AoS 2 - Ossiarch Bonereapers Discussion

[Scurvydog]

With Tzeentch, Serpahon, Nagash and possibly LRL being really prominent with magic, Null Myriad might not be so bad, although they bring nothing against specific builds unfortunately. This hits Nagash builds the hardest though, as he already brings the reroll 1s to save.

Petrifex is still a strong sub faction, most would kill for access to +1 rend, reroll 1s to save army wide, good trait and good artifact, still hard to complain, but still burns when toys are taken away.

I still think they should have gone for something else, nothing makes sense for petrifex, and the Ivory host is of course left to rot still.

[simakover]

especcialy interest in Nagsh list. im building it, but for now dont know how make better Nagash list

[daf]

Folks, I have a dilemma. I am a Death player for love. I have been playing NH, LoN quite successfully (not against Seraphon though as I got tabled in the 1st round) and OBR has been my dream as they are beautiful and powerful. Last week I got a full army but didn’t unpack it right away sensing some commotion that could come. And here it came.

Please, advise me - is OBR with nerfed PE still strong enough to be competitive compared to armies like LoN? I am looking for something that could compete and sometimes win against Tzeentch or Seraphon - just not to be ashamed.

Asking cause I can still return my army with heavy heart and wait for better times for Death...

To show lots of good will, I tried to attempt a competitive list and came up with:

Legion: Mortis Praetorians

Katakros (general)

Boneshaper

40 Mortek Guard

20 Mortek Guard

20 Mortek Guard

1 Mortek Crawler

1 Mortek Crawler

1990 pts

Katakros and Boneshaper go in the middle. 40 MG before them for screening. Crawlers on both sides a bit at the back to shoot like hell and screen K’s back. 20 MGs on wings. K heals and adds +1 save all over 18-36”.

What are your thoughts?

[Dracan]

It's a real pity what they have done here...

There where better ways to fix the issue, ie. make it +1 save for non infantry models only or something...

Baring the cavalry and stalkers that where borderline useful, the catapult and the harvester that were pretty good if list dependent, the rest of the range was pretty lackluster even WITH Petrifix elite.

Arkhan with 3+ save was ok and you didn't hamstring yourself too much taking him, on a 4+ save no thanks, just no, not worth 360pts.

Morghasts and Mortis guard  weren't worth it, still arent with point reduction again even if in old PE.

Stalker's or  cavalry where situational but an alternative style to infantry and both could see play with a 3+ save and be pretty competitive. 

 

Mark my words... people are not going to like the result of this... the OBR players nor opponents... List are going to come down to something like this...

Allegiance: Ossiarch Bonereapers
- Legion: Petrifex Elite
Mortal Realm: Chamon

Leaders
Mortisan Soulmason (140)
- General
- Command Trait: Mighty Archaeossian
- Artefact: Gothizzar Cartouche
- Lore of Mortisans: Arcane Command
Mortisan Boneshaper (130)
- Artefact: Godbone Armour
- Lore of Mortisans: Empower Nadirite Weapons
Mortisan Boneshaper (130)
- Lore of Mortisans: Drain Vitality

Battleline
40 x Mortek Guard (440)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
40 x Mortek Guard (440)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
10 x Mortek Guard (130)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield

Behemoths
Gothizzar Harvester (200)
Gothizzar Harvester (200)

Battalions
Mortek Shield-corps (120)

Endless Spells / Terrain / CPs
Nightmare Predator (40)
Bone-tithe Shrieker (30)

 

Where Stalliarch lords and Petrifix are interchangeable depending if you want rend or run and charge, and Harvesters and catapults depending on meta.

All the list does is move once or twice stand on objectives and goes: come at me bro! then rolls dice and doesnt die for 2 hours...

 

Edited July 21, 2020 by Dracan

[rosa]

27 minutes ago, daf said:

Folks, I have a dilemma. I am a Death player for love. I have been playing NH, LoN quite successfully (not against Seraphon though as I got tabled in the 1st round) and OBR has been my dream as they are beautiful and powerful. Last week I got a full army but didn’t unpack it right away sensing some commotion that could come. And here it came.

Please, advise me - is OBR with nerfed PE still strong enough to be competitive compared to armies like LoN? I am looking for something that could compete and sometimes win against Tzeentch or Seraphon - just not to be ashamed.

Asking cause I can still return my army with heavy heart and wait for better times for Death...

