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GH2017 - Ironjawz Review & Discussion


Chris Tomlin

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We've got a club meet tomorrow afternoon / evening, and I've put a call out to everyone to raid their bitz boxes and bring me any spare heads / helmets from their various armies.  The plan is to make a badass Boss Skewer from a spare Frostlord Spear.  I've got a good range of trophy heads coming my way, so I'm hoping it'll look cool...and since I'm doing my army as Bloodtoofs, I might drop in something like a cheeky Tyranid head and see if anyone notices, who knows where these guys have been and what they've seen with all that Realmgate hopping!

Question for the group is, what do I model it onto?  I'm currently thinking a Warchanter, because his place in my army is guaranteed whereas the Shaman could face the chop if I run with the Troggoth Hag.  And of course the Krusha gets a cool toy of his own, not a support artefact.  What do you guys put your Skewer on?  Am I right in thinking the Chanter is the obvious choice?

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31 minutes ago, PlasticCraic said:

We've got a club meet tomorrow afternoon / evening, and I've put a call out to everyone to raid their bitz boxes and bring me any spare heads / helmets from their various armies.  The plan is to make a badass Boss Skewer from a spare Frostlord Spear.  I've got a good range of trophy heads coming my way, so I'm hoping it'll look cool...and since I'm doing my army as Bloodtoofs, I might drop in something like a cheeky Tyranid head and see if anyone notices, who knows where these guys have been and what they've seen with all that Realmgate hopping!

Question for the group is, what do I model it onto?  I'm currently thinking a Warchanter, because his place in my army is guaranteed whereas the Shaman could face the chop if I run with the Troggoth Hag.  And of course the Krusha gets a cool toy of his own, not a support artefact.  What do you guys put your Skewer on?  Am I right in thinking the Chanter is the obvious choice?

Aye the chanter is the only choice IMO. Giving him the artefact makes him a target and compared to the weirdnob he's far tankier. In addition you will be keeping him around the action anyway so he will give maximum affect with it. The shaman on the other hand might end up wombling off with your Ardboyz or staying back at casting range, to avoid unbinding chances for example, which reduces the impact of the boss skewer.

This all ignores the fact every Ironjawz list runs AT LEAST 1 warchanter, often 2, and a lot of them are cutting the weirdnobs in favour of allying better wizards. (read every other wizard that can cast arcane shield and not inflict mortal wounds on ourselves)

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Allegiance: Ironjawz

Leaders
Orruk Megaboss (140)
- General
- Trait: Ironclad 
- Artefact: The Boss Skewer 
Orruk Megaboss (140)
- Artefact: Destroyer 
Orruk Warchanter (80)
Orruk Warchanter (80)
Orruk Warchanter (80)
Orruk Warboss (140)
- Great Waaagh Banner 
- Allies

Battleline
30 x Orruk Ardboys (450)
- Ironjawz Battleline
5 x Orruk Brutes (180)
- Ironjawz Battleline
5 x Orruk Brutes (180)
- Ironjawz Battleline
6 x Orruk Gore Gruntas (280)
- Ironjawz Battleline

Units
20 x Gitmob Grots (100)
- Bows & Slashas 
- Allies
20 x Gitmob Grots (100)
- Bows & Slashas 
- Allies
2 x Snotlings (40)
- Allies

Reinforcement Points (0)

Total: 1990 / 2000
Allies: 380 / 400

Thinking about something like this, any suggestions how to improve? The idea is to have multiple heroes and units for all objectives without leaving 200 pts babysitting an objective. 

and the damage output comes from the buffed Ironjawz, any 2 (or 3) units could get 2+ to hit, 3+ to wound reroll 1s.

The reason to give general boss skewer instead of destroyer is simply due to target saturation. 

please community! 

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How do you have 2 Artefact? To get the second you would need a battalion. Is this generally or for a tournament?

You really need a wizard for mystic shield. It's more important than the 3rd Warchanter imo.

