Beasts Of Chaos

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Beasts of Chaos army and are they any good?

Well like all armies they have strenghts and weaknesses, but with their ambushes rules they are a very good army to play against, only their ld is a quite weak point in their army.

Greetz
G

Plus with their hordes of skirmishers make them one of the most mobile army...

Yep.

That summons them up pretty good.
Extremely mobile and cheap, yet unreliable.

But they have the advantage of taking other units, from deamonic and mortal list to make up for any thing they lack.

How come they are unreliable ?

Low leadership (gors and ungors have a Ld of 6 - I think of that as unreliable), leadership test when ambushing (leadership 5 hounds will have a hard time popping up at right location) and Unruly (might have to charge/move towards enenmy).

Not quite as unreliable as orcs, but it's worse than undead

Yupp Ld 6 sounds pretty good to my all Ngobbo horde...

Abyways another thing is that they can get extreamly tough unit. Eather daemonic or one of their own ogres/minotaurs/shaggots...

BoC also have the "cheapest" elites in the form of marks of chaos, but you can`t have an entire army with a mark (this does not include undivided), only bestigors, minos, spawns and characters as far as I can remember can be given a mark.

I have a 2000 pts Tzeentch BoC army consisting of 76 models so they can be quite "chaos elity" (but I don`t like playing with them, been trying to sell it for ever..). Low ld is one of the main prob.

Nope Shagoths can also have a mark.

They have the best core unit in the game .. the only unit to have a 360° charge arc, but still be able to get a rank bonus, and able to negate enemy's rank bonuses. It doesn't scout, but with a bit of luck it end up right on the other side of the table, behing the enemy's ranks. If you're not so lucky they still come out nicely spread across the battlefield, and with it's move of 5 ... For the rest, the unit is only as expensive as you need it to be, since you can freely choose how many of each (gors and ungors) you put in each unit. Then, a unit leader still has LD 7, same as Orcs.

The rest of the list is pretty nice too, the hounds are very good value, and infiltrate too (which can be a very annoying feature), and if you need some serious kickin', there are Minotaurs for you. To put the cherry on the cake, there is access to one of the best lores in the game (Slaanesh) whose (counter-)movement spells suit the playstyle of the Herd very nicely.

All in all, it's a very solid list. It's for experienced players, but once you got the hang of it, it rocks.

Klaw

I like the Minotaurs. Not because of their combat power (which isn't shabby, just not as great as you would like from their point cost) but because of the way they look.

I am collecting them on the side just for kicks. My crazy Tzeentch Doombull is just plain nasty.

Da Mentorz Warboss

I've only played beasts of chaos in small battles, so i am yet to face anything meaner then a spawn.

deployment is very important when you face an army as maneuverable as beast of chaos. Especially when you field a goblin army, with the long flanks units of that size tend to have. Wolf riders are very useful, especially since they have very little missle fire. If you are going for an orc and goblin army, using small units of cheap gobbos to guard the flanks of your orc units may be worth considering. It can buy you time, and the orcs don’t care when they run.

Warmachines have limited usefulness against the core units of a beasts of chaos army, they can be handy against ranked khorngors and the like though, and minitors. With the speed a beasts of chaos army can move and the ambush rule, they will be vulnerable.

A few ideas would be to try to limit their superiority in maneuverability through your deployment and occupation of the battle field, and try to isolate his skirmishes from the ranked elite units, through engaging them piecemeal or other means. Otherwise you could be facing those big gors while the herds get the bonus for a flank or rear charge. At least you will still have your rank bonus.

Oh yeah, never charge a gobbo boss at a spawn in desperation, he will die anyway.

In my gaming group we always play with a lot of forests and other type of terrain. BoC is very good at maneuvering in heavy terrain + it`s probably the best army I`ve used against WE.
And yes da Mentorz who doesn`t love them minos ( ), one of the reasons I started collecting BoC in the first place.