Ironjawz at Blackout VIII – An Age of Sigmar Tournament Report

Chris Tomlin has been running the Blackout series of events at Firestorm Games in Cardiff for a good while now, and this past weekend saw the eighth annual event go off without a hitch once again. Rich took his Ironjawz, hoping for some greater success in the fourth edition Age of Sigmar than he’d had in the third!

Blackout has to be one of the top two highlights of my yearly Age of Sigmar calendar, and I think it’s notable that the other one (the Brotherhood team tournament) is also run by Chris. His events seem to attract a crowd that is the absolute perfect mix of competitive, friendly, and passionate about the hobby, and I never fail to leave with a warm fuzzy feeling regardless of results.

The tournament itself is a 2,000 point matched play event, with five games over two days and all of the usual trappings that go with that – Swiss pairings, list submission in advance, and scenarios determined by the tournament organiser. Pairings, score submission and all voting on hobby and sportsmanship was done using Stats and Ladders, which was much better than trying to keep track of endless slips of paper. In the end the event had 86 attendees, a really healthy number for a UK GT.

The Venue

Blackout runs at Firestorm Games in Cardiff, a huge hobby shop in the guts of an old motorcycle showroom. There’s an absolute ton of space encompassing the shop floor, gaming tables, separate tables for card games and RPGs, and an upstairs mezzanine featuring a cafe and tournament space that overlooks the ground floor. Blackout is big enough to span across all of the upstairs and most of the downstairs tables, but there was still plenty of room for a card game event to run at the same time on one of the days, and other casual gaming.

I’m a big Firestorm fan, having been to a lot of events there by this point. Lunch from the cafe is included in the ticket price, with a decent choice available, and there’s a fully licensed bar serving a great variety of draught beers, bottles of cider, and plenty of soft drinks. There’s also a good selection of snacks for that crucial blood sugar boost between games.

The List

Rich’s list - click to expand

This list is a variation of what I was running at the end of AoS3, namely a bit of a “here’s my painted collection” army. I’ve tried to be smart in how I build it, and know the role of the units. The Brutes and the Maw-Krusha are the army’s only really reliable offensive output, while the Ardboyz are there to screen and the Gruntas and Ragerz contribute to battle tactics and do the occasional clutch bit of killing or screening. The foot characters are fully there for the buffs, even the Megaboss. He hits like a wet baguette, but his access to two different ways of giving Brutes +1 attack makes him worth his points in my opinion!

Age of Sigmar 4 definitely seems to encourage reinforced units, and the 10 Brutes can hit like a truck when they’re buffed up with extra attacks. They are almost always given the Priority Target Honour Guard ability from the season rules, giving them +1 to hit and wound against the entire enemy general’s regiment. Given that that’s often a player’s best units (because they want them to get the buffs too) this can come in clutch when it comes to mitigating Ironjawz’ problem with hitting on 4s a lot of the time. I have cleverly made the Megaboss on foot my general, to make sure that the enemy doesn’t get an easy hit and wound boost against my Maw-Krusha, and made sure that the Brutes are the only unit in his regiment to minimise the benefit.

The 6+ ward Artefact of Power was an easy choice on the Megaboss on Maw-Krusha, replicating the ward my infantry would get for hanging out with the wizard and priest. Every fibre of my being wanted to pick the Hulking Brute Heroic Trait, to double up mortal wounds on the Krusha’s charge, but in the end I chose the one that gives an aura of minimum 4” redeploy. I found that using Redeploy and Mighty Destroyers (3” move every Hero Phase) is critical to doing well with Ironjawz, so I think this choice made sense.

For manifestations, I opted for the Primal Energy trio – there wasn’t a huge amount of logic here beyond them being painted, and not wanting to be the person bringing the Morbid Conjuration just for the sake of it. I really rate Ravenak’s Gnashing Jaws, the Burning Head can be useful as an extra shooting attack, and the Lifeswarm is a nice shape for blocking charge lanes if nothing else.

My goal for this list was to do better than I normally do at Firestorm – at Blackout 2023 I went 1-4 (with Maggotkin) and then I did the same with Ironjawz at Brotherhood 2024. My best recent result was from Goonhammer Open this year with a 2-3 (also Ironjawz) so I was keen to match that if possible. I’ve also really been trying to push my army painting skills with this force and am very happy with them, so another goal for me was to get a painting nomination from the judges to display my army for public voting on Sunday.