Sadly you're kind of tight on the points.

Allegiance: Ironjawz

Leaders
Orruk Megaboss (140)
Orruk Megaboss (140)
Orruk Warchanter (80)
Orruk Megaboss (140)
Orruk Warboss (140)
- Great Waaagh Banner 
- Allies
Orruk Great Shaman (120)
- Allies

Battleline
30 x Orruk Ardboys (450)
- Ironjawz Battleline
5 x Orruk Brutes (180)
- Ironjawz Battleline
5 x Orruk Brutes (180)
- Ironjawz Battleline
6 x Orruk Gore Gruntas (280)
- Ironjawz Battleline

Units
20 x Gitmob Grots (100)
- Bows & Slashas 
- Allies
3 x Nasty Skulkers (40)
- Allies

Reinforcement Points (0)

Total: 1990 / 2000
Allies: 400 / 400
 

I included the nasty skulkers as a joke more than anything else, they are the other option to snotlings.

The mystic shield really is that good. Inspiring presence, mystic shield and 10-15 orruk forged shields will make your ardboyz immovable. If you can get them in cover aswell they have a 2+ save and a 6++ feel no pain for the first 30 wounds.

Compare the +1 to save vs a 3rd Warchanter. 

If you want to keep your double grots drop the snotlings and "upgrade the 3rd chanter to a weirdnob.

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So apparently I put a 3rd megaboss in instead of the 2nd Warchanter, no idea why but it makes the points all skewify. Here's the other option is was talking about with the straight wizard swap.

Allegiance: Ironjawz 

Leaders
Orruk Megaboss (140)
Orruk Megaboss (140)
Orruk Warchanter (80)
Orruk Warchanter (80)
Orruk Weirdnob Shaman (120)
Orruk Warboss (140)
- Great Waaagh Banner 
- Allies

Battleline
30 x Orruk Ardboys (450)
- Ironjawz Battleline
5 x Orruk Brutes (180)
- Ironjawz Battleline
5 x Orruk Brutes (180)
- Ironjawz Battleline
6 x Orruk Gore Gruntas (280)
- Ironjawz Battleline

Units
20 x Gitmob Grots (100)
- Spears & Shields 
- Allies
20 x Gitmob Grots (100)
- Spears & Shields 
- Allies

Reinforcement Points (0)

Total: 1990 / 2000
Allies: 340 / 400
 

Costs you the snotlings and 3rd Warchanter but arcane shield is that important imo. The rest of your list stays intact. 

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Thanks for the input. No idea how the second item got in there... I think it's a remnant of a list with ironfist in it.

Yeah, it's probably better with a shaman instead of chanter for the extra save. I just like high damage output. Easier though, no need to add snotlings! 

 

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48 minutes ago, Screamer said:

Thanks for the input. No idea how the second item got in there... I think it's a remnant of a list with ironfist in it.

Yeah, it's probably better with a shaman instead of chanter for the extra save. I just like high damage output. Easier though, no need to add snotlings! 

 

Yeah it's a really clean swap. I think there is a point of diminishing returns on the warchanters.

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So whats your take on the heroes from shadespire? The warscrolls for SCE and khorne is already out, but what about do you guys think of the ironskull and what they are going to bring to the table in a week or so? Also, are they gonna bring anything new to the IJ meta? 

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18 minutes ago, Skumbaagh said:

So whats your take on the heroes from shadespire? The warscrolls for SCE and khorne is already out, but what about do you guys think of the ironskull and what they are going to bring to the table in a week or so? Also, are they gonna bring anything new to the IJ meta? 

So my quick thought is that it will give us a small elite "hero" type unit which costs a low amount of points.

2/3 wounds each, 4+ armour save with ok attacks for maybe 100/120 points? It should actually fill a really important niche from a list building perspective in that we don't really have any low cost units. even our 3 model cav unit is 140 points.

