AoS 2 - Ironjawz Discussion

[IneptusAstartes]

So what are the chances Ironjawz get rolled into Bonesplitterz and the other orruks and non-GG grots to make a Greenskinz mega-faction functioning rather like the Skaventide allegiance? Seems to be a trend...

[svnvaldez]

1 hour ago, IneptusAstartes said:

So what are the chances Ironjawz get rolled into Bonesplitterz and the other orruks and non-GG grots to make a Greenskinz mega-faction functioning rather like the Skaventide allegiance? Seems to be a trend...

I think there is zero chance but it would be interesting if it happens.

[tolstedt]

I'm really holding out hope that Ironjawz get on par with the ridiculous damage that we are seeing from the new book.  I think it's a good sign.  I hope they continue to go with the Ironjawz thematic style of dealing damage in silly ways via mechanics (waaghs, destructive bulk, smashin' and bashin') rather than raw damage buffs.  

How does everyone feel about points?

I think that without any rules changes the Krusha should be 340, Brutes 140, Gruntas 140, Ardboyz 120, Footboss 120, Weirdnob 100

[newsun]

54 minutes ago, tolstedt said:

I'm really holding out hope that Ironjawz get on par with the ridiculous damage that we are seeing from the new book.  I think it's a good sign.  I hope they continue to go with the Ironjawz thematic style of dealing damage in silly ways via mechanics (waaghs, destructive bulk, smashin' and bashin') rather than raw damage buffs.  

How does everyone feel about points?

I think that without any rules changes the Krusha should be 340, Brutes 140, Gruntas 140, Ardboyz 120, Footboss 120, Weirdnob 100

Those look decent ardboyz maybe 120/320-330

[Malakree]

59 minutes ago, tolstedt said:

Brutes 140

Personally I'd say 120 for all our battleline units with Ardboys getting a 300 point massive regiment bonus. 

1 hour ago, tolstedt said:

I'm really holding out hope that Ironjawz get on par with the ridiculous damage that we are seeing from the new book.  I think it's a good sign.  I hope they continue to go with the Ironjawz thematic style of dealing damage in silly ways via mechanics (waaghs, destructive bulk, smashin' and bashin') rather than raw damage buffs.  

Yeah you just know that ours will be the one terrible book don't you, there will be 5 around it which are god mode ridiculous and the IJ one will be T2 at best #saltmine.

Updates

On a srs note I think one of the changes which needs to be made to "modernise" the cabbage is to change its destructive bulk. Note that obviously these changes would be to bring them more inline with their current points rather than the updated ones.

Quote

 

After a Maw-krusha completes a charge move roll of 8 dice. For each roll which beats the Destructive Bulk value in the Maw-Krushas damage table inflict 1 mortal wound on a unit within 1". On an unmodified roll of a 6 instead inflict d3 mortal wounds.

• 1+ (0-3 wounds)
• 2+ (4-6 wounds)
• 3+ (7-9 wounds)
• 4+ (10-12 wounds)
• 5+ (13+ wounds)

It means that a full health MK does at least 8 mortal wounds on an impact while a damage one still has the damage potential it just becomes less reliable. Actually makes an MK charge one of the most terrifying things in the game again, as opposed to a different version of the generic one everything has. (d3 mortals on impact)

 

• Increase the save to 2+ 
• Add in a 6++ wound/mortal save,
• Update Strength from Victory: Heal d3 wounds and increase the 6++ by 1 (to a maximum of 2+)
• Increase the red on all the attacks by -1
• Up the Fists to 5 damage
• Riptooth Fist flat 3 damage.

Ardboys

• Merge the weapon options into a single profile which is 3 attacks at 4+/3+/-1/1
• Orruk-Forged Shields changed to "Reroll All Saves".

Brutes

•  3+ Save, Bravery 8
• Make the Smasha and Gore-Choppa a flat 3 damage each,
• Increase the rend to -2 everything.
• Duff Up da Big Thing: Additionally if the target has the Monster keyword reroll failed wounds.

GG's

• Again save 3+ bravery 8.
• Trampling Hooves: When you roll an unomdified 6 to hit with this units Fanged Maw and Hooves it is automatically successful, do not roll to wound and your opponent doesn't make a save roll for that attack.
• Gore-Grunta Charge: If this unit makes an unmodified charge roll of 8+ it inflicts d3 damage with it's Trampling Hooves instead.

Megaboss (on foot)

• 2+ Save.
• Reroll 1s to hit for any Ironjawz unit within 5"
• 6++ save
• Update Strength from Victory: Heal d3 wounds and increase the 6++ by 1 (to a maximum of 2+)
• Boss Choppa to rend -2
• Rip-Tooth Fist to 4+/3+/-3/3

That would be appropriate given the current meta, remember that unlike most modern armies we have no way to resurrect most of our stuff or even heal it. Once we are dead we stay dead.

