1 more leadership, 45 less points
Talk about trimmed down.  This guy used to be great in hand to hand.  Not so much any more.  We'll have to see if magic is worth it for almost twice the cost of the new Beastlord...

Chieftain: 2 less BS, 1 less wound, 70 less points
Again like the Beastlord this guy is a good deal.  Losing the BS is insignificant.

Shaman: 1 less toughness, 1 less initiative, 7 more points
This is only bad news.  Your basic shaman is less adapt at combat now.

Core Units

Gors: 1 less wound, 5 less points
Probably the biggest change to any race.  Gor's now only have one wound and join the rest of the worlds armies with regular one wound troops.  This is only going to hurt my wallet as I now need to buy double the number of troops as I had before.   Personally I don't like it and see all of these changes as a money making ploy by GW.  Hopefully we'll see plastics.

Ungors: 1 more BS, 1.5 less points
The added BS is useless.  However the cost of these little tough guys is even better than before.  Worth every penny in my mind. 

Ungor Skirmishers: 1 more BS, 0.5 less points
Like above but this time they're making you pay for the skirmish ability.  Again I think these guys are a great buy for the cost.

Chaos Hounds: 1 less leadership
Giving you less for the same price.  With leadership of 5 now these dogs will be running with their tails between their legs.  And to think that you could field your entire army of them!  hahahaha

Special Units

Harpies: 1 less WS, 1 less wound, 7 more points
Oh brother!  This makes harpies very expensive now.  Is it worth fielding 10 of them for 220 just to take out a bolt-thrower?

Beastman Chariot: 18 less points
Chariot: 2 less strength, 2 less toughness
Despite no changes to the Tuskgors this contest winning chariot is now scaled down.   Hard to say right now how this will affect the chariot in battle but I think it will still be a good unit to field.

Bestigors: 1 less wound, 7 points less
Like the Gors this unit is hit in the wounds department, but this time you get a 7 point discount.  A good deal for the price.

Rare Units

Minotaurs: 1 more initiative, 1 more attack, 3 more points
A better deal than before but this time they don't appear to be subject to bloodgreed.   They look great when part of an army and always get a lot of attention from the enemy.  More atmospheric than tactical.

Dragon Ogres: 2 less BS, 1 less toughness, 1 more leadership, 12 less points
Now I must confess that I have never fielded these.  I don't really feel that they "fit in".  However, under the new rules they still have 4 wounds which is 1 more than the strongest Beastlord can have!

Chaos Trolls: 1 less attack, 3 less leadership, 15 less points
4 leadership!  OMG!  I wonder how the new leadership rules will be...   These guys could end up being the biggest waste of points.  However there appears to be nothing about stupidity under their special rules.

Other items of interest

It appears as though Gors no longer suffer from "infighting" as it's not mentioned at all.
A definite bonus.

Champions are now only 10 points more than a reg. with a bonus of +1 attack.
Much more affordable now!

Also Beastmen wizards can use the Beasts, Shadow, and Death lores of magic.
Whatever that means...

It appears that Beastmen can no longer have Chaos Spawn in their warbands.
They were great for stalling tough enemy units!

What are your thoughts?  Send them to me and I'll put them up for all to see!

Some thoughts sent in by readers:

dear herdstone:

I didn't think the changes were too bad. However, the changes to the harpies are a little too much. but i understand why they did it. I hate that the shamans are not as tough as they were. but that's true for all spellcasters. I think the changes to the game should make the better in the long run. we should see less power gaming, and more games based on tactics and genral ship. I'm new to the beastmen army and look forward to learning more from your sight.

Thank you for your time.

Beastlord Warfang Ironaxe

Eric Gadal [egadal@ntsxxcal.com]
Fri 25/08/00 7:31 PM

There is no good news from Ravening Hordes. The discounts for beastmen are a money making ploy from the greedy gits at GW. Beastmen chariots have gone from near the top to barely above the worst. Beastmen are now furry orcs with no missiles nor calvery to aid them. Shooty armies will shread beastmen. Harpies are near worthless. They weren't so wonderful before, and now they've been neutered. With the loss of one wound army wide, there is nothing unique about beastmen anymore. Chaos warriors and daemons, who were stronger armies before all this, get even stronger, whilst our hairy friends descend quietly into the oblivion of GW money hungry whims. I see no saving aspect of these changes, and the army book, if it ever comes out, will be too late to save the few of us who were silly enough to collect beastmen to begin with. I say to GW in venacular common to them, "Get Stuffed"!

All City [allcity@thevortex.com]
Sat 07/10/00 4:09 AM

Hi there. Terrific site!

Many WH Beastmen gamers including myself are appalled at the new changes to the Beastmen army. As that letter on your website stated, the beastmen with these new changes are just furry orcs... I was wondering since your site has such a wide coverage (10000 hits is excellent) if you could design a petition against these changes which the Beastmen gamers of the world could sign in a attempt to stop this butchery of my and yours favourite army. I have my various theories why GW is making these changes (profit margins head this...) and I think these changes would ruin beastmen, possibly turning them into another "Chaos Dwarf" army.

Thanks for your time and i eagerly await your reply.

Wazzock with a kruti problem [de.mulder@hccnet.nl]
Tue 12/09/00 1:24 PM

Man, they really suck, I first thought the Gors were like the best troops on earth with their two wounds, they had real staying power, now they are just cows with large horns. With the Harpies we've really been fucked, no use using them now. Trolls are now even dumber than before, they run away every two seconds, a real help. The minotair may have been made better, but as he was mostly the first target in your army anyway it doesn't matter, he dies anyway, also the little ungor pricks are just as lame for only 1.5 points less, whopie! You may have gathered that I don't like the changes, I really liked the beastmen, now because of this money grubbing plot of G-W I have to spend a lot more to get the same as I had before.

Bobbie

Talon Talon [talono@hotmail.com]
Tue 26/09/00 10:45 AM

Hello, I have some information that I think every beastmen player would like to know. I have talked to the manager of the local Games Workshop, and he said that somewhere in the next year, the new plastic regiment of gors will become available!!

I do hope that they will not be much larger than the metal models, witch also happened to the orcs (eew, they're so ugly, and big, and they all stand like an orang-outang or something!!)

And somewhere in the White Dwarf, it says that some totally new units will be coming, well who knows, maybe us Beastlords can field Gor Tuskgor Riders sometime :)

I hope this information will be usefull, Talon

Mark Stover [coach-mark@juno.com]
Sun 08/10/00 10:06 AM

dear herdstone i must agree with eric gadal that the change sucks and GW is out to suck us dry. losing the extra wound was less of a blow to the beastmen strategy than it was to their character. beastmen should be 2 wounds because they are the tough sons of chaos. now i think chaos is going to leave them at a petting zoo and go harass orks, seeing as how beastmen are just orks who cant shoot now. this is a change that should not go unpunished. they're trashing the army character and trying to make us by more pewter gors. i am new to beastmen and warhammer all together, but losing the army character is a hit on the jaw. somebody needs to get paul sawyer's e-mail so we can talk to him, he plays beasties.