Animal handlers in 3rd ed. WFB: Chaos Beastmasters

This part of ´Animal handlers in 3rd ed. WFB´ -series of articles is about Chaos Beastmasters. It discusses rules, models, tacktics, pictures, links, pro´s and con´s and everything related to Chaos animal handlers. Please click here to find the other arcticles.

This article is mainly about WFB rulebook and WFB: Armies but I´ve included a shortish look into the Realm of Chaos material too.

WFB and WFB: Armies

At first the chaos beastmasters look like a very simple case - just two types of beasts available. But as one digs deeper there are so many sides to them. And pretty many inconsistencies too. I´ll start with the most obvious - it says beastman animal handler and the profile is normal beastman but the picture is clearly of a chaos warrior or a marauder. And as we see later the handler model produced is surely not a beastman but resembles the picture above. So once again someone within Citadel/GW has changed his mind. The chaos beastmaster model was there before the book but then something happened. Perhaps they felt that a chaos warrior or a marauder is too expensive for a handler with pointsvalues of 74 and 39 respectively.

As we see a chaos army can include 0-8 Beastmasters divided into units each with 1-3 handlers and 2-6 animals / handler. You can choose either chaos hounds or spawns for a pack.

Beastmen with T4 and W2 make chaos beastmaster teams a lot less vulnerable to missile fire than what the other races have to offer. Their biggest weakness on the other hand is the below average psychology profile. Your expensive pack may end up running sooner than you think. But good toughness helps to prevent casualties and using a big pack allows you to take some damage before having to check for panic/rout.

The beastmen units get D6-3 chaos attributes. I would count the beastmaster as a beastman unit roll the attributes. This is clarified in the Slaves to Darkness as we´ll learn later. Some GM concideration could be in place here - just to make sure the game does not get broken by mutations.

 Color add of handlers and chaos hounds. Here we see that the handler 

is infact a chaos warrior/marauder not a beastman.

Casting room miniatured did produce this set but it was

discontinued in 11/2016. There we have a beastman
animal handler.

The Citadel chaos hounds are just great and there are so many to choose from. The chaos warrior handler has a good threatening pose. It´s a very nice set as a whole. But the lack of a beastman handler is obvious. You could always use a normal beastman or a slightly converted one as a beastmaster if you wanted.

Citadel chaos warrior handlers with 2-4 dogs can be obtained from ebay with BIN price of around 40€. In a recent auction a handler and three partly painted hounds sold for 15€.

This is the Marauder MM93 Chaos Beastmaster set. One of the better Marauder sculps in my opinion. Again the handler is clearly a chaos warrior/marauder. The pose suggests that he is just about to motivate the pack with that whip of his. Mixing this set and Citadel produced one you could create a unit of two handlers and twelve chaos hounds with no dublicate models!

Cost of a set of a Marauder handler and two hounds is around 25€ in an auction. BIN prices can be as high as 60€.

The idea of producing a set for chaos spawns is a bit of a paradox. Spawns receive D6+6 chaos attributes when generated and there are tens of possible starting profiles so making a set for something like that is just impossible. I understand that not all players are willing or capable (me for example) of creating such conversions a spawn may require.

But if you want to buy yourself a chaos spawn set there are infact some alternatives to choose from. The grandmother of all chaos spawns has to be Ngaaranh.

A painted example of Ngaaranh: Spawn of chaos
from Rogue heresy blog.

She or it dates back to 1983 when released as limited edition. Ngaaranh appeared in this Compendium one article.

 Exerpt from Compendium one.

 Ngaaranh was sold as a chaos harpy in this add from WD49 (1983).

This one is an unreleased Bob Olley chaos spawn painted by

one Mike McVey. Picture from Eldritch Epistles.

Then it´s all the way to the catalog of 1997. I´ve included

this chaos spawn set as I think it´s quite oldhammeresque.

Lot´s of heads and tails to choose from but still quite limited

as the basic form is what it is. But a good base for conversions perhaps.

The 1997 spawn will cost you about 12€. When writing this there were two Ngaaranhs on ebay for BIN prices of 37€ and 83€.

There are multiple newer set in both 40k and WFB/AOS lines but the afore presented are the most oldhammery ones available if you are not that into converting a chaos spawn from scratch yourself.

