3000 point Beasts heavy ogres vs high elves

Played a game at 3000 points today against high elves.  Decided to try a Beasts heavy list to see how it goes.  It turned out to be a victory for the ogres, so hurray for that.

Here's what I was playing:

1 Slaughtermaster: Grut’s sickle, armor of destiny, level 4 Beasts, ironfist: Had wildform, savage beast, curse, and amber spear
1 Bruiser: BSB, heavy armor, talisman of preservation, enchanted shield
1 hunter: shield of ptolos, sword of striking, dragonhelm
1 butcher: dispel scroll, great weapon, level 2 Beasts: had impenetrable pelt and transformation
1 butcher: forbidden rod, level 1 maw, ironfist: had toothcracker.
1 unit mournfang (4 models): heavy armor, ironfists, gleaming pennant, musician
Ironblaster
Ironblaster
1 unit leadbelchers (6 models): musician
1 unit ironguts (8 models): full command, standard of discipline
1 unit ogres (5 models): ironfists, standard
1 unit ogres (5 models): ironfists, standard
Sabretusk
Sabretusk
Stonehorn

He had:
  Character:
Loremaster: talisman of preservation
Noble: mounted, BSB, rerollable 1+ armor
Handmaiden: potion of strength, rapid fire bow (3 shots, whatever its called)
Frostheart Phoenix
Bolt Thrower
Bolt Thrower
Bolt Thrower
18 Archers
17 Sisters of Avalorn
14 Silverhelms
5 Reavers
5 Reavers
5 Reavers
14 Swordmasters
14 Swordmasters
Lothern Skycutter
20 White Lions

Deployment
----------


I set up my units all the way across the map.  Slaughtermaster and bruiser went with the ironguts, and then I had a butcher with each group of ogres.

The elves had a noble BSB with the silverhelms, and a loremaster in with the white lions.  The white lions had the banner of the world dragon, but it never once came into play.

Turn 1 - Ogres
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The reavers and the hunter vanguard forward.  The reavers get into a screening position, and the hunter moves forward to start flanking.

The stonehorn charges the reavers, and naturally, they run screaming away.  The stonehorn flummoxes forward a few inches and stares around sheepishly.

Everyone else moves around to have a better chance at making a charge without taking a charge.  The sabretusk on the left (we'll call him "Lucky") starts moving toward the bolt throwers, while the hunter moves up to try to get into position to take down the Sisters.

Magic goes pretty well.  The ironguts look around grumpily as Gruts' Sickle pokes a hole in one of them.  The silverhelms are cursed, and the ironguts are wildformed.  I try to amber spear the silverhelms, but the loremaster undoes it before it can do anything.

All the shooters get an extra helping of elf meat after this round.  The leadbelchers take out an entire group of reavers.  The first ironblaster wipes out the phoenix entirely, and continues to bounce on to hit the bolt thrower.  Only one wound is dealt, sadly, so it stays in commission, but it is still a great shot.  The second ironblaster rips through a few white lions, and nearly kills the skycutter.

All in all, a good turn.

Turn 1 - High Elves
-------------------


I forgot to mention earlier:  When the phoenix died, one group of swordmasters ran away screaming.  Back to our regular programming.

On the elves turn, they start moving forward.  No charges, but lots of maneuvering.  One group of reavers gets ready to charge block the Mournfang, and the others get ready to annoy the crap out of one group of ogres.  Everyone else moves forward.

Magic is a bust for them.  I dispel everything they cast, though it does cost me my dispel scroll.

His shooting was pretty powerful.  2 bolt thrower shots take out 2 Mournfang, much to my chagrin.  They manage to keep themselves from running, and losing two of their number does have the bonus of preventing the reavers from blocking them.  His handmaiden drinks her potion of strength, and she and her sisters take out 3 of my ogres.  My beasts butcher is starting to get really nervous.  Fortunately, the randomized shots that do hit him fail to wound.



Turn 2 - Ogres
--------------


For the ogres second turn, the shooters get their extra helping of elf meat taken away from them.

The stonehorn charges the blocking reavers.  They run, and this time they don't get away.  The stonehorn stomps up and down on their corpes, and is generally thrilled.  Sadly for him, he's ignoring the bigger threat of the swordmasters staring at him.  They seem rather upset at the loss of their friends.  The Mournfang charge at the white lions.  After the charge, they thought better and immediately regretted this decision.  More on this during close combat.

