tom_gore

No announcement anywhere, but it seems our prayers have been answered and Varanscribe has recently been updated to include both the new warbands and monsters&mercenaries.

Our most common "houserule" is, if there is any doubt, it's visible. Usually we just discuss about it like "would you say this model is LOS blocked to your unit XXX if I put it in this position?".

This looks really cool. Do you think it would be possible in the future to use this as an actual dice roller, too? In short, it would calculate the amount of hits and wounds from an actual randomized roll according to the "specs" inserted? After that the ability to save your "favourite" profiles and you'd save a lot of players a lot of time at the gaming table

I do actually agree with you that the correct playstyle for IJ is going hyper aggressive. If I had more GG models I would probably go for just that - a massive alpha strike that will wipe the table clean in one glorious combat phase. I actually did play my list pretty aggressive anyway when it came to objectives and that pretty much won me the game - although against the lists I went against were also outmatched in killing power and I would have tabled them anyway. Still, with the first and third scenario and the consecutive point gain forgetting the objectives early game is just not an option if you plan to win. However, as I don't have more GG models and I don't plan to buy more unless I run into a better deal than buying the SC set and selling off the rest, for 2K points I'm indeed torn between BW and IJ allegiance. Taking the Ironfist is in any case a no-brainer, and model-wise I'm stuck with adding more Ardboys (which is not a bad thing). Adding Scuttletide is also nice so I would try to find room for that.

Warchanters are the super champions of IJ at the moment. Personally, I even consider running 3 of them in 2K points but I can't bring myself to paint another identical model. Will see what the IJ warband for Beastgrave will bring along. Violent Fury is probably one of the best buffs in the game at the moment. Hell, it's so good I'm fearing it will be nerfed at some point. As for the CP's, spending 8 points to ensure hits still leaves you to roll 1s and 2s on wounds, so even then you could get unlucky and lose the S&B chain. It's a dice game so I accept that sometimes things don't go as planned.