Chaos hounds

Rules

 As with dark elf chaos hounds we meet the basing issue. Rules say 25 x 25mm but models are supplied with 25 x 50mm and propably won´t fit a smaller one less rank up at all on those. The profile is strong for close combat. Chaos attributes can be a curse or a blessing. And in any case should be generated as mentined under GM´s supervision. We don´t want to take the fun away from anyone by some lucky/unluncky rolls before the game has even started.

A very large pack of chaos hounds from Steve McCallums collection.

And he has both Citadel and Maraudet handlers too.

Tactics

These dogs are deadly in close combat so you want to get them engaged. They are hard to kill with T4 and W2 and as their handlers are likevise resilient so your hounds are not very likely to be send on their way to wilderness. 

As chaos hounds are pretty valuable I wouldn´t waste them on harrassing skirmishers or war machines. They are a decent alternative for heavy cavalry so a simple staright forward advance followed by a charge should work. But once again - a large pack takes a lot of space.

Chaos hounds are pretty valuable: a pack of ten hounds and two beastman handlers will cost you almost 260 points. A pack with dark elf handlers will cost you even more. And darkies are a lot more vulnerable to missiles.

The chaos attributes might affect the way you use the a hound pack. Most of the dominant chaos attributes (rulebook page 207) are quite helpfull but for example enormously fat chaos hounds would be nearly unusable. GM discretion is definately needed here. Don´t break the game before it starts.

Two packs of six hounds with beastman handlers equipped with shield.

Total of 308 points. Picture from the Tales From the Big Board blog.

Pro´s

Nice models

Look good in large packs

Very powerfull in close combat

Good speed

Strong overall profile

Con´s

High points value

Chaos spawns

Ok, this is where writing this article got pretty tricky. As the WFB: Armies refers to Realm of Chaos -books so I´m using a few exerpts of both The lost and the damned and Slaves to the darkness here.
There are so many different chaos spawn pictures around the net so I just chose to use some iconic ones from WD magazine.

The rules and creating table for a ´instant chaos spawn´ can be found at the Slaves to the Darkness book. You can either choose a starting profile or roll for one. Likewise you can choose nine rewards or D6+6.

The chaos spawns are first mentioned in Slaves to the darkness on page 52 under the title of Fate of champion of chaos - Becoming a chaos spawn. That part is just for chaos champions and does not reflect to games of normal WFB. On page 62 we learn that a creature in a champion´s retinue can become a spawn by rolling that result from follower´s reward table. Then on page 65 we meet the generation table for an ´instant´ chaos spawn. This is the table to be used when generating a spawn to be used in a game of WFB with chaos army list.

Rules

As mentioned before chaos spawn come in almost infinite shapes and profiles. Just this random table gives you 60 different starign profiles including the other part which can be basicly anything. And then you roll for the minimum of seven chaos attributes.

Chaos spawns are subject to stupidity. This means that in the beginning of each of your turn you have to make a stupidity check. As described under thr psychology rules in the rulebook the test is taken vs. unit´s CL. And as per animal handlers rules the unit´s leader´s profile is used for all psychology test. With beastman´s CL 7 you are pretty likely to fail a few of those tests. You could try to help this by taking a hero as a unit leader but the cheapest options to boost your CL is a level 5 wizard that costs 80 points more than a normal beastman.

Spawns and other creatures of chaos by Pete Taylor from WD117.

Here we finally get the points value for a chaos spawn: 100 per model. Depending on how you roll this could be from very cheap to total waste of points. Imagine one legged, obese, coward, bunnyheaded, albino, puny, hunchbacked halfling vs. mechanoid vampire with fire breathing, teleport, scaly skin, weapon mastery, horrible stench etc. If someone is using a chaos spawn I would really suggest that it´s the GM who creates it to make it somehow reseble it´s point value.

I personally don´t like the idea of a unit of chaos spawns with dominant attributes. It´s just against the whole idea of chaos spawns being randomly warped beyond recognition. Like where´s the chaos in having for example four identical spawns? I would take the time and create each spawn in a unit individually. That may give you some strange combinations but once again - serious GMing is recommended.

In my opinion packs of chaos spawns should propably be used only in narrative battles where a GM has created them to suit the setting. There are too much randomness to their creation that can ruins your gaming experience if you just go by the creation tables.

An iconic Pete Taylor chaos spawn from WD119.

Guess they had too many Fimirs just lying around and

had to do something with them.