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6 hours ago, Skumbaagh said:

So whats your take on the heroes from shadespire? The warscrolls for SCE and khorne is already out, but what about do you guys think of the ironskull and what they are going to bring to the table in a week or so? Also, are they gonna bring anything new to the IJ meta? 

Been giving this some thought!

The key pick ups for me are:

1) The units out there have a battlefield role of " ".  This means they don't contribute to battleline, however that's not really a problem for Ironjawz.  What they DO have is the Bloodreavers / Liberators keyword. 

This is potentially big because it means they count towards warscroll batallion requirements - for example, it could take a fair bite out of the  substantial "core tax" in the Bloodtoofs batallion.

Edit - as pointed out by Malakree, the batallion requires the actual unit not the keyword (it is not in bold), so thanks for the clarification Malakree.

2) The units out there do NOT get the hero keyword despite containing a named character(s).  So no contribution to Mighty Destroyers (or Duality of Death).  

3) They are an enhanced version of the core battleline unit they represent, in this case almost certainly Adboyz.  Based on the points cost relative to the base unit so far, I'm hoping for 80 points, but thinking 100 points is more likely.  This potentially makes quite a big difference because a lot of the units I am considering switching around are 40 points apart from each other (Warchanter vs Weirdnob and Gore Gruntaz vs Ardboyz / Brutes).  So in my current list at least, it will be exponentially easier to find room for them at 80 points (assuming you'll want to!).

4) Pure power level of the first two seems to be "quite good, but not game changing".  From a list building point of view, I'd rather that they were slightly worse and 80 points, than slightly better and 100 points, because we have enough elite stuff already.  If they are cheap enough, they could fill a very important roll: something cheap enough to leave back on a home objective without wasting too many points.  Other than Allies (and this army has other holes for them to fill), you can currently only really do that with heroes (potentially losing their buffing range), or something that's really too expensive for that roll (Gore Gruntas).

5) Following on from that, I'd love them to be cheap and quite resilient.  However based on their aggressive Shadespire lore, it's probably more likely that their stats and abilities will be attack focused.  In which case some mortal wound output would be nice :D

I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this!  Let's speculate!

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2 hours ago, PlasticCraic said:

This is potentially big because it means they count towards warscroll batallion requirements - for example, it could take a fair bite out of the  substantial "core tax" in the Bloodtoofs batallion.

The Ironfist specifically states Ardboyz, Gore-Gruntas or Brutes so sadly no it won't. Yes they can be included under the "any number of other Ironjawz units" but they won't count for the fists we already have.

 

2 hours ago, PlasticCraic said:

5) Following on from that, I'd love them to be cheap and quite resilient.  However based on their aggressive Shadespire lore, it's probably more likely that their stats and abilities will be attack focused.  In which case some mortal wound output would be nice :D

It actually looks like they will have abilities based on their shadespire abilities. So there is a good chance we will get some nice tasty warscroll abilities over pure stats!

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24 minutes ago, Malakree said:

The Ironfist specifically states Ardboyz, Gore-Gruntas or Brutes so sadly no it won't. Yes they can be included under the "any number of other Ironjawz units" but they won't count for the fists we already have.

I'm sure you are right, but I don't have my GH17 in front of me right now.  In my mind's eye the requirement for Arboyz was keyword bold, but since you have posted that reply, I'm much less confident! 

If you have your GH17 handy (or if you just know it for a fact), please can you confirm that "Ardboyz" is not keyword bold in the batallion requirement (i.e. it requires the unit name and not the keyword)?

Q: How do you determine what models and units make up a
warscroll battalion? When is it based on a keyword and when is
it a unit name?
A: When a warscroll battalion is referring to a keyword,
it appears in Keyword Bold. Otherwise, it is referring to
the name of a unit. 

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3 hours ago, Malakree said:

So my quick thought is that it will give us a small elite "hero" type unit which costs a low amount of points.