Magic was a really low costed affair.  We rolled 4-3, but the maw butcher makes a painful sacrifice for his friends.  He pops the forbidden rod and takes 2 wounds in return for 4 extra dice.  The other butcher makes use of his friends pain to transform himself into a giant flame dragon.   The slaughtermaster tries to use the last dice for another round of wildform, but the loremaster puts a stop to that.

Shooting was a disappointment.  The leadbelchers do their job and pop off five of the swordmasters, adding to the one that got beheaded by the stonehorn's chaintrap.  The first ironblaster takes aim at the sisters, intending to pop 6 of them with his flank shot.  Instead, the rhinox gets spooked and he spins around in a circle, chasing his own tail.  The second ironblaster gets set up to pop 3 silverhelms, and the gnoblar gets stuck in the barrel.  Finally, the hunter tries to take out the bolt thrower, and misses entirely.  For shame, ironblasters, for shame.

The 2 mournfang take out 1 white lion on impact and 4 more after combat.  I'm left with 1 mournfang who runs in terror from the white lion menace, and his flight scares the leadbelchers, who then make a run for the border themselves.  Not a great idea, charging into them.  If the slaughtermaster ever gets ahold of that last mournfang, he's lunch.

Turn 2 - High Elves
-------------------


Forgot to mention: The beasts butcher thoughtfully stepped out of his group before attempting to transform into a giant, firebreathing dragon.  That was quite nice of him.

On the elves next turn, they start making mistakes.  Everything they did was a failure this round.

The swordmasters charge the stonehorn and the silverhelms charge the ironguts.  The white lions trip over their cloaks when charging an ironblaster, and the skycutter gives up halfway when charging the last two units from the now dragon's block.

The sisters, the archers, and the bolt throwers are so frightened of the dragon that they all pump everything they have into taking him down.  At the end of the day, they managed to to a whopping one wound to it.  The dragon grins in anticipation of his upcoming meal.  The reavers keep trying to wound the ogres they are dancing around, but have no luck.  They have yet to do a single wound.

Magic is a waste.  The loremaster doesn't use enough power to cast wildform (rolls a 9, needed a 10) and magic ends with a pathetic sputter.

Close combat is more interesting all around.  The swordmasters fluff the majority of their swings.  Out of 15 swings, they only managed to do 4 wounds.  The stonehorn in turn rips them down to only 4 left.  The silverhelms learned the hard way that they never want to charge ironguts.  They want to charge literally anything else.  The noble challenges, which is accepted by my champion.  The silverhelms manage to do a few wounds to the slaughtermaster, and kill a single irongut.  The champ falls in combat, resulting in two total dead ironguts in return for 8 dead silverhelms.  The silverhelms stand firm, and spend the time they have left writing letters to their families, telling them to stay away from can openers.

Turn 3 - Ogres
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The ogres next turn rips through several units, and introduces Lucky to the world in his starring role.

Lucky charges the bolt thrower, the dragon and the hunter double charge the sisters.  The dragon loses another 2 wounds from the stand and shoot, but otherwise shrugs it off.  The ironblaster stops trying to pick gnoblar pieces out of the barrel and charges the white lions instead.

The mournfang fails to roll snake eyes and runs off the table.  The leadbelchers manage to stop wetting their pants and flip around to be ready for next time.  The greatly reduced ogre unit gets ready to receive their skycutter friend next time, and the other group spins around to get ready to charge the reavers should they do something foolish. 

Magic did not go well for our pudgy friends.  It was a great roll.  I had 10-6.  I had everything properly apportioned for maximum carnage.  Grut's punches another hole in the ironguts and supercharges the slaughtermaster.  He decides to try a smaller spell to draw out some dispel dice, then 5 dice his bruiser friend into a savage beast before using the last of his power to curse the white lions.  3 dice used on wildform resulted in two 6's and a 1.  The slaughtermaster explodes, taking out an irongut and 2 silverhelms, as well as draining 6 dice.  The slaughtermaster then sheepishly tries to cast savage beast on 2 dice, which has 6 dice shoved back down his throat.  At the end of the phase, I rolled a 3, so he barely managed to avoid getting himself lynched.

