The Herd are now a Theme List, building off of the Forces of Nature Master list. They already had some overlap, like with centaur units, so this change has some sense to it. In addition to their particular units in the UE book, the Herd can now utilize some Druids, the Centaur units, Earth Elementals and the woodsy nature Tree units from the Nature list. All cool stuff and I'm sure many people will make good use of these new available units.
My collection mainly started with a few boxes of WHFB Beastmen and Chaos Hounds, then added in a bunch of Confrontation Werewolves and few other things. At the end of Second Edition, I had a bit over 3500 points; the bulk of the army was Lycan Hordes anchoring lots and lots of troops (Longhorns, Hunters, and screening Beast Packs. In the late fall of 2019, I also added a few points-heavy units with some Stampedes and a legendary Avatar of the Father.
Many of my units went up in points in Third Edition actually. Beast Packs 70 to 85, Longhorns 100 to 135, Hunters 75 to 90; my anchoring Lycan Hordes 245 to 255. Pathfinder is a very strong special rule, and it seems like 3rd Edition is reflecting that a little more.
Unfortunately, the Edition change has invalidated a significant chunk (points-wise) of my army. The "core" is still there, but all the unusual units I added (the legendary Avatar, the Brutox and the Stampedes) are all lacking entries now...
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| Pictured: The Herd Losers of 3rd Edition. Brutox, Avatar of the Father, and two Stampedes. |
Design-wise.. I can see Mantic trying to move things along and make their army unique. Cutting the Stampede is odd in my opinion though, as I felt it was an exemplary KoW unit. It was suitably generic (a stampede of anything), and the very nature of the unit just begged to be multibased in a dynamic fashion. It seemed a staple of 2nd Edition lists from what I saw, and very fluffy, so I don't know why they axed this one. The Brutox I could understand, it being just a generic monster. I can also get the logic behind cutting the Avatar of the Father, if they wanted to "go wide" with the army design, gimping leadership a bit and forcing players to take more units.
Overall, my Herd collection took a hit, but I've got a great core of 2500 points or so, and with the door open to run the old Stampedes as Chariots... it's not that bad. For any newcomers to the Herd, the army looks to be in a good spot with all the neat options coming in from Nature Master List.
Overall, my Herd collection took a hit, but I've got a great core of 2500 points or so, and with the door open to run the old Stampedes as Chariots... it's not that bad. For any newcomers to the Herd, the army looks to be in a good spot with all the neat options coming in from Nature Master List.
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| Most of my Herd survived the transition to Third Edition. |
Personally, there's not too much I want to add to this collection, though if I'm losing some units, I may add a few new ones once the weather gets better. I'm digging that the Spirit Walkers gained the Phantasm keyword. I played a fair bit of WC3 back in the day and like the idea of a unit of Tauren spirit walkers joining the Herd at some point. We'll see what happens!
I look at your Herd Losers photo and see two Minotaur Chariot regiments and two Beasts of Nature ;D And good looking ones as well, dig your blue Herd, especially with so many smaller units, very cool.
ReplyDeleteThanks for visiting and the kind words!
Delete...and the info! Geez. I had heard about the Chariot substitution possibility, but totally missed the Beast of Nature entry! That's very cool. Thanks for point that out!