2400 Tourney Ogres - need opinions on set-ups

Hey there Stronghold! Long time no see! 

For those of you who are interested, I know I'm not usually an Ogre player, but I needed a bit of a change from my slightly one-dimensional magic heavy HE so my dad very generously allowed me to take out his tribe (the Sewing Circle, for those of you who can remember it) for a bit of a spin.

Long story short, this is my first time playin the Ogres, and I just wondered if anyone could give me some opinions my list, on which of these tyrant set-ups is better and which of these wizard/unit set-ups is better as well.

As it stands at the moment, my list is as follows:

Tyrant - Sword of Bloodshed, Armour of Fortune, Ironcurse Icon, ironfist (315)

Bruiser - BSB, Sword of Might, Talisman of Endurance, heavy armour, ironfist (188)

Firebelly - Level 2, Hellheart, additional hand weapon (207)

8 Ironguts, Full Command (374)

8 Ironguts, Full Command (374)

3 Ogres, additional hand weapons (93)

6 Maneaters, heavy armour, 3 with Brace of Ogre Pistols and 3 with GW, Full Command, Banner of Swiftness, Stubborn, Swiftstride (438)

4 Mournfang Cavalry, Full Command, Dragonhide Banner, heavy armour, ironfists (360)

Sabretusk (21)

Sabretusk (21)

TOTAL = 2391

In advance - yes, I know that my army is low-magic - it makes a change from my elves! General tactic is just to run forward and smash anything that gets in my way. 

Now, my questions:

1) I know my Tyrant may be a good rank-and-file killer, but I'm slightly worried about what would happen if he comes up against a heavily-armoured Chaos Lord, Deamon Prince or suchlike. To counter this I've devised a couple of extra builds just in case. Which of my three tyrant builds is better, or is there another better build you could suggest?

Extra build 1: Tyrant - Giant Blade, Armour of Fortune, Ironcurse Icon, ironfist (315)
(This is much more of a monster-killing, high-strength lord, but I'm slightly concerned about the raw number of attacks I'm losing. Opinions?)

Extra build 2: Tyrant - Sword of Strife, Armour of Fortune, Potion of Strength, ironfist (310)
(This seems to be a bit more balanced to me - however, the strength bonus is one-use-only and if I fluff all of my high-strength attacks against that Chaos Lord it may as well be goodbye as far as he's concerned...!)

2) I'm slightly wary about my Firebelly's presence. Sure, he may have good offensive magic, flaming attacks and a breath weapon for those regenerating gribblies, but I don't really have much potential for buffs, and if my Firebelly's killed then it gets rid of all my flaming.

Another build I came up with to replace him is:

Butcher, Level 2, Hellheart, ironfist (188)

+1 Irongut and Banner of Eternal Flame in one Irongut unit (+53)

Yes, I know the points don't work out if you put it in my above list, I had to fiddle about with the second build to fit this in. Anyway, which build do you think would be better for the army?

Thanks very much for your help!
-Jambodini

Do you have any Ironblasters?  I would recommend one, if not two.

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I do have two Ironblasters, but I wasn't considering including them out of fear that I would be punched in the stomach and have my army case stolen...!

In all seriousness, I can see that Ironblasters would fulfil an important monster-killing and, to an extent, character-sniping role in my list that I currently lack. However, in the end, I decided not to include them for two reasons:

1. Prior experience. Having watched my dad use Ogres many times, and having watched his Ironblasters constantly miss their targets, fail to work and/or blow up in a spectacular fashion, I thought (and it was heavily recommended!) that they just weren't worth it. I've actually seen dad run bigger blocks and more units and do better than he has done with Ironblasters.

2. Points. To include some Ironblasters would require me to sacrifice some units which, I have found, synergise extremely well with the army. Including 1 Ironblaster would probably mean I would have to scrap the 'Tusks and the small Bull unit - there goes my redirectors and hard-hitting chaff unit. Including a second would require me to skim down either my Ironguts or my Maneaters, meaning that their combat potential is severely lessened.

In the trial game I had with them, all of the above units functioned really well for me, so I simply couldn't justify losing them in order to put an Ironblaster in.

Thanks once again for your opinions though. Don't get me wrong, I am still open to the idea of an Ironblaster, so if you can jusify what I should chop off the list in order to put one in I'd be interested to hear your thoughts!

-Jambodini

I'm not sure about that rule, but getting full command on your IG, makes your characters go to 2nd rank. That makes you losing 2 atacks on Tyrand and/or 1 on Bruiser.  I'd drop champs on both IG units, as well as Mourns (too big chance to loose baner, even one last mourn with banner is bether than champ w/o). That would give you 40 points to spend, or more.

