by Joel McGrath

Welcome to Plastic Craic’s BOC Faction review for 4th Edition. The Plastic Craic writing team has a boatload of event wins and podiums between us, and we will be reviewing these Faction Packs with the care they deserve: our aim is to bring you better reviews, from better players.

Joel is a hard-core BOC nerd, with an immense collection of Beasts that have amassed an absolute haul of trophies over the years. Let’s see what he thinks of their 4th Edition rules.

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Like most Beasts of Chaos players at the end of 3^rd Edition, I was happy to pretend this army no longer existed in the game of Age of Sigmar. However, in Games Workshop’s infinite wisdom, they gave us 12 more months with our beloved horned and hooved ones. And honestly, I can’t say if I’m grateful or simply annoyed. Because this battletome is a perfect blend of how Beasts have played on the table from the earliest Wild West days of 1^st Edition to the end of 3^rd, and I’ve already grieved enough to not want to fall into the trap of having to do it all over again next year. But here we are, with this diamond in the rough, at one of the wildest times you can be playing in Age of Sigmar. Talk about a welcome dilemma!

The Lanscape

A great place to start when looking at a 4^th edition army is understanding how the core rules changes affect the potential playstyles of your chosen army. And a few immediately come to mind for BOC.

No more battleshock – This is absolutely massive for how I like to play the army. And that is a horde of goats coming at you from all angles, tying you up and letting you kill them slowly.

Damage has ‘gone down across the board’ – I’m not sure if I 100% agree with this, but there are a lot more units hitting on 4+ base now; and while there aren’t any -1s to hit available to BoC, we are big players in the new Activation Wars, meaning that what is actually hitting us will rarely be at full strength. Combo this with no more battleshock, and our major weaknesses are suddenly no longer a problem.

One other thing that I should mention is that Marked Beasts are weak-gutted dogs, and all the Tzaangor are FINALLY out of the army. Good. Fucking. Riddance. Don’t let the door hit you on your way to union.

Battle traits

The Herdstone

Spare me your Ackshually, I know it’s not a battle trait, but it may as well be as we are always taking it. The Herdstone has seen yet another change, but like the rest of this battletome, it seems to be a near perfect blend of what once was, and what has been. Starting from the second battle round it gives you +1 rend on everything in combat. No longer does it tick up to +2, but it is what it is. If you set it up wholly within 18” of the middle, it’s board wide instead of 24”. You are probably always doing this to get the extra rend in the opponent’s backfield, so make sure you start some models on the table to protect it! Some people will say that shooting can just take it off, and while that may be the case with Kharadron Overlords, most of the dedicated ranged units in the game will need to be standing in the middle of the table to reach it anyway. And I doubt any stormcast players want their longstrikes in the dead center of the board. 

Masters of the Wilderness / Beastherd Ambush

These will feel very familiar to fellow BoC players who played them in the last edition. We are still able to deploy everything off the table and bring them on 9” away from enemies and 9” from the board edge. You still get the +1 to charge rolls when you ambush. This is especially nice in the new edition because there are generally fewer enemy units on the table now, forcing them either to zone you out from their backfield with a larger chunk of their army, or leaving you larger openings to get those objectives or get stuck into the guts of their army. How good will it be to send in a couple units to lock up your opponent’s long-ranged shooting units, such as Jezzails, that can no longer shoot in combat!

Rituals of Ruin

Rituals have had a bit of a shake up and a tone down compared to the previous battletome but are still extremely solid and a core part of how the army functions. One big change is no longer needing to do damage to your own heroes for these to happen. I like free shit.

There are 3 options to choose from: all have a wholly within 12” range from a hero (or board edge if a hero is in ambush), and all go off on a 2+.

Warping Curse – Simply roll a d3, and on a 2+ deal mortals. This used to be d6 mortals, but it aligns with how the game works now. D6 mortals are very rare from what I’ve seen so far in 4^th.

Brand of Wild Fury – Probably the worst of the three Rituals, but still not a bad one. The army suffers from a lack of ward saves, and this one gives you a 6+ on a unit just for your turn. If it means a couple of extra models get to stick around for another turn, then I’m all for it.

Bestial Instincts – The best, by a mile. +1 to wound on a unit is massive and it sends your damage potential skyrocketing. Beasts have never had access to a flat +1 to wound before, and Beasts players will be looking to use this in every turn of their games.

Battle Formations

As is the case with most battle formations, they lend themselves to buffing a specific category of unit within an army. Hungering Warherd heals your bulls, Thunderscorn Stormherd heals your Dragon Ogors, yada yada yada. However, there’s a clear standout, and this is Almighty Beastherd. It says it in the name, it is all, and it is mighty. Granting all your units +1 to hit against enemy units contesting an objective they control. Perfect for those backfield ambushing Gor looking to steal a couple of cheeky points.

