AoS 2 - Ossiarch Bonereapers Discussion

[Evil Bob]

In the past everyone I’ve played against generally used their Stalkers as a fire-and-forget assault unit. Taking them as a super Vet Scorer sounds great but the low unit count OBR is probably going to need to pair them with Mortek Guard cover or a Deathriders escort if these guys are pushing outwards. The amount of cat-&-mouse VP-tactics/force-comp that is spilling out is nuts.

Just consider this.. a three model Vet Stalker unit hits the far side of the enemy in a triangle formation with only one model barely  in contact. Meanwhile the regular battle unit makes as much contact as (un)humanly possible to tarp-pit pile-ins.

On 6/18/2022 at 8:12 AM, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

*Snip*

Maybe a shift to fast stuff like Deathriders and Morghasts will be good, but that will make it hard to score on the points that require Galletian Veteran. Definitely a challenge.

*snip*

Nothing would make me happier. Those are my two favorite units.

If I could somehow get away with Deathriders (I own 31x of them), Morghasts, and Necropolis Stalkers in a Stalliarch Lords list I’d die happy. DIE HAPPY!  The model count on the table would certainly make it look elite. Although not really as elite based on warscrolls.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

I built my Stalker kit as Immortis Guard and am wondering if they migh have merit now that they can be battleline. A natural 3+ save and 12 wounds per unit is pretgy tanky, and they can benefit from Reinforce Battleshields. In the capture battalion, a unit of 3 capturing as 9 seems pretty decent and could be a pretty hard wall to break through.

[Sception]

That feels like a pretty significant change.  Doesn't change the fact that we're still stuck in 2.5 while everyone else is playing 3rd edition proper, but at least that makes for some new build options to try out.

I'm still probably sticking to nighthaunts this season.  Just can't see playing the game without a cruciator with with +1 damage bounty hunters running around.  But if this change and over the shoulder melee attacks outlast the gelato season I could definitely see mixing a six man squad of stalkers into my ossiarch lists, where previously I've been having trouble fitting them at all.

Edited June 22, 2022 by Sception

[Evil Bob]

17 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I built my Stalker kit as Immortis Guard and am wondering if they migh have merit now that they can be battleline.

The damage output is still going to hurt compared to Necroplolis Stalkers but these guys were a serious consideration when building the Feast of Bones box set (after fighting to get the instructions which were not getting posted on the internet). From my limited attempts they were terrible in AoS 2.  I think their value in AoS 3 as bodyguards has actually gone up with the damage creep some armies are getting.  Fun fact they are now fifteen points cheaper than Deathriders. One better save at the lose of three wounds.  That’s not bad considering they have the mighty Rend -2 in an edition that values it even more than before.

They’ll never be more efficient than the Mortek Guard for wounds/tank per point but they do have use for the tactically minded. I only have six but that seems to be more than enough considering every unit in OBR feels like a Sophie’s Choice. Can’t blame those who went MG and artillery.

With how things are having three of these guys next to Arkham is comforting to say the least. Although the lack of model regen still sucks.

[Sception]

Immortis Guard suffer from doing a bit too much - tanky, fighty, bodyguard.  Doing all of that at once pushes their points up, and points inefficiency is the number one thing a bodyguard unit doesn't want.  That's why the new nighthaunt spirit hosts are so good - they do absolutely nothing other than add wounds to nearby heroes, and as a result those wounds come nice and cheap.  By comparison Immortis aren't much cheaper per point than the characters you're shifting wounds off of, unless you're running Arkhan.

Stalkers are more focused, and thus more efficient, and points efficiency matters a lot in an army that doesn't have much slack to work with after the essential core & support options are down.

Still, Immortis, while not great, are a lot better with battleline and 2 rank fighting, or at least you can field 3 to 6 of them without having to sacrifice more important support options.  Plus they look cool as heck and they're very thematic as the tanky elite unit in the tanky elite army.  Aesthetically, I really prefer having them there.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

Thanks for your input @Evil Bob and @Sception. I am certainly still in the process of fully wrapping my head around OBR and your perspectives are really helpful.

