Is the baron + beast unfunn?

Hi. I am using the Barron Satonyx with beasts. We played an old 4th edition mission from city of death where we plant flags. We deployed 12" away from the middel and 18" away from him. I roll a 6 siece the inisiative and the barron get a first turn charge. He kept decimating my oponent the whole game. It was in a campain so I have gotten some cheap Khorne marines/daemons who have infiltrated my warband. However, even withouth them this battle felt pretty one sided. Especialy with them. The last nail in the coffin was when my allied daemonprice used smash attacks on his landraider acchiles. Usualy not very easy to take out. (He got 3 attacks in and I had glanced it once before.)

However, what really bothered him was the barron and beast. True, they are very good when you siece iniciative and are within charge range the first turn. My question: Is the barron with beasts booring to play against? It seems like it does a lot of everything. Stealth, defensive grenades, assault grenades, high inisiative, champions who can accept challenges, can tank with 4+ khymera or a 2+ shatterfield. Rending attacks and S6 on the charge makes shure you can threaten a lot and even then you can hide behind hit and run.

Am I not playing them right? Beasts move 12 and charge 6. Not slowed by terrain exept on the inisiative witch gets negated by the assault grenades. When I charge I will charge 2d6 with re-rolls (fleet) or I will charge 3d6 when the barron charges, re-rolling any d6 I see fit. The beasts only roll 2d6 if the barron is not with the unit. Also, the baron must roll a dificult terain test whenever he starts or stops in terain. If he does he can first re-roll the dificult terain test and then has a 2++ shadowfield vs the terain or takes a wound (and looses the shield.) Is it just me or is this to good? My oponents let me play with it but it is rather harsh.


I run them with 15 beasts, 5 beatsmasters and 4 razorwing flocks.
PS: It did not help that I managed to roll up fearles on them as a campain trait.

If you my oponent had gotten the first turn he could have shot it with the achilles earthshacker cannon (or whatnot) withouth the coversaves, 4 shots at s5. Also he had a drop pod with twin-linked flamer and a flamer so I do not think they are that unbalanced. What do you folk's think? They do clock in at around 405 points. 1/5 of the army (we played at 2000 points.)

It's a good and quite versatile unit for sure, but not unstoppable and certainly not boring. You can add more nasty characters to it and turn it into a very powerful single unit, but such things have their disadvantages anyway (very expensive for one thing).

Getting a first turn charge in with one as large as you run is bad news for your opponent, but that wouldn't usually happen. If your opponent really wants to stop it, expect a heap of small arms fire to put a dent in it.

As for your questions about the rules, I'll do my best:

Beasts move 12" ignoring difficult terrain and charge 2D6". They are fleet so can re-roll any or all D6. They have move through cover so ignore dangerous terrain tests.

Baron is jump infantry so moves 12" over all cover when using his skyboard. He charges 2D6" (3D6" & picking 2 lowest if charging through difficult terrain & not using his skyboard) and is fleet so gets re-rolls as above. He does take dangerous terrain checks when using the skyboard (in both movement phase or assault phase I think), but re-rolls the dice & can then use his shadowfield to save himself too.

So if the Baron is with the beasts they all have to move at the speed of the slowest, which will be the Baron if he's not using his skyboard (remember he can't use it to both move and assault in the same turn).

I think that covers it, but it is quite late!

It sounds like your forces are doing really well in this campaign and that may be affecting how close these games are. If things are snowballing in your favor, that may affect how much fun your friend may be having.

Sometimes the game just plays out in a lopsided way. That's just the kind of thing that happens in 40k.

I'd suggest talking to your friend and seeing what you both can do to make things more fun for each other.

Squierboy wrote:

So if the Baron is with the beasts they all have to move at the speed of the slowest, which will be the Baron if he's not using his skyboard (remember he can't use it to both move and assault in the same turn).

Thats not quite true as your models may move at different speeds in the movement phase... not that this is relevant here mind you... just pointing it out.

As for the beast unit... mine is so underwhelming i don't use it anymore. I run a max pack, similar to yours and it fails me time and again. Anytime it see's the table it is hit again and agin with small arms to take out the khymera then ID weapons for the flocks... 4++ is still just a 4+ vs small arms afterall...

Statistically its great, on paper it rocks... but for me... mine looks nice on the shelf these days

Personally I'm still happy if my beasts get shot to hell on their way to the enemy lines. It means that a lot of firepower is going into them that is not going into the rest of my army. The unit is really cheap for what it can do so I don't regard it as a waste of points. A full beast pack + Baron comes to 375 points, has 47 wounds, 10 x 4++ saves and a 2++ save, is virtually immune to challenges and can pump out 90 attacks in close combat, over a third of which are rending. Basically, my opponent has to shoot it to hell because if he doesn't it will rip him a new one!

The problem is that I find that it doesn't rip anything. 36 rending attacks vs meq is what...3 wounds and 3 rends on average? The rest of the attacks net about 12 more wounds assuming the pack gets there unharmed. So 8 marines dead based on math hammer. Problem is that it won't hit unharmed and it is so reliant on rending to to the work that its easy to fail and loose combat.

In short, they are just not reliable enough for me

To be sure I've had games where they've done nothing offensively for me but I've won pretty much all of those games because they've absorbed so much firepower before being destroyed that the rest of my army has managed to do what needed to be done. YMMV

I love beasts and I always add them into my army with the baron.