2/3 wounds each, 4+ armour save with ok attacks for maybe 100/120 points? It should actually fill a really important niche from a list building perspective in that we don't really have any low cost units. even our 3 model cav unit is 140 points.

If we extrapolate purely based on the two units we have seen, they both have the same number of wounds as the core unit, which would put us on 2.

They are 67% and 71% more expensive per wound than the core units ( for Liberators and Bloodreavers respectively).  If they continue that trend, it puts us squarely in line for 120 points, which is a shame - I'd personally have liked to see a larger points differential vs our existing units.  20 points saved over Gore Gruntas for 1 more body isn't a huge jump in list building flexibility - but let's see what the warscroll brings I guess.  

That being said, if you need to shave 20 points off somwhere: there you go, done!  More options can only be more better :D

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19 minutes ago, PlasticCraic said:

If you have your GH17 handy (or if you just know it for a fact), please can you confirm that "Ardboyz" is not keyword bold in the batallion requirement (i.e. it requires the unit name and not the keyword)?

It's actually in the ironjawz book and says "Orruk Ardboyz" I believe not in keyword bold.

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2 hours ago, Malakree said:

It's actually in the ironjawz book and says "Orruk Ardboyz" I believe not in keyword bold.

You are of course correct...in my head, the Bloodtoofs batallion named the units again in Bold.  However I have checked and it doesn't name them again, just stipulates that it must contain 5 units.  Then referring back to the original Ironfist batallion, they are not named in bold, so it is the actual unit name they are looking for, not the keyword.  Thanks for picking that up.

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I have a couple batreps for you: we had a club meet on Saturday and I got three games in with my Ironjawz.  There’s a minibus of us going to CanCon in January (the biggest event here in Australia with 100 players) so most of us were practising for that, using our intended CanCon armies and the relevant player pack (most of which is pretty standard).  

I am trying to be as honest as possible with myself while I learn Ironjawz, so any insights you have on things I could have done better are most welcome!

My list was:

 

MBMK (Ironclad, Armour of Gork)

Warchanter (Boss Skewer)

Weirdnob Shaman

Troggoth Hag (brought into the Allies slot to replace the 3x Spear Chukkas)

10x Brutes

10x Ardboyz

3x Gore Gruntas

3x Gore Gruntas (split out from a unit of 6 on Chris Tomlin’s sound advice)

Ironfist

 

1)      Stormcast (Scorched Earth).  This was a very unusual list, based around all the Vanguard stuff you don’t always see, along with a dollop of the 9-man Longstrikes you do!  It was exceptionally good fun to play against the hyper-mobility of the Vanguard – similar to a Sylvaneth list in some ways, but more fun than the standard Gnarlroot builds you used to see.  My opponent was a 40K guy who has started playing AOS relatively recently and he did make a few unusual decisions – mainly trying to stand off and shoot me dead, then walk onto uncontested objectives, instead of pressuring the scoreboard throughout.  That can be a valid tactic in the right circumstances, but I could see quite early on that it wasn’t going to work for him here.  I was able to nuke all of his objectives quite early on (he left them largely uncontested), then come back and play on my side of the board.  Very fun game and a Major win for the Ladz.

Key Learning Points:

The 2x 3 Gore Gruntas were huge in this one, getting forward to lightly guarded objectives and cleaning up, then coming back again.  Very pleased with the advice on this forum to split up the 6 into 2x 3, and I’d find it very hard to drop one unit or combine them again.

 

2)      Nurgle (Starstrike).  My opponent’s army was pretty tricked out: his gameplan was to out-deploy me, fling forward a huge blob of Chaos Warriors with Sayl (after giving them all the defensive buffs), string them out 1” apart, and tie me up for a big chunk of the game while he picks up the objectives.  Against any footslogging army like IJ, who can’t bypass the shield wall, this is pretty strong.  I did make a few mistakes in this one, which I will cover in a moment.  I have to admit it was those mistakes that cost me this one, not any inherent weakness in the army, but that’s why we have practice games! 

