Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Beastmen

This is the tactica for the Total War: Warhammer version of the Beastmen.

Why Play Beastmen?

Because you love the half human half animal creatures from Greek Mythology, but wanted to see them as destructive, crazy, violent, rapist raiders who hate everything that so much as looks orderly.

Pros

• Speed: You are up with Wood Elves as one of the fastest factions in the game. Your infantry and cavalry can outpace their competition from most other factions and even their monsters are very speedy for their size.
• Mass Vanguard: Most of your units have Vanguard Deployment, meaning you can set up troops in places most newer players wouldn't expect. This really help exemplify them as an ambush faction who relies on catching their opponents with their pants down.
• Summons: With access to Lore of Beasts, Lore of Wilds and Morghur's Chaos Spawn abilities, you are the most powerful summoning army in the entire game. You can summon a lot of really powerful units like Manticores, Cygors and Spawn to really give you an edge over your opponents and snowball out of control.
• Hitting Power: Believe it or not, a goat man that stands roughly a foot and a half taller than a normal human and is made of nothing but muscle hits really, really hard. That's not even getting into Mintoaurs, which hit with the force of a freight train with a rocket tied to the back.
• Chase down Potential: Because of how fast your units are, chasing down routing units is something that few factions in the game can compete with you at. Hounds and Centigors will get rid of all that pesky infantry and make sure that terrified Lord is escorted cleanly off the map.

Cons

• Lack of Defense: You are a very fragile faction, and are prone to mass missile fire and losing out in pure grindfests. You want to hit hard and get out before the enemy can retaliate.
• Poor Leadership: Most of your army has leadership that can best be described as "A 50's reality show housewife who just saw a mouse." expect your units to be running alot.
• Missing Content. This is their big one. They're lacking a lot of units from the table top, and they feel it. Without things like the Ghorgon they struggle with big, heavily armoured monsters, and generally have a ton of holes they shouldn't have. They are in desperate need of a lord pack.
• No Heavy Cav: You don't have any cavalry options which can win in a one on one slugging match against enemy heavy cavalry. Centigors get pimpslapped even by Orc Cav.

Universal Traits

• Primal Fury: As the first DLC faction since launch, the Beastmen were the first race to get some kind of passive battle ability on most of their units. As such, it's pretty outdated compared to what newer faction received. Whenever a Beastmen unit's leadership is over 50%, they gain extra charge bonus, melee attack, speed and immune to psychology. It's pretty much Frenzy only instead of getting extra weapon damage they move faster. This may sound like a great way to deal with the army's Leadership problems, however since it goes away when leadership is below 50% it means that it doesn't help as well as you think. Combine this with the general low leadership the army has, and sometimes you forget they have immune to psych in the first place. The bonus to stats are nice, but hopefully this get updated when the Beastmen update comes.

Legendary Lords and Subfactions

• Khazrak The One-Eye: Your big named bastard who focuses on combat. His magic items are subpar to be honest, and the reason you bring this guy is for the Chariot mount. Since Beastmen chariots are actually pretty good, this guy can actually be a menace with microed well. His biggest problem is that while he is a decent combat lord he really doesn't do much to help the army as a whole, and mostly just exists to runover the enemy. Granted, he does that pretty darn well, but since the Beastmen units generally need some form of leadership support in order to keep them in the fight this guy usually gets over looked when it comes to multiplayer. When it comes to campaign.... well see further down on what we think about Beastmen of the campaign map. He probably won't lose you a battle, but he probably also won't be the reason you win either.

• Malagor The Dark Omen: The only caster lord you currently have, and for what he does he honestly isn't terrible. Lore of Wilds is actually a pretty decent lore of magic with some good damage spells and the ability to summon cygors out of the ground to bash your enemies to pieces. He's about as useful as you'd expect a mage lord to be with one major issue, he has no mount options. This means he is a damn easy target for any decent melee character who can out maneuver him. Yes, I know he has wings, but no he can't fly because CA hates fun. He's OK in melee as far as mages go but don't expect this to save him if someone like Tyrion decides he wants him dead. Fun fact, he is the only Legendary Lord who starts their campaign by taking attrition. Yeah... Did we mention Beastmen campaigns kind of suck?

• Morghur The Shadowgave: Now this beautiful mutated bastard is the diamond in the sad, sad ruff that is the selection of Beastmen lords. For one, while he is a foot lord he has crazy high regeneration, meaning killing him is actually pretty damn hard. On top of that his abilities are just flat out amazing. For one, he gets a free Chaos Spawn summon to use whenever the hell he feels like it, so you can surprise the enemy with surprise butt sex. On top of that, he has a really cool passive that makes it so that once per battle, when an enemy unit reaches below a certain health point, they die and spawn a friendly unit of spawn. That means this guy can get you two extra units on the battlefield FOR FREE. Needless to say that is amazing and as such he is the go to lord pick for 90% of Multiplayer Beastmen lists. As for how to use him in campaign.... trust me we'll get to that.

Units

Lords

• Beastlord: Your only generic choice and as far as generic lords go he's... Meh? He's pretty much just Khazrak only he trades some melee prowess in exchange for an extra buffing ability for him and his army. Ironically this means in multiplayer he's considered better than Khazrak since he can actually help out all the poor goatmen who are stuck in melee. Other than that, you pretty much use him like you use Khazrak. Put him on that chariot and blast Ludacris on your speakers as you run your enemies the fuck over.