Close combat goes well.  The white lions take another wound off of the stonehorn before getting crushed into paste.  The stonehorn doesn't bother to reform, figuring that he will start after the bolt throwers next.  The ironblaster kills 6 white lions on the charge, and another 3 after that while only taking 3 wounds himself.  The ironguts wipe out the entirety of the silverhelms to the man, then reform to handle the white lions at the next opportunity.  Finally, the dragon and the hunter wipe out all of the Sisters.  The handmaiden tries to save her unit some trouble by challenging the hunter, which he gladly accepts.  The dragon eats a bunch, fries a bunch, and then stomps the rest.  Both the dragon and the hunter over run, but they don't hit anything worthwhile.  Finally, Lucky deals a wound to the bolt thrower and wins by two!  The bolt thrower crew manage to hold their ground, but Lucky is feeling good about himself.

Finally, the second ironblaster whips around and tries to shoot at the unwounded bolt thrower, but his shot comes up short.

Turn 3 - High Elves
-------------------


The skycutter and the reavers gang up on the 2 remaining ogres from the beast butcher's unit.  No one else moves.

During the magic phase, the only thing that I let him get off was spirit leech, figuring that the slaughtermaster will be fine.  I was definitely wrong on that assumption.  He rolls a 6, I roll a 3, and my general croaks.  Looks like that mournfang that got away is not going to be lunch after all.

Shooting was mostly a bust.  The only good thing that happened was a bolt thrower dealt the last wound to the stonehorn.  Boo...  The skycutter and the reavers manage to wipe out the 4 wounds remaining on the ogres, so good for them.  Thus far, in all the games the skycutter has taken part in, this is the most damage he's ever done.

The white lions deal another wound to the ironblaster, while he fluffs every swing.  As a result, he runs and the white lions chase him down.

Turn 4 - Ogres
--------------


Its the beginning of the end now.  My ogres charge at his reavers, who run to the far side of the white lions.  The dragon takes a look at the archers, who decide it is in their best interest to come back another day and run off the board.  The dragon then redirects into the bolt thrower, ready to chomp off the last wound.

The hunter swings around and shoots down the sky cutter.  Yet another win for him.

For magic, we ran into an interesting scenario.  We each have 6 dice.  I have one level 1 caster and a dragon.  The loremaster wants to dispel the dragon.  So, do I cast toothcracker, then lose the dragon, or do I hold onto my dice to try to recast dragon after it is dispelled?  We weren't really sure on the rules, so we flipped for it.  I held onto my dice, he dispelled transformation, and I tried (but failed) to recast it.  Now I have a butcher with 3 wounds on him sitting in combat.  Not a good place to be.

The ironblaster takes out 4 white lions, causing them to panic toward the ironguts, and the leadbelchers take 3 guys out in the reaver group as they run by.

In close combat, Lucky lives up to his name.  He fluffs all of his attacks, takes a wound, and runs away from the scary, scary bolt thrower.  Thanks for nothing Lucky.  The butcher is considerable more naked now, and takes a wound from the bolt thrower, which takes him out.  Sad times, he made sure a happy dragon.

We call the game at this point.

Lessons learned on both sides:

 - Don't charge silverhelms into ironguts.  It never ends well.

 - Loremasters are scary due to the amount of signature spells they have.  Loremasters suck since they are only level 2.  He didn't really get much magic off.  The only real thing he did was kill my slaughtermaster.  Definitely irritating, but that was all he could do.

 - Set up flank units that can handle reavers dancing around them.  I had an entire unit of ogres just kind of dance around in a circle because of them.

It was definitely a fun game, and I'm planning on keeping this list for a while (though I will probably tweak it a bit more).

Hey LawGnome

Firstly thanks for the battle report, it’s exactly what this place needs more of and not only that you’ve also ran a list that doesn’t hold onto the usual suspects but it is difficult not to take dual Ironblasters at 3k so my hats off to you sir.  Writing this as I read so forgive me if you’ve covered something or I’ve doubled up asking questions.

Lists – As mentioned above but I love it purely because you’ve included things that the internet persists are terrible choices such as the Hunter and the Stonehorn.  Very keen to see how these units work for you.

Running against the High Elves is a tough one, they’ll always be striking before us however we’ve got some impact hits to do minimal damage before that.  Your opponent has lots of fire power to bear down on the Ogres but on the flip side Wildform can of course minimise some small arms fire.

