Malakree

So looking at the points cost, errata and changes to IJ allegiance ability I have the following conclusions. Ardboys are now worthless in blocks of 20 or 30. Take them as 10s to fill battalion slots and bodies for the weirdnob. Our overall lists basically won't change. Warchanters are the same as always. Allied wizards are going to be important because they bring what the weirdnob doesn't. Especially true with the lower model count. Ironfist is more mandatory than ever, thus nullifying the MK points decrease. Our big choice now is to Mega-battalion or not to Mega-battalion. MSU Brutes with Waaagh! is probably the way to go. 2+ Warchanters will be core. Footboss is still mediocre because of his 10" Waaagh! and points cost being to high. Warchanters are just better. Specific Tournament rules will greatly influence our ability to compete. Uglu or Hysh are our realm of origin. Sword of Judgement/Spell Mirror vs Lens of Refraction/Mirrored Cuirass nothing else competes. So to give reasons for this in relevant blocks. Ardboys now don't have the survivability advantage they used vs mortal wounds, those being the big thing the shields were used for. With Battalions becoming more important (and the Ironfist more expensive) the space for them has decreased at the same time their effectiveness got hit. Brutes do the same thing but better now. Cost wise we have had a 20 point drop if you have either a megabattalion or 2 mawkrushas. As they said in the podcast, MASSIVE, meaning huge changes in what we can field in our armies. Spells got more powerful but the number of models we are fielding is dropping so the weirdnob isn't really changing in power. Either grot shamans, for the low points cost, or a Wurrgog Prophet, for the multiple spells, both got better making the weirdnob relatively worse. With spells gaining in power and us becoming even more focused around big Waaagh! turns we no longer have the points to burn on a Footboss, Given that there is no restriction on how many times a single megaboss can Waaagh! multiple times in a turn (no srsly) you are better off spending those 140 points on 2 (or maybe 3) extra command points, its just better. The Command points and greater choice in good artefacts means that battalions got even stronger, the Ironfist out-competes everything else for pure power at it's cost level. Given this, and the fact a cabbage is now completely mandatory, the megabattalions is amazing with the only question being if you can get the full Ironfist in your list and spare the 120 points. Combined with the Waaagh! effect this means that the Brute Boss and his Claw/Smasha is now hands down our best battleline option for pure combat potential. All of this rolls together into 5x5 Brutes in a mega-battalion being the basis which all Ironjawz armies must be measured against. The artefact option from a realm really comes down to what you want and whats strong in the meta. Spells dominating? Take Lens of Refraction or Spell Mirror. Need to keep your cabbage alive vs things like Skyfires then Mirrored Cuirass is a solid choice (though I would argue take Daubing of Mork and one of the other 3). Really just need to be able to delete an obnoxious enemy hero/monster? Sword of Judgement on a warchanter is probably the most ridiculous thing ever. Below is probably the most ridiculous hero killing tool combo in the game. I don't think ANYTHING else competes. Lastly dealing with the tournament rules. If we are allowed to use the spells of the realm our army comes from (what I think would be the best ruling) as if it were an allegiance lore then that essentially gives all armies an extra lore for their wizards to choose from. This makes Ironjawz much better in the spell game because we don't have those options naturally. It also makes the realm artefact vs spell choices a very interesting dynamic. If we are forced to use a random realm each time it adds huge variability in the power of our wizards. If for some reason the lore ends up being bad then our wizards don't have the innate spells to fall back on, unlike tzeentch or bonesplitterz, so our magic power level fluctuates wildly. That is my reasoning for the above statements. Feel free to criticise/discuss.

I used to run them as 30 but I think with the recent faq to their shield they will probably just be worse than more brutes or ggs. Especially given some of the other changes like golden toof, which now gives a 12" battleshock immunity aura, and the IP change. The big unit is just to many points for a tarpit with such a glaring weakness. Also I feel that msu brutes/ggs will be better for pulling a mega battalion which is now amazing for us.

Question is if he can take the realm artefacts instead since they don't have an allegiance requirement. My personal opinion on the WAAAGH! Is that each mb will be able to use it once but the same type (2 cabbage for example) will stack for the extra attacks.

Take the Prophet of the Waaagh! command trait to go with it. Roll 2d6 5 times on turn 3, any rolls that pull a 6 grant 2 attacks instead of 1. Odds on 2 dice that neither is a 6 is (5/6)^2 or ~69.4 that means that 30% (and change) of the Waaagh! will be 2 attacks not 1. So for 3 Waaagh! we are looking at an average of just under 4 extra attacks, add in the Big G and you are looking at an average of 6 extra attacks on turn 2. Not at all filthy.

This errata makes me think that it's not happening. It looks like we are going to get the 3rd ed dark eldar treatment, gotta wait for AoS3 for our next battle-tome.

