PlasticCraic

Seconded, and you can easily do a hand swap to make them into Morr Boys for example, if those were to become more the more viable option. You can magnetize, or as @svnvaldez has suggested, just put a small dot of superglue on there, and it will ping right off when needed.

I've been a big advocate of a Yhetee - Gorger dual kit!

Thanks for the detailed response @swarmofseals Even in that scenario I don’t see how that would be worse than having whole armies sitting there unused, which is the case currently. This is something I touch on more below. Bit of a sidetrack here - and I'm probably preaching to the choir - but I would argue that the concept of mobility is just as important as straight-line speed. Things like the Gorefist can be fast, but they are also predictable in that they move across the board towards you, and are therefore easily countered. DOK benefit from deep striking through Khinerai (low-key one of the most important units in the army in my opinion), which has a huge impact on the game as it is actually played (especially since they have the 4+ after move). Just as importantly they also have access to run and charge and retreat and charge, both incredibly powerful tools. Not being bogged down is a huge factor in mobility, and it wins you matches. Since we’re discussing Ironjawz I can tell you that when the Fungoid Cave Shaman could make a Maw Krusha retreat and charge, that combo won me a lot of games. So personally I like to think about mobility - fast or slow is part of that, but not the whole picture (and FWIW I'm pretty excited about what Hand of Gork means for Ironjawz)! I’d agree with that too actually. I think your earlier point about the most popular builds (Troggoth and Squig heavy) being less optimal than Grot-heavy builds is bang on the money. If we have a way of tracking the win rate for Grot-heavy builds, I’d bet good money that it would be much higher than what we are currently seeing. I do think that it’s important to distinguish between armies being left behind and factions being left behind. Let’s look at what was the most feared and respected armies were this time last year: Changehost and Vanguard Wing. When was the last time you saw either of those around the top tables, or at all? Tzeentch I think is actually in a decent place right now, but anyone running Changehost has probably had to buy a whole lot of new models to keep going. They aren’t used very often, but when they do, they do just fine (which would be consistent with them being a popular choice for players following the flavour of the month when they were top dogs, and those players moving on to other armies with more buzz when their existing dominant builds were nerfed). Enlightened, which were rarely seen previously, became their powerhouse unit when BOC dropped with an improved warscroll and Skyfires have long been out of favour. In the case of Stormcast, the new book essentially ripped up the existing playbook and gave them a whole new set of tools to play with. You can look at the stats and (quite correctly) point out that SCE are in reasonable shape, sitting (just) above 45% win rate. But it’s quite naïve to say that the faction is ok, therefore people’s armies have not been left behind. All of those blocks of 30 Liberators are sitting looking pretty on display shelves as we speak. To use a third example, look at Fyreslayers. Not a faction that has been left behind by any stretch – I’d personally put them right up near the top, and I’m sure their stats will bear that out once people have all their Hearthguard painted up. But that’s the point – even long term FS players have a lot of painting to do, because those 90 Vulkites aren’t the power pick any longer. My point is that even if the faction is sitting in the healthy 45% - 55% band, competitive armies within those factions (and therefore large swathes of people’s collections) are left behind with more regularity. And people live with it, so for that reason I don’t agree that whiplash would be any worse than that in practice. I’m actually not saying that churn automatically makes people unhappy. Almost the opposite in fact – a lot of people proactively embrace churn, others learn to live with it. Either way it is not a hobby-ruining experience for the majority of people. My proposition is that army strength is cyclical, churn does happen, and people are telling us with their actions that they broadly ok with that. The point therefore being that if people can live with that, and I believe my examples above illustrate that they can, we could also (as a community) live with the whiplash effect you described. So it’s a matter of opinion (and yours obviously carries a lot of weight), but I personally wouldn’t judge any potential whiplash effect to be sufficient reason to prevent bolder moves in points reductions. That’s my premise in a nutshell, for reasons outlined above. And I'm not for a moment suggesting that the goal of those points adjustments should be to converge on a win rate of exactly 50% - that will never happen, and as you point out some people will still moan because they actually want easy mode. But I think a band of 45% – 55% is a pretty good goal. There will obviously be times when armies moves outside of that – it’s not a perfect world – but I think the goal of points and rules updates should be to move those outliers back into that band. You won’t always hit the nail on the head, but I think it would make for a commendable goal.

