Rock Lobster

I agree with this as one of the risks, my earlier post on the sequence of events covers when is a good time to go first and go 2nd. It is certainly matchup dependant and likely scenario dependant. in some situations you can be sure an opponent will either stay in place to shoot you, or if they move out it is a bad day for them. Some skaven builds this can be true for, if the objectives are in the center, and the enemy has only 3 blocks of clan rats and no chaff. That is a golden opportunity to destroy those 3 blocks with your whole army in a turn and you can even follow with your pin strategy next turn if you double turn or go for the kill. If the enemy has lots of chaff you should go first or it will fan out and deny space for bottling them in.

Thanks @Andrew G stated much more eloquently then i said. To do a really good job of bottling up the other army there has got to be enough teeth in the blocker that the opponent is worried that if they try to ignore it, move out of combat, move around, fly over etc and they might get lose control of it in their turn and the blocker will break lose and exact a heavy toll. Hence they will need to dedicate resources to killing them. If you still have a full 60 grots you will simply leave that 1 unit in combat and everything else will move around he ardboyz and go hunting for the megaboss and smaller units since the ardboyz are unlikely to ever move again. If the ardboyz shred 40+ goblins and you are looking at a 20 goblin unit going into your combat phase, even if the odds are in your favor, that turn it is pretty hairy to run the risk of those ardboyz nabbing a unit kill in your turn and charging you again next turn - you will want to commit resources to holding them up or killing them.

Double charge is a good shout there if you have 2 Krushas, I like that idea. Costs you 2 cp to charge them both but you can then nail little heroes for sure and get free t charge again in the charge phase and cause havoc. I can see that ruining someone’s day. If you have the magic to do some damage it’s not unreasonable to score a few wounds off bigger monsters like a vwrminlord and kill them. for shooting you could use the ironweld dwarves as much as that bugs me. 3 organ guns for 360 points or 2 cannons and a cog smith for 380 points I would convert those from fantasy and 40k orky stuff. Those could be enough to free up the crushas for the charge phase. If you are looking to pre-damage in the hero phase it would probably be another wizard. maybe skate or would work as he can cast maybe an endless spell to pick off wounds and his shooting attack does so also.

True you won’t take them down, but I’m many cases you want to grind enough with the first hit to reduce the blowback turn 1 and keep your unit in the field longer. Most screens can dish out pain at full strength but deteriorate at Lower levels. A waaagh or 2 can take that unit down to the size they don’t benefit from +1 attack or +1 hit or wound etc. I think you probably do need to have a cp or 2 saved for inspiring presence for your turn to make sure the unit tanks their army a turn, potentially you keep 2 to tank your turn and theirs if anything survives, although I would probably just save the 1 and chance an aetherquartz since I would rather do some damage and most combat armies will slaughter that many wounds in their turn. Grisslegore would still be a problem with this as the general alone can kill half the unit and everything can fly over the ardboyz screen anyway. if you do power up those ardboyz in some matches you will blowout the screens, get the double turn and get stuck into the meat of the army, tying it down or killing. A cost effective approach with aetherquartz and the prophet of the waaagh if you start with the 4 cp is to not commit the megaboss and follow these steps: 1. Deploy with your ardboyz as a screen for your units, shaman out of unbind range (taking into account possible spellcaster movement first turn) but in range to hand of gork. You can choose to go first or 2nd, first gives you the chance to hit the enemy as they are and bottle them up, but risk being destroyed on a double turn. Going 2nd means at most they get 1 turn and you may get the double, risk is if they are smart they will fan out to deny hand of gork range meaning you have no choice but to hit the screens instead. Situation will determine the best course, consider the following: A) hand of gork May not go off, if you go first hoping for it, are you screwed if it doesn’t and you get double tapped? You may want to consider going 2nd as the safer option. Kharadron overlords might be a good one for this, if they can shoot you for 2 turns it could be game over. B) does the enemy have so much chaff that if they get a free move even a double turn won’t make it to the meat? Some skunk builds can do this, you may consider going first for the chance to trap them. C) is the enemy alpha strike so devastating and would overwhelm your ardboyz striking first that the only chance you have is a Hail Mary first strike before their buffs etc. You may consider going first. 2. Double buff the ardboyz with war chanter. 3. Hand of gork those suckers up into the enemies face. if you fail hand of gork it is not the end of the world, if the enemy move forwards you may be able to shove them in their front line units face still so it’s not wasted, and your screen is still there so that is something. 4. Ironfist all units, ardboyz within 3-8” of enemy, meaning auto to 5” charge. If you roll high on this roll you may have the option to put another unit or 2 into combat if you do choose. 5. If the enemy stayed back, Hopefully you can run your megaboss to cover, close enough to inspiring presence or reroll charge on your ardboyz but for now out of danger range from most things. If you get a double turn he can sally forth. If the enemy is back cap all objectives in front of their deployment, if their screen advanced, blow up theirs screen and seize objectives. This has not used any cp so far so you have 4 in the bank. 6. 3 waaghs on the ardboyz from your hidden location, with aetherquartz you may on average get 1 back to bank 2, you will have at least 1. On average prophet of the waagh will give you attacks for those 3 waaaghs. That’s 6 attacks per ardboy with a great weapon and with the warchanter buffs average of 5 hits per boy. 4 boyz dish out 10 wounds at rend -1. That is a lot of solid dice to throw out. You can realistically engage 2 units of clanrats at the same time and kill them entirely in 1 turn, or cripple 3 units with attacks spread out that will likely die in the next turn. this leaves enough gas in the tank for battleshock immunity or if the ardboyz survive better than hoped you can bring a mighty 2nd turn waagh x2 with the rest of your army to roll them.

