Rock Lobster

I got Extremely-stressful Eggplant I am not even sure what this paint would look like, but it sounds worthy of being the base color of an army for sure.

Wow that is a great conversion

Thanks man, I'll check them out

Ah yes, I can see why that is an issue

Have you considered alternate minis? The avatar of Shah from raging heroes is a really clear keeper of secrets and armed the same way - below is one of mine:

I would just say set expectations low and maybe we will not be disappointed. There is a good chance Ironjawz are going to get a book some time in the near future so they may not want to go deep with changes in the GHB. A year ago prior to the GHB we were hurting and the GHB made tiny insignificant changes to points but did establish allegiance abilities etc. This time we could be looking at similar. If you are hoping for 25% discounts on things, prepare to be disappointed I think. It will probably be 10 points here, 20 points there. Only big changes will be the really crappy battalions which will get a hefty discount I think - its a shame they are really bad and add little to the army, but a cheap artifact and command point will be handy. As I mentioned in previous posts, the best thing they could do for our fun is to change that Waaagh mechanic so it doesn't require the whole army to clump together for the roll to even have a chance and force you into MSU. I think it would be cool to put Ironjawz in the activation wars to allow it to compete with the likes of slaanesh and flesh eaters, albeit randomly. Roll a dice - 1-5 +1 attack 6+ +1 attack and always strikes first. And allow to activate in either you or your opponents combat phase. The expectation is that ironjawz just die when charged, if there was a 1/6 chance that they may go first that might be a risk that makes your opponent more conservative. Multiple waaghs obviously increases the chance of the always strikes first and prophet of the waagh also. You would still benefit from keeping things together, but would not cripple yourself if you spread out to fight the battle - you could go MSU or big units. I think this would be much more fun.

Any tips on how do make that smoother, do people just do multiple additional layers to transition in, or do I need to look at wet palette and wet blending or something. I have heard this kind of thing is much easier with an airbrush but its difficult for me to conveniently set that to work in my place with fumes etc.

How did you do the cloak transitions? I did something very similar in scheme but with traditional brush and highlight and I am not that experienced at blending having never done this kind of thing before, yours looks seamless:

Agreed, for just a few points more you can get 2 Keepers. They have so much utility.

Finally got my keeper done, super happy with it, I have never tried blending colours before so I gave it a crack for the cloak to blend the red\pink blue and purple of my colour scheme together. I don’t know how people get it to look 100% smooth, but it’s the best I can do.

Always best to summon heroes if possible as they pay for themselves with depravity. If you are godseekers with cogs it’s all good as you can charge immediately and get affect. If you don’t have cogs or seekers and will struggle for a 9in charge, might be better with enraptures who can immediately contribute in shooting phase. Remember if summoning near the fane cheaper Simmons are better as you save more. For example, summoning 3 x enrapturess will give you back 3d3 depravity, where 2 exalted chariots will give you back 2d3.

I think you could have some real fun with that. Not game breaking but an amusing surprise for opponents. You can even do funny things like teleport your wizard and throw our short ranged endless spells at close range when the enemy was not expecting the mirror to land turn 1. Or even silly things like those 80 point exalted champions, depravity efficient, can hide them to make it so you always get to summon or amusingly sayl can sit out of dispel range and throw 1 over the battlefield every turn like a giant catapult.

If you take Sayl the faithless from forgeworld you get some very cool options for slaves to darkness allowing you to teleport a slaanesh marked character or unit across the board. That giant block of maurauders is more fun if teleported in a line in your opponents backfield. Or even just a chaos lord on daemonic steed or manticore with godseekers and cogs. Teleport, charge on a 6 with reroll and wreck shooting units that thought they were safe like warp lightning cannons and get drepravity a the same time. Or do it with a unit like a slaanesh marked chaos war mamoth or chaos warriors. Slaanesh mortal spell that allows +1 to hit on a unit is great and the manticore sorcerer is good for receiving depravity from being hit so he is a good shout if you do care about effectiveness as well as having mortals. Yes its no just points and performance to consider, it is nice to know your models arnt going to be superceded within a month of you painting up a load of old tosh.

Yes, good shout. Masque would be great for this, the 5+ 4+ makes her very durable and no risk of battleshock + heal D3. The key is you need enough survivability so that you dont get nailed in their turn and free the unit up so dont pile in and attack or you will take a lot of hits and with fewer wounds could get sniped with an endless spell or normal spell. The key is surviving your opponents phases correctly and positioning based on liklihood. If the enemy has little magic damage and shooting you can be a little more cavalier, perhaps on weak units pile in and get some attacks in for free and you will survive into their next combat phase. Against armies with some shooting and mediocre magic damage you will likely die in their shooting phase so position your units assuming the unit will not move but could still make a charge. Against armies with strong magic or damage abilities in the hero phase the strategy may not work as they can delete your unit and then theirs breaks free to move and charge. However they can tank a lot of mortal wounds so it may be worth it still. If the masque has only taken 1 wound in the previous combat phase, that means the enemy has to do 8 wounds to nail her. Thats 4 typical endless spells or 2 pendulum equivalents plus a magic missile on average. If she takes that kind of damage rather than it going into your keepers, that is really nice.

It will be interesting to see what happens with the GHB points costs, there may be good options after that. Slaves to darkness are currently very poor, the lowest win % in stats of any of the big factions with lots of kits, just 25%. So at the moment very overcosted for what they do. Also there is good odds of eventually getting a slaves to darkness book, there could be some great stuff in there. Right now I would not commit to it unless I know where they stand or you will lose a lot of games compared to using beasts of chaos allies who are really solid.