To show lots of good will, I tried to attempt a competitive list and came up with:

Legion: Mortis Praetorians

Katakros (general)

Boneshaper

40 Mortek Guard

20 Mortek Guard

20 Mortek Guard

1 Mortek Crawler

1 Mortek Crawler

1990 pts

Katakros and Boneshaper go in the middle. 40 MG before them for screening. Crawlers on both sides a bit at the back to shoot like hell and screen K’s back. 20 MGs on wings. K heals and adds +1 save all over 18-36”.

What are your thoughts?

I never understood this attitude...

If this is your dream army, go for it!

Even if there is a possibility, that they might be a little weaker. This is absurd... Points, FAQs, everything changes and if you like the models and the lore just play the army!?

Furthermore: they are still strong enough

Edited July 21, 2020 by rosa

[daf]

Thanks @rosa! 

Do you have any thoughts on the list? I have never played OBR so I cannot assess it myself but in my dreams, it works like a blender  

[Sigmark]

Now that the other hosts are getting a look in has anyone given thought to/used a deathglave battalion in a a stalliarch lords list. 

6" move at the start, RDP some extra move, run and charge and charging 3d6 sounds like it may have some legs (and wings)

[PrimeElectrid]

You need to be able to get it down to 1 or 2 drops, else the opponent takes T1 and hits your exposed 4+ AS units with everything they’ve got. Remember you have to vanguard before knowing who goes first.

Im thinking specifically shooting lists,  but also melee armies as you are 6” closer to them making a charge feasible to many even on 24” deployments.

[El Syf]

Honest question; would there have been so much uproar if Ossiarch bonereapers were all +1 save army wide when they came out?

Mortek guard 3+ as standard, liege kavalos 2+ as standard. Petrifaction would then have some other ability. 

OBR are meant to be Nagashs greatest work and well they certainly don’t seem it anymore. I honestly believe they should have replaced bludgeon rather than unstoppable juggernauts, it fits with their lore!

[Arcian]

1 hour ago, El Syf said:

Honest question; would there have been so much uproar if Ossiarch bonereapers were all +1 save army wide when they came out?

Mortek guard 3+ as standard, liege kavalos 2+ as standard. Petrifaction would then have some other ability. 

OBR are meant to be Nagashs greatest work and well they certainly don’t seem it anymore. I honestly believe they should have replaced bludgeon rather than unstoppable juggernauts, it fits with their lore!

I dunno,  maybe? You raise a fair point. The winds are out of my sails a little with this news. My local meta is pretty heavy on the shooting and I only really felt confident I could weather it  with PE

[Goldy751]

I have a question:

How does the Null Myriad ability work exactly.

it doesnt specify that the null myriad unit has to be the ''target'' of the spell but it just has to be affected by.

For example: if my OBR unit is in combat with an enemy unit wich is affected by a spell that gives it a -1 to hit aura effect for example. Now my OBR unit would be affected by that spells effect becouse now I have -1 to hit. Would I in this case be able to roll a dice and ignore the effect on a 5+?

Now say my opponent casts a prismatic pallisade endless spell and put it on the table. If I want to shoot but it blocks my line of sight, I can roll a dice and one a 5+ ignore the effect.

 

sorry if this is kind of a noob question but since we now have less temptation to just go with petrifex elite I thought it was worth asking.

[Obeisance]

How do people feel about Crawlers?

I've played literally one game with them, then lockdown happened.

Looking at them, they're the only way we have to kill wizards across the table, harass heroes, etc. We can't spell assassinate and this is literally one of two guns we have.

The problem I feel, is that they need babysitting. You don't have the units to go foward, take and hold, or leave stuff behind to free them up. The only game I played was with one and it just got engaged. I couldn't pull 20 Morteks from the battleline to shake it free.

What's your experience?

edit:

From a list construction standpoint, I feel like you can have guns or magic, but not both.

Edited July 22, 2020 by Obeisance

[Sception]

In most games against opponents who know what they can do, they're not going to kill all that much for their points, but the things they can *threaten* can still swing a game in your favor.  The opponent can't string out because you could pick off a lone model and kill half a unit by coherency rules.  They have to keep their fragile 5 wound wizards and buff heroes hidden out of line of sight, limiting their ability to impose critical buffs & debuffs where they need them.   And there are certain kinds of opponents that the  crawlers are absolutely amazing against.  OBR are a small, elite force that can be absolutely swamped by speed bumps and tar pits, and since those kinds of units often have poor saves, bravery, or both, crawlers are about the best option in the army for clearing that problem up.  They're also about the only way we have to encourage an enemy to come to us instead of just hanging back and shooting, or chasing objectives while avoiding our slow  heavy hitters.