Proceeded to win a 3-round local 1500 pts Battlehost tournament yesterday. My list and my opponent lists will be added later when the tournament system starts working again. Game 1 vs. Disciples of Tzeentch, Duality of Death I deployed most of my army on the left side and only 1 chanter, pigs and 1 group of brutes to the right. My opponent did a reverse mirror, deploying most of her forces on my right side and only the acolytes and the skyfires on my left side. She chose to go first. Failed to cast half her spells (!) and then took some pot shots with the Skyfires, killing one of my Ardboys. Thanked her for triggering Mad as Hell, ensuring that I would be able to reach the left side objective with the Ardboys. Megaboss spent a CP to trigger rampaging destroyers and surged forward to meet and mince the skyfires. I ran the pigs to capture the right side objective as she had held her pink horrors back to screen Kairos. Brutes ran forward as I failed to cast Hand of Gork. Both objectives in my control on turn 1. The next turns, her bad luck with casting rolls continued, allowing me to push forward like a freight train. She was turtling into a corner while leaving both objectives in my control. After 3 turns it was 12-0 but we decided to play out the 4th turn. I finally managed to break through the screens of horrors and destroyed Kairos. She was a fairly new player to AoS. I gave her some tips about playing more aggressively for the objectives, since she already knew how to screen her casters (my megaboss with +7 strength of victory stood in testament to that). Major Win for Ironjawz Game 2 vs. Flesh-Eater Courts, Total Commitment Deployed my whole army to the frontline, fairly wide, with Weirdnob fairly close to the center so I could teleport units to the fray. He went first, hesitated about making a long-ish charge at my Megaboss but decided against it and screened his TG. Summoned the courtier and the bats to my left flank but failed to charge with both of them, allowing me to mop them up with the Ardboys and Brutes I had at that flank. After that we played cat and mouse with the TG vs. MB for a turn, until I managed to teleport Brutes into his flank and got a double turn with another successful teleport. The brutes cleaned up his support while the Ardboys tied up the flayers. At that point I was brave enough to charge forward with my MB and with unlucky rolls his TG failed to kill it in the countercharge, allowing me to mop up the remains. Table was clean at 4th turn. Major Win for Ironjawz Game 3 vs. Gloomspite Gitz, Places of Arcane Power Another wide deployment by me. Planned to take both flanks with Warchanters and the middle one with Megaboss, but plans changed when opponent deployed almost his whole army to my left side. With the highly mobile squigs I had to move my Megaboss to engage them and protect my Warchanter so I could hold at least 1 objective for as long as possible. Gave him the first turn. Opponent managed to teleport the Trolls to my right side objective, effectively ****** my plans to take it with the other warchanter. Fortunately he failed the charge with the trolls. I buffed up my brutes on that side and charged them while my megaboss plowed into the goblin screens on the left side. In the combat phase I even managed to active Killa Beat against the trolls, but then made a greedy mistake and fought with my megaboss first. A few missed attacks later (-1 from the netters, mind you) there were still 4 goblins left and my hope for smashing and bashing went with it. The trolls then minced the brutes, leaving my right flank quite outmatched (I should of course have fought with the brutes first, although they could only hope to kill 3-4 trolls at best. My megaboss had Mystic Shield up so the gobbos literally had a bigger chance of hurting themselves than my MB). Luck intervened as he charged my megaboss with his Mangler boss and managed to cause a puny 5 wounds to him (I saved 5 4+ saves of 2 damage each on one roll). He didn't get a double turn and my megaboss retaliated twice, dispatching it and effectively securing the whole left flank. In the middle there was the last scrap, with Ardboys getting worn out by the trolls and my shamans trying to get some points off the middle objective. He charged in with his squig boss, but ended up being beaten to death by the Weirdnob (all hits, all wounds, he failed all saves and I rolled 7 for damage). Shook hands at that point. Major Win for Ironjawz Observations. Megaboss with the kit I had chosen him was a perfect balance between tanky and killy. He survived all three games (with a little luck, admittedly) and did most of the killing in each. Brutes are in a tough spot in IJ lists now. They're outshined by the Ardboys in almost every aspect. With a bit more mobility and bravery they could be wonderful, but now they're way too reliant on good run/charge rolls and battleshock tests. Teleport is an incredibly powerful too for the Ironjawz. I wouldn't dream of fielding them without it anymore, and at 2k points with a second artifact it's going to be the shamanic skullcape, as I failed way too many teleports with a 6 in casting roll. CP are still at a premium, but I don't feel like the Brooch is an absolute must anymore. At 2K you can start with 3 points and coupled with Ironfist and the Fungoid, you should have plenty throughout the game if you don't waste them for trivial stuff.

Meaning running less than 5 ardboys in a unit.

By the way, don't know if anyone else noticed yet, but the idea of taking 5 x 1 Ardboys in an Ardfist in order to nuke them with Green Puke and get 10 man units back is illegal, because you cannot field understrength units in a battalion as per core book page 240.

Well there is hope. Grashnak's Despoilers is a great little toolkit for any chaos army and of course in BoC armies it can easily replace the vanilla shaman.

About the upcoming orruk warband for Underworlds - I hope its warscroll brings a boost to Brutes in the army. Those poor green mean fighting machines are being replaced by Ardboys in almost all lists at the moment.

To bring godbeasts believeably in AoS they'd have to change the scale. Which of course they might (and make sure everyone still needs to keep their old Fantasy Battle miniatures in the garage and buy new ones).

Of course there would be a FW range of miniatures involved. You really think GW is going to publish a ruleset just for old miniatures everyone already has in their garage? Where's the money in that? I still don't think this is Old World stuff. More likely Age of Myth or Age of Chaos. A "brand new" setting with "brand new" rules. Just like Horus Heresy is for 40k.

You're not really supposed to use them in melee, but yeah I know what you mean. I wish there was an easier and faster way of counting who can fight and who cannot.

People can use whatever tournament rules they wish for their own tournaments. Including banning square bases.

Well GW movement trays are actually quite affordable comparing to many similar quality 3rd party options. So we'll see.