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Good morning,

I'm working through Battlescribe and I find that, apparently since the Ironjawz got bundled into the Orruk Warclans book, 'Ardboyz all get shields automatically and they've all got the same weapon. The only options are standards and musicians. Is that correct?

I'm not sure how it works out in the wild if you have an 'Ardboy miniature without a shield. At the time I put them together, I was working off of the old Ironjawz battletome. In that book you could take a shield but that gave you less attacks, and so now I have a giant horde of patiently painted 'Ardboyz without shields because moar dakka.

I'm wondering if I should paint the Shield bitz that I have and just kinda glue them on their arms over their other weapons in preparation for when I get the new battletome and start playing them again.

you are correct that all models have the same weapon profile, but only 2 in 5 can have a shield(according to the AoS app and the warscroll on the gw site), so the all have shield thing seems like a mistake in battlescribe.

As for glueing the shields, seeing how not all models get a shield you should glue them on the models

Models should be WYSIWYG. Not everyone can have a shield, so ensure that only 2 out of 5 have shields. If you need to add shields to get to 2 out of 5, then paint them up and glue them on.

I'm confused on why it is structured that way. Let me make sure I have this right:

All 'ardboyz have the same weapon profile. With or without shields, standard bearers or musicians.

But only 2 out of 5 get the shields, if you so so choose.

But since taking the shield doesn't have any negative consequence, there's no reason why you wouldn't. Why have a choice?

Also, I'm thinking about how they would be played. So to keep yourself stuck in a fight, you would allocate wounds to your shield bearers to get that FNP roll. And if that FNP roll is failed, you specifically remove shield bearer models instead of the generic ones in the back. Is that right?

joewarhost wrote:
But since taking the shield doesn't have any negative consequence, there's no reason why you wouldn't. Why have a choice?

Because not everyone will have built them that way. In a 10-strong unit you can have 4 shields, 2 drummers, a Gorkamorka Banner Bearer and a Gorkamorka Glyph Bearer - but not everyone will have built that.

@joewarhost You are correct on all counts.

Don't forget that we also have a choice in most units to add musicians, standard bearers and unit champions. Gamewise, there's no reason not to, but as the poster above says some folks may not have those models.

Yeah its mostly a rule because the 'Ardboys (aka, the old Black Orc Plastic Kit) only came with 4 shields in a box of 10.

This was fine in WHFB when Black Orcs had the 'Armed to the Teeth" rule where they counted as having all weapon options and didn't need to be WYSIWYG.

Adapting that box to AoS just came with this weird restriction.

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:
Yeah its mostly a rule because the 'Ardboys (aka, the old Black Orc Plastic Kit) only came with 4 shields in a box of 10.

This was fine in WHFB when Black Orcs had the 'Armed to the Teeth" rule where they counted as having all weapon options and didn't need to be WYSIWYG.

Adapting that box to AoS just came with this weird restriction.

Ironically, by the actual rules, it wasn't fine in WHFB since shields were purchased gear and not automatically included in "Armed to the Teef" and thus technically you had to buy more by the "majority models armed" rule. Armed actually calls that out since the only way to choose a single HW with Armed, you had to buy a shield first. Just nobody actually enforced it.