So while they often don't do all that much damage, everything else they do, and the damage they can threaten, can be pretty critical.

[Obeisance]

But 400pts for maybe critical?

I say 400, because from what I've seen they're taken in pairs.

400pts is.. two units of Cav or 6 Stalkers. With change for endless spells.

[Saxon]

On 7/21/2020 at 1:22 PM, Neinball said:

Not really. OBR already had a pretty wide selection of viable lists, they were all just petrifex.

I'd wager you're likely to see even less variation in lists now because mortek guard are going to be even more valuable now for the less survivable subfactions. 

I have rarely seen anything but huge blocks of mortek guard used. Honestly i've only really seen the same core build used. 

This is a problem GW have though. Too many newer releases have seen people zero in on almost singular builds

[ACBelMutie]

32 minutes ago, Saxon said:

I have rarely seen anything but huge blocks of mortek guard used. Honestly i've only really seen the same core build used. 

This is a problem GW have though. Too many newer releases have seen people zero in on almost singular builds

Yes, a lot of Mortek Guards because they had resilience and damage output thanks to Petrifex, but there were lists with Katakros, Nagash or Liege-Kavalos. There were a nice Deathriders list too. The new lists will be probably less different between them. 

Greetings 

[Neinball]

Exactly as ACBelMutie said. There were lots of variation, sure a lot used guard, not just because they're good but also because they battleline. If you look at the results from big tournaments, there have been Nagash/guard, Nagash/Deathriders, Katakros/guard, Katakros/crawler, guard/harvester, and many variations of non-named heroes of the same. Now the power is shifting from the subfaction back to the individual units and well, motrek guard are the top so expect to see them even more than you had before. 

If you weren't seeing Deathrider Kavalos Lances in Petrifex in your meta, then don't expect to start seeing them in Staliarch lists now as they were far better before. If people wanted to play that, they could have. Now less so, since they don't have the innate power of PE to proper up the weakness of the build as Deathriders are squishier than Guard and a lot harder to heal.

[Sception]

I mean, nearly every list ran at least some morteks, as they're our only infantry battleline, and while kavalos are a good support unit, kav armies in general are a rarity in AoS because they mostly don't work on their own, and OBR aren't one of the rare exceptions to that.  You might see a bit less morteks if there were options to make any of our other units battleline, via legions or particular commanders or what have you.  But that's just not an option we have right now.

You still saw a fair bit of variety between LOTS of morteks, or fewer morteks to fit in some side stuff, or much fewer morteks to fit more side stuff.  Katakros lists were a thing.  6 stalker lists were a thing.  dual crawler lists were a thing.  Quad crawler lists were a thing.  Some folks swore by a single harvester.  lieges, Boneshapers, and Soulmasons all saw play.  Some people ran shield corp.  Some people ran lance plus a single unit of mortek.  All as petrifex - basically no legion variety.  But list variety was a thing.

Post petrifex, I'm not as sure.  Yeah, the stalker/immortis/morghast units got points discounts, but those units were, if anything, more dependent on petrifex's save bonus than Morteks were, due to being less resilient point for point to begin with.  On the other hand, Stalliarch do have one of the better legion bonuses after Petrifex, and Stalkers are probably the best unit to take advantage of it.  If that's good enough, along with a points drop, to make them work without petrifex, then you'll still see them.  If not you probably won't.

There's a real risk that the only lists you see going forward are Katakros Praetoreans, and if that's the case then 500 points of Katakros will significantly reduce the variety of lists that can exist in the faction.  Too soon to say, though.

[Cargo Cult]

In other news, I’ll never get back all the time I’ve spent today trying to remove the mold lines from all the fecking holes in Arkhan’s cloak.

[Cargo Cult]

And don’t even start me on the reins. They are now in the bin.

[SilverJelly]

I think the shift will lean towards Deathriders and Crawlers. It makes sense to go Mortek for for the obvious reasons. But now that we are more susceptible to shooting, I think it makes more sense to be more aggressive and hit shooting threats early on, be that with Crawlers or using RD to get the extra movement to reach charge range. While Mortek is survivable due to numbers, it will take all game to go across the board, survive, and capture an objective. Maybe even an Arkhan, Liege Kavalos, Deathrider, Crawler list, Arkhan can teleport around the board. 