Friday (Day 0)

Travel to Cardiff from my home base of Worcester is a simple affair, less than two hours by car. The journey was completely uneventful, just a quick stop off at Cardiff Central station to pick up Three and Two co-host Laura and then check in, a drink at the bar, and bed!

Whilst we had a drink I bored Laura by doing a load of revision for the tournament – thinking about how good my army was at scoring each battle tactic, which tactic would be best to start with in each scenario, and setting up my notepad to make notes about successes and mistakes through my games. Laura also pointed out a great time-saving tip – pre-creating and titling all five games in the Tabletop Battles app and populating your own army and the scenario for each round, so that you don’t end up spending 5 minutes messing with your phone at the start of each round. Instead you can just fill in your opponent’s name and army, and away you go. This was a real lifesaver, it felt like the pre-game sequence went so much more smoothly as a result.

Saturday (Day 1)

We Ubered across to Firestorm from the hotel on Saturday morning, with just enough time to be joined by fellow Rollmodels member Chris and other familiar faces before a quick briefing from the TOs. That done, it was straight to the tables for round one of the day.

Game 1 – Border War vs Dave’s Hedonites of Slaanesh (Supreme Sybarites)

Dave’s list - click to expand

I stepped up to my round one table to meet Dave, who plays in international events like the Six Nations for Team Wales. Dreams of an easy game evaporated before my eyes; even more so when I spotted his army featured forty Blissbarb Archers. Ironjawz don’t particularly like being shot, especially not a total of 123 times every battle round (assuming Dave used Covering Fire every turn, which of course he did).

We deployed our armies, with Dave screening his characters and Blissbarbs with a couple of units of attack-stealing Symbaresh Twinsouls whilst sending his Hellstriders wide to prepare for Take The Flanks. I spread across the width of the board, stacking my infantry in the centre with the Maw-Krusha on the left flank and Gore-Gruntas on the right. Dave gave me the first turn, unsurprisingly, and as the position of some terrain made scoring Take the Flanks difficult I opted to go for Seize the Centre as my battle tactic. I managed that thanks to some clutch run rolls making up for my bad deployment, as I hadn’t really planned on going for that tactic T1.

I also made probably my only big mistake of the event in this turn – I gambled on teleporting my Brutes into Dave’s backfield to threaten Glutos, and moved the Maw-Krusha forward to support them in calling a Waaagh. This seemed like I was capitalising well on a deployment error by my opponent, but in reality I was straight up cheating – the set up from the teleport spell has to be wholly within 24” of the caster. It wasn’t hugely further than that, maybe 30” or so, but still too far and not allowed, so my apologies to Dave!

It turned out not to be too much of an issue – the Brutes failed their charge, and took some casualties from shooting from Covering Fire plus Dave’s regular shooting phase. I scored 9 points here from my tactic plus objectives, and in return Dave scored take the flanks and some objective points for 7 in round 1.

In round 2 I went first, controlling my home objective and both middle objectives for another five points. However it really started to unravel here – I went for Slay the Entourage, powering up my Ardboyz to take down a unit of five Symbaresh, which should have been easy enough. I failed a couple of the buffs, and critically I forgot about Symbaresh reducing enemy attack characteristics! I missed the battle tactic, and on the other flank the Krusha and remaining Brutes did nothing against Glutos.

Dave responded carefully, sneaking a unit of Hellstriders onto one of the border objectives for 3 points of primary scoring, plus the Chaos tactic Offering of Carnage (kill at least 2 enemy units) for another decent round.

At this point most of my army was dead! I did manage some tricky maneuvering with a Warchanter to score Destruction tactic The Kunnin’ Approach and maximise my VP scoring, but I didn’t have the resources to take anything back and I hadn’t even touched the Blissbarb Archers which continued to rain hell upon my forces. Dave finished off round 3 by Taking Their Land and taking my back objective for a max score, and we talked through how he could max score the rest of the game.

So we started off with a 21-44 defeat. In the moment I think I really turned inwards and had a little crisis at this point, I was in full “oh no, it’s happening again” mode, so I hope I didn’t come across as too surly to Dave! Ultimately I made a lot of mistakes, and paid the price for them. He was truly a great opponent, the whole game was played with great communication, and I really hope we get the chance for another game soon.