I certainly can't deny that I mainly chose Immortis over Stalkers for aesthetic reasons. But also partially because I really think Stalkers are a pretty flawed unit. I know their damage also output is good, but their low move characteristic and inability to play the capture game well (low body count and not that tanky) kind of makes me struggle to come up with a situation where I would want them. Particularly with how tight points are in OBR.

For Immortis, taking the new GHB stuff into account, maybe the play is to run them alongside Mortek and not make them battleline. That way, they can at least protect Mortek from Bounty Hunters and maybe even bodyguard for a nearby hero unit. Personally, I think Immortis are most interesting for their natural bulk, not necessarily their bodyguard ability.

[Sception]

The problem with non-battleline stalkers & immortis is how many points in obr armies are already spoken for by the time you're done with the battleline you're required to take and the hq's you need for rdp   the battleline in particular is even more onerous than it appears because you're effectively obligated to over-invest beyond the absolute requirements since none oc the available units are cheap enough to just fill slots, they also have to do work.

So you take, on the low end, what? 2x20 morteks, 5 riders  a soulmason and/or kainan, and probably either katakros or arkhan plus a liege, depending on Praetorians vs. Petrifex?  Is that still close to the standard set up?

I need to keep reminding myself to not give the impression that I have my pulse on everything because I really don't, orthodox obr core set up may have drifted significantly, though I'm not really sure how you get away with less than that, and if you are taking all that then it's alraady forcing some hard decisions on whatever else you take.

So, like, at that point stalkers or immortis are competing for space with crawlers (much weaker in 3e, but still obr's best option for projecting oower & threatening support heroes), harvesters (vulnerable to shooting, but strong recursion for nearby morteks, a decent enough beatstick, and a rare source of monstrous ramoages), & harbingers (a hammer unit with a long enough charge range to not be overly bothered by Redeploy.

Much easier to fit them in if they can replace some of the morteks or the deathriders - stalkers not being as fast as deathriders but at keast faster than morteks & with a helpful charge phase CA, so trading riders for them doesn't completely kill your limited mobility options, particularly if you were going to take some harbingers.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 hour ago, Sception said:

So you take, on the low end, what? 2x20 morteks, 5 riders  a soulmason and/or kainan, and probably either katakros or arkhan plus a liege, depending on Praetorians vs. Petrifex?  Is that still close to the standard set up?

My tninking was that you could possibly reduce the size of the Mortek squads to 10 and add 3 Immortis to screen them. Slap the mortek in the conquerors battalion and the setup still captures well. But the problem is that, outside of Gallet, 10 Mortek + 3 Immortis is probably worse than just 20 Mortek, while other armies can just run their previous staple units and have them improve under the new rules. So overall I think it feels like losing ground. I am more and more convinced that going more in the direction of Bounty Hunter heavy, GV light set ups will be the meta build for OBR.

[Grimoriano]

Hi guys, I have a question: can Nagash return an immortis or stalker with his ability?, for example, I lose an stalker, try to ress with one of his ability (3 wound or less) because stalkers have 4, ofc I ress 0, and... with the supreme lord of the undead I get 0+1?

[Beliman]

3 hours ago, Grimoriano said:

Hi guys, I have a question: can Nagash return an immortis or stalker with his ability?, for example, I lose an stalker, try to ress with one of his ability (3 wound or less) because stalkers have 4, ofc I ress 0, and... with the supreme lord of the undead I get 0+1?

Wow, that's evil. It should be illegal to just think about it XD

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

4 hours ago, Grimoriano said:

Hi guys, I have a question: can Nagash return an immortis or stalker with his ability?, for example, I lose an stalker, try to ress with one of his ability (3 wound or less) because stalkers have 4, ofc I ress 0, and... with the supreme lord of the undead I get 0+1?

