Best strategy to using beastmen?

[Nasrin]

I like their units and used to use mods for them but I want to play as them in a normal playthrough. How does everyone use them? Do you recruit a lot of the minotaur units?

[Ysthrall]

Hi. It's been a year or two since I started my Beastman campaign (ME, VH), so things may have changed a fair bit, but I have some general tips:

1) Play like a coward on the campaign map. Scout with heroes, avoid fair fights. Any fair fights. Gang up your hordes to squish something, loot everything, and run off to digest it. If the AI can see you, you're in trouble.

2) Play like a coward on the battle map. Fall back before enemies, slip invisible units behind hills and through forests, pull his army elements apart and eat them with overwhelming force one by one. Drag him here and there in response to one threat or another. Massive overwhelming ambush from all sides at once is what you want, straight up fight is not.

3) Gors and Ungors do fine and dandy if played as above. Hounds, harpies and centigors for speedy flanking attacks. Bestigors, Minotaurs and Chaos Spawn are the units for your front line. You shouldn't need more than 5 or 6 of them in a stack. Use with whichever LL gives them the best buffs, and try to avoid a stand-up fight. A couple of Cygors per stack are nice (they do well in melee too), don't bother with giants.

4) Time things to co-ordinate with the Blood Moon. Pick your buffs carefully, and plan campaign movement to compensate.

5) Forget the beastherds. One pops, great, send it off to mug some small undefended settlement nearby. Don't try to control or co-ordinate with them. Waste of time.

6) Forget role-playing as an unsociable herd of murdergoats; be a chessmaster. Use diplomacy on anyone who will talk to you; Norsca, Skaven, Vampires, Greenskins. Attack their enemies, fund their war efforts if you can, ensure that they recolonise what you have razed.

7) Kill Reikland and Courrone ASAP. Sacrifice much to do so. Because once they start confederating, their settlements will grow exponentially, and your victory conditions will fly way over the horizon.

8) You are not the crushing hammerblow that shatters the walls of civilisation: Thats the Warriors of Chaos. You are not the endless rain of shrapnel to wear away at your opponents defences: that's the Greenskins. You are the everbleeding wound, the constant drain, the migraine that prevents them concentrating, the ball and chain around one leg....

...Beastmen are the faction that's sets others up for the kill. When the Skaven find the Brettonians in disarray and depleted, it's because of you. When the Empire can't fund armies against the Vampires, it's because of you. When the Norscans find another port razed and ready for them to set up shop, it's because of you....

...and when Archeon finally turns up to find the realms of men huddled back to back behind their watchfires, clutching improvised spears against the howls from the dark woods....

...he'll take the credit, because he's like that. But it'll be because of you :)

[Nasrin]

Originally posted by Ysthrall:

Hi. It's been a year or two since I started my Beastman campaign (ME, VH), so things may have changed a fair bit, but I have some general tips:

1) Play like a coward on the campaign map. Scout with heroes, avoid fair fights. Any fair fights. Gang up your hordes to squish something, loot everything, and run off to digest it. If the AI can see you, you're in trouble.

2) Play like a coward on the battle map. Fall back before enemies, slip invisible units behind hills and through forests, pull his army elements apart and eat them with overwhelming force one by one. Drag him here and there in response to one threat or another. Massive overwhelming ambush from all sides at once is what you want, straight up fight is not.

3) Gors and Ungors do fine and dandy if played as above. Hounds, harpies and centigors for speedy flanking attacks. Bestigors, Minotaurs and Chaos Spawn are the units for your front line. You shouldn't need more than 5 or 6 of them in a stack. Use with whichever LL gives them the best buffs, and try to avoid a stand-up fight. A couple of Cygors per stack are nice (they do well in melee too), don't bother with giants.

4) Time things to co-ordinate with the Blood Moon. Pick your buffs carefully, and plan campaign movement to compensate.

5) Forget the beastherds. One pops, great, send it off to mug some small undefended settlement nearby. Don't try to control or co-ordinate with them. Waste of time.

6) Forget role-playing as an unsociable herd of murdergoats; be a chessmaster. Use diplomacy on anyone who will talk to you; Norsca, Skaven, Vampires, Greenskins. Attack their enemies, fund their war efforts if you can, ensure that they recolonise what you have razed.

7) Kill Reikland and Courrone ASAP. Sacrifice much to do so. Because once they start confederating, their settlements will grow exponentially, and your victory conditions will fly way over the horizon.

8) You are not the crushing hammerblow that shatters the walls of civilisation: Thats the Warriors of Chaos. You are not the endless rain of shrapnel to wear away at your opponents defences: that's the Greenskins. You are the everbleeding wound, the constant drain, the migraine that prevents them concentrating, the ball and chain around one leg....

...Beastmen are the faction that's sets others up for the kill. When the Skaven find the Brettonians in disarray and depleted, it's because of you. When the Empire can't fund armies against the Vampires, it's because of you. When the Norscans find another port razed and ready for them to set up shop, it's because of you....

...and when Archeon finally turns up to find the realms of men huddled back to back behind their watchfires, clutching improvised spears against the howls from the dark woods....

...he'll take the credit, because he's like that. But it'll be because of you :)

Thank you for the tips my friend. It is very helpful and appreciated :)

[Lord Holland of Wessex]

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[Hieronymous]

Originally posted by Lord Holland of Wessex:

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Click on quit.