Tactics

Well - how to tell you how to use a bunch of creatures that can be anything from complete rubbish to almost unstoppable killing machines. The Slaves to the Darkness suggest that spawns can be useful for soaking up enemy charges and overrunning less numerous enemies. But it really depends on what you get. Hopefully you are playing with GM created spawns that should have at least some kind of use in the scenario you are going to play. You just have to figure it out that use.

Pro´s

Nice models if you make them so

Good for narrative battles where they serve some purpose
Chaotic naturel suits a chaos army

Con´s

Randomness
Stupidity

Daemonic Legions and Armies of Chaos

Daemonic Legions

Daemonic legions and Armies of chaos for each power are presented in the RoC books. Daemonic legions can have units of chaos spawns and packs of chaos hounds in their auxiliaries contingent. Chaos spawns must have a pack handler but the hounds can be fielded with one or just by themselves.

In The Slaves to the Darkness book we find units of both Khornate and Slaaneshi spawns. For Khorne you can take 0-3 units of spawn each with 8 monsters and a leader that can be either a bloodletter or a champion of chaos. This means that the value of a unit at it´s lowest is a whopping 860 points. Slaanesh can have 0-4 units each with 6 spawns and a leader. Lowest cost for that is 660 points. For some reason I believe that those points could be much better used elsewhere.

Creatures of chaos from WD109

The idea of daemonic legions having spawn units has been dropped at some point as they do not appear in The Lost and the Damned book. There is however a note that a daemonic legion can invlude troops drawn from the mortal world i.e. from the Armies of Chaos list. That allows fielding beastmasters/handlers too.

Armies of Chaos

Khornate armies of chaos can have beastmaster units each with 2 handlers and 8 chaos hounds or chaos spawns. Here it becomes clear that the handlers too are subject to chaos attributes. And that the spawn is created using a human profile as basic. The unit point value is quite odd. A normal beastman in SttD costs 8 points so a single handler should be 13. And chaos hounds as part of a host are 23 points which is normal. Adding up 2 handlers and 8 hounds gives you 210 points but the points per unit value is given as 120?!?!

And the handler in the picture looks more like chaos thug than a beastman.

What I wrote above about the Khornate army hadlers stands for Slaaneshi handlers too.

Personally I could think about adopting the human-profile-as-starting-point-for-rolling-a-chaos-spawn -principle to using spawns with WFB: Armies Chaos list. But only if there is no GM available to create the spawns and you absolute must have to use them in a game.

Nurgle and Tzeentch armies can have packs of chaos hounds. They are special in that they can either operate independently or be led by chaos champion. If acting independently I believe that they are not bound by the animal handler movement rules. And if they are lead by a chaos champion he is concidered to be an animal handler with all the applying rules for him and the pack.

Nurglesque pack of chaos hounds. As you see the style of the army list 

has changed somewhere between SttD and LatD.  And notice the base size.

Now it matches with the models.

 Tzeentchian chaos hounds unit.

Nurgle and Tzeentch packs differ in size (7 hounds for Nurgle and 9 for Tzeentch) and in number of chaos attributes. Both roll for D6-4 attributes but for Tzeentch the special rules say that: All the chaos hounds in the unit can be given up to the number of attributes rolled - thay can always be given less if you prefer, but must be given at least 1.

As with the hounds, Nurgle and Tzeentch armies can field chaos spawn as an independent pack or with a chaos champion leader. What strikes me is the points cost which is only 25 compared to 100 points in WFB: Armies. And the unit size is unlimited!

Chaos spawn unit of a Nurgle army.

Tzeentchian spawn unit.

A pair of ´eavy metal chaos spawns.

Writing this article was a pretty chaotic process. New things seemed to pop up around every corner and I´am pretty sure I missed something on the way here. Please sound up if you want something included.

What I´ve done with them boyz´n gobbos

Almost a year ago I was wandering what to do with a bunch of fantasy regiment orcs and goblins I had bought from a friend of mine. I got some tips both here in my blog and at Oldhammer forum but after starting with the boyz I lost interest in the project and the models lay untouched for months on my paiting table.

A couple of weeks back I won an online auction that had 70+ metal orcs and goblins in it. With some fantasy regiment models I had managed to get from a couple of guys I know I realised that I now had enough models to meet the WFB: Armies troop minimas for an O&G army. Even though I still needed some command groups and a shaman or two that realisation boosted my will to really start painting the army.