So the strongest in my opinion is Magore's Fiends. They are a really solid combat Warband. If you're looking for something faster and high model count, you're probably looking at Godsworn Hunt or Garrek's Reavers. Both are pretty weak though. Eyes of the Nine are kind of unique, fast with a medium body count and very tricksy but fragile. They are difficult win games with. So Magore's are the "best", Godsworn are the closest to what you're looking for in terms of playstyle. Up to you now bud!

Excellent post @swarmofseals, and thanks for sharing your experiences. It's a great insight. That concept of whiplash is an interesting point, I'm not sure I agree though. By not changing points sufficiently, GW essentially make armies obsolete and unusuable pretty quickly. People don't exactly love that. You don't have to look far to find people who feel like they had their pockets picked with BCR for example. It's a repeated pattern: pump an army up, people buy in, army gets left behind, people buy a new army. If GW were deliberately trying to suppress sales and keep people playing the same armies that would make a lot of their decisions seem very strange, and would be illogical commercially. You definitely get people who jump off the carousel the first time they get burned in that way, but there are others jumping on board every week, and a decent percentage stay on board for the long haul (whether they are frustrated by that cycle or not). There's been a lot of talk about Gordrakk still being 100 points overcosted for example. What's the worst that could happen? People end up with max 10 more Ardboyz in their collection? I think most people would take that in a heartbeat, if it means they can get some use from an army that has been gathering dust (and there are plenty of Ironjawz armies out there gathering dust, believe me!). If and when the Ironjawz book comes out, you just end up with options. Today I'll run the Ardboyz heavy list and use all 40 that I own, tomorrow I'll go with a more balanced army and sub some out for Gore Gruntas. One "spare" unit in your collection to rotate in and out will be no great hardship, and certainly less likely to antagonise the customer base than selling them an army and letting it rot. So I find it difficult to believe that discouraging more sales out of benevolence is the true motivation behind this business model. Some people would complain about whiplash. More already complain about feeling compelled to churn their armies, because they are not supported and properly balanced. A few of those people quit. More of them just suck it up and buy a new army. And so the cycle continues. TBH I actually like the cycle of dynamic imbalance, I think it's the only way to run the game and keep it fresh and alive - I just wish the armies I loved weren't so consistently down for so long! I personally think it's the right system, not always implemented the way I would have done it.

Thanks for the feedback guys, that's much clearer to me now.

I think it was Donal who talked about "Anchor pricing"...Gordrakk is a prime example of that imo. Tweaking up or down from their existing points, rather than assessing what he's really worth from the ground up. If you were pointing him from scratch today, there's no way you'd go anywhere near that points level for him (or the regular MBMK). That being said you could also quite feasibly start by looking at his current points of 580 and say "that's ridiculous, let's knock XYZ points off". But I guess there's also an element of losing face with things like that, by effectively admitting that either they did a terrible job of setting his original points (true), and / or several years of wild power creep has left him floundering (also true). I guess it is what it is for now...hopefully a book will make him more viable in the future. For now I do think there is some play in a Gordrakk + Brute Fists list, albeit maybe not the most competitive army we can field.

Yeah I think I'm in the same boat....redo the banners, slap some black on where I can, and they've got a new life. Spears and bows are the less optimal weapons options for Moonclan (imo), but not to the extent that they are useless. I think we'd all love this! And it's probably on the cards at some point, given the repeated references. That army would print money.