Thinking about it, I might swap out 1 unit of boys for a 2nd warchanter and a cp. cp is so valuable and having the alpha striking 30 ardboyz hitting on 2s is really great.

Leaked points on the internet and in this forum a page or 2 back.

You want to make sure you get another ironjawz unit and megaboss within waaagh range with that push. Blood toof will give auto pass with 3 units. On 18” distance not a problem, at 24” You may have to spend 2 points most likely to get megaboss and a gore grunta unit into range which would suck as it would leave you with 2-4 waaghs subject to broach, but that may be enough to be honest. Enemy hit by 30 ardboyz, megaboss and either 3 gruntas or 10 more ardboyz with plus 2 attacks each is pretty tasty. You might even be fine taking the chance on longer charges as long as the megaboss is within range to waaagh the 30 ardboyz and some units will still trigger the ability even if not in combat to ensure you get the extra waaagh. Depends what you roll for your ironfist, if it’s a 6 you could feasibly get a couple of charges off with gruntas.

So for anyone who hasn't clocked onto them yet (and I imagine most people have), here are some obvious optional shenanigans from the new allegiance abilities etc you may want to try - some good, some bad: Brutefist for charge and fight in the hero phase Highly inefficient because brutes are less efficient then ardboyz, you cannot go megabattalion and the battalions robs you of the speed of an ironfist. However, since the brute fist allows you to charge in the hero phase for free, it allows you to charge with the brutes and inflict D3 mortal wounds per unit, then spend a command point to fight Best combined with the death bringy dingy which can take 15 brutes 12" forward, you charge them out with cogs and pile in and fight in the hero phase, then in the combat phase you do it again. Hand of Gork is your 2nd unit of brutes flying in when combined with cogs for that sweet 6" charge. 30 brutes in your opponents grille can be highly amusing. Megaboss on mawkrusha with luminary rod and muscle bound brute (keeping in hysh for aetherquartz goodness). Not the best build of megaboss, but potentially amusing. You can pick this boy up and drop him down somewhere to charge in the hero phase. He will hit with 8 dice, 4+ for mortal wounds (av 4), D3 wounds from muscle bound brute (av 6 now) and if you really want something to die or you see multiple support heroes you can spit out the luminary rod just before you roll you impact hits since you can do it any time. That is average 8 mortals, good chance you get to charge the next target and if they were also hit with the luminary rod (like fireslayers hanging around bezerkers) you will probably kill them too and continue being irritating. The fun thin about this is because it is he hero phase you actually get a 2nd shot at his potentially when you stop moving. Lets say you kill a hero and get stuck on the 2nd, you still get to do your innard bursting below and if they speed bump dies you can charge again - you can also clear the speedbump if you have offensive magic, you can also clear the speedbump if you have shooting. The rampage can be good paired with some allies or mercenaries or spells that can pluck a couple of wounds off those characters to soften them up for a chain reaction of charges. Megaboss on mawkrusha of murderous deathand his variant, megaboss on Mawkrusha of that can actually survive a turn Not very subtle this one, take Ironsunz and you get the D3 roll to see how many extra wounds and attacks your megaboss gets at the beginning of the game. Pair with the trait to reroll wound rolls on the charge and warchanter buff him for potentially 7 attacks, 2+ / 3+ RR / -3 / D2 and then waagh on top of that for the pain train to grow. With the megaboss of murderous death, your main weapon will have between 5-7 attacks pre-waaagh, give him the rend-3 blade or +1 damage and go to work killing things. The megaboss that can actually survive a turn benefits from his 14-17 wounds with the reroll 1s trait. With the ethereal amulet that is a sexy 3+ save reroll 1s always. Mortal wounds will make him fall over. Or go iganx scales to resist the mortal wounds but be subject to rend. The less costly to the rest of your army version of this would be the 5+ mortal wound save from Hysh since it lets you get broach still Ardboy teleport bomb Ardboys have a natural +2 to charge with the banner, with ironjawz that is natural +3, with cogs that is +5. You send these boys in with the dead bridge, bringy dingy or hand of gork and even from 9" away you can have a 4" charge. They are a great unit to teleport. Using this realistically even the very slow ardfist can make it into combat with the likes of the bridge