This unit of stickas was the first one to get completed. They still need a banner of some sort but that I will deal with later. I´m very inexperienced at painting greenskins. In fact this is the very first unit of orcs or goblins I´ve ever done. My goal is to have a playble force ready by july so rank and file were done as quick as possible with some more love given to command group models. Black base coat, warboss green skin, basic colours for clothing and armor followed by agrax earthshade wash. Quick highlights with skarsnik green and that´s it. Good enough to be used on the battlefield.

 Chief Rhybag´s speshul stickaz. Fantasy regiment goblins, iron claw

goblins, bagpipe musician, a chief and a double snotling as standard bearer.

The upper snotlings face is badly molded on it´s right side but 

will do if you don´t look too close.

The next unit to be completed will propably be this big mod of boyz. Regular boyz are all fantasy regiment orcs and the command group a mix of early nineties orcs from different ranges. This will be the main unit of my upcoming army.

That´s 28 orcs including a boss, a standard and a musician. The boss and standard are

pretty much ready. Everyone else in various stages of WIP. As you can see the

banners are not my strongest area of expertise.

Then there are the arrer boys of which I have close to 40 models. To meet the army minimas I´ve chosen 20 of those to be painted after I´m done with the big mod. They´ve been base coated black and I´ve started working on first of them just to get ideas of how I want them to look in the future.

These arrer boyz will need a standard and a musician. Perhaps

I´ll get a Harboth´s standard for them as those seem to be available

at ebay for reasonable price.

Most far from completion are the gobbos. I have at the moment 19 goblins of which about half are armed with javelins/spears and the rest with various hand weapons. They will need a standard bearer and a musician later on. And some stripping will be required.

Gobbos. Cannon fodder in making.

As last I´ll put a group picture of everyone. I have some wolf riders and a pair of bolt throwers waiting somewhere but as those are not obligatory they will be worked on after everyone else is done.

By july these will be ready to get on the battle field

Just wanted to show that something is getting painted even though I´ve been lately working mostly on the animal handler articles. The next one will be about chaos. Perhaps in a week or something.

Animal handlers in 3rd ed. WFB: Dark Elf Whelp Masters

This part of ´Animal handlers in 3rd ed. WFB´ -series of articles is about Dark Elf Whelp masters. It discusses rules, models, tacktics, pictures, links, pro´s and con´s and everything related to Dark Elf animal handlers. Please click here to find the other arcticles.

As described in the WFB: Armies book you can take 0-8 Whelp masters to a Dark elf army. That is two handlers more than Wood Elves and same number as Chaos and Skaven. Each unit is made up of 1-3 handlers each with 2-6 beasts which they lead. A single beastmaster has a normal elf profile and is armed with a hand weapon. Basic cost includes no armor but there is option for light armor and shield. Whelp Masters may lead  warhounds or chaos hounds. Sets for these were produced by Citadel and Marauder.

Whelp masters were one of the units in WFB: Armies that was originally printed with wrong profile. That was corrected in WD107 with a glue-on-errata.

Goblin Lee discusses Dark Elf Whelp masters in his article where he takes a look into the dark host of Naggaroth. I agree on a lot of what he says there. The whelp masters fit well into the background of a dark elf army and they look good on a battle field. A strange thing that Lee also notes is the absence of cold one warhounds as pack beasts.

Having the maximum of only three handler par pack can be a vulnerability and one should propably either take a large number of beasts or give armor to the handlers to give them some protection aganst missile fire.

Whelp master and chaos hounds set from Citadel´s 1989 winter trade catalogue.

 Another add with color pics of handlers and chaos hounds.

I never knew there was a chaos dwarf handler too.

Add from Dec 1987 flyer.

The Whelp master set is a very nice one in my opinion. The master himself has a good pose with his whip laying low and hand pointing to the direction where he wants his pack to go. I just wish there were more options for a handler model available. On the beast side ten different chaos hounds gives you a lot to choose from.

The dark elf handler seems to be a pretty sought after model. I managed to get one for 6€ and a full set of a handler and four hounds was sold in december 2016 for 23€. When writing this article there was an unopened blister in ebay for 115€ BIN. Single chaos hounds were from 10€ up. No examples of a single handler were on sale.

Marauder MM73/3 Dark Elf Whelp master and warhounds.

