Royal Beastflayers in Warcry: How to win games and eat people!
Reaction
The initial comparison I want to make for Tenacious Hunters is with the generic reaction; Strike Them Down which you can see above. As a direct comparison, I think Tenacious Hunters is better because its not a 50% chance to do D6 damage points, but rather a flat D3 (so it always works). From my games however, I haven't really had all that much of an opportunity to use Strike Them Down with any kind of regularity; Either the thing I'm charging in is dead, or I'm charging specifically to pin things down in which case it's more likely to receive a counter attack then a disengage.
Following this, Counter always seems to be a better reaction to use in those situations where you know your fighters are going to die, which would be very common considering your basic ghouls are T3 with 8 wounds.
Therefore my initial thinking is that Tenacious Hunters as a reaction is one of the weaker ones, in that it's not as consistent as an ability that you want to use, and as a reaction that you would want to build around.
Royal Flaymaster
At 175 points, the Royal Flaymaster sits in that expensive-but-not-too-expensive hero slot. I feel like it's decidedly OK compared to other heroes in it's price range where it trades in 1 attack for M5 vs the common M4 (with the closest analogy being the Witherlord who has the same stats except for the movement and attack). I almost wish they made it 200+ points and gave it the extra attack it really wants. Especially considering that its one of your main damage dealers in the warband.
Pack Tactics makes the Flaymaster as an interesting ally option in other, more numerous warbands such as Soulblight Gravelords where they can leverage masses of cheaper bodies in skeletons to get around their general poor damage output and offer some big single target spike damage.
No Rest Until The Quest Is Done is a flat strength buff for a quad. The question is; "Is this going to be better than Rampage". The ability itself specifies visible friendly fighters so the Flaymaster can't use it to buff himself in the event that he is fighting very tough opponents and generally, the extra two actions from Rampage will probably be more useful 90% of the time.
One thing to mention is that in this warband overall, there is a distinct lack of attack boosting abilities which we have commonly seen in most ‘new warbands’. This is probably intentional on Games Workshop's part to avoid a horde warband being able to multiply out their attacks and get around the weakness of generally poor fighters.
Beastflayer Baron
The Beastflayer Baron is likely the best fighter in the warband and most probably the main fighter you want to build around. The bonus move actions from Sound the Hunt combos well with other more flighty Death heroes like the Askurgan exemplar or the Abhorrent Archregent, and also fast thralls such as dire wolves to get them to objectives even faster.
High value doubles are fairly easy to make in Warcry given the wild-dice system so I would expect 1-2 of these in every list. From a raw stats standpoint, the 3/4/2/4 damage profile is average along with the T4 and 16 wounds. I feel like you get a lot of 'bang for your buck' with this fighter for the 115 points you are paying but that said; you only get one in the box so a player would need to convert up several more.
Ghoulgore Squire
I feel like 95 points is actually a decent price point for these ghouls. With their T4 and 12 wounds they are comparable to Bestigor (doubly so with their M5 also) or Despoilers from the Jade Obelisk. S3 however is their biggest weakness due to the prevalence of T4 in the game nowadays. That being said, there are several multi-bestigor builds out there so perhaps a multi-squire build could work for a more elite style of play.
Unleash The Hounds as a movement buff is more of a sidegrade from the baron’s free move action double so I would expect more use out of that then the Squires.
Offal Hound
The dead baboons as they are 130 points; So not expensive, but not amazingly cheap either. With their very much average damage profile and 15 points more then the baron (What you're getting is two extra points worth of movement, a couple of wounds and a downgrade from toughness four to toughness three), they don't seem to bring anything to the table that you can't already find elsewhere.
Again comparing these to the Beastflayer Baron, which is the closest analogy in the box; With exactly the same damage profile; you are only losing a couple of wounds, but I think in the toughness four and movement double really makes up for it vs T3 and Climbing Horrors.
The beast room mark, as always is a bit of a liability because your Offalhounds can't pick up treasure.
Ghoul Tracker
55 point M5 chaff = good.
Allies
I've got a selection here that I think could work pretty well for this war band.
We've got the Craven Hunt Master out of Nighthaunt. At 135 points, it's not the cheapest version of resurrection that you can get, but I think it's the most versatile at the price point that you are paying. And it's got Hunt in the name.. which is what this warband is all about.
Secondly, we have the Askurgan Examplar. The warband as a whole is slightly light on damage outside the Flaymaster so bringing in some heavy hitters could be very useful to compliment the numbers of the basic ghouls. I think it combos very well with the Barron double because you can use it to give a big boost to the Exemplar's speed where it can bring its big damage numbers to bear.
Finally we've got the Abhorrent Archregent. Again, at 205 points, just like the Exemplar but a little more tanky and otherwise very similar. The Archregent comes with a movement buff ability built so if you didn't want to take your Ghoul Gore Squires over something a bit more flighty, you could take the a regent and still have the benefit from your movement boosts.
The Chosen Slingshot
For this list, the idea is that we are going to ally in an Abhorrent Archregent and a Crypt Haunter for the Chosen Of The King combo. You can put them in the same deployment group as your Baron, and using his double, move both the Haunter and Archregent closer to the opponent so that they can use them almost from the first turn.
That will push the haunter up to 6/4/2/5 for the turn with the ability to mince through most targets whilst the Archregent itself can bring it's not insignificant attacks to bear on another target thanks to the range of Chosen of the King. The two of them provide a very big target for your opponent that they need to deal with or else leaving them to cause havoc to chaff and elite units alike.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I think that straight out of the box the Royal Beastflayers are decidedly middle of the road. I do think however that they will really come into their own if you get a second box, because that allows you to run two Barons and then choose between the Squires and the Offalhounds whilst still keeping your numbers up with your Trackers. It will also allow you to run a second Flaymaster for a more damaging punch.
I think overall as a war band, I really like them. I think they're going to be very good on objective missions, even if just for their very good maneuverability, free moves, movement boosting and base move of 5.
If you are building them as 9x fighters, and you are getting a lot of additional damage in there wither from Askurgan Exemplars, Chosen of the King, or otherwise, that's absolutely fine. But if you don't have the additional damage from allies, you will want to go much bigger and really double down on those Ghouls, Pack Tactics, and using the Barron to get places.
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