[tolstedt]

@Malakree

Lots of cool ideas.  I love the save upgrades.  They are slow enough to justify it.

Waaagh needs to be changed as well.  

I would pay 440 for the monster you described in the krusha.

[tolstedt]

Also, Ironjawz should have an allegiance ability to destroy terrain or endless spells.  Once per turn if you have 10+ models at the end of the movement phase near a terrain feature or endless spell, remove it from the board.

Ironjawz are so smashy they just beat the ****** out of whatever is in the way or being annoying.

[IneptusAstartes]

4 hours ago, tolstedt said:

Also, Ironjawz should have an allegiance ability to destroy terrain or endless spells.  Once per turn if you have 10+ models at the end of the movement phase near a terrain feature or endless spell, remove it from the board.

Ironjawz are so smashy they just beat the ****** out of whatever is in the way or being annoying.

Sounds ideal. Would probably be worded as “that terrain feature no longer provides cover or has any effects on nearby units”. Because, you know, rubble.

[PlasticCraic]

I think removing the terrain piece altogether would be cleaner. 

There were already arguments about how Nothing Left Standing interacted with Sylvaneth Wyldwoods.  With the amount of stuff that's out there now, it would be a nightmare to foresee and police the interactions.  How do you define "nearby" - whatever you set (3", 6", within, wholly within) there will be a rule already out there that defines it differently.  And what if they are not "nearby" at all - what if they are interacting from the other end of the table?  For example by teleporting onto it from a different Wyldwood.

If you want it to do nothing, best to just remove it from the table imo, otherwise there will always be a loophole and an argument.

Edited March 21, 2019 by PlasticCraic

[tolstedt]

6 hours ago, PlasticCraic said:

 If you want it to do nothing, best to just remove it from the table imo, otherwise there will always be a loophole and an argument.

Yeah, just remove it from the table.  Great visual impression as well.  Get the stuff in the way out of the way by smashin it.

[broche]

Still shacking my head at some proposed discount.  33% discount for an above average army. Party! You guys need to realize problem are not within Ironjawz (were everything are mostly fair priced) but with the 5 or 6 underpriced units  accross top army (Heel, Sequitor, Hag Queen, Ghrimgast and now Verminlord, Screeming Bell/Doom wheel) and some badly design ability (like Hag'naar)

You can expect DoK, Idoneth and Stormcast to get significant point adjustement in GHB19. I would also not be surprise to see a change in how summoning work. IMO game was just more balanced  (and easier to balance) when poeple where paying for stuff (hello Death).  Problem is , Skaven as they just came out they won't get point fix until 2020, so they will be dominating until they release some more filth. Let say, Ironjawz with everything costing 120 and  army wide ironclad with 3+ save and 6++ and Maw Krusha doing 10 mortal on a charge (for 320 pts).

[Superninja]

     I wish the Megaboss's (on foot) reroll hit rolls of 1 within 5 inches was larger.  5 Inches on a slow guy makes it hard to keep (brutes) in that area.  I also love the idea that Malakree proposed that it should pertain to any Ironjawz unit. 

I also wish that our Weirdnob Shaman worked like this: 

     When using Waaagh! energy with 20 ironjawz models around, you receive a +2 to casting and unbinding. (same as now) On a successful cast or unbind, with doubles, the nearest model/unit takes d3 mortals.  On an unsuccessful cast or unbind, and doubles, no damage.  I really hate failing the cast/unbind and taking the extra on top.

     The Goregrunta charge really needs to fixed to be useful.  Tired of it.

      I would really like it if a Megaboss on foot, or even any Ironjawz hero, could be included in an Ironfist.  That way the models on foot could actually keep up and reduce our drop.

Edited March 21, 2019 by Superninja

[Malakree]

53 minutes ago, broche said:

Still shacking my head at some proposed discount.  33% discount for an above average army. Party! You guys need to realize problem are not within Ironjawz (were everything are mostly fair priced) but with the 5 or 6 underpriced units  accross top army (Heel, Sequitor, Hag Queen, Ghrimgast and now Verminlord, Screeming Bell/Doom wheel) and some badly design ability (like Hag'naar)

Except it's not, it's every good army.

On the MK front, GUO, roticus, terrorgheist, dragonlord, durthu, empire gryphon, vlozd, archan, nefrata, all the verminlords.

They have made it very clear where the points standard is with the new books and the mk is so overcosted it's unreal.

For brutes/ardboys/ggs compare them to sequitors, evocators, any of the nighthaunt, nurgle, tzanngor, dok, idoneth, fec, sylvaneth. You know, the stuff which matters as the new competitive baseline rather than things like dreadspears from sparkling covens.

