Ironjawz: The Verdant Horde

[NoobhammerN8]

So I've gotten the Ironjawz bug pretty hard after listening to The Black Sun podcast and various other less Orc centric broadcasts. The models are awesome and it will go some way to completing my "2k Army for Every Alliance" personal goal that I set for myself this year. So far I have the Thunderfist box (anybody want to buy a gargant? Lol.) and get starting box as well as thirty ardboyz that I had from my previous army. I sold thirty of them before Ironjawz dropped because I didn't think I'd need them. Oh well. So tonight I'm facing 1k of Tzeentch Arcanites. My list is going to be:

Megaboss, Bellowing Tyrant, ToP

Warchanter, battlebrew

Ardboyz x 10

Brutes x 10, JGH

Goregruntas x 3, JGH

Ironfist

 

Pretty basic list from what I've seen. My gaming group keeps telling me to put the weirdnob in there for mystic shield, but I don't think he's worth dropping 5 brutes. I'll try to update this thread with painting progress and battle reports as I go. The warchanter is the only model I've put any amount of paint to, but I've only had the models since Tuesday. Here he is with just some basic layers.

[NoobhammerN8]

I managed two games tonight at our club vs Evan, pretty happy with how the army played. I decided to do both characters with ToP because Tzeentch Arcanites are all about the mortal wounds, and it really payed off in the first game. His army was Shaman on disc, Ogroid Thaumaturge, 3 skyfires, 3 enlightened, ten Tzangors with shield, ten Tzangors with 2x hand weapon and a formation whose name I do not remember. We rolled up 3 places of power, but since it was a 4x4 battle, we just used 2. I had one fewer drop than Evan, so I opted for taking turn one and went operation grill, using my destruction move to immediately score both objectives. He responded by attempting to use spells and shooting to knock off my Warchanter, but he got him down to one wound and then ran out of things to attack him with. I goaded him into charging into the protective screen of ardboyz, but he made a crucial mistake in not tying up the gruntas. He also had attempted to charge my brutes with one ten man Tzangor unit and the thaumaturge, but failed a 5" charge. This let me position the ten man brute unit in my turn so that I was able to murder the Thaumaturge by wrapping around him and the Gruntas ran up the middle and got to work on the shaman who had been left all on his own. Once the Shaman went down, we called it and reracked as he had no way to score.

Game two was a glorious mess, leaving just 4 models on the board by the end. This was gift from the heavens, and I think I was too cautious with this one. I should probably have left the ardboyz in the backfield and just charged everything else over to his side of the board, but I was worried about the enlightened and skyfires zipping onto my objective when it came down. As it was, I ended up sending the ardboyz and grunters in to try to interfere with his scoring and ran the warboss out on his own to chase the skyfires. He almost made the mistake of letting me get within 6" of the objective, but I didn't want to win that way and suggested he bubblewrap the objective to keep me away from it. The skyfires got spooked and ran away from the lumbering Megaboss, but the ardboyz went down over two rounds. The gruntas just got magicked off as Evan used his destiny dice so that the ogroid's fire blast spell did a flat 5 mortal wounds two turns in a row and then killed the remaining one in one round of combat. I had no choice but to send the ten Brutes in and left the warchanter on his own to hold the objective. He finally spotted that if the chanter goes down, its game over and starts shooting at him. The brutes died pretty fast, I think I rolled maybe three 4+ saves for that unit all game, all but two got destroyed by common Tzangors, such a shame. To be fair, they also killed 15 Tzangors and three enlightened, so not too terribly bad. The warboss soloed the other half of the Tzangor unit, but they hit him back pretty hard, leaving him on three wounds.  I won a crucial turn priority round five, and got the two surviving brutes into the skyfires, keeping them from reaching my Warchanter and cementing a tie. The warboss surprised me by weathering the attacks of the ogroid with one wound and then smacking him down with one round of attacks. Brutal!  We almost called it a tie, but then I remembered the actual win conditions, so we finished out his turn in which he shot and magicked off the warboss and one brute. I thought I might weather the storm, but the Skyfire's disc got one attack through and rolled a 3 for the d3 wounds. So in the end, that's one major victory and one minor loss. Not a bad start.

I really like the mobility of this army, and the raw killing power of ten brutes is fantastic. I have enough models at this point to do 2k, providing my opponents will accept three black orc bosses on one base as a megaboss. I was thinking it might be cool to do a diorama so I don't have to field two of the same model on the field. It's probably not the most competitive version of the list, probably need at least 15 more Brutes. This is what I'm looking at for 2k:

Allegiance: Destruction

Leaders
Orruk Megaboss (140)
- General
- Trait: Bellowing Tyrant
- Artefact: Talisman of Protection
Orruk Megaboss (140)
- Artefact: Battle Brew
Orruk Warchanter (80)
Orruk Weirdnob Shaman (120)

Battleline
6 x Orruk Gore Gruntas (360)
- Jagged Gore Hackas
- Ironjawz Battleline
10 x Orruk Brutes (360)
- Jagged Gore Hackas
- 2x Gore Choppa
- Ironjawz Battleline
20 x Orruk Ardboys (360)
- Ironjawz Battleline
10 x Orruk Ardboys (180)
- Ironjawz Battleline
10 x Orruk Ardboys (180)
- Ironjawz Battleline

Units

Battalions
Ironfist (60)

Total: 1980/2000
 

Hopefully I'll have some fully painted models to post up in the next few days, but first i need to repair them. Managed to drop them in the parking lot. Nothing serious, just have to glue some ardboyz back to their bases. Everyone else is pinned.