Anarchic Relics (Artefacts)

We’re not exactly spoiled for choice in this department, considering this is in place of BOC ever getting a 4th Ed Battletome, but there are 3 options and 2 choices. The Gnarlstaff turns off enemy ward saves on a 2+, while the Brayblast Trumpet is a gift from the writing team to repurpose your Beasts of Chaos army into a Soulblight army. In a game where there is no summoning and not much recursion, giving us 5 chances of cracking a 4+ to bring a unit back at half strength is very generous. The Trumpet is a clear favorite, but there is a use case for the Gnarlstaff if wards get out of control at the back end of this season before we get the chop.

Alphabeast Instincts (Heroic Traits)

This is honestly the first real choice you have to make when writing a list. And your chosen Trait is going to define how your army will play on the table.

Bestial Cunning is a fan favourite from the last battletome, but has changed slightly. Instead of slamming down 9 Bullgor 7” away with a +2 to charge, you’re now turning your general into a Lord-Imperatant (but better because it’s not once per game). This combo’s well with the ambushing rules to essentially get d3+1” to your charge. At a minimum you’re on a 50% chance to land those 7’s on 2d6. You can always get lucky though, that’s why we play dice games after all.

Death-Grip is a really interesting ability, one that can bust open a game against a shooting army. Or make your opponent hesitate to shoot you in the first place. Important to note here the 2d6” move can be finished in combat. Think about how powerful that is, for potentially preventing other units from shooting or locking up some cav from charging etc. It’s like a second Countercharge that happens as a Reaction in the shooting phase. I just question whether or not it’s as good in game as it is on paper. Shoutout to my mate Big (Sexy) Shaun over in New Zealand, he “loves” these ‘trap card’ mechanics.

Propagator of Ruin is my personal favourite, allowing you to do two of the Rituals a turn. Note that it is not the Hero that’s doing a Ritual, you just measure from them. Meaning you can zap from the board edge and give your units on the table a defensive or offensive buff.

Spells

BoC do not have strong wizards, they never have and probably never will, unless the dev’s want to be generous again. No bonuses to cast and all our wizards are Power Level 1, looking at a spell lore that requires 7s and 8s to cast. A real shame, because the BoC spell lore always has solid spells, including now.

Devolve received an upgrade, moving from the Bray Shaman’s warscroll to the spell lore, which I guess doesn’t mean much in 4^th edition. Pick a non-Hero unit of Gluttons whatever and turn them into numpties. Max control score of 1, no Commands and has to move closer to the wizard who cast it every time they move. Fucking nuts spell. It’s a shame it has a 12” range and a cast of 7. Spell Portals still exist come to think of it…

Vicious Stranglethorns is another rippa spell where you half their move and subtract one dice from their charge. Casting value 8 and a 12” range.

Viletide rounds out the lore and is the unlimited one. A flat d3 mortals and no Commands until your next turn. Casting value 7 and a 12” range…

Spell Portals yeah?

Manifestations

BoC endless spells have always been good on paper but never saw much play due to a lack of good casting options and needing to pay points for them. Much the same in 4th, but at least they’re free now, right?

Doomblast Dirgehorn is a great endless spell for keeping goats on the table. A growing -1 to wound aura is solid and will hurt a lot of combat armies. It’s just a shame you no longer require line of sight to banish them anymore.

Ravening Direflock is a good screen? Reducing control scores of enemies by 5 is nice, but are we really going to cast this over devolve if we have the choice?

Wildfire Taurus continues to be the absolute unit it’s always been. It does some decent damage in combat and is our first source of strike last in our toolkit, by way of old-school Stonehorn impact charge mortals. Honestly, the Taurus alone makes this manifestation lore worth taking over the generic ones.

Warscroll Focus

Time to get stuck into our beloved BOC units. We’re all here because we love these idiots, and we’ve all got our personal favourites (not you, Tzaangors, piss off back to your own Battletome).

BoC have always been broken up into different ‘groups’. We thankfully lost one grouping already (catch ya, Tzaangors). The remaining are Brayherd, Warherd, Thunderscorn and Monsters of Chaos. I will talk about these different groups together, as the unit(s) and accompanying hero (if any) gel well into little power pairs, just to save some room for when I get down to Brayherd and we can really get into it.

Thunderscorn

Our only monster hero who slaps in combat, boasting a control score of 2. The Dragon Ogor Shaggoth, or Shaggy, is no slouch this edition. Paired best with a unit of Dragon-Oh Yeah’s to give them a 4+ spell shrug. These two units get Crit (Mortal) in combat with their main weapons, which is applied to multi-damage attacks. Dragon Ogors are cavalry now, who interestingly get to fight first if they get charged, with no other charge bonus. Name me another cavalry unit that’s built differently like the Drogor.

