Total War: Warhammer – Call of the Beastmen Review. Hey, horned one! Review of Total War: Warhammer - Call of the Beastmen

Or the Beasts of Chaos are the nightmarish creatures of the warp. Creatures changed and mutated due to the corrupting influence of the Dark Gods. One could feel sorry for them, for the fate of many beastmen is bitter and sad, if these mutants did not pose a colossal threat to all intelligent races of the world.

Classification of horned and tailed animals

The number of human-beast hybrids cannot be accurately calculated. These creatures live wherever people have ever appeared. They usually choose forests for housing, and the deeper the thicket, the better. Beast people are not stupid; they understand perfectly well that being seen by other intelligent beings is an extremely risky activity, fraught with death.

The average beastman, if such a term can be applied to such creatures, is a creature with the legs of a goat, the powerful muscular body of a man and the head of a beast. Quite often - goat.

Despite the fact that the number of beastmen is large, and their mutations are varied, two main groups can still be distinguished. These are the Ungors and the mountains. The Gores are the strongest and most powerful of the beastmen, usually identified by their enormous horns, of which there can often be more than one pair. Unogres are not able to boast of such wealth, which immediately puts them in a subordinate position in the society of beastmen. In addition, they are weaker than the mountains.

In addition to the mountains and Ungors, frequently encountered beastmen include minotaurs - nightmarish creatures of enormous height with bull heads, and centigors - horse-human hybrids. The latter usually replace cavalry for the beastmen.

We must also not forget about the “Air Force” of the beastmen - the harpies. These creatures are a parody of women. Ugly, with mugs distorted from hatred and mouths filled to capacity with sharp teeth, they can seem beautiful only to very large originals. But at the same time, harpies are very cowardly creatures. They are scavengers, preferring to attack the weak and finish off the wounded. Having encountered serious resistance, the harpies very quickly lose their fighting spirit and scatter in all directions.

It is worth mentioning about dragon ogres - unimaginably ancient and unimaginably nightmarish monsters who, according to legend, entered into an agreement with Chaos in time immemorial. The essence of the agreement was simple: long withering in exchange for death, in return - service for the good of Chaos. Dragonogres can live almost indefinitely, but they spend most of their time in hibernation, awakening only when Chaos calls to them.

By the way, many also consider the notorious (and not unreasonably) one of the subspecies of beastmen. However, this theory has one serious flaw - extremely high level development of upright walking rats.

Beastmen Society

Quite primitive creatures. In this sense, they differ little from orcs and ogres. Beast people live in small tribes or herds, as they are also called, each of which has a leader - an animal ruler. Usually this is the strongest mountain with the most beautiful horns.

However, real power still belongs not to them, but to the shamans.

Beastmen shamans are natural sorcerers, capable of harnessing the winds of magic on an instinctual level. Where a human or elven sorcerer would rely on knowledge, a shaman will simply cast spells without thinking about how he does it. For them, magic is a natural process, just like walking or breathing.

This is why shamans are the most revered members of beastmen society. Killing a shaman is the worst thing that only one of these creatures can do in his life. Moreover, you need to understand that this life will end very quickly after committing a crime.

Beasts of Chaos do not build cities. Usually they huddle in some thicket and set up a primitive camp there. It should be understood that beastmen do not stay anywhere for a long time (at least in large numbers), because in otherwise they run the risk of meeting the regular troops of the local inhabitants, who, and this is absolutely certain, will not be particularly friendly.

In addition, they try to make their camps around the so-called herd stones - ancient structures with sacred meaning for creatures crippled by Chaos.

Beasts of War

Beastmen are called Chaos Beasts for a reason. The dark gods did not simply mutilate living flesh, turning it into a nightmarish parody of itself, no. They have created a huge army of loyal followers who live only to please their ruthless overlords.

That is why, when the shaman hears the call of the Dark Gods of Chaos, he lights a fire near the herd stone. Smoke and flames are sure to attract all the beastmen in the area, and now several flocks are uniting in order to carry out the order. First, ritual battles are held, which make it possible to determine the strongest of the tribal leaders, who will lead the united herd into battle.

After this, the best armor and good weapons are brought to light. Both are passed on to the best of the mountains, who are called bestigors, and who are to become the main fighting force of the army.

How more the gods will appear to the shamans, the more tribes will unite. Like streams, these small armies will rush forward, gathering into a full-flowing river that crushes everything in its path.

And stopping such a flow will not be easy!

However, even without the orders of Chaos beastmen- are deadly. Both loners and small groups and herds, in their free time from serious wars, do only one thing - attack, kill and eat.

A lone traveler or even a small detachment moving along a forest road. Farm on the outskirts. Small village. Residents of the Old World should always remember that the forest is often fraught with dark nightmares that can come on the legs of a goat.