59 minutes ago, broche said:

You can expect DoK, Idoneth and Stormcast to get significant point adjustement in GHB19. I would also not be surprise to see a change in how summoning work. IMO game was just more balanced  (and easier to balance) when poeple where paying for stuff (hello Death).  Problem is , Skaven as they just came out they won't get point fix until 2020, so they will be dominating until they release some more filth. Let say, Ironjawz with everything costing 120 and  army wide ironclad with 3+ save and 6++ and Maw Krusha doing 10 mortal on a charge (for 320 pts).

Stupidly that stuff is now reasonably costed for the current meta. 

[Scurvydog]

A new book would be best, I think the current pricing for our battleline (heroes and especially MK are overcosted still) matches what the army should be, namely a more elite orruk army. I don't want brutes to be cheap and weak, they are the biggest and the toughest infantry and their rules should reflect this. New units like Evocators who plain does everything better in combat and are wizards as well at around the same points is what really mess up the balance here.

I really hope for a change to how Whaaag works currently, even though it makes sense a blob of orruks become more dangerous, it is just not very interesting to play, when you are forced to move around inside the megaboss whaaag bubble or lose out on the only shot we got at doing proper damage. Stacking command points for this purpose as well seems to double dip in the monotony, as we got no other interesting options at all and can hardly afford it regardless. 

 

Smashing and bashing is also a pretty strange rule, as all it does is allow snowballing, so during that whaag alfa you might table your opponent there if all stars align. Nobody likes this in the long run and I feel more interesting things could be done with the concept of the green tide of violence escalating. Some sort of mix between the Idoneth tides and Khorne blood tithe, playing into the warchanters hyping up the boyz. At least something with more of a gameplay impact would be more fun I think, perhaps even baking in some of the current battalion effects into this mechanic, like ere we go.

 

 

 

[broche]

1 hour ago, Malakree said:

Stupidly that stuff is now reasonably costed for the current meta. 

Analyzing the meta of top army is probably the worst way to acess point value. Top army will always get skewed with undercosted model,
cause undercosted are better. Players (especially good one) are much better than GW to find efficient units. I fact, one of the best way to 
find overpriced units is look for overplayed units inside a faction. If you take idoneth for example, Heels are outrageously cheap, but the rest of the army
is bad to average costed at best (you don't see any Turtle, Shark, Edeilon in top list, but you see 18-24 Heels). Thrall are also pretty bad for their 
cost (much worse than 10 arboys). So INSIDE the same faction, you have those huge cost discrepancies. And when i say huge, i mean huge. It took 
my buddy (who play idoneth since their release and is a top player) less than an hour to figure out Heels were broke. If you did your history
lesson, you'll remember another time this has happened: Tzeench skyfire spam. So that leave us two possible hypothesis to explain this recurring phenomena:

1. GW deliberatly make some units underpriced to sell more models and this become the new benchmark for future army (ie every new army is a new benchmark)

2. GW are just plain bad (in fact possibly some poeple are good and some are bad) at access the right price from the start 
(ie benchmark is current state and you try to fit new army in that benchmark)

You seem to support hypothesis #1, which i think is false. I think #2 is the right one, and is supported by the following facts:

A) As far as I can recall, no army have dominated over 2 seasons (ie over two differend GHB). You can argue that this is new battletome release during season,
but it's only partially true. If you look at Tzeech in 2017, the continued to dominate over release of Khorne, Stormcast and Kharadron then got slam by GHB2018.
Nowday they're an average army

B) When a new GHB come out, point tend to converge to a middle ground (good units get point increased, less played unit get discount). A good exemple of this
is bonesplitterz, they were just arrowboys spam but but now they're having much more competitive choice with some point adjustement. 

C) They sometime seem to succeed when releasing new army (beast of chaos, gloomspite gitz) but sometime fail horribly (skaven)

I won't start comparing individual cost with you on model like Maw Krusha, because you currently just seem to suffer from to big of an emotive bias. Of all the model
you list as a comparative, none of them approach the damage output of MK with +4 attack, neither none of them can double (and sometime more) the damage output of your
whole army. So until there is a rule change on Waagh stacking it's quite hard to compare his cost on a 1 on 1 basis. I mean let's be serious here, a MK on the charge 
with spending 1 CP does around 21 damage (mix of mortal, rend 1 and rend 2 damage) and buff damage of everything withing 15'' of 25 to 50% damage.
A Griffon spending a CP on himself will do 13 dmg (half rend 1 and half rend 2) and will never reach better than 14. They are not on the same power level.

[broche]

@Scurvydog exactly. I think IJ right now suffer more from a lack of option than miscost. The fact that the only competives builds revolve around waaagh stacking is sad.