Weirdly seems like it should work, but I personally would clear it with my opponent in friendly games because it seems like an exploit.

[Sutek]

4 hours ago, Grimoriano said:

Hi guys, I have a question: can Nagash return an immortis or stalker with his ability?, for example, I lose an stalker, try to ress with one of his ability (3 wound or less) because stalkers have 4, ofc I ress 0, and... with the supreme lord of the undead I get 0+1?

No.  That would be like going into a store with a buy one get one free offer and walking out with free one without buying anything.

The ability has to be able to work in the first place before you can apply the bonus.

[Sception]

On 7/8/2022 at 12:10 PM, Sutek said:

No.  That would be like going into a store with a buy one get one free offer and walking out with free one without buying anything.

The ability has to be able to work in the first place before you can apply the bonus.

Is their an official faq on this?  As is the rule is extremely ambiguous and could easily be read the other way.  Zero plus one is one, after all.

Also, how does it interact with harvester?  Do you re-roll the trigger roll?  That seems most natural, but that roll doesn't determine how much you bring back, just whether the ability happens, so a strict reading would have the roll come and go before nagash has a chance to interact with it.  Do you bring back two morteks for every 4+?  That doesn't seem right either.

New nagash is a mess, & honestly needs a rewrite.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

9 hours ago, Sception said:

Is their an official faq on this?  As is the rule is extremely ambiguous and could easily be read the other way.  Zero plus one is one, after all.

Also, how does it interact with harvester?  Do you re-roll the trigger roll?  That seems most natural, but that roll doesn't determine how much you bring back, just whether the ability happens, so a strict reading would have the roll come and go before nagash has a chance to interact with it.  Do you bring back two morteks for every 4+?  That doesn't seem right either.

New nagash is a mess, & honestly needs a rewrite.

I remember this question coming up in the contextbof Deathrattle Skeletons as well when new Nagash was released. I think the problems stem from the fact that resurrection is not a unified mechanic in AoS, but the rules guys  wanted it to work for all the different implementations if it across all the Death factions, so it's really vague as a result.

There definitely seems to be a difference between, for example, the Harvester, where you get a die roll to trigger resurrection and then a die roll to determine how many models get resurrected, and something like Invigorating Aura, where you just get to resurrect/heal D3 wounds. It feels like the trigger roll in the Harvester case should not be rerollable and if you fail it you shoukd not get the option to decide to just resurrect 1 model anyway. But in the case where you do successfully trigger a resurrection ability, and it just fails to work (like trying to resurrect a 4 wound model with a d3 roll), you should get the extra resurrected model.

And then there are cases like Deathrattle Skeletons, where it's just one roll that determines whether anything is resurrected, but you build a dice pool of several rolls for any single activation of the ability, which are just completely up to interpretation with regard to how they should work.

[Boggler]

Alright, I've got a 1 day 3 game event coming up. OBR is my lockdown army and I've never played with them before.

Here is the list I have come up with based off the excellent lists submitted by Michael Rausch over at The Honest Wargamer.

Things might not go my way if I wind up against Teclis/Nagash but hopefully I'll still have the bodies with the Harvester to hold on.

Spoiler

Allegiance: Ossiarch Bonereapers
- Legion: Petrifex Elite
- Mortal Realm: Ghur
- Grand Strategy: Show of Dominance
- Triumphs: Bloodthirsty

Leaders
Liege-Kavalos (170)*
- General
- Command Trait: Mighty Archaeossian
- Artefact: Godbone Armour
Arkhan the Black, Mortarch of Sacrament (340)*
Mortisan Soulmason (115)*
- Artefact: Soul Reservoir
- Lore of Mortisans: Drain Vitality
Mortisan Boneshaper (115)
- Lore of Mortisans: Empower Nadirite Weapons

Battleline
30 x Mortek Guard (420)***
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
- Reinforced x 2
20 x Mortek Guard (280)***
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
- Reinforced x 1
5 x Kavalos Deathriders (190)**
- Nadirite Blade and Shield