Drakvald and the Wastes

One of the most famous dwellings of the beastmen, a place that brings the most more quantity problems and headaches, of course, is Drakvald. This is a huge forest area, almost filled to capacity Beasts of Chaos, goblins and other equally vile creatures who constantly raid the lands of the Empire.

However, this is far from the only abode of the beastmen. These creatures live wherever it is possible to live. There are especially many of them, of course, in the Chaos Wastes, both northern and southern.

This guide will discuss the strengths and weak sides Beastmen. It's time to think like a predator.

Beastmen are one of the most beautiful and original races of Warhammer total war. It’s worth choosing them even just to watch how a crowd of minotaurs breaks apart almost any formation.

The economy of the beast people is one of the most difficult, since they are deprived of buildings that improve the income of the faction, however, they also have their advantages. They have the strongest looting and raiding abilities compared to other factions.

The faction's base income is 2500 on medium difficulty as "favor of the gods". In principle, not so little, although at first it may not be visible.

One of the main properties that determine the success of a horde is its growth. Growth is needed to build increasingly powerful buildings necessary to gain access to the most powerful and dangerous units, but the beast people are deprived of the usual methods of increasing their numbers. The most effective way accelerating growth is the investment of skill points in the hero panel. Three skill points will give a very significant increase, but this is not the only method. You can also improve growth from the research panel and when defeating enemy cities, but the others do not provide such an increase.

In the future, the maintenance of additional armies will fall entirely on the shoulders of the foreign population. How? Sword on the doorframe. Plundering enemy settlements, especially large ones, will seriously increase the amount of money that you simply won’t know where to spend. They say that the sword feeds a warrior. Well, the robber too.

Get ready for a stable minus in the money supply, such is life on debt.

War tactics

Until the army grows, it only makes sense to plunder or partial destruction, since the resulting growth is not as efficient. The most important thing is experience, which will improve the growth and skills of your horde.

After you have developed the army to the appropriate size, you should begin to destroy everything living and good so that it is not possible to come to your rear. The AI ​​may want easy redevelopment of destroyed settlements, so be careful. Do not leave a single enemy army behind.

It is worth fighting armies using ambushes, which can work even in a direct attack on the enemy, but no one has canceled the rule of numerical superiority.

Castle siege

A siege is a real test for beastmen. They are used to fighting in the forests, attacking from ambushes. In a direct assault, beastmen may not be very effective, even with all their power, but they are strong in a siege.

A well-leveled lord can have in his reserve a reduction in the moves of enemy resistance to occupation by 3 moves. However, that’s not all, research and skills will also help reduce these moves. minor characters, if I'm not mistaken, a shaman.

In this case, the siege will be reduced by 6+ turns, which will allow short time wear down enemy troops. There is no need to wait; in a very short time, the enemy army will lose some of its fighters and become very vulnerable. As soon as you see a significant increase in your chances of winning, storm, there is no need to waste “unnecessary” time.

In parts of the Old World covered with impenetrable forests there are the possessions of the Goatfoots, who hate with all their hearts and try to destroy any manifestations of civilization. And in this they are assisted by various Chaos monsters and other dark creatures.

Army Features

Legendary Lords

Lords

Heroes

Infantry

Rifle Infantry

Horsemen and chariots

Ranged Horsemen and Chariots

Monsters, beasts and artillery

Famous units

Tactics for playing as Beastmen

1. Rapid attack. Like Greenskins, Beastmen are good at dealing large quantity damage in a short period of time, but at the same time they do not stand out for their good defense or arrows, and even the artillery of the Beastmen quickly gets tired. You must start a battle as quickly as possible and just as quickly crush the enemy, fortunately, the Beastmen have everything they need for this: the possibility of forward deployment for most units, fast movement speed and excellent pressure for almost the entire army.
2. Cannon fodder. Again, the Beastmen, like the Greenskins, have numerous squads of cannon fodder that can distract the enemy while the core of your army surrounds and destroys the rest of the enemy forces.
3. Fighting on the flanks. The Beastmen have weak marksmen that don't have much value to defend, and the Beastmen's artillery in the form of the Kigors is quite capable of taking care of itself (and besides, it loses effectiveness over time, and therefore loses value). In addition, the speed of the Beastmen's vanguard does not lag much behind the speed of their flanks, and some units, such as minotaurs, are versatile against both infantry and cavalry. All this makes it difficult for the enemy to implement the classic "surround and destroy" tactics, but Beastmen, on the contrary, can execute it very well.
4. The magic of sorcerers. Beastman sorcerers can provide significant support to allied units and inflict great damage on enemy units, so you should not neglect them. In addition, they have one interesting school dedicated to the power of nature.
5. "Waaagh" of the beastmen. Beastmen, like the Greenskins, can bring an additional fully equipped army onto the battlefield, which automatically appears on the strategic map under appropriate conditions, and therefore can truly please the enemy a huge amount fighters.

