[Minis]Deathknell Preview 12 - Beastmaster 20

[Kae'Yoss]

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mi/20050310b

The new preview is out, showing only one mini (and one that we have seen before), but an interesting ability is revealed: The Greenfang Druid is Beastmaster 20. He can put Wild and Difficult animals and magical beasts under control With his high rating, this means that this CG can now have a lot of nice beasts under control: Dire Wolves, Dire Bears, Dire Lions, Fiendish Tyrannusauruses - and that's the second salient ability: Warband Building: CE Animals and CE Magical Beasts are legal in your warband.

This is going to be interesting.

 

[Longbow]

Very interesting. Are all those Dire Animals good in Skirmish? Or is it just a cool ability to use former unusable creatures?

 

[Kae'Yoss]

They would be OK I guess, if not for the damn difficult 20 restriction. They may not have a good AC, but usually decent speed, HP, attacks and damage (often with special attacks like rend), all that for between 22 and 32 points. And of course, the Dire Bear from Death Knell will be stronger than anything before. He's listed as 44 points, so I guess something like 20 damage per hit.

But the good thing is that we can now finally consider those creatures for a warband. When you have stuff out of control due to difficult rating, it has to do some stuff, like rushing the nearest enemy (which might not be in your best interest). And as a side effect, this increases the number of huge figures that are legal in CG warbands, as the fiendish tyrannusaurus is now possible for CG.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Fiendish T-Rex + Dire Animals + CG = Interesting...

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Fiendish T-Rex + Dire Animals + CG = Interesting...

I think it's funny that the Fiendish Tyrannusaurus, as well as some other monsters, are now more at home in CG than they are in their home faction.
We already had something like that with the combo Red Wizard + Nightwalker (the Warband Building of the Red Wizard would allow the Nightwalker into LE, and the command ability would increase spell damage).