Behemoths
Gothizzar Harvester (215)**
- Weapon: Soulcrusher Bludgeons

Endless Spells & Invocations
Chronomantic Cogs (40)
Bone-tithe Shrieker (50)
Nightmare Predator (60)

Core Battalions
*Command Entourage - Magnificent
**Bounty Hunters
***Expert Conquerors

Additional Enhancements
Artefact

Total: 1995 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 3 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 104
Drops: 8
 

https://thehonestwargamer.com/author/swaggyshadow2121/

[CDM]

Is ther going to be a second wave? I really like the concept but would love to see some more units.

[Overread]

It really is impossible to say when. 

On the one hand Death as a Grand Alliance is in a fairly good spot. Both Soulblight and Nighthaunt are really diverse in model options. Meanwhile whilst Flesheaters are lagging behind they share quite a few models with Soulblight so any update of things like zombie dragons and such hits both forces. 

So in theory when GA Death is looking for release slots, Ossiarch should be fairly okish to get a new selection of models through that. Of course the blowback is that Soulblight and Nighthaunt likely outsell Ossiarchs. 

 

We have seen an archer in Underworlds and that can suggest we'll see them in the main army too. It's no guarantee of course and we've seen things in Underworlds that never went any further (eg Kurnothi). 

Personally I feel like Ossiarch would do well with a chunky second wave of models coupled to a new rules set that perhaps weakens them a little, but also allows their points values to lower a bit so that when adding more model diversity there's more room to put them on the table. One downside if a very powerful elite style army is that adding new stuff is hard because there's just never the spare points. Then again we've seen armies like Necrons go from powerful, elite, limited roster to very large rosters with the ability to take a good number of models per army and a nice level of diversity. 

 

I've every hope for Ossiarchs and I think a nice chunky second wave would have a similar boost the same way it helped out Lumineth. 

[Nullius]

On 9/11/2022 at 12:54 PM, Overread said:

Personally I feel like Ossiarch would do well with a chunky second wave of models coupled to a new rules set that perhaps weakens them a little

have you found the units to be especially strong? Lol I think these are some of the weakest warscrolls in the game. They were all conceived to have multiple RDP command abilities stacked on them, which is no longer possible. The only barely functional unit in the army (mortek guard), essentially act like a weaker version of grave guard, which feels very off. Now that bounty hunters do extra damage against them, they are no longer strong on the defense. 

 

the new GHB has unfortunately been the nail in the coffin for OBR for me in this edition of their battle tome. I have a lovingly painted and massive BoneReapers force but I’ve stopped resisting accepting the obvious, sadly: this is a BAD army at this point in the game. It struggles against practically every faction. (Unless your opponent is unskilled) There is no damage dealing unit in the army. Mortek die easily to even weak shooting and fall in droves to any cheap units in the bounty hunter battalion. Lack of access to basic commands is devastating, and every unit is overcosted by at least 20-30 points, and often much more. We have the largest war machine in the game which shoots less effectively than ten elves with bows or three stormcast eternals. We have no fast units, no shooting, no teleports, and no command abilities.  

The only path to victory I’ve found is simply allowing the enemy to table the army but trying to get a win on points. If you can avoid the tabling until the bottom of turn four, you can sometimes win. It’s not much fun, even in victory. Now I understand how gloomspite players feel.

Edited September 19, 2022 by Nullius
Typo

[Sception]

OBR are in a very difficult place, and need a significant re-write to work properly given the 3e changes to command abilities.  That said, there are players who continue to do well with them in competitive formats, and there have been positive moves.  Battleline-if for the monstrous infantry is something we've wanted to see since day one, and conditioning that on a mortisan general isn't a particularly onerous condition.  The heroic action to force a spell through is very nice as well.