Best Late Game Beastmen Army Composition

In the early stages of the game, the optimal composition of the army balances on the line between your victories and the cost of maintaining troops. At a later stage, you can afford to create armies from the most powerful and expensive units, but even here it is possible various options depending on who your opponent is.

Among ordinary infantry, bestigors stand out too much from everything else, and therefore you don’t really want to recruit cheap spear infantry in the late game, but you need to. Minotaurs are always worth recruiting more, simply because they are good. It is worth taking minotaurs with heavy weapons against enemy monsters and cavalry - they are also effective against infantry. Chaos Spawns are situational, but they weaken the enemy and are excellent cannon fodder, although they cannot be stretched very far along the front line. Kigors will come in handy in any situation (don't forget about their ability to counter enemy magicians).

Options from readers

Lord Haarhus

The first serious - if, of course, you judge the seriousness by the price tag - addition to Total War: Warhammer adds a new accessible faction - the Beastmen. If you don’t want to play for minotaurs and other hellish devils, then you shouldn’t buy this DLC: the beastmen as an AI-controlled side will appear in the main campaign and so on - thanks to the free update!

Until now, each side of the conflict in Total War: Warhammer has been unique, but Beastmen break this tradition, as they resemble Chaos and Orcs in many ways. Firstly, this race is nomadic, it has no cities, and its main goal is to sow Chaos and destruction. Secondly, if the monsters are doing particularly well, then an additional army controlled by AI will appear next to them - a roaring herd. Essentially the same Waaagh! orcs.

There is some good news: two hordes can safely stay close to each other, the beastmen can move long distances thanks to “animal trails” (it’s clear who borrowed the principle from) and have a marching mode that allows them to set up an ambush in a picturesque forest in almost any skirmish. In other words, the beastmen are Chaos partisans, the main task which - jump out of the bushes, beat up the people, if possible - also burn their cities, and then run away back.

In a fair fight, monsters do not have much chance of survival: a long pitched battle is very dangerous for them. But it shouldn’t come to this: as practice has shown, The best way achieve success - destroy several small settlements, get a roaring herd and take it on big cities and serious armies. The devil's technology tree is small, the horde doesn't have any special worries, so it's very easy to manage.

How else? She doesn't have the disadvantages of Chaos, since a horde can keep armies close by, and besides, Beastmen are good if you need to disguise yourself. And with a roaring herd, forest dwellers are much more dangerous than orcs: they have no cities to defend, which means that you can wage war even with all your neighbors at once - it’s very difficult for them to catch up with you, and they have practically no chance of harming the horde.

Beastmen are an excellent choice for those who love guerrilla warfare. In addition, they often have to choose the consequences of various random events, so the lack of management of full-fledged settlements is partly compensated by temporary effects (both positive and negative) - the price to pay for this or that decision.

It is clear that one new side, largely molded in the image and likeness of already existing factions, cannot justify the high price of the add-on: the Chaos faction costs about 2 times less. Therefore, we included a separate campaign in addition. And in vain.

“An Eye for an Eye” tells the story of Khazrak One-Eye’s revenge on the human race in general and Boris the Wise in particular. The map is a small rectangle inhabited by several factions of people, orcs and other beastmen. Khazrak's task is to destroy as many Imperials as possible and punish Boris.

The campaign turned out to be incredibly dull. The AI ​​cannot offer resistance; instead, it (obviously, at the behest of the scriptwriters) declares war on us on behalf of the nearest faction, we calmly destroy it, then its neighbor declares war, and the same story is repeated with him. And so on until there is almost no one left on the map. You can only play as beastmen, the AI ​​does not rebuild destroyed cities (which is strange: in a large campaign it is constantly trying to restore its settlements), there is no one to expect real resistance from.

During this campaign, something happened to me: funny story: Boris turned out to be too Cunning, so I didn’t get to him, but simply destroyed his entire city and automatically won after one or two turns. In my opinion, this flawed little map with boring opponents doesn't compare to a standard Total War: Warhammer campaign.

It's a pity that instead of experiments - King Arthur? Dark Omen? Shadow of the Horned Rat? – Creative Assembly offers us, under the guise of almost a full-fledged addon, just one new race and a stupid mini-campaign that is not clear to anyone. There’s not much to say about other innovations: as in the case of Blood for the Blood God (Blood! Chopping off heads! For only 129 rubles!) such things should have been in the game initially or added to it with free patches.

As expected, in the newDLC for Total War: WarhammerCreativeAssembly has started adding new races. The first “newcomers” turned out to be the warriors of Chaos - brutal monsters, burning everything in their path, who do not care about anything except war. The second, oddly enough, turned out to be the same fiends of the dark gods - the beast people. A very controversial choice.