By the time I punched through his wall, I was too far behind on the scenario to pull it back within the time we had.  I have to be honest, this game was an absolute trudge, and not a huge amount of fun.  It was also frustrating that we timed out on the one scenario where late game is so key – not helped by my opponent taking forever to move and then string out his 30 guys.  I've suggested the relevant Element Games trays to him.  But although it was the least enjoyable game in some ways, it was also the one I learned the most from, which is just as important!  A Major Defeat in this one.

Key Learning Points:

First and foremost, this was good practice, because the list behaved in a similar way to the 30x Liberator blobs we will be seeing plenty of!

Possibly the biggest mistake I made in this one was forgetting that my Boss Skewer debuffs my opponent’s bravery.  It could have had a significant impact, because by my turn 3, he had 5 guys left in that blob, each keeping one of my units pinned in place.  I’d have made a minimum of 2 of those flee, and probably 3 (by knocking the unit below a multiple of 10 for +1 bravery).  So this alone would have gained me half a turn of objective scoring, which of course is massive.

The other one is setting up my army.  If I’m facing a “pin in place” list, I need to set up for the grind and deploy with my Gore Gruntas tucked in.  This was big, because I set them up wide and didn’t get a chance to tuck either unit back in once they’d been pinned, so I ended up with 5 units in range of the MBMK.  Needless to say I popped 2x 6s on the Mighty Waagh!  Frustrating, but entirely my own fault – if I had deployed more carefully, that would have been amazing instead of soul-destroying, so I will not do that again!

Thirdly, and this is still troubling me, I do wonder if I was too pedestrian with the MBMK.  He is the only unit that could bypass the shield wall by retreating right over it.  Maybe I should have done this, copped the turn of him doing nothing, then been free to smash into his heroes if I got the double turn?  It’s not like my opponent had a lot of high damage shooting to hurt him out there in No Man’s Land.  It’s still hard to know whether this would have worked – he did have other cheap units that he could charge and tie me up with if I didn’t get the double turn (which I didn’t).  But even then, I’d probably kill them pretty swiftly, and be free to wreak havoc in the next turn.  This one I find hard to ponder, but I’m happy to hear other people’s thoughts?

 

3)      Khorne (Scorched Earth again).  What a game!  My opponent had all the stuff I hate facing in Khorne – multiple Skullreapers, a War Shrine (surely the strongest and most popular unit to get a points decrease? Where did that come from!), Gore Pilgrims with 3x Slaughterpriests (no Rule of One for prayers…3x Blood Boil per turn.  Whyyyyyyyy!), Juggerlord (does so much and is so hard to kill for 140 points!), 10x Blood Warriors (compare them to 10x Ardboyz and cry), and 70x Reavers in various sizes (these guys I do like facing, because it is so satisfying to annihilate them!).

Fortunately this is one mission I am already quite familiar with, and I knew all of my enemy’s units very well.  Even the small amount of shooting you get from the Troggoth Hag can hurt them badly, and the 2” range on her staff was nice for clobbering Blood Warriors over the top of Reavers, without them being able to hit you back!  He set up very strong in the middle and quite weak on the flanks (one in particular), which was probably a mistake.  I was able to take one of his wide objectives with GGs supported by Brutes, and another with GGs alone, rolling that sweet, sweet 3 victory points both times!  There was a big punch up in the middle which he eventually came out on top of, and started pressing forwards.  However I had hollowed out his army a fair bit, so that meant he left his middle objective very lightly defended, and my GGs were able to swoop in on it and cap it too. 

My minor heroes and Ardboyz were holding my own objectives, so by the time he got there and killed them, I was too far ahead.  Come the end I was virtually tabled (just a couple of GGs left) but miles ahead on the scenario.  A Major Win.