indeed, it is a massive shame though that you cant actually use your extra 2 artifacts with big G in there.

The points cost makes no sense. However, it is possible since there is no dwarf army book to have to maintain the use of that they may be being bumped to 2 wounds on their warscroll to be on par with the gingers. If that is the case the 10 points extra will seem a bargain with twice as many wounds.

1 fun bit of comedy value you could do (but still terrible... but still fun) is take 5 megabosses, saving a cool 100points, 10 ardboys and a wizard with the death bridge from forbidden power. turn 1, teleport 5 megabosses across the table some 16-20" with a screen of ardboys that give them -1 to hit from shooting and allow them to all pile in and get nasty if the ardboyz get charged if they get the turn. If you get the double turn, or survive their onslaught, 5 megabosses go in and waaagh as many times as humanly possible turn 2 into your opponents lines with comical results. Note that the forbidden power stuff works well for ironjawz so worth considering. The boat can ensure a unit of 20 ardboyz gets in combat turn 1 easily with all their charge bonuses. They wont be buffed with Waaaghs and things probably, but it would be great for collapsing a weak flank etc. Ardboyz are great with the bridge as well as you can charge out of the bridge with the charge bonuses and make it in without too much trouble with as much as +5 to charge if you also do cogs for that turn 1 alpha strike. The bridge can also make your ardfist actually work, giving the warchanter a way to cross over the middle of the table turn 2 from his hiding place. Meaning you move up turn 1, throw all of your units into combat to mash things up and probably in some cases die, then before the warchanter dies summon back reinforcements behind the enemy rather than in your own backfield.