The Beastman race is by no means the most popular in the Warhammer Fantasy universe. She is a fusion of Chaos mutants and animal orcs, so she is often lost against the background of the classic “evil guys” and does not have her own pronounced charisma. Indeed: who would choose an army from satyrs, centaurs and other representatives of human mythology, when it is possible to lead Archaon the Destroyer himself to victory or declare WAAAGH to the whole world?

Beast people, uniting in herds, panicked the armies of all civilized states of people, elves and gnomes. This happened in the Principality of Midland, where the local ruler Boris successfully fought off the armies of mutants and was even able to wound the leader of the race of beast people, Khazrak One-Eye. Naturally, he could not come to terms with such humiliation from a person, and began to gather an army that the world had never seen before. It is this army that you will lead into battle in the new story campaign. It would seem that we can rejoice: new campaigns, interesting races are appearing, the game is acquiring additional content. Unfortunately, not everything is so rosy.

The new global map turned out to be a greatly reduced part of the original, without bringing with it any new interesting locations. Theoretically, most of its territory should have been part of the Great Forest, but in reality this is not the case, and the battle will almost always have to be fought on a standard plain. In total, it will take no more than six hours to capture all regions - the main goal of the campaign.

Half of the beastmen's troops have the ability to deploy forward, which allows them to be deployed almost anywhere on the map, making ambushes in any suitable forest.

Stretching out this time will be problematic, even if you really want to. And all because of the horde mechanics inherent in the army of beastmen. They, like the chaosites, burn everything they meet on the way settlements and get money exclusively from robberies. This frees you from having to protect anything, but the economy will be just terrible. Beastmen soldiers are very expensive, and the race does not have any buildings in the camp that bring in money. There are only buildings that reduce the cost of maintaining troops to the detriment of the growth of the camp itself. And given that raids bring practically no money, you have to earn money exclusively by robbing settlements. Since there is always not enough money, it is simply impossible to sit out.

From the very beginning you need to think global strategy, determining where to move and who to rob first, since you can get stuck somewhere in the middle of the looted territories and just spend your entire treasury. And at this time the imperial troops will sit behind high walls and laugh at your impotence.

On the global map, the beastmen will adhere to a strategyhit&run, since it will be difficult to play against races with the ability to quickly create reinforcements. However, by luring the enemy outside the city walls and hitting him in the rear, you will win.

When it comes to open conflict, the opponents will not be laughing. It's safe to say that up until the late game, the Beastmen army completely dominates the battlefield. Almost naked, lightly armored creatures emphasize constant pressure, damage and mobility. Crowds of Ungors with spears, mountains with axes in each hand and centaur-like centigors simply trample the enemy into the mud.

But the most terrible in the army of beastmen are the minotaurs. These are very powerful, resilient melee infantry units the size of two Imperial cavalrymen. At the same time, they move approximately at the speed of this same cavalryman, and therefore have a ramming blow. One squad of minotaurs in a battle can kill up to three hundred enemy infantry, destroying almost an entire squad in one go. Well, they do it beautifully - impaling soldiers on horns, tearing them apart. Watching them work is a pleasure. The only thing that can stop the minotaurs is arrows and very heavy infantry. Alternatively, you can try to reduce their morale, but this is a very unreliable method.

However, when other factions are still able to reach the end of the technological tree and rebuild their cities, the beast people will not have it at all sweet. Due to weak armor, it is very difficult to take cities full of riflemen, and artillery salvoes will be very effective at thinning out your ranks.

The beast people themselves have a hard time with technology. Their tree is even smaller than that of the Chaosites, and each bonus researched removes you from the next by five percent. There are also those that will speed up your science, but there are very few of them and they are expensive.

On the global map, the Beast People faction is completely boring. The only tasks are to destroy everyone on the map indiscriminately. We have to take into account the huge fines to diplomacy and the lack of the ability to trade, which is quite logical. The Beastmen are a mixture of the Chaos and Orc factions. From the former they got the mechanics of the horde and the destruction of settlements, and from the latter - the strengths and weaknesses of the troops and the scale of bestial rage, which works exactly the same as the orc WAAAGH.

The only original aspect of the beast people is their dependence on the phases of the local moon Morslib. Every few turns you will receive a bonus of your choice. This can be either an instant replenishment of troops to the detriment of the growth of your camp, or an increase in the attack and defense of your troops. But the general’s movement range on the map will be halved. You have to pay for everything, but some bonuses are very strong. And the development branches of the beast-people generals are, perhaps, one of the best.

In principle, we could have ended here, if not for one thing. Price. Of course, the quality has nothing to do with it, but the price tag for DLC is too high. And this practically kills the desire to try Call of the Beastmen and admire the dance of death performed by an army of minotaurs.