Obviously a modern battletome would be refreshing , and I expect Smash and bash to stay. Personnally, i like the mechanic. Sadly, we have no idea when that will happen, and i'm pretty sure it won't be before GHB20...

[Malakree]

4 hours ago, Scurvydog said:

A new book would be best, I think the current pricing for our battleline (heroes and especially MK are overcosted still) matches what the army should be, namely a more elite orruk army. I don't want brutes to be cheap and weak, they are the biggest and the toughest infantry and their rules should reflect this. New units like Evocators who plain does everything better in combat and are wizards as well at around the same points is what really mess up the balance here.

So I'm actually addressing 2 different things in my post. 

1. What points should the CURRENT warscrolls be with no changes.
2. What changes would help make the warscrolls worth their current points cost.

Obviously I would like IJ to remain the elite melee army which no other army can really take in a straight up fight. The fact is they currently aren't and the points cost don't reflect the fact Brutes lose in a fight against Skeles let alone the actually good combat units.

[Lanoss]

@Malakree I like a lot of your suggestions. Except for the 2+ or 3+ saves respectively - seems a bit op. 

Ive been wishlisting the idea of Ironclad across the board as an alleigience ability! Saves stay the same but reduce the rend from attacks by 1. Makes choppy units less choppy but isn’t op against no rend attacks 

[Malakree]

1 hour ago, Lanoss said:

@Malakree I like a lot of your suggestions. Except for the 2+ or 3+ saves respectively - seems a bit op. 

Without the mass rerolls or secondary saves it won't work out that heavy. The big thing to remember is that as an army we have no ways to increase our save outside of cover and almost no ways to get save rerolls (even RR1s). When you then factor in the lack of extra saves (except the suggested 6++ stacking on the megabosses) and healing I'd say it's really less scary than you think, especially given the elite and expensive nature of the units in question, it's not like you get 30 for 360 points and can bring them back for 1 CP.

[tolstedt]

11 hours ago, broche said:

You guys need to realize problem are not within Ironjawz

Can you say more about this?

[Backbreaker]

I love your ideas guys !

I just want to know : Do you send mails with feedbacks and ideas to AosFaq team ?

I'm not sure they are reading this post and it would be great if your ideas could reach the team !

[Scurvydog]

It's tough to balance out unless GW really sits down and decides what they want Ironjawz to be. Are these guys truly the elite of the elite ironclad fightning monsters? The fluff does seem to indicate this, more than a green tide of overwhelming numbers for the Ironjawz, which is more the traditional orruk ways.

The FEC rules of mustering could fit a green tide theme well if they chose to go that route, so for example brutes are still tough with their 3 wounds, but really not the kings of combat in their own right. If the warchanters though could do something similar to the attendants of FEC or the spirit torment of NH to replace models, then it might be different.

Or go the elite route and make the models worth their points in their own right, with the current melee meta I doubt they would even be too OP with the ironclad rule mentioned and the standard brute changed to 3 attacks down from 4 but with flat 2 damage or something, to make the point that these guys hit hard.

[Backbreaker]

30 minutes ago, Scurvydog said:

go the elite route and make the models worth their points in their own right, with the current melee meta I doubt they would even be too OP with the ironclad rule mentioned and the standard brute changed to 3 attacks down from 4 but with flat 2 damage or something, to make the point that these guys hit hard.

What I like about Ironjawz is that we can play greenskinz without relying on hordes type lists... Make them hit hard again !

[broche]

15 hours ago, tolstedt said:

Can you say more about this?

Typo, should have wrote with. 

What i meant is since last year problem is not with Ironjawz. IJ are pretty much in an equilibrum states.
Giving huge discount to every IJ units won't fix the current state of the game (army imbalance).
It would just balance IJ with other unbalance armies.

I think IJ suffer a bit from lack a variety because of older book. But don't forget that new battletome
often have 1-2 broken mecanich but most of it often have low impact on game state. For example, if you
remove Hag'naar from DoK, they suddenly become a quite average army. For IJ i think they got it mostly right
with GHB18, with 1 noticable miss: Brutefist should have cost 80-100 pts, and other formation a bit cheaper as well
(around 150). This may seem minor, but Brutefist is just ******, so at least if it was really cheap that would
open a new build and still get that second artefact and lower drop (and maybe squeeze 2-3 mortal wound per game).

But the biggest mistake they made was removing renforcement point. Points is already an inexact science. When you 
need to factorize the fact that some army can generate 200-500 worth of extra units in the game, it become a mess 
to balance army. 

[Vasshpit]

I truly hope they stay elite and do not go horde. 

Ive kinda viewed them as Grand alliance Destros version of Stormcast or Uruk Hai from lotr.

Id just like some more unit options like scouts (in one book Gordrak sends out scouting parties) and war machines.