You mistake him. He wanted advice on Beastmen, not Bretonnia.

Ysthrall gives probably the best you'll find. I have only a few additions-

1. Study the tech tree, it is not merely a series of progressive buffs, there's decisions to be made.

2. If at all possible, take the growth option for the moon cycle and then lay low for a while. Consider saving gold so when you do this, you can build.

3. Now that ordertide is taken down a peg, you don't have to go as crazy burning down Reikland as you did in the past.

[Tricks]

Best strategy: wait for Beastmen rework.

[Xhal]

Originally posted by Tricks:

Best strategy: wait for Beastmen rework.

Or better yet play a better faction.

[Eminem]

Thanks for the tips as well. I would hate that coward play style cause I don't have patience for ambush mechanics. Glad I haven't started a new campaign with them

[wrought82]

there's no reason to play them like that at all. If you find there is just lower difficulty, they are easymode as long as you dont increase battle difficulty and doable when you do, but they are hit hard by it.
first turn pool your units together, your first goal is to spawn a brayherd, it will more than match the strength of your army when you spawn it turn 5 or so.
every lord goes blue line for growth and upkeep reduction
always keep 2 armies together, if a siege is difficult wait for your brayherds to catch up.
get 4 armies then build up your main building and the upkeep reduction for gors, early armies should be mostly or all ranged (ungor raiders) and 0-6 of the strongest melee you have. if enemy has a lot of ranged remember raiders are decent in melee and have stalk and vanguard, they are hybrid, they can take on twice their number of brettonian archers in melee, they are also fast enough to kite most infantry
upgrade to the -50% upkeep reduction THEN get minotaurs, dont do it before. the trick to playing horde is to earn more w every army than you pay in upkeep, getting minotaurs too soon will cripple you. 2 armies and 2 brayherds is enough to deal w anything AI throws at you early on.
I think you get minotaurs around turn 50 or so and from there is just about how far you want to go. focus on expanding number of hordes. often ppl complain they cant destroy enemy factions because they keep resettling, their issue is they have just 4 armies or so. turn 50 you should already be at 4 turnn 100 at 10, if you play toturn 200 around 30 armies

[Rokso]

-Pick your fights carefully.
-Get Minotaurs

Once you get minotaurs you're unstoppable unless you get caught out by several armies.

If you're feeling spicy; stack lords and heroes with the "Nurgle's Foul Stink" trait or the one that gives weapon strength to minotaurs.

[Cazador]

It's amazing how rare the achieve is for completing the beastmen campaign lol... It's one of my rarer achieves on all of steam. Some good suggestions already but I'll add my two cents.

1. Pick a target and get to work fast. I like going after bretonia first as sometimes ikit will do well and help you vs reikland. I find VC just gets wrecked these days so not worth it. Also the flying cav of bretonia is super annoying later on if they get rolling. Don't try and fight both as you will find nowhere to hide very quick.

2. Get a second lord fairly quick just to work on horde growth. Leave him with almost no troops and use him as bait. Have him raid while your main army sits in front of him in ambush. Helps pull armies out of cities that normally wouldn't and leaves cities easy.

4. Pay attention to faction conflicts. You can be hidden and if you position well it's amazing how often the AI force marches their armies right in front of you trying to get to a front. You can pick them off super easy.

3. Minatours are good but honestly didn't rock any until end game when it was almost over already. Lots of other units will cut it before then. I rocked a lot of my lords specialty units. (Yes I've played through multiple times on other lords... I'm a sadist lol)

4. Don't be afraid to just hide sometimes and hit side cities. It won't be long for multiple stacks to run off to fight other armies.

5. Try to have one or two agents early for murdering enemy agents or you will get spammed to death by enemy agents. Anti player bias is the worst and you'll have 6+ enemy agents spamming you unless you get a high level one up early to wipe them out.

[Nasrin]

Thank you everyone for the tips and help. I will attempt a beastmen playthrough.

[wrought82]

just really remember to ALWAYS keep your armies together at least until you get minotaurs.
there will be many times when you'll want to take that 1 extra settlement splitting up your forces. 90% of the time one of your armies will be pounced on and often destroyed. and hordes arent immortal like arks, losing one is like losing your starting province or worse for other factions

o and as a rule of thumb you want to be losing about 1/10th to 1/15th of your stash every turn. another thing players tend to do is get lazy and hoard gold. this is comfortable until you face some huge empie that is 3 times as strong as you because you neglected on growing your horde empire

Also: replenishment is slow but recruting is on the go, so just combine unit till you have 17 (minimum to keep brayherd) then hire 3 new nits

[Rack]

Step 1: Launch the game
Step 2: Choose any Beastmen LL
Step 3: Start campaign
Step 4: Quit campaign after first turn
Step 5: Choose different faction
Step 6: ??????
Step 7: Win your campaign
Step 8: Repeat steps 1-8

[Wh♂♂par]

Didn't read replies.

You get more than enough armies, fill as many as possible with Minotaurs, maybe Cygors and then keep rampaging. Or cheese with hero stacks.

[halogamb]

Minotaurs and cygors. Alternatively, I'm not sure why anyone would want to play Beastmen right now when they're in such a pitiful state all around and are undoubtedly next on the chopping block for a full rework. But hey, go for it if you really want to.