Looks like you are correct. Good to know that the stormcast get the d3 damage for making a charge and we are still stuck with a hyper restrictive version of it. Not sure why they don't just squat Ironjawz and tell us which stormcast warscrolls our units now count as.

Welp that renders the use of Ardboys to be 10man holding units only. Good to see that my point about the GG's damage increase technically lasting for the rest of the game made it into the errata ? I'm just glad I didn't start buying up more Ardboys as I think GG's are now going to be just better than them.

No, but they did get better because they no longer stop you from having other characters with command abilities. This is entirely me being a hopeful grot but I think, given we have SC4 + NH battletomes there might be some new stuff for destro soon afterwards. I'm hoping it's IJ2, which would explain the extreme lack of IJ changes with the GHB, but I suspect it might be the long rumoured Moonclan. Will possibly know by the end of the week, here's hoping it's both!

Where are the two extra Waaagh! coming from? Each hero can only use a command ability once per turn so you would need more than one.

I think it will depend on the list and how many weirdnobs you want to include. If you think about it a budget of 150 for endless spells actually gives you quite a few Excluding The Purple Sun all of the others are 60 or under. Soulsnare Shackles are 20 points! It's a host of extra tools that we haven't had before which adds a ton of strategic and tactical depth. For example, at 40 points The Burning Head is a potentially vicious start to an already explosive turn. As a hilarious combo, take a Balewind Vortex and Umbral Spell Portal to cast Foot of Gork with a 24" range from the centre of your opponents army!

@DerZauberer One of the things which I think will be super important is the endless spells. I know I've said it before but it really has to be reiterated. You are correct that the Cogs are MASSIVE for us but there are some others which are equally key, for example the prismatic palisade For 30 points this gives us a way to shut down enemy shooting against us and not just a small amount either. One of the biggest Ironjawz weaknesses is that we have HUGE bases on everything, this makes it almost impossible to hide behind smaller terrain. This completely counters that, it doesn't matter if that cannon can see 49% of your Maw Krusha, if the line from centre to centre goes through the palisade, which is huge, Then the cannon can't shoot it. It gives us the ability to shut down the shooting armies that hose us as we close in and if we place it properly can even start applying -1 to hit against enemy units on the turn we charge! Another example is the Emerald Life-swarm, which we can use the restore wounds to our units (MK Wounds table anyone) or even start bringing models back. How about a Malevolent Malestrom to really start dumping over spell heavy enemy armies (Finally a counter for tzeentch) A soul shackle snare might seem like it's really hoses down Ironjawz and hurts us more than it helps however this couldn't be further from the truth. All the snare does is half the movement characteristic of the unit, think about that. Oh noes my Brutes lost 2" off their movement characteristic, whatever shall I do. It does nothing to stop all the other movement abilities which we actually rely on for our mobility, Destruction move, Ironfist and Charges are all completely unaffected. On the other hand a more traditional army is losing a significant portion of their ability to move around the map. The Purple sun is scary, of that there's no doubt, despite that it's again not targeting us. A unit of Brutes would have 1 dice rolled for every 3 models in the unit, a unit of Vulkite berserkers on the other hand are looking at a 1:1 ratio. In fact, outside of Nurgle armies, I don't think there is any army who suffers less from the mortal wound aspect of the spell. Think some of those are starting to sound good? How about the Burning Head. At 40points with only d3 mortal wounds for any unit it moves across it seems...alright. That's right up till you read the wrathful aura part. You fire a Giant Flaming Skull into your enemies lines, then charge your army in behind it, suddenly your units are rerolling 1s to hit while they are wholly within 9" of it, something which really benefits an army that has small but powerful units as we can easily get two or three within that 9" Aura and at the same time deny it to our opponents just with careful positioning of it. Ever wondered what a Maw-Krusha hitting on 2+ rerolling 1s looks like? Well now you can find out. The Malign Sorceries, especially the new Balewind, finally gives us a way to properly utilise the weirdnob shaman and turn it's +2 to cast into a devastating battlefield effect.

If you also grab a balewind for 40 points it gives 6" range on both and a second spell.

He definitely fits into a mega battalion because they said he could on the podcast.

So this brings up an interesting question regarding our Waaagh! since the unit we "use" them on is the Megaboss not the other units. This means we are once again in a grey area where RaW doesn't clearly define whether we can have multiple of the same Waaagh! type over multiple megabosses.

Allegiance: IronjawzLeadersGordrakk The Fist of Gork (540)Megaboss on Maw-Krusha (440)Battleline3 x Orruk Gore Gruntas (140)3 x Orruk Gore Gruntas (140)3 x Orruk Gore Gruntas (140)3 x Orruk Gore Gruntas (140)3 x Orruk Gore Gruntas (140)BattalionsBloodtoofs (120)Ironfist (180)Total: 1980 / 2000Wounds: 104 It's like the gordrakk fist with slightly less turn 1 reach but a waaagh! Extra and 2 mks getting both bonuses to boot. Not to mention you can use the third cp to reroll a crucial failed charge. Also requires only 17 models to run.

