By Rory Foster

Images copyright of Games Workshop, used without permission.

f the three Chaos armies in Warhammer Fantasy, Beastmen are the last to recieve an update. The other two books have had mixed receptions (to say the least) from the wargaming community. The 'Daemons of Chaos' book is generally regarded as the most powerful overall, but a bit too powerful (e.g. points costs are too low, there's no limit on magic items, etc). The Warriors of Chaos book, from what I've seen, was a very 'meh' release. Good overall, but it doesn't have anything that really stands out. This book, on the other hand...

This book isn't bad, but it's just so damn dull. It's no longer 'Beasts of Chaos', it's just 'Beastmen'. Chaos is mentioned all through the fluff, but there's no god-specific stuff anymore, no Chaos marks or anything like that. This is far worse than what GW did with Codex: Chaos Space Marines. This is the next level of boring; boring minatures, boring fluff, boring units.

Ok, fluff first. This time around it seems to place a lot of emphasis on the Beastmen themselves instead of Chaos, which doesn't make any sense considering they're a race of mutants. Heck, they're more 'Chaos' than Warriors of Chaos, and they can't even get Chaos marks!
There's a section at the beginning of the fluff about how Chaos came to the world. It's exactly the same story as that in the other two Chaos books. Nothing new to see here folks.

And from there onwards it's the usual stuff... some history about famous Beastmen, their culture, their rituals, their invasions, etc. It's like the writers didn't even intend for this to be interesting. I mean, look at the Warriors of Chaos book. There are huge sections on the great invasions of Chaos (in which the Beastmen took part; something omitted from this book), details of the tribes, that sort of thing. There are no interesting stories of Chaos invasions or great warlords in this book. I mean, Beastmen are supposed to be one of the biggest threats to the Empire and Bretonnia because they're everywhere, right? So why don't they have the same fluff detail as other armies?

But enough whining. The units section is much more interesting. There are several new units and characters here, including such delights as Razorgors (affectionately referred to by some as 'Chaos Pumbas') Most of the old units are more or less the same (apart from the obvious lack of Chaos). There's a bigger emphasis on monsters now, with three big new beasties (none of whom have models, thanks a lot GW...): Cygors, big wizard-hunting ranged attackers, Ghorgons, giant Minotaurs who can eat people alive to regenerate their wounds (making them very good damage sponges) and Jabberslythes, the Beastmen equivalent of dragons. Sure, they don't breathe fire and you can't stick a rider on them, but they have a nifty 'Aura of Madness' ability that automatically wounds nearby targets and attacking them in close-combat is very risky due to their acidic blood (in addition to their considerable strength and toughness).

Oh, and Beastmen cannot have Dragon Ogres or Shaggoths anymore. This doesn't make any sense. They're monsters, and are pretty much Beastmen themselves, so why were they excluded?

There are plenty of characters here, and they have interesting enough fluff. The old crowd (Khazrak, Gorthor and Morghur) are still here, mostly the same. As far as new characters go, we've got Malagor, who's the 'uber-wizard' of this army book, filling the same role as, for example, Vilitch or Teclis; Ghorros Warhoof, a Centigor lord who's a decent fighter but has lame fluff; Taurox, an obviously Khornate Minotaur (nice to see some Chaos in this book at last) who looks good at first glance but would die way too easily; Moonclaw, an absolutely useless level 1 wizard who fell from the moon (what the heck?); Ungrol, a two-headed Gor who's good against the Empire, Brets and, surpringly, other Beastmen, but has a crap statline (which is a shame, because his fluff is fairly interesting) and Slugtongue, a level 2 wizard who has a kind of poisonous aura with a huge range that could potentially cripple expensive units (such as Knights and Chaos Warriors).

Because the army book is now about just 'Beastmen' instead of 'Beasts of Chaos', there's no god-specific magic anymore. Instead, Beastmen get their own lore; Lore of the Wild. The spells here are pretty good; the best spell (one that requires a 16+ to cast!) can summon a free Cygor, Ghorgon or Jabberslythe. The only downside is that if it gets wounded the caster can die, but bringing a monster out of nowhere for even a couple of turns forces your opponent to focus on either the big beastie or the rest of your army bearing down on their forces. Hard to cast, but it seems like fun.

The models released with the codex are largely underwhelming. Khazrak is unchanged and thus still has his wonky whip, Malagor doesn't look terribly dynamic, Ghorros looks pretty good (better than the normal Centigors), and the Beastlord model with a great weapon looks like he's got a pole rammed up his bum (heh, 'rammed').
Gors look alright. I wish they weren't all goats though. Beastigors don't have enough variety in their poses, in my opinion. Most of them seem forced into the 'weapon raised' stance. You can always fix this yourself with a knife and greenstuff, but I wish there was no need for that in the first place. The new Minotaurs copped a lot of flak on internet forums for their ridiculous muscles; not on their arms, legs are torso, but on their shins. They have these big, freaky muscles where people aren't supposed to have them. They're on their faces too, and it just looks really bizarre. Granted, the 'Eavy Metal paintjob makes the muscles stick out a lot, but they've still gone overboard with the sculpting. Razorgors (aka Pumbas) are the absolute worst GW models I've ever seen. Their faces are ridiculous, their eyes are far too large, and the spikes sticking out everywhere look out-of-place. It's gonna take a heck of a lot of greenstuff to fix these abominations.

As I said, this army book isn't bad, it's just 'meh'. There's nothing that stands out (apart from the Razorgors' eyes, ha), and I get the feeling GW just wrote it so they could get it out of the way to focus on bigger armies like Orcs and Goblins or the Empire (and, of course, more Space Marines! Hurr!)