Deployment – A very interesting fact that you deployed so wide, not normally seen with the Ogres due to poor leadership so once again I’m keen to see if this works for you as your opponent is packing the ability to delete a unit per turn so hopefully this doesn’t happen and cause a cascade of panic tests.  At least your opponent must pick a ‘side’ of the rock he’s going to commit to with the Silverhelms, hopefully that plays directly into your favour with some counter charging goodness.

Turn 1 – Do you think it would have been wiser to charge with the Mournfang as they get Swiftstride meaning they’d probably advance quicker and meaning the Stonehorn could still march 12” getting it closer to combat?  Was there a reason outside of being a terror causer for this?  Magic proved to be great here, getting 2/3 spells off is a great result in my opinion.  Did Grut’s really make the difference here?

Shooting is fantastic, taking out that unit of Reavers without question was a gold move as they can really mess with your charges later game and of course Ironblaster of Phoenix  - bravo!    Second Ironblaster I have to ask, why not target the Silverhelms and try and get a lucky failed look out roll on the BSB?  If you put pressure on this unit it forces him to come forward in range of more Ironblaster shots and of course the Leadbelchers which are great at cutting down anything I think?

Panicked Swordmasters – bonus! 

Can you remember what spells the Loremaster attempted at you?  The High elves certainly retaliated with some quality shooting of their own it seems.

Turn 2 – What was your thoughts behind the charges here?  It appears to me that the MFC would have been in range of the Swordmasters potentially taking them out of White Lions charge arc?  Sabretusk could have been used here as well with massive 16” range to prevent a counter charge perhaps if things went awry?

Magic – what purpose was casting transformation?

Ironblasters taking some quality time out I see. 

Any idea why your opponent didn’t try and dispel Transformation?  Lack of dice?  Opponent was ballsy charging the Ironguts!

Turn 3 – Appears just to be clean up phase now of the game.  I was thinking perhaps you could have held off the charge onto the White Lions?  Rather pull everything back and shoot awaiting the backup of the Stonehorn?  Or sacrifice an Ironblaster to achieve the same result positioned in a way for optimal over run?

I think there is a writing error in your report here, Swordmasters are in combat with Stonehorn not White Lions. 

Another great turn outside of magic for you however I think not reforming the Stonehorn was a mistake, you’ve already got a Sabretusk, Butcher and Hunter in the backlines to take out bolt throwers?

Ouch on the Spirit Leech!  What spells did you stop?  Hang about – how did he cast this when you weren’t in his front arc?  I smell shenanigans afoot! 

Turn 4 – On the rule I believe your opponent must decide to dispel it at the end of the phase so it’s the very last thing he does.  He’s got to wear the rest of your magic first.

Conclusion – what was the Loremaster running?  Book of Hoeth?  That turns it into a very formidable caster being able to re-roll a dice every cast/dispel.

Congrats on the win, how often do you play at this points level?

Jimmy:

Thanks for taking the time to read and comment.  I definitely appreciate it.

Going in order, lets see how many of your comments I can satisfactorily answer.

I was actually a pretty big fan of this list.  Everything had a place and did their job well (minus the mournfang, but that was due to bad decision making on my part.)  I am a big fan of the hunter/sabretusk combo, and thought that shield of ptolos was well worth the points this game.  I definitely need to revise my opinion on always taking longstrider.  My opinion is now that you should usually take longstrider, but vanguard more than makes up for it if you don't have it.  It just depends on what you are going to be facing and how important you think those extra few inches will be.  With the exception of the opening bird shot, I was actually wishing I had a few scraplaunchers instead.  Being able to whittle down white lions and the sisters before getting into combat with them (white lions due to their hitting power, and sisters due to their quick to fire stand-and-shoot thanks to the handmaiden) is hugely beneficial.  You can take out a lot more with a decent scraplauncher shot than with the best cannon shot.

The primary factor in choosing the wide deployment was that all of my stuff had a wide frontage, and all of them wanted to charge as soon as they could.  Due to the size of the army, there was not much hope in keeping everyone within the general's leadership bubble.  You wouldn't think that an extra 500 points would add so much frontage, but just in core requirements alone it really expands the amount of stuff you need to take.  So, since you can't possible protect them all, you focus on keeping your casters in the bubble, and just hope that everyone else will be ok.  Fortunately, bolt throwers only have about a 25% chance of doing anything to the units that were outside of the bubble, so I felt a little safer than I otherwise would.