I have to note Dave’s beautiful army – although running as Slaanesh, every model was either based on or converted to include Gitz models, and painted to a fantastic standard. Of particular note was his attention to making sure that silhouettes matched, which I think is best exemplified by his Sigvald conversion below. The army used a lot of parts from both the Slaanesh and Gloomspite ranges and can’t have been cheap or easy to make, it definitely wasn’t just a case of someone choosing to run an existing army as something different for the sake of being competitive at a tournament.

Game one down, it was time for lunch (vegan chilli and tortilla chips for me, a Firestorm classic), a quick browse of the shop, and then setting up for the next battle.

Game 2 – The Vice vs Jackson’s Flesh-eater Courts (Lords of the Manor)

Jackson’s list - click to expand

I knew I was going to enjoy my game with Jackson as soon as I set my stuff down across the table from him and introduced myself – he was warm and friendly, and we had a great couple of hours together. A slight downside to this, we were so engrossed in having a nice time that we didn’t play as fast as we should have, and had to be told to dice down (sorry Chris!) after we’d quickly worked out the scores at the end of battle round four.

Jackson had a classic combo of Ushoran and a lot of Morbheg Knights, supported by six Horrors, a block of Cryptguard and a couple of foot heroes. Knowing that we were playing The Vice and would end up brawling in the centre of the table, Jackson deployed his Charnel Throne quite far forwards to keep his forces supported in the later game, and dropped the rest of his army fairly centrally save for a unit of Morbhegs on each flank to score the corner objectives. In return I put most of my army centrally too, apart from Gore-Gruntas and the Maw-Krusha in the back corners to capture the objectives.

Jackson gave me the first turn, and I picked Seize The Centre. I’d put my block of Ardboyz in a gap between two pieces of terrain so that they could run forwards and hold a channel, and Jackson played an absolute blinder by using Magical Intervention to cast the Cadaverous Barricade in my hero phase. I failed to unbind it and the horrible fence appeared right in front of my forces, meaning that the Ardboyz couldn’t run and had their movement halved, making them totally incapable of getting to the centre. I missed the battle tactic and scored 4 on the primary. Over on the right flank I kept the Maw-Krusha back, resisting the urge to send it at Jackson’s lines too early.

In return the FEC attempted to score Marked for the Grave, a Death tactic requiring you to kill an unharmed unit. A careful redeploy of an intervening unit gave Jackson a slightly more awkward charge into his chosen target, and he couldn’t quite kill them, leaving us on 4-4 after the end of the battle round.

The next turn the Brutes charged into the block of six Morbheg Knights, making it despite another good Barricade cast thanks to a decent roll and a Waaagh call from the Megaboss trundling up behind them to hold the newly-moved objective. Other units fought back and forth this round, with Jackson scoring Do Not Waver to keep us tied up.

The next turn it was finally time to commit the Maw-Krusha, who ate a unit of Morbhegs for Slay The Entourage but failed to take the backfield objective on his flank off of the Cryptguard (NOTE: looking back at this, the small unit of Morbhegs were not in the entourage – either this was a miscommunication between Jackson and me, or I’ve misremembered. Perhaps the score should have been 4 points lower). In the centre the Ardboyz stepped forward and spread out to cover as much space as possible, aiming to deny control of the objective underneath them. Ushoran spent some Noble Deeds points bringing back a unit of Morbhegs in my backfield for a clever Take Their Land score in Jackson’s turn, and the Horrors charged the Ardboyz who took it mostly on the chin. The Krusha finished off the Cryptguard in Jackson’s turn, freeing him up for some mischief.

In my turn four, I fed the Megaboss on foot to Ushoran in hopes of keeping him away from the objective for as long as possible. The Maw-Krusha charged Jackson’s two foot heroes in the back, splitting attacks and killing them both to deny quite a lot of support to the Horrors in the middle. The Ardboyz were powered up with extra attacks and damage to dispatch the Horrors, and I scored Do Not Waver and four primary points. Jackson scored Inevitable Demise (two units in my territory) on his turn, but couldn’t take the objective from me, giving us the first differing score of the game! We quickly worked out that with my priority Ushoran would most likely die and I would deny any more primary scoring, and that we would both get another battle tactic, giving me a 36-28 victory.