Anyone who is disappointed I gave fair warning, 10-20 points is usually all they move for units, sadly this equates to probably another 10 ardboyz in your list in a meta that is twice a ruthless as it was a year ago. It is going to be a rough old year for ironjawz. That being said we are used to being at the bottom of the pile so lets look at winners and losers: Ardboyz - big winner The best unit in the book of the 3, hands down. Before hand there were trade offs between the power of the brutes and the low cost of the gruntas and it was tough to pick. Now from a pure efficiency standpoint it is not close. Ardboyz are the best choice, offensively, defensively with similar mobility to gore gruntas on the charge and benefiting most from waaghs and being the joint cheapest. I think this was a massive error in good army design and allocating points and is such a shame since they are the worst sculpts, but the reality is that if you are min/maxing for a tournament, these are your unit of choice now. The good thing is you dont have to aim for a regiment discount any more (which is good since 30 was almost unusable with 1" reach and 32mm base). Units of 20 are a solid pick, units of 10 also great with multiple waaagh, ruins the other unit options. Bloodtoofs one drop - big winner If you are taking an ironfist I believe this is an auto-include. 80 points gets you a 50 point value command point and for the other 30 points you get an artifact, +2 bravery (sorely needed) on your whole army and you become 1 drop. If you are taking an ironfist and not taking this, you better have a phenomenal reason. Combined with the change in the ironfist that is 60 points returned to your pocket. Megaboss on foot - Winner and actually in line with other books in terms of cost! The drop doesn't help the army out a ton, but this is exciting as it is one of the few places I can look at and say the character feels the right cost and is in line with similarly costed characters which is great. Maw krusha you look at and say, dear god how is this thing so much more expensive than a keeper, bloodthirster, grislegore monstrosity etc, but the megaboss you say - looks about right. Ironfist / gorefist - winners The ironfist or gorefist is almost mandatory given the slow speed of the army, points drops here are gravy for almost any list. Maw Krusha and Gordrak - slight winners in absolute terms / losers against any similar fighting flying monsters 20 points is nice, hooray, but lets be real, these guys are outclassed by a ton of other armies monsters who are 40-100 points cheaper. In real terms they are horribly overcosted, in our army terms they are essential being the only survivable waagh user with any decent sized bubble, faster than everything else and can fly over screens. So basically its the best we got, and the best we got is now 20 points cheaper so yes we suck comparing to other books, but we suck ever so slightly less. Brutes - slight winners in absolute terms / losers in internal balance Lets be fair, a 10 point saving is a joke. If these guys were 150 they wouldn't be setting the world on fire. That said 10 points is 10 points. Problem is that a 30 points cheaper they are massively outclassed by the ardboyz, which is a tragedy as they are MUCH better models. Gore gruntas - slight losers on internal balance They are better than brutes because of their lower cost and higher speed, but lets get real. Putting the quite fast, more durable and much more punchy ardboyz at the same cost as the Gore gruntas means you are probably going for a gorefist or going for Ardboyz Ardfist - slight winner, but not really viable Ardfist is cheaper, ardboyz are cheaper, this is almost great. Problem is that it relies on your warchanter surviving. In modern AOS there is almost no way to keep a 6 wound hero alive if your opponent wants it dead. Only way to survive is to hide, and hiding means stuff comes back on your board edge. It will be underwhelming compared to what you think it will do on paper. Other battalions - losers They are still rubbish battalions and they remain rubbish - a brute fist would need to be a max 100 points before I would consider taking it, and if I did It would still be worse then saving the extra 60 for an ironfist. Wierdfist puts all your eggs in a wierdnob basket, a wierdnob that saw no discount and is terrible, in a meta where almost every army can kill a small hero in 1 turn and the whole battalion is wasted. Wierdnob shaman - massive loser This one boggles the mind, he is one of the worst casters in the game for his points, a spell that is almost uncastable even with max buffs, 1 cast and unbind, hurts surrounding units and the same cost as the mighty 2 cast grey seer with his plethora of useful spells. I actually got caught out by this one, I thought 20 point drop for sure. Nope! Same points, hot garbage, only include for rule of cool and ally in any other wizard. ------------- Overall The big disappointment here is not the discounts which I expected to be disappointing and fairly underwhelming. The thing that makes me sad is that if I want to have the hardest list I can, the way they have costed the units means my least favorite choice and the worst models to own and paint are the best option by far. You dont need to use ardboyz, but doing so is an advantage, no question. This feels like it reduced options if you are looking for the best list you can make rather than growing them. I think further discounts on the brutes and another 10 points off the gruntas would have made for more interesting choices, addressing the wierdnobs terrible price point would have also led to some list changes. As it is, the best army looks like a bloodtoofs with a pile of ardboyz, not fun to collect, paint or look at, but no question stronger than pre-GHB 2019.

Would be nice if that would happen, but lets set expectations, things almost never change by more than 20 points, and they have not obvious inclination to hard balance so I suspect the maw krusha will remain very overcosted. it being 80 points more than a keeper of secrets is very frustrating.

I think that is the trick in developing points costs. Points costs are way off when the totality of synergy is not considered. On paper Ironjawz units are really solid. Compared to 70% of the field though they get steamrolled because our synergy included power does not equal theirs. Flesh eater courts are a good one for this, the warscrolls combined with the command abilities, general traits and allegiance are far mightier than the warscroll alone might suggest when you hit them or they hit you. Ironjawz are exactly what you see on paper when you hit them and fold. On the attack waagh plus smashing and bashing makes them better.

False alarm, they made a mistake and updated the article. removed hedonites and inserted gloomspite. We may be staying as is.