The first thing one spots here is that the warhounds are actually monted on 25 x 25mm bases and not on 25 x 50mm as wood elf warhound are. At least the walking dog has had a long slotta tab that has been clipped for this picture. Anyways I believe that these hounds can be mounted on the smaller bases and still rank up nicely.

From this picture it is pretty hard to tell what kind of bases there are inside. I believe that the one that is visible behind the dog in right lower corner is a 20 x 20mm for beastmaster himself. And I believe that there are three 25 x 25mm bases under the grey padding as three cavalry bases would show from beneth the badding. What do you think?

One of the Marauder produced masters seems to be wearing light armor but the other one looks unarmored. One could easily attach a shield to their free hand or back. I´ve never had much love for Marauder dark elves and in my opinion this is one of the worst sets for darkies they did. The poses, clothes and especially the hair just rub me the wrong way.

A set of four hounds was recently sold at ebay for 14€ and a set of a handler with three dogs for 17€. Writing this there was a single handler in ebay for 7€ BIN and a full set for staggering 76€ BIN. Asking price for single doggies seem to be from roughly 10€ to 20€.

Warhounds

Rules

Normal war hound profile here with no special rules. As mentioned before these models do actually fit a 25 x 25 mm base. The Marauder produced models bear some resemblance to the picture above. Don´t know if it´s a good thing or not - the hound in the picture look quite strange IMO. That´s a chaos hound if you ask me.

Tactics

  

Just like wood elf ones, dark elf war hounds can be used for multiple tasks. Threatening enemy flanks, harrassing skirmishers and warmachines, protecting own troops and screening action - they can do them all. But keeping in mind that they are vulnerable and won´t survive long against a stronger enemy. And missile fire can twindle their numbers quickly. Being on a 25 x 25mm base means that they take up a lot less room on a battle field than their wood elf cousins.

Just for 111 points you get a horde of three handlers and eleven hounds.

War hound pack as a part of a Marauder Dark elf army. People

don´t seem to be very fond of the set as it is hard to find painted example of one.

Or of any Dark elf Whelp master team with normal war hounds.

Pro´s

Citadel produced handler is a nice model

A large pack looks good

Good speed

Cheap

25 x 25 mm basing

Many ways to use in a battle

Con´s

Vulnerable 

Not very effective in combat

(Marauder handler models)

 

Chaos hounds

Rules

Once again we meet the basing issue. Rules say 25 x 25mm but models are supplied with 25 x 50mm and propably won´t fit a smaller one less rank up at all on those. The profile is strong for close combat. Chaos attributes can be a curse or a blessing. And in any case should be generated as mentined under GM´s supervision. We don´t want to take the fun away from anyone by some lucky/unluncky rolls before the game has even started.

Tactics

These dogs are deadly in close combat so you want to get them engaged. They are hard to kill with T4 and W2 but will propably draw missile fire as the enemy wants to take out the whelp masters and send the hound on their way to wilderness. You could concider armoring the handlers to cancel some of the hits they receive.

As chaos hounds are pretty valuable I wouldn´t waste them on harrassing skirmishers or war machines. They are a decent alternative for heavy cavalry so a simple staright forward advance followed by a charge should work. But once again - a large pack takes a lot of space. Perhaps you could support the hound pack with some dark riders who can take on enemy flank after the dogs have been committed.

Chaos hounds are valuable: a pack of ten hounds and three handlers with light armor and shield will cost you almost 280 points. With 18 hounds the price goes up to 462 points.

The chaos attributes might affect the way you use the a hound pack. Most of the dominant chaos attributes (rulebook page 207) are quite helpfull but for example enormously fat chaos hounds would be nearly unusable. GM discretion is definately needed here. Don´t break the game before it starts.

A large pack of chaos hounds from Realms of Chaos blog.

Pro´s

Nice models

Look good in large packs

Very powerfull in close combat

Good speed

Strong overall profile

Con´s

Vulnerability of the handlers

Pricey

Evo Von Himmel´s (Dieselmonkey) beastmaster with his chaos hounds.

Back to Animal handlers in 3rd ed. WFB main article.

Animal handlers in 3rd ed. WFB: Wood Elf Beastmasters

This part of Animal handlers in 3rd ed. WFB series of articles is about Wood Elf Beastmasters. It discusses rules, models, tacktics, pictures, links, pro´s and con´s and everything related to Wood Elf animal handlers. Please click here to find the other arcticles.