I don’t like rushing the end of games under pressure, as I always worry that someone is missing something and that actually a heal or something would have happened and changed the outcome. That said it’s better than holding the whole tournament up, and our game only went slowly because we were having such a good time so there’s no bad feels there. Jackson was a top opponent who I can’t wait to have another chance to play, and he’s also a long suffering Flesh-eater Courts player so it was great to see him enjoying all of the new models on the table. It was nice to get a victory too, and I was now feeling a bit more confident.

Game 3 – Feral Foray vs Joe’s Skaven (Warpcog Convocation)

Joe’s list - click to expand

More shooting! The suggested terrain map for this scenario was really bad for Joe’s army, with an alternating line of obscuring terrain all the way across the board, joining the long edges. To his credit he deployed really sensibly to deal with this, stacking his shooting threats into one corner behind a Clanrat wall reinforced with endless spells and making me come to him. Because of this I started off stronger on scoring, taking an early objective off Joe and scoring Seize the Centre and Take the Flanks to put me ahead going into turn 3.

This doesn’t tell the full story though – at the same time, Joe was cleverly using his Gnawholes and a unit of six Rat Ogres to take objectives back and score Take Their Land, and managed to Slay The Entourage in turn two by killing my foot Megaboss with his big block of Stormfiends. On the other flank, the Rat Ogres killed the Maw-Krusha in a single turn after I made the bad decision to All Out Defence the Ardboyz against some shooting rather than saving it for the Krusha’s combat.

From turn three onwards I was massively on the back foot – I scored a bit more on primary but failed to get any more battle tactics, while Joe max-scored the remaining three rounds whilst more or less tabling me, leaving me on a 26-46 loss. It seems like there’s not a huge amount to say for the most part because I really feel like I screwed something up this game, but struggle to put my finger on exactly what. I think what I should have done was just try to play my own game as much as possible, keeping out of range of his shooting, shutting down the Gnawholes, and scoring objectives and tactics. Underestimating the Rat Ogres was a definite error, but more generally I think I fell into the Ironjawz trap of feeling like I have to move my army forward at the enemy because they’re melee-focused and killing things is the point of Warhammer. It might be the most fun, but as it turns out it’s not always the way to win games.

I have to say, none of this should reflect badly on Joe! He was a superb opponent, we had a ton of fun in this game and he had a huge grin on his face the entire time, a truly infectious energy for the final game of the day.

Three games down, and it was time to head back to the hotel with Laura and Chris. We had a couple of drinks whilst talking over our performance so far and our pairings for round 4, and ticked another Cardiff pizza company off of our list of places to try (a.k.a. places that will deliver to a hotel on the edge of the city). Scaramantica Pizza was a decent halfway house between a traditional Neapolitan affair and a classic British takeaway pizza, and felt somewhat less detrimental to the human body than last year’s Square Pizza Co. Then to bed for a pizza coma and worrying about game 4.

Sunday (Day 2)

Another quick breakfast, and a drive across to Firestorm Games for two more games. Chris and Laura took an Uber (my car is very small) and got picked up by the same driver as Laura and I had had on Saturday. He was apparently incredibly confused about how I had turned into Chris.

Game 4 – Shifting Objectives vs Oliver’s Slaves to Darkness (Godswrath Warband)

Oliver’s list - click to expand

I did a massive grimace on Saturday night when I saw that I’d been matched into twelve Varanguard plus Be’lakor. One of my early practice games was versus a list with six, and I got thoroughly pasted by them, so twelve seemed terrifying. Be’lakor also inspires incredible anger in me – he’s not really any more egregious than any other control-focused unit, but for some reason I am holding a multi-edition grudge. Chris and Laura did a good amount to talk me round, pointing out that to get these big pieces in his list Oliver was having to put all of his eggs in just a few high-cost baskets, and that I could play conservatively and make him come to me.

I’d actually played against Oliver at the last Blackout. When we talked about this I erroneously claimed that he’d beaten me with his Aggradons, but actually it was the one game I won that time around (sorry Oliver!). He deployed pretty much as expected, big block of Varanguard and Be’lakor in the middle of the board with a unit of 3 Varanguard on each side and some Furies on each flank ready to score Take The Flanks. I set up the Ragerz and Gruntas ready to do the same on my side, with the rest of my army hiding behind a wall of Ardboyz in my backfield.