Not sure if it would have been better to charge the mournfang as well.  I think I was trying to avoid putting myself in easy charge range for the swordmasters or the skycutter.  In retrospect, I really had nothing to fear from the skycutter, but I have had the fear of chariots burned into me thanks to my matches against WoC.  Turns out that this particular chariot kinda sucks.  The stonehorn charge was made with the idea that rolling a 6 is pretty easy, and that the reavers would most likely run anyway.  The end result would be me trundling forward a bit while taking chaff out of position.  The other reavers were destined to be shot to hell, so I didn't bother trying to charge them.

Regarding the second ironblaster shot, in retrospect, I really should have tried to take out the silverhelms instead.  I figured that with a good shot I could take out the skycutter and bounce through to take out the bolt thrower.  I was really hoping for a two-fer.  I got a couple of white lions instead, so I guess it was ok.

I used Grut's every turn I could.  It made my magic phases a level 6 vs a level 2, so I always had a dice up on him.  He didn't bring a dispel scroll, and really needed to spend all of his dice to counter whatever the biggest threat was.  So for the first turn, that was amber spear, and for the second, he did not have enough dice to really have a chance against a 6-dice transformation cast.

I think the loremaster tried to cast searing doom on the mournfang and tried to cast iceshard on the leadbelchers.  At various points he tried to cast wildform, miasma, and earthblood.  I was able to dispel everything except for the spirit leech.  Every other phase he either had terrible luck on winds, or rolled poorly and lost concentration.  It really wasn't his day for magic, though in his defense, the loremaster was meant to be a support caster in his list, with the other units doing all the heavy lifting without depending on magic to win. 

The mournfang charge on turn 2 was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad bit of decision making on my part.  I think that I thought that I was going to lose them soon anyway, so I may as well get the impact hits on the white lions before they died.  Then I only got 1 wound from impact hits and figured, welp, that was really dumb.  I would have been better off charging the swordmasters.  I would have an additional point of armor to play with against them.

Casting transformation was a survival tactic more than anything.  One round of shooting took out half the unit, and the butcher was going to start taking randomized shots on the next round.  I figured that if I could get transformation off, I would keep him safe for at least a round, and maybe have a chance at getting a good charge at something. I had way more dice than him, so he had no chance of dispelling it, and he didn't want to dispel it on the next couple of turns (a poor decision, in retrospect) because he thought his dice would be better going toward debuffing my other units.

Charging the ironguts was the decision that he regretted doing immediately after declaring.  He spent the subsequent round reminding himself that ironguts hurt armored things.  His two big reminders for himself throughout this game were that and that regular archers suck (they did 0 wounds over the course of the entire game).

Hmm, I know the spirit leech was legal when he did it.  I think I either accidentally skipped a turn where nothing much happened, or I had the silverhelms live longer than I thought.  In any case, I think this is more an error in my memory than an illegal play.

Regarding dispelling transformation, we figured it out after the fact (mostly thanks to the always friendly people here).  In any case, I failed my attempt to recast transformation, so for purposes of game play, it turned out alright.

I think the loremaster had a talisman of preservation and the book of whatever lets you reroll a dice on each attempt.  I think he might actually have been better off with the Book of Ashur so that he was effectively a level 3 caster, but I don't know how the math works with all that.  Shame that the loremaster is a lord choice yet still a level 2. 

This was my first ever attempt at a 3000 point list.  The length of the game surprised me a bit.  An extra 500 points was almost an extra hour of play.  It would have been even longer had I not shot off two units on turn one.  Also, the list creation process actually caused a bit of panic for me, since I almost did not have enough ogres and proxies to actually field an army of this size.  I had leadbelchers mixed with salamanders, ironguts mixed with Kroxigors, and my hunter from the competition had to be a regular ogre just for the extra body.  I used a saurus unit filler in his place.  I was thinking of bringing a good sized unit of maneaters instead of mournfang, but it was far easier to use my existing mournfang than it was to find another 6 to 8 ogre bodies.

Thanks for taking the time to answer the queries mate! 

On the Loremaster, I don't entirely agree that he's just a support character, I've seen many lists and battle reports where his magic has certainly turned the tides of battle, simple things like fireballing chaff, or icesharding certain targets go a long way to winning battles.  They work great in a variety of lists from MSU or more traditional lists and he can chop a little as well for an added bonus.

Great read and congratulation with the win.

Helf with only a lvl2 and no book in 3k? It is a bit odd : ) It gotta be even more odd that ogre outshoot Helf (although we have a solid shooting phase).