Go for the seeker battalion for the 6" pile in. Have 3 units of 5 hellstriders filling out your core. In your turn, make a snake with your 5 hellstriders pointed at the corner of the enemy unit and move or run to within 6". In combat pile in to 2.999999". They then get to pile into you 3" - since you have only 1 model at the front and you are hitting a corner probably only 2-3 models max can fight. As long as you keep your banner bearer a the front you are 10W with a 4+ sv and bravery 8. You will stick around to prevent them doing anything other than retreating in their turn. In your next turn do the same again and watch them rage. Turn 1 they will do nothing anyway, Turn 2-4 you can force them to be useless while you clean up the rest of the army. Turn 5, you are winning on points or have killed the rest of the army and can combo charge your whole army in for fun.

The thing that I like is the ironjawz community is really solid, they love the army and have put up with a horrendous task and meta and fought through it still. It doesn't have to be a game breaking book, it just needs to give us a fighting chance against the top armies and people will be super happy. The big thing for me is make it flexible, options for building different types of lists and ways of playing - it will make them so much more fun. To do this they are going to need to drop some points and more importantly loosen some of the mechanics such as the waaagh which requires lots of small units and all within a bubble. If you didn't have to roll for it, how much more fun would your games be if your units could go anywhere and you change between big units and small units or a mix of both, using allies etc without being punished by the mechanics of the army.

Thats true, going with the sacrifice turn 1 gives a 5/6 chance of really killing somehing that needs dying turn 1. It just means the rest of the keepers are quite floppy, no real weapons. I am on the fence about swapping out the 2 exalted chariots for a 3rd keeper and either losing he cogs for an enrapturess, or taking 2 more endless spells to be a nuisance such as the mirror and geminids, or command points, or a little 80 point exalted hero who just sits behind the fane making sure I keep a character alive and giving me +1 on my command point roll from battalion. I wouldn't drop the battalion on the hellstriders as that 6" pilein allows you to really mess with people. Imagine someone frustration when in your turn you park 6" away from 20 sequitors on a corner, then pile in to just inside 3" with the first model, then he will only get to attack with 2 guys and you have locked a 400 point unit in combat for his entire turn for just 100 points. That is valuable for tying stuff up while the keepers are elsewhere. You can get 3 of those annoying units for the cost of 1 daemonette unit.

One can only hope, he points drops are desperately needed, but Games Workshop is rarely this drastic in helping out sub optimal factions. My expectation is 10-20 points here and there and another period of pain until the new book comes out, probably around Christmas as Ironjawz are a popular army in need of a refresh and it is a great time to make some money.

yes

It just say 'in the next combat phase' so that would be the next combat phase is when you add the plus one.

Sounds good. I think I'll give a couple of them a little run out in a silly list Saturday next week at a 1 day tournament. My final list for the capital city bloodbath in August I wanted to use beasts of chaos in my slaanesh but am loathe to buy and paint without knowing GHB points costs this coming month so in the meantime I am going to play fun. I am currently looking at this (no bodies, just characters): Invaders (Ghyran) Keeper - 360 (blade of hammerhal Ghyra) (best of the best) Keeper - 360 (Ghyrstrike) Bladebringer on exalted chariot - 220 Bladebringer on exalted chariot - 220 Epitome - 200 (Rod of misrule) Character battalion - 120 5 Helstriders - 100 5 Helstriders - 100 5 Helstriders - 100 Seekers battalion - 140 Cogs - 60 1980 I dont think it is going to do very well, no bodies to hold objectives, but I like the schenanigans possible with the 6" pile in from the helstriders and there is enough CP in the list to allow a keeper and bladebringer to pair up, both attack twice and shred anything. Both keepers have a helpful killy artifact. The invaders keeper with best of the best can be almost as killy as the pretenders keeper if you sacrifice a wound on the fane for rerolls to hit you can get 3 attacks with the claws, rerolls to hit and rerolls to wound to deal some real hurt. Although from your post I quite like the idea of the sacrificing of an item on the bladebringer for the chance of rerolling all attacks, very tasty. I think I could change to seekers, give one of the bladebringers the cameo of the dark prince to snatch the CP turn 1 and then sacrifice it for rerolls. Disadvantages - less CP over the game, and keeper loses the reroll to wound which makes her less reliable, advantages - possibility to have reroll hits on a bladebringer for good, +1 to charge, potentially run and charge or retreat and charge on keeper. What do you guys think? I like the idea of the speedy godseekers keeper, but the builds I have seen with the fire cloak etc concern me as there are no offensive items of worth in Aqushy or in the seekers artifacts and the keeper feels like it will flub attacks after jumping screens. Anyone had any experience with this? I could just have a non-flying keeper who can run and charge or retreat, but without the fly that retreat and charge or run and charge is not nearly as valuable.

That being said, if a grisslegore big nasty monster riding character were to fall for that they would be incredibly salty when they stick on a screen and just sit there for their turn doing nothing.

Its not really a big deal, they will just decline the challenge and take D3 mortals, then they go on their merry way doing whatever they want. If it said 'if they decline the challenge they suffer D3 mortal wounds and cannot charge this phase' that would be a great ability. As it is, it is just a little chip damage to one character and only does more if an opponent would be foolish enough to accept the challenge when you have screened.

I just layered up dark reaper with drakenhoff shade. Then built up with dark reaper, thunderhawk blue, russ grey and then a mix of russ grey and white.