 

[Sangfroid]

Sounds like some good ed bashin been appening :-) 

The extended list looks good lots of Ardboyz isn't too bad as they are fast and resilient in a Ironfist and still put out a fair amount of damage. 

with limited rend -2 and no mortal wounds outside of the Weirdnob, you may find yourself reading the forbidden part of the Weirdnobs  war scroll to deal with things like treelord ancients. 

 

[NoobhammerN8]

That's a scary thought. But I think I will behave myself, I'll really need mystic shield with my seeming inability to roll 4+ saves.

[NoobhammerN8]

Painting progress for the night.

[Solaris]

Looking nice, I really like the colors! I especially like the camo green armor - you'd think that green skin and green armor wouldn't work very well together, but with the shades you have chosen it really does.

[Chris Tomlin]

Hey @NoobhammerN8,

Nice thread! Glad to hear you enjoyed the podcasts.

I enjoyed reading your reports against Tzeentch. I'm hoping to play them myself for the first time this weekend.

I do like your colour scheme, sharing the opinion of @Solaris above. The basing is cool as well. Good work.

 

[NoobhammerN8]

Thanks guys. Tonight's work was building my second set of pigs. I used the brute box to make sure they were all unique and in a fit of OCD made sure that all the optional parts are on different pigs in the second set. Still need to glue on the spare bits for their trophies, but I can't spray them in the rain so it doesn't matter. Planning to get a 2k game in on Saturday vs sylvaneth, so getting them built and on bases was more important.

 

[Chris Tomlin]

Nice work, I did the same on my second set of 3 pigs, which still need paint.

[NoobhammerN8]

Good morning fellow megabosses. Bit of a rough Saturday for the Verdant Horde. I was meant to play against Sylvaneth, but ended up against Bloodbound. I had heard that the spiky gits posed a problem for us, so I had some trepidation going in. My list was 2 megabosses, a warchanter, a weirdnob, 6 pigs, 10 brutes, a 20 man ardboyz unit and two tens. We rolled up gift from the heavens and I got my stuff down first due to the ironfist formation. I let my Khornate opponent have first turn, and he predictably didn't budge. He had his army in a kind of meat grinder set up, a line of blood warriors sat in front of his characters with two fives of skull reapers crouching behind to either side and wrath mongers spread behind the blood warriors to buff them. He had two twenty man reaver units on either end as well. When it came time for my turn, I threw caution to the wind. I figured that his army placement would mean that if I get the double turn and interfere with his objective turn two, it becomes a game of survival for the remaining three turns and his forces are slow enough that he wouldn't get to me. This would have been perfect, but I got excited by the 2" weapons on the Brutes and Pigs and decided to have a go at surprising him and killing his characters where he thought I couldn't reach. Sadly, Khorne smiled upon him and in that first push he made 8 out of 12 5+ armor saves, and the sixes just kept coming after that. He managed to kill my warboss with the skullgrinder, which meant that almost the entire army suddenly gets two rolls to wound on a 4+ to hit for the rest of the game and that clinched it. I tried to hold out with the twenty man squad of ardboyz, but his lord on juggernaut and skull crushers made short work of them. I realize that the right move would have been to just sit on the three places where his objectives might fall and make him fight me. Another option would have been to hit the squishy reavers on the end and ignore the middle of his forces. They would be forced to leave formation and I wouldn't have had to suffer the embarrassment of losing all but the weirdnob, chanter and twenty ardboyz by turn two. Still, the gambit almost worked, if one of my ardboyz closest to his objective had survived, the game might have turned out different. But I have learned to rely on superior maneuverability to pick apart my opponents when I know they fight better than I do and I should have had the chanter and weirdnob drop back to hold the objective behind the ablative line of ardboyz. This would have at least meant a draw. A great game overall that taught me much about how the Ironjawz need to be played. Probably won't hear from me on here for a week or two, moving this weekend, but the move puts me closer to our gaming club, so there should be plenty of battle reports to come and I'm sure that will keep the hobby fires lit. Perhaps in the lull I'll figure out some fluff for my army. I have already decided to name the chanter in honor of a friend who passed away right as I was starting the army. It was perfect as he was a huge fan of raves, so hopefully some of his spirit will infuse the chanter's magic glow sticks. I figured that perhaps the green armor indicates that the weirdnob has convinced them that their destiny is to find a land of green and destroy it, as they are clearly on desert basing. Perhaps they will find Gordrak there? Depends on my finances in the next few weeks, I suppose. Till then, get out there and smash something!