Beasts of Chaos: Rupturing the Meta

It’s been a while since I spoke about my beloved Beasts of Chaos, but with the summer coming to a close, and myself being all moved into Providence, I feel it’s worth examining where BoC stands right now.  Per Games Workshop’s Metawatch from August 17th, BoC are sitting at a lukewarm 48% winrate, trending upwards, and Woehammer’s August 27th Meta Stats puts us at a rough 46% winrate.  These are among the lowest winrates we’ve had in all of 3.0, so what gives?  For starters, the most popular meta pick prior to the last balance update was slaughtered, with Ungor Raiders seeing their cost increased substantially, and given we’re far better tailored to small Heroes, rather than Wizards, this season’s gimmick isn’t especially rewarding for us.  All told though, there’s been a few tops, with folks still forcing Raider blocks, but on the horizon, rumblings of a storm have been picking up.  Splicing this flavor-of-the-week combo into your BoC list may be exactly what you need, so without further ado, let’s address the Incarnate in the room.  It’s Rupture time.

Via Warhammer Community

I’ve spoken highly of the Krondspine Incarnate numerous times on Flipside, but for a quick refresher, this centerpiece shores up many weaknesses of the faction on its own, and synergizes immensely with some of our strongest units.  It’s charge rerolls for an army that absolutely needs to hit charges, a massive midboard threat to force opponents towards the edges, and is even guaranteed to survive turn 1, should you null deploy (reserving nearly all BoC units).  One of its core mechanics is its Bonding feature, which ties the Krondspine to a Hero; only that hero can issue commands to the Krond, and when that hero dies, the Krondspine enrages, gaining Run & Charge, and a +1 to Hit.  While we prior triggered this effect by bonding the Krondspine to a Great Bray-Shaman and killing it via Rituals of Ruin, now, there’s a brand-new spell specific to this season, which pairs perfectly with a newly-buffed Endless Spell, the Suffocating Gravetide.

Rupture is a spell with Casting Value 10, range 18”, which causes a chosen Incarnate or Endless Spell to become wild for the rest of the battle.  This obviously gives the Krondspine some huge benefits off the bat, but crucially, while wild, it treats all Endless Spells (and friendly Wizards) as enemies, allowing it to use your own ES for its unique monstrous rampage.

Via Warhammer Community

This Monstrous Rampage, called Devour Endless Spell, essentially allows you to dispel an Endless Spell on a 2d6 roll, adding your current Incarnate Level.  If you succeed, it’s dispelled, and you gain an Incarnate Level.  This is absolutely wild if it ever goes off, and a Krond being onboard usually disincentivizes an opponent from touching their own ES, for fear of feeding your monster.  You can only take a Krondspine down one Level each turn, so much like Morathi, you either need to decide to kill it during a game, and deal ~18w for two turns, or simply ignore/tarpit it.  Making it Level 3 off the bat is of course insane, increasing every ounce of output it produces, but to do that, we’d need to cast both an Endless Spell that’s easy enough to unbind, and cast a 10cv Spell in the same turn.  Moreover, the ES would need to be fast enough to keep up with a Krondspine.  What folks have been choosing is a sleeper, and something that’s never once seen tournament play before.

Via Britmodeller

For a mere 30pts, you can take the Suffocating Gravetide in your list.  The Gravetide is a 6cv Spell with an 8” range, and a 12” move, meaning it will always be at the speed of your Krondspine, and to unbind it, you need to roll a 5+ on 2d6, given it’ll be Level 2 when you’re attempting Devour Endless Spell.  It doesn’t do much aside from that, being a way to block some mortals and take up a big area, but the next component is what puts it all together.  The Tzaangor Shaman on Disk is a BoC hero you can take for 120pts, which once per game can cast an extra Spell at +3; this means you get to spend your normal cast on Gravetide, hitting 6+ ~72% of the time, your Rupture ~58% of the time, and then your Devour ~83% of the time.  If you’re calculating for all three of those events happening, it’s ~34%, which isn’t great, but your probability of at least one of those rolls hitting is ~98%, which is good.  Coupled with Primal Dice, this becomes a relatively consistent way to power out an extremely deadly Krondspine, and because we’re so non-committal, this works out brilliantly.

This is, however, a cheesy strategy, and by no means is ensured to go off every time.  Its greatest failing is hitting exactly Rupture+Gravetide, then failing your Devour, leaving your Krond at Level 1, but that’s thankfully a slim chance.  This is a massive pointsink for an army that’s relatively overcosted on the whole, and that makes me less keen to recommend it in every list; this needs to be in an army with very forgiving other units.  You need to be able to trade back up, with things like Tzaangor Enlightened on Foot, and Bullgors, to be able to rely on this aspect of gameplay.

Overall, I’ll certainly be slotting this style of package into a ton of my lists, and luckily, this is a point-for-point swap with a Beastlord (TzShaman+Gravetide, 150pts) which makes it effortless to include.  There’s bound to be more tricks to our book discovered, but it’s been a wonderful surprise seeing how deep our rules can go, and how well BoC continues to play with generic ‘big guys’, like Belakor, Krond, and Grunnock.  While we’re not the most magically adept faction, if you’re sitting below a 50% winrate, sometimes the cheese must be the answer.  Until next time!

That’s a wrap on this brand-new package for BoC!  While this isn’t the only army that can use it, BoC still remains a top-tier Krond-using faction, so there’s a lot of play!  I’d love to see your lists including this group of cheesemongers, so post them in the comments below, and we’ll get brainstorming!