I do rate both units. Shaggy is expensive at 260 but he is doing a lot: casting, killing, outscoring a single Zombie on an objective. The list goes on.

Monsters of Chaos

You can forget a couple of these units exist in this category, due to a sad combination of points and a lack of doing anything. Such as the Spawn and the Razorgor. But there is some nice stuff in here.

People who have played AoS for a while may be familiar with all of the different iterations of the Jabberslythe warscroll – it’s had quite the journey. Well, the Jabber’s received another makeover, and I believe it is the best one yet. A Jabberslythe is a fantastic mid-board Monster who’s doing a 9” Rampage, making multiple enemy units hurt themselves on hits of 1 in combat, while not being in combat himself. Not all Rampages are created equal and it can be used without needing to charge, and can even target multiple units. Pretty crazy stuff for 210pts. Tuck him behind your front lines and hope the artillery don’t lock it in their sights.

Cockatrices have a part to play in the Activation Wars. They’re now a horde-clearing ranged unit that hands out Strikes Last. Not a bad idea to run one of these if you have large hordes in your meta, such as Skaven or Zombies. They are a Beast though, so only count for 1 on objectives, which isn’t ideal for a 150pt piece.

The Chimera is over-pointed but has a lot of attacks. I can see a world where you ambush 3 of these in with a Bestial Cunning general, and (barely) kill 10 Plague Bearers off an objective. At least they have a control score of 5.

The Chaos Gargant lost his aura of -1 to save but is your cheapest monster at 160pts if that becomes relevant. Skip, unfortunately.

The best Monster of Chaos scroll is the Chaos Warhounds. 20 wounds, small cavalry base and 10 models for 130 points. They’re fast, you can make them run and charge and they change a dice to a 4 on the charge. A near-perfect pinning unit turn 1, or to occupy space and buy some time for the Herdstone to tick over. Fuck, reinforce them, why not? They’ll do work with the new combat range. There are worse warscrolls to be taking and reinforcing.

Warherd

Still your bread and butter for mass carnage on the drop. The Doombull’s command ability of old is now giving another Warherd unit an extra dice to their charge. HUGE. Keep in mind that you can still do Bestial cunning, to get a potential 5” charge on 3d6. Redeploy that, motherfucker! You can even use Slaughterer’s Call to Countercharge, which opens up a whole heap of potential your opponent probably wasn’t expecting.

Both the Doombull and Bullgor do charge mortals, however they lost their Crit (Mortals). Bullgor received a points drop back down to 180 because of this, but they still do some work in combat with a potential 14 damage per model on the charge (not including charge mortals). It’s just a shame you cant double reinforce them anymore, so I expect to see fewer Bulls on the table. In saying that, they are still scary.

Gary the Ghorgon is much the same as previously, and probably our best Monster for damage at 220pts. The Cygor is now a pure Manifestation assassin, but has taken a whack as it lost the ability to unbind twice and can only do mortals to a wizard once on a successful spell attempt.

Brayherd

Dear reader, if you’ve made it this far: Thank you for sticking with me. But we’ve finally made it to what I believe is the best part of the battletome.

Centigor – The only warscroll in this section that you can forget exists. Unfortunately, their 4+ ward rule is only in your turn, and they don’t really do anything? It’s almost as if they’re missing a weapon profile in combat to justify their 160pt price tag. Honestly, I think it’s GW just saying to us ‘Please don’t buy these models from us, and please don’t even bother 3D printing them’. Thanks, Good Guy GW; I’ll just keep the 30 odd in the box.

Chariot – One you can mostly forget about. They don’t do much and are over pointed like the Centigor. If your game plan even suggests using Power Through with these, go back to The Old World as Age of Sigmar is not the game for you.

We’re spoiled for choice for hero selection when it comes to the goats. A whole two choices. Which at least are both kind of good.

The Bray Shaman is an auto include if you’re playing a BoC army. Probably multiple. They try their best to cast spells at your opponent, but what they’re really doing is Rituals and granting run and charge to one unit a turn. We’ve finally got it back after 3 years! Considering the spell lore, their points value of 120 is fair. The run and charge can go on any Beast of Chaos unit; Bullgor can go a mighty 12” +3d6” if you really wanted to. But ultimately, it’s just fantastic for moving your Herd around and getting onto those objectives.