As an AoS original faction, It does feel natural to compare OBR to Lumineth and be bitter at the preferential treatment the latter has received.  Whenever I find myself slipping into this mindset, I make a conscious effort to compare to Fyreslayers or Kharadron instead, and recognize that our initial wave was fantastic and support since honestly hasn't been that bad.  The transition to 3e has been awkward and will remain awkward until we get a new book, which is annoying, but OBR aren't the first faction to have an awkward edition changeover, and won't be the last.  In the mean time, we endure, and I take some comfort in the ludonarrative ressonance of that - it's difficult times for me playing OBR, just as in character it's difficult times for the OBR themselves, and in both cases we shoulder on and endure.  It's what we were built for, after all.

[Altair554488]

On 7/15/2022 at 11:39 PM, Sception said:

Is their an official faq on this?  As is the rule is extremely ambiguous and could easily be read the other way.  Zero plus one is one, after all.

Also, how does it interact with harvester?  Do you re-roll the trigger roll?  That seems most natural, but that roll doesn't determine how much you bring back, just whether the ability happens, so a strict reading would have the roll come and go before nagash has a chance to interact with it.  Do you bring back two morteks for every 4+?  That doesn't seem right either.

New nagash is a mess, & honestly needs a rewrite.

  This appears to have been addressed in the latest FAQ  from 27/10/2022: 

Q: Can Nagash use his ‘Supreme Lord of the Undead’ ability to add 1 to the number of slain models that are returned to a unit even if the ability used did not successfully return any slain models to the unit? A: Yes

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

What do you guys think about the latest point drops? Stalkers/Immortis are starting to look pretty attractive right now, even compared to Mortek.

[Flippy]

2 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

What do you guys think about the latest point drops? Stalkers/Immortis are starting to look pretty attractive right now, even compared to Mortek.

Even Morghasts start to look attractive for 150 points.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

3 hours ago, Flippy said:

Even Morghasts start to look attractive for 150 points.

I think Morghasts were even looking pretty solid before. Harbingers have always been pretty decent, even back in the Legjons of Nagash days.

I like that with the latest points update, all the elite units are starting to look pretty competitively pointed. I like a big blob of Mortek as the backbone of an OBR list, but still it seems like a shame that they and Deathriders were basically the only units that saw serious play for most of the existence of the faction. If Stalkers, Immortis, Morghasts and even the odd Harvester are now choices you don't have to feel bad about bringing, then that seems pretty exciting.

[RocketPropelledGrenade]

On 10/31/2022 at 1:36 PM, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I think Morghasts were even looking pretty solid before. Harbingers have always been pretty decent, even back in the Legjons of Nagash days.

I like that with the latest points update, all the elite units are starting to look pretty competitively pointed. I like a big blob of Mortek as the backbone of an OBR list, but still it seems like a shame that they and Deathriders were basically the only units that saw serious play for most of the existence of the faction. If Stalkers, Immortis, Morghasts and even the odd Harvester are now choices you don't have to feel bad about bringing, then that seems pretty exciting.

Agreed. I am off OBR until the 3rd ed battletome myself (RDP just feel too weird in a 3e envionment for my tastes), but I really hope that when we get it, it doesn't suddenly jump those units back to the insanely high points. I would love to expand my Immortis Guard next time I am buying Ossiarch models and make a super large phalanx of them.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

So, with OBR probably getting a release in spring, what are you guys hoping for?

I think as far as models, there are three things I could see happening:

Foot hero

The minimum everyone gets. Maybe a Liege Immortis.

Mortek Archers

Everyone has been talking about them since the release of the Underworlds warband. A second basic infantry option would definitely be appreciated.

New Arkhan

Arkhans body was canonicaly destroyed during Broken Realms. This would be the perfect opportunity to bring him back in a bespoke bonereaper form.

 

In terms of rules, I hope OBR get the new subfaction style that more recent books have been using. Other than that, obviously RDP need to be reworked (maybe just ditched?). I would not mind if OBR just become an army that is very good at using command abilities, rather than having their own different type of command points.