I should note that these are my opinions and should be treated as such, what works for me and my personal play style may not work for you. That being said I hope to at least generate some thoughts on how this great unit can add to your DE army.
When I got my hands on the DE dex I sat down in my FLGS and was instantly enamoured with the awesome models. I then dug deeper and found the Beastmasters. Let's see multiple high init, Tons of attacks, Invulnerable saves, really fast, interesting wound allocation, Rending, I was sold.
I had a bunch of chaos warhounds for kymera and spawn for clawed fiends. I converted some rather poor razorwings from some warrior bits and green stuff. My first unit build was 5 BM, 10 Kymera, 4 Razorwings and a clawed fiend.
My first few games with them were amazing. The speed and shear power of over 80 attacks on the charge spread over I6 and I5, even without power weapons was brutal. Terminators fall, 10 man grey hunter squads fall, (even with the banner) whole boyz squads evaporate. The list goes on. Against vehicles they are fantastic as well. Many times my kymera have immobilized a vehicle at I6 allowing the 26 rending attacks of the razorwings to finish it.
That is not to say that they are invincible; far from it. Things that have beaten down my beasts, Blood Talon Furioso, Fear of Darkness, big kroot unit with tons of hounds (they were in cover and got to go first), charged by 10 assault marines with priest and reclusiarch., 3 direct hits from a manticore in one turn, double lord TWC (although I killed off the TWC), and IG with psycher battle squad.
Next in part two I will talk about the different BM unit configurations and finally in Part 3 I will conclude the series with a discussion on beastmaster tactics.
Next in part two I will talk about the different BM unit configurations and finally in Part 3 I will conclude the series with a discussion on beastmaster tactics.