Petrifix 

Arkhan                             360

Liege Kavalos               200

15 Death Riders         480

10 Death Rider           360

10 Mortek                     130

2 Crawlers                    400

Total                              1930

 

Edited July 24, 2020 by SilverJelly
Added list

[Greasygeek]

32 minutes ago, Cargo Cult said:

And don’t even start me on the reins. They are now in the bin.

Oh s.... I just ordered Arkhan a few hours back...

[Shawry]

Thoughts on this Stalliarch lord's list?

I'm not sure on the boneshaper as it'll be hard for them to keep up with the army. I was tempted to drop it and change the unit of 6 stalkers to 2x3 to add the battalion. But that still would leave me with 110 points spare after removing the nightmare predator spell.

 

I can even drop the 5 unit of deathriders and add a 20unit of mortek guard with the boneshaper but that would put me at 2k exactly but zero endless spells

In terms of holding objectives they'll most likely struggle.

Edited July 24, 2020 by Shawry

[Obeisance]

Remember me asking questions about Catapults and such? I finally had a game with them.

I played Places of Arcane Power vs Seraphon.

My list was..

Opponent was somewhat new to AOS, one of my friends. Kroak on a Balewind, 2 Priests, Astrolith Bearer, Chief on Terradon, 2 units of Salamanders, 3 units of Skinks, 5 Terradons. He was the "I can teleport a unit" subfaction.

I haven't played this style of list before. I know I'm not breaking new ground here/telling people anything new.

Usually I run high magic with Arkhan and multiple other casters. Also Stalkers. Never ran the Deathriders before either. I figured that I needed a fast unit to objective grab/respond quickly as my army is somewhat static, so tried out Deathriders. They were okay. I kind of have like 180-190pts floating depending on what second hero I take. I'm almost tempted to run a Soulreaper as it'd give me 200pts. 200 is that sweet spot where you can take stuff like Harvesters. But anyway, the theory is sound.

Game was my first foray outside of Petrifex and it.. kind of worked out?

Not running Petrifex means I have RDP for Endless Duty. I even used reroll attacks vs. charging units, but it's not really neccessary. I'm already hitting on 2+ table wide. Not to mention the permanant +1 to hit. Usually I'd have to slam down Shrieker to get that. Coupled with the fact I get two -1 to hit debuffs on the table..  yeah.

There was one turn where my ****** puckered up- Skink on Terradon charged Katacross with his insta-death dagger, but I saved both wounds. Phewwww.

As for the Crawlers?

We played 3 turns and I tabled my opponent. Crawlers did 4 damage to Croak, removed two Skink screens so I could get charges, finished off a unit of Salamanders. I even shot a Skink Priest on the other side of the table, capping an objective on a 2 count. Normally I'd have to pretend that didn't exist. They were a constant threat all game.

So.. I might be a convert to Katacross and Crawlers.

Squaring off, my opponent is going to have turn 1. Other objective is out of frame to the right. I zone out real teleports (aside from the tip of my rear board) with Catapults.

Kroak summons a Balewind. Tosses some mortal wounds at Morteks, things shoot Morteks. He teleports too far forward. Terradons, Priest, Chief come down.  Gets 3 points. Opponent makes two mistakes.

Captapults remove the skinks and deal 4 to Kroak, Morteks charge the Terradons who explode. Morteks get a speed buff, roll a fat charge and I get six into Kroak. Kroak explodes. Skink screen middle goes down. Opponent is surprised. Cavalry charges Skink screen. I don't make it to the middle by a couple inches (I forgot to give Katacross speed) and right has two heroes. I land -1 debuffs on both units of Salamanders.

Catapults remove Priest sitting on top left objective. Morteks, Catapults and Katacross remove the last of the Salamanders. The Deathriders basically just tied a unit of Salamanders up all game and were the only unit to get completely wiped. This was taken after a Chief charged Katacross, hoping to get lucky, and died.

When we were done, we talked about the couple errors my opponent made that lost him the game. Namely the two teleports.

[Cargo Cult]

14 hours ago, Greasygeek said:

Oh s.... I just ordered Arkhan a few hours back...

I’m sure it’ll work out. Apart from anything I want to magnetise Arkhan for ease of transport and so the fiddly reins are out. As per the below I replaced then with a sword borrowed from Mannfred in the same set.