I used it at UKExpo and that ruling was made there. It's how I always read it. It's to stop things which trigger on you having made a move action, so hidden paths then cunning but brutal etc.

Specifically Second in Command is there to score victorious duel if farstrider dies and to ****** over people trying to do the same. It's definitely a choice my argument is that it's not garbage like most seem to assume, and I did as well at first. Realistically there is quite a bit of wiggle room in all of the decks components and I suspect it will come down to how you individually play. Personally I was attempting to minimise the amount of 3rd end phase cards since I'm trying to score superior tactician and trying to maximise my scoring potential when I'm losing as the game at the moment is very much who gets ahead first in aggro mirrors. My original post was made after looking at the thread and seeing people primarily ruminating on just how defensive farstriders should be. It was to give people an inspiration for a far more aggressive style of play which isn't scoring supremacy turn 1. I actually toyed with making a statement but found my playstyle just doesn't score it. Will be interesting to see where people take it and I'm waiting eagerly for the new leader objectives. There's 2 slots in the objective deck that I have seriously struggled to fill.

I can dream eh not having a solid gaming group to play against hurts because I can only test at tournaments. Means that I have to use the smaller ones to test iterations which puts a cap on how fast I CAN iterate.

I have a really close matchup against what I would consider to be an almost fully refined Magores and I think if I stopped making a few mistakes with the deck (I average 1-3 a game) it would actually be very positive. Skaven are the one deck I've struggled with/not managed to get locked down purely because I just haven't really faced them. The deck itself is a pretty demanding deck I feel and skaven just capitalises on your mistakes better than any other faction. Imo Skaven is probably the strongest warband atm when built/played correctly. Aye, it's pretty funny. I've had a ton of people go "dafuq" then check the cards, then realise that yes I did just win from having my fighters die. With regards to the Katophrane's, yes my current build has taken it out though I haven't had a chance to test the new variation yet. Specifically I spent about a month and a half building the deck THEN the katophrane's nerf hit as I finished tuning it. Removing the relics is a pretty huge change so I stuck with it, I don't think they are optimal anymore but they are oh so close and I don't really want to share to much of how I'm changing it so really the base build is where you guys are guna have to work from I really don't want to go to a tourney to just have to face someone who has netdecked me with my own deck ?

The big thing is that you aren't actually trying to USE the relics. They are there for the various reroll on your huge dice pools. Occasionally you will get 4 up and start drowning your opponent under power cards. Very rarely you will hit 6 and instantly win the game. Realistically though I have no problems discarding them with an opening hand. You only super care about 3 which gives you a ton of leeway. I'm glad you liked it, I definitely enjoyed building it then seeing peoples faces when you drop it on them ? Currently playing around with a variation on the idea but need to see what comes in the leader pack. I think second in command is possibly the most underrated upgrade atm and it's only getting better.

If they hadn't already posted it I wouldn't have put up the full list. More giving the general idea of what I'm doing/running so that people can play around with it themselves. As it is I don't feel as though it's going to be super easy to use/abuse the list (like some other kataphrane's decks....) and I'll probably be switching things up with the leader pack anyway so I'm not to bothered.

You're playing an aggressive combat deck which inspires for being in his territory. Just drop them if you pull them and kill him, he can't NOT fight back or you just go crazy on him.

I'd argue that any of the factions who have an individually powerful fighter is able to use army of one well. The reason it's strong in farstriders is down to the 3hex range and furious blow upgrades (imo). That doesn't mean it's not solid as hell on Gurzag, Magor or Riptooth. Imagining Riptooth with triple defence dice and 4 dice attack is terrifying. It really depends what comes out in the next pack tbh since my guess is that will be a balance patch for the game. Plus, as it focuses on the "leaders", it might make army of one better for the other warbands.

I think it's a fantastic idea which gives a great balance opportunity.

I play around the upgrades and objectives I get. I pack 2 defensive upgrades and aren't that dependent on it. Also because I'm going aggressive I often put through a kill and a bunch of early damage playing the grind game since I win it. The 2/3 set kata is really the key bit since even rerolling 2 def dice makes you tanky as hell with guard up. And your attacks when inspired are equally rude with rerolls. If eagle eye goes down early then farstrider rerolling on his bird is amazing for crit fishing. Plus the range means you can control the early game fights to be as aggressive as you want them to be. Got dauntless in hand? First action charge with swiftblade, got something else you can just take first action shoot instead. Farstriders are super flexible even if you are playing them hyper aggressive. Oh and in case you were wondering yes I did manage to kataphrane someone in one of my games, I don't play for it but the threat is very real.