Using Beasts

krayd wrote:

Pippolele wrote:

What utility can we get out of a Beastmaster alone?
fast moving, character, untargetable:
I can see it deploying teleport Homers in relative safety for example.
What else?

The beastmaster is a pretty good animus vitae delivery system.

Can the beastmaster get close enough for a T1 animus vitae delivery and army wide advance and charge?

Pippolele wrote:

krayd wrote:

Pippolele wrote:

What utility can we get out of a Beastmaster alone?
fast moving, character, untargetable:
I can see it deploying teleport Homers in relative safety for example.
What else?

The beastmaster is a pretty good animus vitae delivery system.

Can the beastmaster get close enough for a T1 animus vitae delivery and army wide advance and charge?

You would likely need to not go first, and make sure that the beastmaster is well hidden at deployment (which actually isn't difficult to do on most current tournament layouts).

I usually use my beast master as a buff for the flock, usually staged out of LOS but within 6" of the bases in order to give them the LD, this is where the sits for the first 1-3 turns.

Then on turns 3-5, if I have units of birds left I will push them and him to a midfield objective.
if the birds are blasted (which they usually are) hes a great backfield unit to throw back there in order to screen out your deployment zone

I always have 2 units of 5 wracks as backfield objective campers, between them and the beastmaster I am usually pretty effective about screening out any deep strikes.

then once the opponent has pulled in all their reserves, you can move the beastmaster onto a backfield objective and free up some wracks to move further up the board.

in essence he either has some left over beasts and can help hold the midfield with spare units which will allow other units to be used for something other than objective camping
or do that in the back field.

that is the beauty of the beastmaster and the beasts unit, if they are used to pull control of objectives in the early game, and further used to keep control of objectives mid to late game they are providing their best use

being a cheep, cheep unit that requires you opponent to make a bad choice: spending effort into removing a unit that is for all intents and purposes unable to do anything but sit and die.

I feel the more you double down on this principle with beasts and the beastmaster, the more you find value in them being around. Not for what they can do, but what they can allow other units to do.

Well, the Animus works best with a Cult-heavy fast list. Lots of Hellion and Reavers...
Venom goes his full movement, fires, moves 7" via strat and then the character inside throws the animus.
Et voila, the whole army can advance and charge on the first turn.

Unless you roll a 1 for the animus, and cant re-roll it due to the unit being inside a Vehicle (cant use a strat on a unit inside a vehicle). You can be Black Heart to have a built-in reroll, but IDK how popular Kabals are right now.

Where-as a Beastmaster with Splintermind is BS2, and can easily get in range to throw the Vitae on Turn 2 (possibly Turn 1 if your opponent made a mistake), and can be a recipient for the reroll strat.

I ran 4 Clawed Fiends as a blocker/decoy unit. Most people freak out when you tell them their stats. When they work best it is doing something like eating a charge from Deathshrouds or pinning something else of high value in melee. They were never really meant to kill stuff in combat.

As for the Beastmaster, yes, he sucks. I do use him for Animus Vitae because he is going to be up front with the Clawed Fiends.

Beastmaster can also Raise Banners.

Currently running her in my list without any beasts, just as an Animus Vitae caddy. Performs the function really well.

Also baits the opponent into picking Assasinate/Mental Interrogation. Which is one of the few ways I can win in the current Comp Meta, haha.