As per WFB: Armies book you can take 0-6 Beastmasters to a wood elf army. You can divide them into units made up of 1-3 handlers each with 2-6 beasts they lead. A single beastmaster has a normal elf profile and is armed with a hand weapon. Basic cost includes no armor but there is option for light armor and shield. Handlers may lead bears, boars, warhounds or wildcats. A dedicated set was produced for each animal type by Citadel.

 An addvertisment from WD96. I just love those Jes Goodwin sculpts.

An another add.

As we see the sets were originally sold with one leader and three beasts except for bear keeper who had just one bear. Later blisters had just the handler and a single animal in them.
Another thing of curiosity is the name- in the rule book everyone is called animal handler, in WFB:Armies we have wood elf beastmasters and the miniatures were sold as elven animal keepers.

Bears

Rules

Wood elves are the only race that can use bears in beast packs. Looking at the description, rules and profile two think stand out immediately. First the base size. Here it says 25 x 25mm but the bear in the Elf Bear Keeper set is provided with a 25 x 50mm base and is such a large model that it would not fit a 25 x 25mm base by any means sane.

The other thing is movement. In RL a bear can run at 60km/h where as the world record speed for a horse in a sprint is around 88km/h. Usein Bolt can reach almost 36km/h on a 100m dash. He wouldn´t stand a chance agains a bear. At least on a longer distance. Therefore the M4 feels very low. As in real life a bear´s speed should propably be somewhere in between human speed and horse speed. Giving the bear a M6 would have made it a bit more believable.

Tactics

Tactically bears can be somewhat tricky to use effectively. I would propably use a largeish pack of bears in a straight frontal attack agains enemy infantry. Or as wood elf armies often rely on ranged attacks I could place my unit of bears either in the center between archer unit or to flanks to protect those. They would stay still until enemy moved closer and then engage.

If I chose to go on offence with my wood elves I would propably deploy bears in support of my treemen or warrior kinband. As rules limit maneuvering with packs the attack would be pretty much a straight forward advance and charge.

Keep in mind that the bears cause fear ability is very helpful in many situations and should not be forgotten.

The bears will draw missile fire and that fire is away from the fragile elves. With T4 and W2 you can expect the bears to handle that at least better than elves. Taking the optional armor is a must for bear handlers to give them some protection agains missiles. Having a hero as unit leader would be another thing worth concidering just to add some resilience to handlers.

With S4 and A2 bears are formidable in close combat even though WS3 will force you to pick your opponents carefully. A smaller force of WS4 dwarves could tie down your bears for a long time.

A unit of three handlers with nine bears is around 220 points. If you take a LVL10 hero as the unit leader the price goes up to 300 points. That is quite a lot. You can get a treeman or a unit of eight elven lords including a hero for that. But as wood elf army lacks good infantry with some staying and slaying power bears could be a choise to concider.

A beautiful bear keeper from Thantsants´ collection.

The bear handler set is not very common and you should be prepared to pay around 20€ for a set of a single bear and handler in ebay.

Bear Pro´s:

Jes Goodwin models

No one else gets them

Good S, T, W and A stats

Cause fear

Bear Con´s:

Slow

Tactical limitations

WS3

Pricey
Model´s can be hard to get

The Masterwork Guild blog brings us these four bears and their master.

Boars

Rules

 

Another type of beast pack that is only available to wood elves. The description says that boars in Old World are much bigger than the ones in RL but that does not seem apply to the Jes Goodwin sculpted wood elf boars. The are smallish especially if compared with orc warboars of the same time. They are mounted on 25 x 50mm bases but will fit 25 x 25mm ones nicely.

The special rules do not apply when boars are in a beast pack. It would be quite logical if the negative leadership modifier for boars being difficult to control would apply to packs too but the rules state that it´s in effect only for riding purposes.

The profile for a boar is pretty close to a human with differences in movement and psychological stats. And as we know all tests are made with the handlers´ profile. So low boar scored here don´t count.

The boars as beast pack animals suffer from their special rules. Their cost is affected by stubborn rule which has no use for them in pack mode. In my opinion their right value should be somewhere around 4 points.

A set from Greblord´s Little Men.

Tactics

A boar packs best asset is their speed. They can charge 14" which means that they usually can choose to charge enemy infantry instead of getting charged themselves. They are pretty weak in close combat with their average profile. And with T3 and no save thay are vulnerable to missile fire.