Ollie wasn’t sure whether or not to try and alpha-strike me, but ultimately decided to give me first turn. I think this was the right choice – I’m very unlikely to move even further backwards, and if the charge does go well in his turn one it opens up the possibility of taking a rare double turn, wiping my army and then scoring the rest of the game with ease. With the turn, I shuffled my Ardboys to one side of a piece of terrain and summoned the Gnashing Jaws on the other side of it, contributing to the screen. I kept my Brutes back, trying to make sure they couldn’t be engaged by any Varanguard that got into the Ardboyz. The Gore-Gruntas moved up to clip a secondary objective for a touch of scoring, trailing the back of the unit towards the edge of the battlefield to both score Take The Flanks (in concert with the Ragerz on the far flank) and provide a screen for the Maw-Krusha which had moved up behind the pigs.

In return, Ollie did as expected and fired nine of his Varanguard forwards. The block of six hit the Ardboyz (navigating around a hastily-summoned Burning Head) in the centre, and popped their fight twice ability to wipe 40 wounds worth of Ardboyz and put some damage onto the Megaboss on foot. Thankfully, my careful screening paid off and the Brutes remained untouched and ready for a counterattack. On the left flank the three Varanguard charged and killed my pig screen – I was quite pleased with my play here, using Redeploy and Mighty Destroyers moves to tuck the Maw-Krusha back behind the screen, making sure that the Chaos horsies wouldn’t be able to put attacks into him. Oliver scored Attack On Two Fronts and a full six on primary scoring thanks to me leaving the objectives mostly uncontested, versus my seven points for turn one.

Ollie got priority on turn two, but decided that he needed to give the turn to me to maximise his scoring potential. I’m not sure this was the right choice – I really think he could have neutralised me with a double here. As it is I chose Do Not Waver, confident that the Krusha and Brutes could deal with their respective units of Varanguard without dying in return. I also got lucky with the primary objective this battle round, with it falling on the objective that the Maw-Krusha was about to charge onto. He did, killing two Varanguard and wounding the last one, with them failing to kill him despite fighting twice. In the centre I buffed the Brutes up with extra damage and attacks, and as expected Be’lakor used his Dark Master ability to try and deny them on a 3+ each time they used an ability.

This is where I got hugely lucky – Oliver rolled a 1, 2, and 1 to turn off the Brutes’ move, charge and fight abilities respectively, meaning they were completely unperturbed by his Chaotic influence and promptly butchered thirty wounds worth of Varanguard, with a touch of help from the Ragerz that charged in from the flank. On Oliver’s turn his Furies scored Take The Flanks, the Maw-Krusha polished off its last Varanguard, and back in the centre I used Mighty Destroyers to move the Ragerz across and Magical Intervention to summon the Emerald Lifeswarm, creating a new screen. The Brutes redeployed backwards (have Orruks ever moved so far backwards in one game before?) and the final unit of Varanguard charged in to kill the Ragerz, but could only pile two models into the Brutes for their second fight. The Brutes then piled in and took two of them off.

So eleven Varanguard died in turn two! In turn three the Maw-Krusha and Gnashing Jaws killed Be’lakor for Slay The Entourage, which mostly wrapped the game up. Ollie did make an excellent play in his turn, using the Nexus Chaotica to explode a bit of terrain near my Megaboss and take him off for an otherwise-unlikely Slay The Entourage in return, and valiantly bounced Furies around to score more primary points. I managed to take the Furies off in subsequent turns, using shooting and impact mortal damage to get around their retreat ability, and maximised my scoring for a final result of a 41-30 victory.

I am incredibly pleased with this result! I cannot deny that I got lucky with Be’lakor flubbing his Dark Master rolls and an attempt at giving himself fight first, and Ollie’s decision to not double turn me too, but still I think I played the bits I had control of pretty much perfectly for the match up. I’m glad I didn’t let the list get into my head too much. Oliver was another supremely fun opponent, and it was great to play him again!