There also hadn't been any cases of a faction that actually exists in the Mortal Realms being deleted from the game until now, so you don't know what will happen in future. I agree that Gitmob on their own won't get a book, but I wouldn't rule out their return in some kind of soup tome one day. It's particularly relevant to give the FW monsters an ongoing purpose in Matched Play in my opinion. Edit: just to be clear, I'm not willing to die on the hill that this is definitely happening! I agree that it's improbable, I just don't think it's impossible, and I want it to happen more than I believe it is likely to happen.

Gitmob have their own section in the Core Book (within "The Savage Tribes"). It really makes no sense to me that they've deleted a faction that is confirmed as existing and has been written about in the Mortal Realms. My main hope is that they do a Savage Tribes book at some point, similar to Beasts of Chaos, and that it will also be a keyword they can add to the FW Monsers that don't already have one (e.g. the Magma Dragon and Dread Maw).

I've read the rule and it says "Bash em Lads has a casting value of 8. If succesfully cast, until your next hero phase* you can reroll wound rolls for attacks made by friendly Ironjawz units while they are wholly within 12" of the caster". So you do need to be within range at the time you are rolling the dice - however on the upside you can also benefit with Hero phase pile ins. I think what puts me off is the weakness of the spellcaster in question, but it might have some applications. *not "In the next combat phase", whuuut?

Is the Vortex staying at 40 points? Wholly within 18" of a nice wide "base" is a lot more achievable. Still probably not a turn 1 option, unless you do something like Boat the Ardboyz and Hand of Gork the second caster. If you did that, you'd obviously attempt to cast his RR Wounds spell first (from out of unbind range), so if it fails you can use Hand on something else.

I definitely wouldn't advise anyone to buy Forgeworld models, unless they are the ones with a useful keyword (Gloomspite, Aleguzzler etc). I've bought things like a Magma Dragon and Dread Maw in good faith, and now it looks like GW are proactively destroying the only army that they can be fielded in.

Yep, it will be a massive blow to Mixed Destruction if Gitmob are no longer Battleline. It's also very disappointing that Ardboyz didn't get made into Battleline, it just makes no sense at all when you look at what other GAs get. The only thing that might happen is that they could be included in a Compendium pdf download (maybe when the FAQ drops), but even then I am not aware of any Compendium units that have Battleline status. Another very bad GH for Mixed Destruction I think, it really feels quite vindictive that they've kicked a GA that is already down.

Eh, I don't know how much support Gutbusters Grots needed (or get). It's one kit with one warscroll, and since printing it in the GA Destruction book, they haven't exactly poured a lot of energy and resources into them...if you called them soemthing other than Grots, I don't think we'd even be having this conversation. They're just a single unit in an army, they're not a range in their own right that needs to be supported.

Yep, if you do kill someone with a Hero Phase charge you trigger Destructive Bulk there and then too. It's not linked to the Charge Phase, so you can get extra charges going early and often! For the same reason, it's possibly worth softening them up with magic first, rather than finishing off after. Only thing to watch out for with the Luminary Rod is that On Da Rampage only triggers if Destructive Bulk itself does the damage to slay the unit you charged, and it happens "immediately". So you can't complete your charge, see how you roll on DB and then decide whether or not you apply Luminary Rod - or you can, but you won't then get the chance to charge again immediately because On Da Rampage itself didn't kill them. So you're either taking the calculated risk of using it before you charge, meaning you might not be perfectly efficient in terms of potentially over killing something, or you use it strategically (knocking the last wound or two off in your Hero Phase, to prevent you being bogged down and allowing you to move off and charge again; or the same thing after your shooting phase if you don't need to move before charging again, when you know what if any damage your breath attacks have done to the unit you are locked into). Still a really good tool if you are building for this combo, and it sounds hella fun!