Keeping the afore mentioned in mind I still think that there are several ways to use boars in battle. One could sacrifice them to screening more valuable units from missile fire. Or to tie down enemy units to give your other unit time to take them on flank or rear. Or you could send them to a flanking move to harrash enemy war machines or missile troops.

The size of a boar pack depends on how you want to use them. With their 25 x 50mm base a large pack of boars takes a lot of room on the battle field. That might not be good if you want to move fast around enemy flank and go after warmachines. But for screening own troops or delaying action you need some durability. And elf profile should keep the pack from routing even if they losa a round or two of combat.

The maximum unit including three handlers with no armor and 18 boars for screening or delaying action costs roughly 150 points. For flanking and war machine harrassing you could take a more nimble set of two handlers and six boars for just 62 points.

A pair of piggies and a handler from Wee Blokes blog.

They look better on 25 x 25mm base than on the cavalry one.

There aren´t that many painted examples of a boar handler unit in the internet. The set propably wasn´t very popular at it´s time. With some luck you could get a single boar from ebay just below 5€ where as a handler could go for 6€. But it´s more common to see BIN prices of 10€+ for a model.

Boar Pro´s:

Jes Goodwin sculpts

No one else gets them

Good speed

Cheapish

Boar Con´s:

No very effective in combat

Vulnerable
Costly compared to war hounds (see below)

Handler and his pack from Lead and Paint.

Warhounds

Rules

 Here we meet the 25 x 25mm base issue again. The models produced are on cavalry base and as with bears won´t fit a smaller one. The elven warhoud model is a pretty long one and I believe it would be quite impossible to set them up as a unit if on 25 x 25mm. Orcs and norse are mentioned as users of warhounds alongside with elves but warhounds never made it to their army lists.

Profile is very close to that of a boar. M is one lower and I one higher. Once again there is no reason to look at the LD, INT, CL and WP part. So for two points less than a boar you get a slightly slower beast that can hit a human first with it´s higher initiative. I would take warhounds over boars any day.

Tactics

Warhound pack could be used in the same way as boars above. Higher initiative given you a bit more room on what targets you should engage. Keep in mind that your dogs won´t last very long with their T3 and no armor. Don´t take both shield and armor for handler as you don´t want to slow him and the pack down.

With just about 110 points you can get yourself three handlers and 18 dogs. That´s 40 points less than with boars.

Thantsants´ war hound pack with their master.

A single warhound can be sometimes found at 5€ or even below. The price for a handler is usually up from 8€. BIN prices for a full set seem to be around 30€.

Warhound Pro´s:

Jes Goodwin sculpts

Good speed

Cheap

Warhound Con´s:

No very effective in combat

Vulnerable

A pack of war hounds from The Masterworks Guild blog.

Wild cats

Rules

Another type of animals that is available to wood elves only.

M8, WS4, S4, A2 and leap special rule all means that this kitty is one mean killer. As the text says they are formidable fighters indeed. On the other hand it has T3 and just one wound.

Look at picture from WFB: Armies - does that look like a killing machine? No! That´s the face of a little naughty kitten who has just been disciplined by it´s owner IMO.

Tactics

You need to get your cats to charge an enemy of lower initiave. You can´t afford being shot at as your costly cats will be killed. Be carefull with your deployment as you can´t maneuver much. It´s pretty much straight forward towards an enemy you can leap at. Against a not shooting enemy you could concider holding back and protecting your archers not engaging but at the latest moment. But make sure you charge and against lower I.

Wild cats can be an alternative for cavalry but they are not as versatile as horse mounted troops. They cost a lot and require quite a lot of concideration on where to use them effetively. But they sure look good as a unit. Taking a hero to lead wild cats could be a good idea as with bears.

A wood elf wild cat handler and his pack by Thantsants.

Perhaps the most sought after of the wood elf animal keepers. But they seem to be a bit more common than the bears. In any case be prepared to pay at least 10€ for a single cat or a handler.

Wild cat Pro´s:

Jes Goodwin sculpts

No one else gets them

Great speed

Killing power

Wild cat Con´s:

Vulnerable

Costly

Model´s can be hard to get

A big pack of cats from The Masterwork Guild.

Back to Animal handlers in 3rd ed. WFB main article.