One thing to note about your game. You stole the ini first turn which is cool. But the player that gets the first player turn cannot make charges

colinsherlow wrote:

I love beasts and I always add them into my army with the baron.

One thing to note about your game. You stole the ini first turn which is cool. But the player that gets the first player turn cannot make charges

Sorry, where did you read that?

Never heard a rule againstit, but usually when i play games, i end up just short of charge distance due to the enemy deployment. Can you believe that they won't meet my charge head on...

I find the Baran and Beast pack isn't working out very well lately as players have learned to not shoot them and just kill them in melee as they almost alway lose combat flee possibly even get swept, of course this changes if you have Eldar allies in the mix but then it's even more resources pumped into it

I've only heard that anti-charge rule about Infiltrators, not sure if it applies to the dumb-luck of stealing the Initiative. May want to double-check that though.

Massaen wrote:

Thats not quite true as your models may move at different speeds in the movement phase... not that this is relevant here mind you... just pointing it out.

Yep, good point. I intended my statement to mean when rolling for assaults only.

As for the effectiveness of the unit, being a potential threat is one of its most useful features. Your opponent should know that it's packed with multiple S4 and S3 rending attacks along with hit & run (& a reasonable amount of splinter fire too) and could in theory tear through almost any infantry or tank unit they have. This will make them target it in a hurry as it is also very fast moving, which could very well save your other units early on in the game. Even if they die without assaulting, they could win you the game by doing so.

So you should take advantage of their cheapness by keeping it cheap - don't plough too many points into a distraction unit, but make it just big enough to draw fire. You'd have to experiment to find just the right size to go for.


...unless of course you are going for a 'death star' type unit, but then you'll be including a few 2+ save characters to absorb damage and keep the beasts alive.

Quote :

Statistically its great, on paper it rocks... but for me... mine looks nice on the shelf these days

What does it mean exactly.

What is the rest of your force?

I've shelfed mine as well, it's a melee unit that doesn't win melee and gets shot up pretty easily to. It's not cheap once you add the Baron in either really same points as Archon with incubi or grots with sucubus etc.
But if it works for you, use it.

colinsherlow wrote:

I love beasts and I always add them into my army with the baron.

One thing to note about your game. You stole the ini first turn which is cool. But the player that gets the first player turn cannot make charges

So far as I can tell, that's only applied by the infiltrate special rule.

@Azdrubael - I mean that using math hammer and looking at the combo of rules and stats the unit SHOULD be great. In my experience on the table it's not and thus it generally stays on the shelf beside my mandrakes

Weird. My beasts have been performing amazingly well for their points. The thing that's been helping me lately has been putting the flocks up front when bolters are around and the Khymera up front when ID is a fear.

Lately, I run two cheap units of mostly Flocks that lurk in cover or out of LoS and try to counter charge things that get too close, or make a run at shooty problems.

It's in the rules book. I don't have the book on me at the moment, but it is there. It's only the player that goes first. If you go second you can charge

colinsherlow wrote:

It's in the rules book. I don't have the book on me at the moment, but it is there. It's only the player that goes first. If you go second you can charge

I've never seen this in the rules. I've never read about anyone who has seen this in the rules. I've never seen it mentioned before. In the absence of a page reference I'm going to stick with turn 1 assaults regardless of whether I go first or second.

Count Adhemar wrote:

colinsherlow wrote:

It's in the rules book. I don't have the book on me at the moment, but it is there. It's only the player that goes first. If you go second you can charge

I've never seen this in the rules. I've never read about anyone who has seen this in the rules. I've never seen it mentioned before. In the absence of a page reference I'm going to stick with turn 1 assaults regardless of whether I go first or second.

I agree.

There is a reference about turn 1 charges under infiltrate but thats it

The problem with this matchup was that we deployed 12" away from the middel and 18" away from each other. He should not have depployed 18" away from where that beastpack was going (in city of death one of the ruins I had was an HQ so they had +1 coversave in there resulting in a +2 with the stealth.) It is basic strategy when fighting nids, I do not for the life of me understand why people do not so so with the beast pack.

I have been using the baron a bit wrong as he should not get the hammer of wrath attack if I move him 12". Often he does not make it into base to base contact so I guess it is not so important. I was eating combat squads who are pushover in melee (relatively vs 400 points of melle units)

One problem I have noticed is that my I6 models, barron, pack master, khymera pile in at 6 and usualy kills the one in base to base contact meaning my razorwing flock does not get to make attacks at I5. Then at I4 or 1 my opponent piles back in and delivers his attacks.

Niiai wrote:

One problem I have noticed is that my I6 models, barron, pack master, khymera pile in at 6 and usualy kills the one in base to base contact meaning my razorwing flock does not get to make attacks at I5. Then at I4 or 1 my opponent piles back in and delivers his attacks.

That's a problem with large units going into assault.

Except the flocks pile in as well...

Massaen wrote:

Except the flocks pile in as well...

Exactly. As long as a flock can get in base contact with one or more enemy models or is within 2" of a friendly model in base contact with one or more enemy models in the same combat then they can attack.

The flocks pile in at I5. By then the models I was in base to base contact with are gone as they do not pile back before I4 or 1.

Or do I have it wrong? Just need to pile in to one that has been in base to base during the fight?