So, Beastmen
I have just finished playing a TW: warhammer campaign as the beastmen and I used the Shadowgave legendary lord from the start. I (again) didn't bother finishing off the dwarves for the long campaign, mostly because due to how the beastmen work, they wouldn't be able to beat me in a single combat anywhere on the map, but it would still take a lot of time to conquer all of their forts.
Now for the ones who have no idea about beastmen in this game: It is a scavenger race, that doesn't have stable settlements and cities. Instead all you have are armies that can produce units if you set camp (which you are very heavily discouraged to do).
Since for most factions, the settlements are what generates money, you are in a bit of troublesome situation early in the game. What you are supposed to do is attack settlements and loot them for money so that you can run at a deficit until you lower the upkeep cost of your armies under the default income...so that you can create more armies and keep doing this in a loop. The alternative to looting settlements is raiding locations (which provides you with income and upsets the populace), but that merely lowers your costs in the early game, rather than giving you actual income.
Well it's simple, you say, just destroy some settlements!
Well. yes. But it's not that simple. Early in the game, you get thrown into the world with two very simple armies, but all enemy settlements are garrisoned by full armies, which are even higher tier. So you scour the lands for an unguarded settlement which you could destroy while watching your money reserve run dry.
They also have a mechanic which allows them to gain a Brayherd following them. In essence this is a second, smaller army that will keep continuing your big army, if your big army is conquering stuff.
I feel like this got more ranty than I originally intended.
Let's start over. Beastmen feel like a very strange and shitty merge between Bretonnia, Skaven and dwarves.
Yes. It sounds strange. It was even stranger when I realized that.
But let me explain: You take the shitty and really bloody cheap units of Skaven, you add a squad of peasant archers of Bretonnia and then you add the solid lategame infantry of the dwarves.
Of course later in the game I realized that this is wrong, because you still get some monsters and wanna be cavalry and most importantly, they are the only race with a mandatory monster unit branch (the minotaurs), but I was discouraged of making them because of my legendary lord.
Overall, they are fun to play. There is something absolutely satisfying about the fact that you get a whole army to just throw away on a whim (or when it gets too small). As a result, unlike in normal sieges where you try to avoid big clumps of opposing armies and instead focus the smaller groups, assassinate lord and rush the base to force a rout, here you can throw an entire army headfirst into the defenders, laugh at the fact that you annihilated them (although with incredible losses) and then just casually destroy the rest. Considering most of the fighting you will do is exactly during sieges, it is very much important that they are the most fun race to be had during that. (if we don't count the skaven and opening the gates on the defenders, that never gets old either)
Similarly to Bretonnia, you get archers which you can use from the very beginning and then no improvements upon them (As far as tiers go). Unlike Bretonnia however, you get to upgrade them via technologies so that they hold their power across the whole campaign (although compared to higher tiered archers they still lose, but not as much as I feared).
You only get two very low tier versions of spearmen, which makes cavalry bite a lot, but at least they are so dirt cheap that you won't mind losing them. They are quite literally a fodder for the charges.
Centigors (centaurs) are an attempt at having cavalry. They come in three versions and all of them are a gimmick that just bogs down on your roster. Usually if you manage to single out an archer unit and charge it with cavalry, the result is ground trampled with blood. However with Centigors against wood elves, several times I have witnessed a charge being turned into a rout as they got completely destroyed by the arrows.
I didn't get to use shamans in combat much, mostly because by the time I started employing agents, I was busy killing enemy agents with them, so I might go and play some of the battles involving them to see them in action.
The last story battle was...bad. I didn't know what to expect and I screwed up my roster for the fight majorly. In hindsight, I should've taken more spearmen (hello Bretonnia, I never learn) and replace the three units of Centigors with Pigs (for taking out artillery).
Luckily for me, Minotaurs are quite literally beasts. At one point I realized that half my minotaurs are running across all sides of the battlefield and just slaying everything that comes close. They can even battle it out with enemy lords focused on melee, which just seems wrong, but to me and the "click anything to kill it" approach it felt very much in place.
The Horde mechanic is an interesting take. Because the supporting army doesn't follow you immediately, but instead right after your turn, you don't generally utilize quick ambushes as much as Skaven do. You just don't use the force in that way. Instead you lure them in to bigger fights, use agents to lock down enemy armies and such and then use the overwhelming numbers in your advantage.
So even though you get this huge cloven nation that is all about destroying your enemy quickly, you have to pick your fights, wait for the army to come close and then strike, when they can't do anything about it.
The only thing that made the beastmen somewhat difficult is the rough start and then deathstacks of 4 filled armies roaming the lands...which get solved with Lightning strike (which allows you to start a fight without any reinforcing armies, yours or enemy's), but in doing so you decline your own natural advantage.
Oh and while we are on the negative points: no idea how it is with other Lords, but the Shadowgave campaign is very much focused on facing humans, therefore I quickly made peace with anything non-human and enjoyed my manstew. However constantly facing the same enemies got old very quickly.