Really good post this one, a very helpful summary of a lot of the conversations from the last few days! Good shout on Luminary Rod too, I'd been thinking the same thing about softening up 1 maybe 2 layers of enemies to keep the charges going. And from the same Realm as the Brooche too, what's not to love! Unfortunately we have probably lost our best shooting through Gitmob being removed from the Allies table (and potentially the whole game). But there are other options, and I love the idea of a Super Smash Bros combo where twin Maw Krushas combo charge to keep each other going. I agree to an extent, but I think it's a bit of an overstatement. A good player can probably go 3-2 quite consistently now with a variety of Ironjawz builds, whereas that was a pretty decent achievement under GH17 and GH18. I'd agree that the Iron Blanket (Ardfist bomb) is certainly our best chance of winning more games though: I reckon 4-1 at a large tournament would be a realistic goal, and that's something that has only been achieved a handful of times by Ironjawz in 3+ years.

Nah he def can't. There's a very clear cut FAQ on that subject.

Oooooh boy, that list is HORRIBLE...in a good way! That's a lot of Ardboyz to paint, but I got 2 words for ya: Contrast. Paint.

Yeah, I was thinking along similar lines with Gordrakk. You probably can't fit Cogs at that point, but you get 3D6 charges instead. Blast through the chaff screen in the Hero phase, and blast through the rest of the army in the combat phase. (Or go straight to the juicy stuff if they haven't screened front and back - you can Hand right into the backfield and trigger the Voice of Gork on any unit in the Batallion). Also gives you a bit of play against Gristlegore and Slaanesh too, if you can get into them in the Hero phase. I was thinking: Big G 560 WNS 120 20x #BRUTES 680 5x #BRUTES 170 5x #BRUTES 170 #BRUTEfist 160 Leaves you 140 points for maybe a Megaboss on Foot (get some juice out of that second artefact), 3 pigs or 10 Ardboyz (or maybe even a Fungoid + CP, or Arachnacauldron to get Itchy Nuisance). You could drop down to 15x #BRUTES and have a bit more to work with, but we don't bring Gordrakk to the party to be sensible Alpha strike armies usually have a hard ceiling in terms of what they can achieve, and aren't that much fun after a few games. But man I'd love to put Gordrakk and 30 Brutes on the table!

A question for everyone out there...we know from the Feb FAQ that Scurry counts as an action on a fighter card towards Keep Them Guessing: Q: Does Scurry count as an action on a fighter card for the purpose of scoring Keep Them Guessing? A: Yes. This is how Scurry is worded: Reaction: After a friendly fighter other than a Squig makes a Move action, if that move began in an adjacent hex, this fighter makes a Move action. They cannot do this if they have any Move or Charge tokens My question is whether Bjorgen Thundrik's Reaction (on his fighter card) would also count towards Keep Them Guessing? The wording is: Reaction: Use this after this fighter's activation. In the next activation, enemy fighters treat hexes adjacent to this fighter (other than blocked hexes) as lethal hexes. Do we think that this is also in scope, because both are Reactions? Or is Scurry different because it is a Reaction that incorporates an action, whereas Thundrik's does not incorporate a defined action?

Sorry it's the Gavespawn ability I am thinking of, not a Batallion benefit. The Titanic Fury spell would do it too.

That's not quite true, the BOC warscroll was changed and is better than ours because Not Destruction. They are doing 2 attacks with straight 6 damage, instead of 1 with D6 damage (they can also be in Batallions that benefit them further, unlike the rather underwhelming Troggherd). They do still have Drunken Stagger however. And I agree that it was a massive wasted opportunity to update the warscroll when our book came - a crying shame. They seem bewildered as to why they don't sell, and keep trying to foist them on us with promotions: dumping them in the Ironjawz Battleforce box, putting a pair of them in an Allies box, and now giving them a push alongside a heap of obsolete finecast in Mercenaries. People love giants. All they needed to do was give it a proper warscroll, and they'd be flying out the door.

I built mine with Araldite and she's holding up fine.

How about you @DestructionFranz - do you have any events coming up? How is your list looking?