Heroes

• Bray Shaman: Your generic caster hero and he does what you expect most mages in this game to do to be honest, so he's always handy to have around. He has access to the Lore of Beasts, Shadows, Death, and Wilds, so he focuses more only blowing shit up with magic prowess more than healing or straight up buffs, not that he's incapable of doing that. Since you pretty much got to bring this guy in most armies unless you have Malagor, you may as well put him on the chariot, as when you do that he becomes pretty decent at cycle charging infantry to death as well. He's got some good magic lores and a mount that allows him to actually be useful in melee, what else do you want from a mage?

• Gorebull: The first monstrous character (aside from Kholek and Sarthoreal) to be put into the game. This guy is a beast who specializes in AP anti large, so see if you can throw him against any monsters to chip down. He also acts as a pretty good bodyguard for your squishier lords or casters since who the hell wants to be fighting a nine foot tall minotaur with a big fuck off axe. The Gorebull does have one infamous weakness that makes him a meme in the community though, his mass. For whatever reason it is really easy to knock this guy around like a pinball and send him flying to Saturn. Now a Dragon or Giant would understandably be able to do this, but something like a troll should NOT be able to throw this guy around so easily. Seriously, look up Gorebull Mass and you will probably find some damn good memes. This means he has issues sticking to his targets since anything big can just throw him half way across the map. Still, pretty good hero is you're able to keep him within orbit.

Melee Units

• Ungor Spearmen: Your chaff spear unit, designed to absorb damage and make sure enemy cav doesn't stick around too long. Stat wise they're pathetic but they do have high entity count and can use vanguard deployment for ambush tactics. They also gain advantages when fighting in the forest, so can tree engagements if you can. By far the best part about them is that they have the expendable trait, meaning you don't have to worry about them scaring the troops you actually care about when they rout. They will make your frontline in most multiplayer battles, though in campaign you'll want better troops as soon as you can get them. They also come in a shielded version, which you should get if you're fighting skirmisher heavy factions.
  • Destroyer’s of the Drakwald: Not only does this unit have much better melee defense, meaning it might actually stick around for a while, it also has poison attacks. This can be a good support unit and help enemy cav get stuck if they get their hands on them.

• Ungor Herd: The same as above only this is a much more offensive infantry. These axe wielders sacrifice some defensive stats in exchange for better offensive ones, meaning they can pump out a bit more damage than the spear version. They will still lose to most halfway decent infantry of the same tier, but they're meant to be expendable anyway so don't worry too much about it.

• Gor Herd: Your mid tier infantry, and man are these guys lawnmowers against low armored units. They come with two versions, a shielded version with more defense and a dual axe version with more attack. These guys are some of the best chaff clearing infantry in the game, and will get rid of all the low level fodder some factions love to bring to the table. Their armor is garbage so even the shielded version will die to missiles, but can still be great if they get on the right troops. Plus vanguard can help with sneaky shenanigans. Get the shielded version against factions with tons of missiles and the unshielded one against factions who don't.
  • Black-Horn’s Ravagers: They have better armor and stats than a normal Gor Herd, stalk, and an ability that gives them perfect vigor. This makes them great early game damage dealers, but their usefulness will drop off as the battle rages on and they sustain damage.

• Harpies: They're like fell bats, only they might actually kill whatever they're fighting. They are usually used to tie up enemy skirmishers and get them off the field so that your troops can fight unmolested. They will die if anything so much as sneezes on them too hard, so be careful when sending them in, as they may not be able to pull out again.

• Bestigor Herd: On of the few units that can best be described as "Shock Infantry." They have a monstrous charge bonus for an infantry unit, and combine that with a decently high model count and they can cause havoc. If they can get a clean charge off on an opponent, these guys will be doing roughly the amount of a monstrous infantry unit PER ENTITY. They will clear through most mid tier infantry if they can get the drop on them. The bad news for you is they they're very reliant on the charge as their defensive stats aside from armor suck, so if they're the ones getting charged, don't expect them to last long. Great for punching through heavy armor.
  • Khorrok’s Manrippers: These guys trade a great axe for a halberd, meaning instead of armored infantry you want them fighting cavalry. They are your only halberd unit and you can only bring one, so they're almost a requirement against heavy cav factions.

Missile Infantry

• Ungor Raiders: Your only foot skirmisher unit, and by Khorne's Bloody Taint are these guys not exactly the model most ranged units strive to be. With pitiful range, accuracy and AP you'd think there's be absolutely no point in bringing them, right? Well, they do have some uses. They can be used to force away skirmisher cav and can do some ok damage against units that don't have a ton of armor. They also have vanguard and stalk, meaning you can use them to get some sneaky ambushed on an unsuspecting opponent. That said, they aren't waywatchers, so don't expect them to carry the day for the Beastmen

Cavalry

• Centigors:
  • Sons of Ghorros:

Chariots

• Razorgor Chariot:

Monsters

• Chaos Warhounds:

• Razorgor Herd:

• Chaos Spawn:

• Feral Manticore:

• Minotaurs:
  • Butchers of Kalkengard:

• Giant:

Artillery

• Cygor:
  • The Eye of Morrslieb:

Tactics

Campaign Strategies

Don't play the Beastmen campaign. It is very much not worth your time until the update.