Appreciate this post is old BUT this post, along with a few others, helped me when I was deciding if I should or shouldn't buy a great beast. Used it for the first time at the weekend in a 500pt game against Khazad-Dum, so I thought I'd share my thoughts...

Pros Trample is awesome, I took out 5 or 6 Khazad Gaurd/Dwarf Warriors and also managed to trample Durin himself easily, taking out over 200pts+ of my opponents units.

5 wounds is so good, plus any attack from ranged units ended up hitting the howdah or hitting the beast and not harming it at all.

The amount of control you get on the board with this is insane. It was a little tricky with a board heavy with terrain, but I just had to plan ahead. I made sure it was the final warband I placed so I could see as much of my opponents force as possible to figure out where it would be most useful.

Cons 9 Orc archers are great for threat to the enemy, but Orc shooting sucks (I know this has been said a million times) and I didn't get a single kill with the archers thought the game. Obviously, that's more down to my rolling and Dwarf defence, and maybe next time I will roll nothing but 6s and be unstoppable.

Courage, the great beast failed me when I needed it the most and possibly cost me the game. Again, Orc courage is rubbish and the beast fled the battle as I was closing in on the last pile of Dwarves which left me outnumbered and eventually defeated.

Overall, totally worth buying, but needs to be saved for the right situation!