Game 5 – The Better Part of Valour vs Grant’s Lumineth Realm-Lords (Vanari Battlehost)

Grant’s list - click to expand

A two-two record going into the final round was exciting, so I was a bit disappointed to see another shooting heavy list. Grant had a fully-Vanari army meaning it was all also on a permanent -1 to hit, not ideal for Orruks hitting on fours! Shout out to Grant for flying down to the event from Scotland with the game’s most fragile army, you have to admire the commitment.

Unfortunately for Grant, this game went very much my way pretty quickly. I made a massive turn one charge with the Maw-Krusha into the Wardens on one flank, killing them and getting far enough to engage the Sentinels behind them and deny their shooting. I teleported the Ardboyz forwards on the other flank, failing a charge into the scary Dawnriders but doing a sterling job of getting in the way. They got shot a lot by the other block of Sentinels then charged by the Dawnriders, soaking up a lot of offensive output. In turn two I powered up the Brutes that I’d held in reserve and charged them into the Dawnriders, getting there despite having their movement halved by a nice casting intervention by Grant. I was careful to move the Gruntas close to the Sentinels, making sure they couldn’t Covering Fire into the Brutes as they weren’t the closest target. The surviving Gruntas charged both the Dawnriders and the Sentinels, turning off the rest of the army’s shooting and killing a few of the archers. The Dawnriders died to the Brutes, most of the first unit of Sentinels died to the Maw-Krusha, and the Ragerz got a great charge into the remaining unit of Wardens to kill a few and deny a Counter-Charge, before valiantly dying to mortal damage.

At this point we talked the game through as Grant reckoned the power had been taken out of his list. We agreed that the Maw-Krusha was probably going to die and the surviving few Wardens would be able to score a couple of primaries, and that Lyrior would be able to charge across the board for a late Take Their Land, but I was going to be able to max score. I won 50-26, finishing the event on a positive record!

I sound like a broken record, but Grant was yet another fantastic opponent! Once again the game was played cleanly, fairly and in the spirit of enjoyable competition, acknowledging that we were on the middle tables and not contending for a trophy without compromising on our competitive play. Hopefully we’ll get another chance to play in the future!

Results

Three and two, a finish that I’d dreamt of but hadn’t dared to hope for! We also don’t have to rename the podcast any more! I’m so so pleased with this result, I really feel that I levelled up my play and the way that I was thinking about the game. I’m loving the game in its fourth edition so far, and definitely feel motivated to get to some more GTs and RTTs.

I finished in 31st place out of 86 players, a really respectable finish in a tough field full of top tier players in my opinion! Laura finished in 46th and Chris in 79th, meaning that unusually I was also the best-performing player of my club. I doubt it’ll last, given that they’re two of the better tactical minds I know! Up at the other end of the table, Matthew Gouldesbrough beat Dan Arnold to the win by a single tiebreak point, with Simon Weakley only a couple more behind and all three podium players on a 5-0 record.

I didn’t pick up enough votes for any of the podium positions in the painting competition. I’m fine with this to be honest, I was pushing to get a nomination and expected that I’d have further work to do for my army to catch peoples’ eye next to a bunch of other great hobby projects.

I didn’t go home empty handed though! To my utmost surprise, I received the Judges’ Choice Best Army award, which I’m absolutely thrilled about. It’s a great compliment to have your army chosen as their favourite by people who paint armies for a living, and I definitely wasn’t expecting it.

Reflections

Overall I loved the event, and I’m so happy to come away with a positive record, a hobby trophy, and a bunch of new friendships. Blackout is a permanent fixture in my calendar, and I’m looking forward to returning to Firestorm in January with the rest of the Rollmodels team for Brotherhood.

I’m in two minds about what to do with the Ironjawz now. I was going to let them sit in the cabinet for a while and get some reps in with my complete Lumineth and Maggotkin armies, but writing this report has convinced me that maybe I could keep pushing with the army and get even further! Watch this space for future event reports, I guess.

Within the next couple of weeks there should be a report of Laura’s and my experience at the event available on the podcast feed for Three and Two: A Matched Play Age of Sigmar Podcast, if you prefer your media in audio form. There’s also a pre-event episode up now where you can hear our plans, and compare them to the outcome.

If you’d like to attend a future Blackout event, the best way of finding out about them is to keep an eye on Chris Tomlin’s Twitter feed here.

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