Also after facing the wood elves several times, I am very much looking forward to playing them...which I will dislike because of the proximity to dwarves.
Now for the ones who have no idea about beastmen in this game: It is a scavenger race, that doesn't have stable settlements and cities. Instead all you have are armies that can produce units if you set camp (which you are very heavily discouraged to do).
Since for most factions, the settlements are what generates money, you are in a bit of troublesome situation early in the game. What you are supposed to do is attack settlements and loot them for money so that you can run at a deficit until you lower the upkeep cost of your armies under the default income...so that you can create more armies and keep doing this in a loop. The alternative to looting settlements is raiding locations (which provides you with income and upsets the populace), but that merely lowers your costs in the early game, rather than giving you actual income.
Well it's simple, you say, just destroy some settlements!
Well. yes. But it's not that simple. Early in the game, you get thrown into the world with two very simple armies, but all enemy settlements are garrisoned by full armies, which are even higher tier. So you scour the lands for an unguarded settlement which you could destroy while watching your money reserve run dry.
They also have a mechanic which allows them to gain a Brayherd following them. In essence this is a second, smaller army that will keep continuing your big army, if your big army is conquering stuff.
I feel like this got more ranty than I originally intended.
Let's start over. Beastmen feel like a very strange and shitty merge between Bretonnia, Skaven and dwarves.
Yes. It sounds strange. It was even stranger when I realized that.
But let me explain: You take the shitty and really bloody cheap units of Skaven, you add a squad of peasant archers of Bretonnia and then you add the solid lategame infantry of the dwarves.
Of course later in the game I realized that this is wrong, because you still get some monsters and wanna be cavalry and most importantly, they are the only race with a mandatory monster unit branch (the minotaurs), but I was discouraged of making them because of my legendary lord.
Overall, they are fun to play. There is something absolutely satisfying about the fact that you get a whole army to just throw away on a whim (or when it gets too small). As a result, unlike in normal sieges where you try to avoid big clumps of opposing armies and instead focus the smaller groups, assassinate lord and rush the base to force a rout, here you can throw an entire army headfirst into the defenders, laugh at the fact that you annihilated them (although with incredible losses) and then just casually destroy the rest. Considering most of the fighting you will do is exactly during sieges, it is very much important that they are the most fun race to be had during that. (if we don't count the skaven and opening the gates on the defenders, that never gets old either)
Similarly to Bretonnia, you get archers which you can use from the very beginning and then no improvements upon them (As far as tiers go). Unlike Bretonnia however, you get to upgrade them via technologies so that they hold their power across the whole campaign (although compared to higher tiered archers they still lose, but not as much as I feared).
You only get two very low tier versions of spearmen, which makes cavalry bite a lot, but at least they are so dirt cheap that you won't mind losing them. They are quite literally a fodder for the charges.
 |
| Great weapon centigor. Please note the lack of any armor. |
Centigors (centaurs) are an attempt at having cavalry. They come in three versions and all of them are a gimmick that just bogs down on your roster. Usually if you manage to single out an archer unit and charge it with cavalry, the result is ground trampled with blood. However with Centigors against wood elves, several times I have witnessed a charge being turned into a rout as they got completely destroyed by the arrows.
I didn't get to use shamans in combat much, mostly because by the time I started employing agents, I was busy killing enemy agents with them, so I might go and play some of the battles involving them to see them in action.
The last story battle was...bad. I didn't know what to expect and I screwed up my roster for the fight majorly. In hindsight, I should've taken more spearmen (hello Bretonnia, I never learn) and replace the three units of Centigors with Pigs (for taking out artillery).
Luckily for me, Minotaurs are quite literally beasts. At one point I realized that half my minotaurs are running across all sides of the battlefield and just slaying everything that comes close. They can even battle it out with enemy lords focused on melee, which just seems wrong, but to me and the "click anything to kill it" approach it felt very much in place.
 |
| A gorebull having the time of his life. |
The Horde mechanic is an interesting take. Because the supporting army doesn't follow you immediately, but instead right after your turn, you don't generally utilize quick ambushes as much as Skaven do. You just don't use the force in that way. Instead you lure them in to bigger fights, use agents to lock down enemy armies and such and then use the overwhelming numbers in your advantage.
So even though you get this huge cloven nation that is all about destroying your enemy quickly, you have to pick your fights, wait for the army to come close and then strike, when they can't do anything about it.
The only thing that made the beastmen somewhat difficult is the rough start and then deathstacks of 4 filled armies roaming the lands...which get solved with Lightning strike (which allows you to start a fight without any reinforcing armies, yours or enemy's), but in doing so you decline your own natural advantage.
Oh and while we are on the negative points: no idea how it is with other Lords, but the Shadowgave campaign is very much focused on facing humans, therefore I quickly made peace with anything non-human and enjoyed my manstew. However constantly facing the same enemies got old very quickly.
Also after facing the wood elves several times, I am very much looking forward to playing them...which I will dislike because of the proximity to dwarves.
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