Today we're looking at how to conquer your foes with the furry, finned, and ferocious leaders of the Beasts. Of all the families in Rumble currently, they offer the most varied gameplay experiences. Old Murk-Eye creates enormous waves of murlocs to overwhelm your enemies. Hogger starts slow, but with each revival becomes an increasingly unstoppable force on the field. And last but not least, Charlga completely changes how gold is spent during the battle, enabling strategies no other leader can support.
None of the Beast leaders are the strongest in the game. But what they lack in raw power they more than make up for in specialization - each leader brings something to the table that you won't find anywhere else. As you step beyond the regular campaign and into heroics and raids, mastering their might will be a valuable asset.
Hogger
The terror of Elwynn Forest begins combat as a fairly mediocre mini. His initial placement finds him with slightly less health and slightly more damage and movement speed than the regular Gnoll Brute, but at a cost of 1g more.
As you play him over and over again, his Relentless ability grants him a 35% stacking increase of attack and movement speed, up to a cap of 105% increase (a cap of 3 upgrades). A fully upgraded Hogger is one of the fastest minis in the game, and deals a respectable amount of damage, matching Grom Hellscream (though with cleave rather than single-target).
This makes his army strategy fairly clear - cycle through your army to ramp Hogger up, and let him clear the mission for you.
Even though his damage output is high, he remains fairly fragile. The Ham Hock talent gives him a 30% health boost, allowing him to match a Fire Elemental (albeit without the Resistance trait). Because of how crucial he is to his army, this is usually the pick.
He can further be supported by sources of Bloodlust like Ogre Mage, or extra survivability from a [Frostwolf Shaman]/mini/frostwolf-shaman "Frostwolf Shaman"), though you should be mindful of how those high cost minis interfere with the cycle strategy.
As for the other options, Fatal Frenzy is a decidedly mediocre talent. Perhaps in co-op mode this will see play, but for now, he's not even likely to be the first beast to die in a battle, giving the very real chance the talent does nothing at all.
Spoiled Meat is not bad for poison comps. Many beasts can inflict poison, and many sources of poison are cheap (Defias, Plague Farmer) so he is one of the better leaders to build with that synergy.
Overall, Hogger is the most straightforward of the Beast family. If you're just dipping your toes (or paws) in, he's usually the pick.
Charlga
In contrast, the matriarch of the Razorfen Tribe is a highly complex leader. Her spirit link ability fundamentally changes how you play the game.
Explaining her ability in full took an entire article - but the TL;DR version is that she splits your army into a stack of minis and a stack of costs. Whenever it is time to draw from the top of the stack, she takes a mini and a cost, and the cost of every mini in your hand is the drawn cost.
In practice this means that while Charlga doesn't save any gold relative to an ordinary army, she can manipulate the costs in order to make plays that another leader cannot. Similar to Murk-eye (who we'll cover further down), she can explode on the map with more power than the available gold would allow, with the crucial weakness of managing her 'downtime', as you have to play a kobold or other cheap mini above cost. This creates a varied, unusual playstyle.
Even as a combatant Charlga is distinctive - she is a ranged mini that can't hit air (like the Plague Farmer), and rather than deal damage directly, she ensnares her target in entangling roots that take away a percentage of health per second (8%). Entangled melee minis are immobilized, and towers are disabled. Note that an entangled tower will still get shots in on Charlga, she cannot keep them locked down forever.
Her talents are roughly balanced against each other - Cavernous Mists, which reduces her cost by 1g (halving her deploy cost), is significant both for the direct reduction as well as adding a '1g' to the cost stack of her army. Nature's Grasp allows Charlga to lock down a Tower and 2 defending melee minis at the same time, doubling down on her support role.
Spirit Passage is the most interesting. Although it is a restrictive ability (only 5g minis work with it), it is a powerful one. Sending an upgraded, Stealthed Gargoyle or Sappers to an enemy base poses a serious threat. Careful and creative army-building will be rewarded with this talent.
Charlga is often regarded as a weak leader. There is some truth to this - she offers few direct advantages like Baron Rivendare's skeleton armies or Rend Blackhand's immense personal value. But her ability offers unique advantages, that no other leader brings to the battle. Keep an eye on the crone.
Old Murk-Eye
Finally, we have the lurking menace of the coasts of Westfall, Old Murk-Eye - my personal favourite leader and the one I took to victory over Onyxia.
Murk-Eye swarms like no other in Warcraft Rumble. His ability is called March of the Murlocs. For five seconds after deploying Murk-Eye himself, every time you spend a gold on a mini, he spawns an extra Tidehunter at your Barracks (per gold spent). Given that a Tidehunter is worth ~1g each, this effectively doubles the value you're getting from gold spent for the duration.
This makes the basic strategy of Murk-Eye simple - maximize the gold spent during the March of the Murlocs. This means pooling gold until near capped, and then exploding onto the map with Murkeye and his fishy friends, completely overwhelming any defences. In addition to being powerful, it's frankly a lot of fun.
Note that (without Tip of the Spear) the Murlocs are not guaranteed to all go in the same direction and support each other. This can be good and bad - it limits the direct strength of the Murk-Eye push, but allows map control, similar to Baron Rivendare summoning skeletons. They can march down alternative lanes, taking chests and clearing kobolds for you, while your main army marches on the enemy base.
Also note that the March ends as soon as Murk-Eye dies. If he gets sniped suddenly, you have to be quick to abort the push.
Because Murk-Eye favours going all-in on pushes, he is very vulnerable afterwards. Cheap sources of AoE force you to play carefully, reserving some Gold in the pool in case you get wiped and need to quickly deploy a counter.
Murk-Eye is a very gold-hungry leader, and you'll really notice which maps can support his playstyle best, having abundant chests or mines to take. Like Hogger, he prefers cycle-heavy builds, though for a different reason. While Hogger wants to race back to redeploying himself, Murk-Eye needs cheap ways to maintain map presence while he pools gold for the next push.
He is a relatively high damage, if fragile, leader. A small amount of health (he will just about survive an equal level Chain Lightning), a short-ish range, but damage comparable to a Huntress (and a similar bouncing attack). It is important to keep him in the backlines and out of danger.
In most situations, Marathon of the Murlocs is the talent of choice. Doubling the time you have to get free Murlocs is obviously very powerful, though note that except for unusual situations, you don't have enough gold to maximize the ten seconds of Marching.
Tip of the Spear is an interesting choice. Spawning all the murlocs on top of Murk-Eye makes the overall push stronger, but more vulnerable to counterplay. Still, when paired with something like Cheat Death, it can make a push with more damage than anything can withstand.
Finally we have Electric Eels. I'm not the biggest fan of this talent because of the aforementioned vulnerability of Murk-Eye, but he can 1v1 a Molten Giant or even Abomination by stunlocking them with his attacks, which is not too shabby. Not something I'd aim for, but not a bad talent to have lying around.
Old Murk-Eye can pair with the +beast damage auras from Prowler or Grunts, as well extra sources of gold from minis like Defias Bandits. As mentioned before, Cheat Death is another powerful synergy, allowing his army of Murlocs to become unkillable for a time and send his foes to the inky depths in the process.
Overall Murk-Eye is a leader that rewards well-timed pushes and careful economic management. His highs are high and his lows are low, but a skilled pilot can build on both.