The Beastlord is another good warscroll and the perfect leader for your army. The Beastlord can do some work in combat and gives out some insane buffs too: if there’s an enemy hero nearby, the Hatred of Heroes ability kicks in and he can even make another unit fight after him, adding to your Activation Wars toolbox. Most notable thing about the Beastlord is he is your cheapest hero to bring in the Jabberslythe, as the Shamans can only take Brayherd units. It is a tax you might be willing to pay to stay away from Auxilaries.

With goats, there’s always been running jokes of which Gor is the best. I can safely say that all the Gors are great and for the first time, you want to take all of them in an army. All of the goats from Ungor to Bestigor have Crit (2 Hits) with their melee weapons, including Ungor Raiders. This is a big deal for BoC as you used to have to get a spell off, spend a CP, walk your dog and fly to Paris for the Olympics to get them doing exploding attacks. It was almost impossible.

Ungor are the weakest but can retreat out of combat in the combat phase on a 3+, making them a near-perfect forward screen for the rest of your horde. It is only once per turn (army) so this trick won’t work on multiple units. But who cares if they die? They’re Ungor.

Ungor Raiders have had a massive shift in power and I’m here for it. Nothing pissed me off more than my boys with bows having a huge shakeup and points hike in the last battletome. No longer are they an efficient shooting unit, but they’re back to their old tricks: shit tons of dice, back to 18” range and still having a pseudo shoot-from-off-the-table ability. Honestly, the perfect warscroll at 90pts for 10. The thing to note is you can’t take 10 units and have them all use their Hidden Volley ability all at once. But that’s ok, I plan to use 2 units of 20 with an ambushing Shaman to pressure those backfield squishy shooting units like Longstrikes. The damage will add up for a couple of turns before you can get stuck into them. It’s still 20 wounds that aren’t battleshocking at the end of the day. A fantastic unit.

Gor are largely unchanged from their previous iteration, however there’s no longer dual weapons or shields. These are your main source of Strike Last with their Gor Stampede ability. They are also pointed well when compared to Bestigor on damage output and other stats and abilities. 10 Bestigor is better than 10 Gor, 20 Gor is better than 10 Bestigor, and 20 Bestigor are, infact, the best Gor. Regardless of this, take Gor. Lots of Gor. The more Gor the better.

Speaking of Bestigor, what a glow up! Finally, at long last, Bestigor have more than 2 attacks on a model. now, they are 200pts for 10 and they remain as 2 wound models with a 4+ save with a passive -1 to wound in the shooting phase. The +1 to wound Ritual on a 2+ can make 20 of these guys drop a Mega Gargant in one activation. The last time Bestigor could reliably drop something major in a turn was at the start of AoS2, when Gavespawn could hand out +10 or so attacks per model while you were fishing for CP regen. What a wild time that was. And what a wild time it is now. It’s only taken 6 years.

I’m going to end the review with a list I’m looking at taking to an event coming up. It’s untried and untested at the time of writing, but I’m getting mad nostalgia from this battletome from the peak of my wargaming career back at the end of 1^st edition and into 2^nd edition. I never won a big GT with this style of list, but I took out a lot of podiums and fuck it was a good time.

The list: BRAAAAAAAAY

Beasts of Chaos
Almighty Beastherd

Beastlord 170

• 1 x Jabberslythe 210
• 20 x Gors 220

Great Bray-Shaman 120
[General]
[Propagator of Ruin] – Allows for two rituals a turn
[Brayblast Trumpet] – 4+ bring back a unit

• 20 x Bestigors 400
• 20 x Ungor Raiders 180
• 20 x Ungor Raiders 180

Great Bray-Shaman 120

• 10 x Ungor Raiders 90
• 10 x Ungor Raiders 90
• 20 x Gors 220

Lore of the Twisted Wilds / Bestial Manifestations

2000/2000pts
3 drops

That’s 168 wounds of heavenly joy, with recycling and a whole bunch of dice getting flung around. I think it’ll be a lot of fun to play and I believe it can be competitive. Backboard threats, some play in the Activation Wars and some damage when you need it.

The only downside is that the entire army is basically Infantry, giving your opponent an easy choice to make with their Honour Guard. But that doesn’t overly matter, because everything in the army has a shit save anyway. Another thing that I can see being an issue is a lack of proper damage: weight of dice is really nice, but the army does lack a proper nut cracker. I have considered running the Incarnate instead of the Bestial Manifestations, but I want to be one of those cool kids who get to flood the board with them.

The Bestigor (who will almost always be your Honour Guard) and Gor can pump out some serious volumes of dice, but I’m playing an AoS2 style list in AoS4 that doesn’t have a battleshock mechanic. 5-0 will be a piece of piss*.

*Sarcasm, obviously. If you didn’t pick that up, making BOC work might be a bit above your paygrade.

Credit for all minis to Eat, Bray, Love. Give him a follow

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