Key Learning Points:

I did forget Duff Up Da Big Thing when I was attacking the Warshrine.  That was inconsequential here, but could have cost me in a different game.  I’ll have to add that to my cheat sheet - I usually remember it against monsters, but I have forgotten it before against other big things, not sure why.  Other than that I don’t think I made many mistakes here.

Again I appreciated the value of 2x 3 Gruntas in the scenarios with 6 objectives.  If you look at their kill points it was minimal, but their Victory Points were off the charts, which makes them the real superstars.

 

The Bigger Picture:

My overall record with Ironjawz is now 5-4: I’m finding them very satisfying to play and enjoying the journey.  I did find the Troggoth Hag more useful than the Spear Chukkas.  She failed to cast her spell every time (literally no successful casts in the 3 games), but she does draw fire from your MBMK and Brutes, and has multiple ways to hurt the enemy.  In all honesty, I’d have probably been better off with another 10x Brutes in these games.  But the Hag wasn't a total washout, even with the bad dice, so I’m going to push on with her, and hope for more upside on the casting.  Her real time to shine will be as a can opener in TLA / Stardrake matchups, and in Duality of Death.

I do want to try a second Warchanter in place of the Shaman.  I like the idea of being able both to cast Mystic Shield on the MBMK, and to debuff the enemy / take a shot at pumping out some mortal wounds (depending on the situation).  However the Brutes and MBMK are both SO much better when buffed +1 to Hit! 

If I go down this path, I’m open to suggestions on how to use the extra 40 points this creates: either to take a triumph, upgrade some Gruntas to Brutes, or as a wildcard choice maybe take a Grot Wolf Chariot?  It’s only 40 points so it comes bang on 400 overall for the Allies slot.  It’s obviously not the best unit in the game, but it’s lightening quick, and could be a good piece for stretching your opponent’s focus / capping uncontested objectives late game when there’s not much on the table.  Happy to hear people’s thoughts on this – and thanks for reading!

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9 hours ago, Brodylan said:

@PlasticCraic I'll also be heading to cancon with ironjawz, a pretty similar list though instead of the hag I'll be taking a gargant and 5 brutes. Great learning points! 

That's awesome, make sure you keep everyone up to date on how the Gargant is doing for you? 

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Hello! I've been considering picking up Ironjawz, but in a tryout game against a friend's bloodbound I have to ask: Is there a good way to deal with their wrathmongers? When we fought their death effect kind of just deleted my units.

My list was rather quickly thrown together but it was something like:

*Megaboss on foot

*Warchanter

3x3 goregruntas

2x5 brutes

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As somebody who regularly runs Wrathmongers the biggest problem I have is when somebody feeds them chaff.  So models that lock them in place and don't hit too hard (or at least won't cause much damage to themselves).  You want to keep your Megaboss further than 2" away from them for certain.

I'm not entirely sure what to suggest with the list you're running.  Goregruntas could be a good option, they should inflict a good number of wounds due to the wrathmongers 5+ save and as a unit of 3 the worst case scenario is they wipe themselves out (you can only pick a model once with the Wrathmongers death effect).  Don't forget the +1 Attack bubble within 3" of a model either - a unit should be rolling out 28 attacks into the Wrathmongers, if it's a 8"+ charge 15 of those will be D3 damage too.

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I found that a unit of 20 Ardboyz with Mystic Shield (and a probably unnecessary Inspiring Presence) stalled 5 wrathmongers and 10 bloodwarriors for about 4 turns. If it hadn't been for my idiot decision to charge into a choke point, herp derp, they probably would have wiped them both. As it was I could only bring about 25% of the attacks to bear I should have done. Despite that the Ardboyz killed 4 wrathmongers and 7 bloodwarriors.

I also managed to delete a unit of wrathmongers with my 5 DW brutes charging into them, they had a Footboss nearby and frenzy of violence. That was with one of the brutes dumping all 5(!) of his attacks into the slaughter priest and falling 1 wound short of killing him to :(

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