So according to the bottom of the GHB preview article on warhammer community, there will be a pdf early july with points updates for hedonites of slaanesh... It is a little nerve-wracking at this point since the only data they have is a brief period of people losing to them who have never faced them before and havn't yet adapted. Its a recipe for a crippling over-reaction if they are not careful. Personally I am biased, however I dont feel there are any characters who are undercosted. they are swingy with massive damage potential but glass cannons so I hope they dont get increases. Maybe an increase in depravity cost is better. For troops, I would like to see seekers as battleline and fiends and damonettes return to their original pre-book cost. I think that will make list selection more challenging.

I expect it will just be 10-20 points here or there for this. My guess would be 10 points off ardboyz to 150, 20 points off brutes to 160. It all helps. If the megaboss on maw krusha dropped to 400 points (that is probably optimistic) that would be really nice to free up cost. It is surprising they didn't list a couple of the most overcosted things like he wierdnob shaman and foot megaboss (he is way too slow to make his points). I hoped for a 20 point reduction in each.

I really like this list in certain matchups, upsettingly fast for your opponent to deal with if they are screening, it comes apart against a dedicated combat army that wants to fight a collection of chaff units. Dont drop the seeker cavaclade, it is really good, using little units to mess with your opponent, prevent units from moving by tying up in combat, picking off fanatics etc. A tempting option in my view would be to drop the enrapturess for a sybarites battalion to make you 2 drop, then drop 1 unit of 10 seekers to 5 and make 1 units of hellstriders 10 man and reduce the chariot to an epitome to give you cogs. The army gets faster, you always get to choose first or second turn and everything gets in turn 1. Less overall depravity but more CP if you take the cameo, burn it and get rerolls to hit so lots of things striking twice.

Same with fiends. I think it is a shame since the mechanics of the army pressure you to go for characters, so it would be a nice balance and a tough decision to have effective troops that want to compete for those points.

I think our army is structured in a way where any point invested in slaanesh heroes is very valuable. Since you need to pay the core tax anyway any points spent on mercenaries comes directly out of those valuable character points. As such the mercenaries would need to bring something spectacular to overcome this - also cp is very valuable to us and mercs eat it. The most valuable additions would probably be the dwarf organ guns or the flesh eater arch regents. The issues are that while the archregents give you a handy deepstrike summon they consume the 1 cp first turn and their abilities consume 2 more which is no good for us. With the organ guns that is a much smaller investment of the 1cp first turn, but 3 organ guns is a keeper of secrets... that is missing out on a great spell, high combat power, a 2+ locus and 13 built in depravity points plus any points generated. I dont see how you can make that trade work efficiently. Gloomspite however will love those options, they have no real worries about trading out their own stuff for mercs and have a bucket of command points.

So I am wondering if the mercenaries clears up why we have the silly wording on some abilities that affect ‘chaos slaanesh’ units. It’s silly since all slaanesh units are by their nature chaos. However if the mercenary keyword replaces the grand alliance keyword, then slaanesh marauders would become ‘mercenary slaanesh’ and hence would not be affected by those same abilities.

I wouldn't really use them to fly up the board and charge the strong stuff, its more for getting around the screens and charging grey seers and warp lightning cannons hiding behinds those screens.

One funky interaction with the mercenaries would be the marauders, if they are still slaves to darkness. If they are you could still mark them slaanesh and then with Sayle teleport them 9" away from the enemy in the backfield and since it is a setup their ability allows them to move D6" to close the distance on the enemy for a teleport and charge.

I think this is better for weaker armies, slaanesh benefits from more slaanesh. Bigger excitement will be from any drops in other armies in the GHB that can be marked slaanesh like slaves to darkness.

I don't necessarily have an issue with this. The scariest armies either have no obvious weaknesses and do everything well (i.e. Skaven) or are so strong in one way of playing and have a rock hard ruleset that makes them very hard to overcome (i.e. flesh eater courts), in all of these types of armies the stuff in your book is either better than anything else you could take or taking something else dilutes your rock hard list design. Mercenaries is one of those things where the weaker your faction is the more you benefit from them, giving the potential to pull a match against a stronger faction from maybe a 20% chance to win to a 35% chance to win by filling in some weaknesses. If you are an ironjawz player you may love to add some artiller to your army devoid of shooting, or have some ghouls come on the back of the board to address the lack of ability to get opponents spellcasters and artillery hidden behind screens. A skaven player would only make their list worse by including any of this kind of stuff by comparison.