@Jimmy:

He was pretty choppy, now that you mention it.  I think that he's a good wizard, but it is really hard for a level 2 to compete against a level 4/6 (depending on the phase).  It is definitely powerful to have all of the signatures, but it is amazing how much that extra +2 when casting or dispelling comes into play to make him feel weak and powerless.

@Joakim:

Thank you

This was both of our first attempts at a 3000 point game.  My opponent said he was trying to do a magic light list so that he could have more supporting units.  And it would have been a much different game had I not shot out the phoenix and the swordmasters on turn 1, so I'm not yet convinced that it wouldn't work out to have a lighter magic phase.  That said, his list fell apart with one cannon shot, so it might not be that great anyway

As far as the high elf shooting is concerned, I think we are definitely playing against different armies.  Every time I play against elves, I find that their shooting is the least of my concerns.  Regular archers are only str 3, and bolt throwers only score a single kill roughly 25% of the time.  Sisters of Avalorn are definitely strong shooting, but they wilt in front of even a moderately sized unit of leadbelchers.

Out of curiosity, what have you faced from high elves that makes their shooting phase scary to you?  I am hoping to pass it along to my friend to help improve his lists.

Everything gets different if the phoenix dies turn 1 - but even if the bird co-charged the guts nothing would have changed : ) Not being able to thunderstomp is a major setback for the bird in the game as the only 4 attacks cannot reliably do enough wounds to stand off static combat of a rank and banner.

For Helf magic I would highly recommend using the book of hoeth - I know it is almost a no brainer - but it will allow the lvl2 to cast more reliably as most of the signature spells are around ~7-10 and need 2-3 dice to be cast even with the book. I bet the game had felt different if he had rocked up a lvl4 shadow with the book : )

I also find the elf shooting rather weak - absolutely - maybe my last post was misleading. I am just a bit concerned that ogres can field an apparently stronger gunline than most armies.
For the shooting, my Helf experience is that you want to pick off a few wounds here and there but hitting on 4+ and wounding on 5+ is just a pain and against ogres the RBTs are best used against mournfangs and the IBs (which is ofcourse good!) but dont rely on killing many ogres. the 17 sisters is rough maybe archers in core is a better trade off for shooting? High elves are tricky as you want the fun toys but everything is expensive and the whole list has to reflect your game plan.

I wish I played more 3000 pt games : )

Battle report I enjoyed most on here in a while.

Very well designed, clear images of battle progression, informative yet amusing descriptions and most importantly, interesting army lists! Good work!

Have a new pet gnoblar for your efforts!
BB

Awesome battle report! It was a lot of fun reading. May I make one suggestion to try in the future:

Use gruts sickle on a lvl 4 Maw slaughtermaster. You can easily get 4 useful spells that are all 9 or less to cast. Which means you can safely 2 dice them. So imagine a winds roll of 5-3. Pretty typical. Since you will very likely get +6/+7 on every roll, you can safely 2 dice ALL 4 spells and there's a good chance he won't be able to dispel any of them, or usually just one at the most. Because maw spells are cheaper and you get a +1 from the signature, you can reliably get away with this. And this also means the slaughtermaster can regain up to four wounds!

Even if you get a crappy, 6-1 roll. You can two dice three spells and then throw a single dice at the fourth and have a 66% chance of getting it off. And even though your opponent has 6 dice, it will be very hard for him to dispel two of them without a lvl 4. And in the four games I played a lvl 4 maw with gruts sickle... 0 miscasts. It's hard to miscast when you 2 or 1 dice every spell. pretty cool IMO.

@Belchfist:

I am glad you liked it!

@Nells:

Also glad you liked it

I have done Grut's on a maw master before.  Everything you say is completely true.  Depending on the needs of the list, that is definitely one of my preferred builds (the other being fencer's/scales/greedy fist).

With this list, I was really interested in seeing how beasts worked for ogres.  Before this game, I had never had beasts on anything other than a butcher when I was trying a buff heavy list (didn't work all that great, never had enough dice).  Grut's was included this time so that I had a chance of bubble casting the beasts buffs.



I have another game tomorrow, and I'm deciding between an off-beat tyrant/firebelly list (featuring a giant!) or a death slaughtermaster/yhetee list (featuring doom and darkness, hopefully).  I'll post the battle report with whatever I decide to do.