Still not sure about that rule, but having full command, moves them all to first rank, no matter of characters in unit, as i heard.

Full command moves them back, but you can always make way to get them up front for CC.  Just lose the extra strength on impact.  I would drop champ on fangs though.

As for the Ironblaster, I would be shocked if it didn't earn it's points in a tournament.  I have an upcoming 2400 tourney and my list is similar, but I am not a fan of maneaters and have 2 blasters.

Especially in a tournament, you will see many, many things you will wish you had a canon to shoot at.  IMO they are they best things in our book and I don't leave home without them

Indeed, 1 ironblaster works for me very well.

I always tend to kill at least 1 big thing or 2 with it. And always had good succes with charging it in somewhere aswell.

But, luckely we got too many nice goodies to fill our armylists with :-)

Thanks again for your opinions guys! I have another trial game today, so maybe I will tweak the list a little and try and make room for an Ironblaster.

If it's okay, I just wanted to ask again: which of the Tyrant builds I put up is better, and should I have a Butcher (+ flaming banner on an Irongut unit) or Firebelly?

I would drop the 3 ogres, an irongut, and a mournefang champ or something to fit in an ironblaster. Take flaming banner on the maneaters, then they can shoot anything with regen before the cannon shot.

flaming ironguts will be neutered by a 2+ ward vs flaming character, don't do it.

Okay, so I had two trial games yesterday - one with Ironblaster (I sacrificed the Bulls, a Sabretusk, the Mournfang Champ and some other gubbins) and one without.

The Ironblaster list fought against Beastmen and... it didn't go so well. The Ironblaster achieved nothing in Turn 1 and promptly blew up in Turn 2. Suffice to say that I did not get on well with it at all. The rest of the army actually did quite well and I managed to force a very bloody draw out of the game by throwing everything I had at my opponent's huge block of Minotaurs + Doombull and gradually wiping it out.

The non-Ironblaster list, on the other hand, went spectacularly well! I fought against Skaven. Although in the first turn my Bulls got annihilated by a Warp-Lighting spell and Jezzails (at least they distracted the nasty shooters) and my Maneaters and both Ironguts lost a model apiece due to Plague and Warp-Lightning Cannons, several good things happened that quickly swung the game in my favour:
1) my Mournfang actually managed to wound his Hellpit Abomination four times, break it and run it down, kill a unit of Gutter Runners + assassin and then position themselves very sneakily
2) my lone sabretusk killed his Warp Lightning Cannon
3) My Maneaters killed his Vermin Lord, thereby getting rid of his level 4 and making his magic phase much easier to deal with
4) A Maneater + General's Ironguts combo charge on his Stormvermin wiped out 3/4 of them in one go and basically secured the win for me.

So what I took away from those trial games was:
1) Against Skaven, Sword of Bloodshed is awesome - I am still worried about more heavily armoured things though
2) No ironblasters please - dad was right, they're too unreliable for my tastes
3) Virtually-all-infantry army is the direction I want to take with my army.

With that in mind, if anyone has any comments about my Tyrant and Butcher/Firebelly builds just so I can tweak the list a little further, it would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Jambodini

Tyrant build one as they often bring more than a single monster unit (monster in the gribbly sense). Butcher and banner over firebelly definitely! Firebelly is great at lower points but he is for regen hunting. His breath weapon is handy but a maw butcher will really help your combat which you have an entire army comprising of! Still one guys opinion but good luck!

Sorry to read about that...

I've to say, when I started with Skaven a while back. Everybody on the Skaven forum were talking about how good the WarpLightning Cannons were. How great they were. What they destroyed. How many points they took, etc...
I had a lot of games, fielding 2 of them every battle. Doing totally nothing... Ohno, that is incorrect. Sometimes, they hit something, but only doing 1 wound out of D6... Really. Also a lot of mischart table rolling for me aswell. And with Skaven that goes painly bad. Most of the times I rotated and shot my own troops with S10...   Ahwell it was fun, but it gave me a sad feeling aswell. Lost me at least 10-12 games, with throwing dice below average on the cannons.

And then after 20-ish games or so, they finally started to work for me. I went down from 2 per game to just 1. And then it happened. 1st round hit with S10 & 6out of D6 Wounds. Monster died. Sad face accross the board. 2nd turn, another hit, S8 or so, another big thing died. 3rd turn.... bammm center of explosion template in the middle of a big unit. Killing 17 of the 21 hit...

Since that moment, I got them running with succes (read average. but that is good enough), just like the stories I read on the Skaven forum.

And with Ogres, those cannons do less pain to my own troops and still doing average. Kill 1 model per game, for sure.

So, don't give up on those cannons. Keep them in your list. If only 1, then only 1 it is.