AoS 2 - Ossiarch Bonereapers Discussion

[rattila]

Well a foot hero and mortek archers look kind of obvious as you said, but also the most disappointing thing that can be thinked off.

I mean, those are constructs. Just getting « skellies with bows » seems not enough. I kind of hope two things :

- a hero with the height of necropolis stalker / immortis guard. Or maybe just rewrite the warscroll of morghast to make them hero.
- a unit with missile weapons like light ballistea, the size of necropolis stalker or morghast. Obviously the weapon will not be held by the warrior but incorporated to him. It could have 4 legs and lauching bones with pointy end. Go wild GW.

this faction deserve some new cool tools.

[Sinfullyvannila]

Hello everyone. I've been commissioned to build and paint and OBR army starting with the Mortisan Tithe Echelon box. At the moment I plan on "slap chopping" the bone bodies and doing traditional layering on the rest of the miniature. My client wants me to do the poster boy subfaction(with the purple armor). Do you have any advice on how to paint the army as efficiently as possible? Are there any pitfalls I can avoid? And what else does that box need to be a playable army(does it have insufficient battleline and are there "nombos" or traps I can advise them against)?

And yes, I will advise them to buy the minimal number of models until the new book comes out next year. I also plan on teaching them raw 2E vs my 2E sacrosanct Stormcast or Squig GG army(just straight out of both battletomes which IIRC both of my armies would be naturally handicapped) until the new book comes out next year in order to alleviate frustrations with the issues the army has with the current edition.

Edited November 27, 2022 by Sinfullyvannila

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

2 hours ago, Sinfullyvannila said:

Hello everyone. I've been commissioned to build and paint and OBR army starting with the Mortisan Tithe Echelon box. At the moment I plan on "slap chopping" the bone bodies and doing traditional layering on the rest of the miniature. My client wants me to do the poster boy subfaction(with the purple armor). Do you have any advice on how to paint the army as efficiently as possible? Are there any pitfalls I can avoid? And what else does that box need to be a playable army(does it have insufficient battleline and are there "nombos" or traps I can advise them against)?

And yes, I will advise them to buy the minimal number of models until the new book comes out next year. I also plan on teaching them raw 2E vs my 2E sacrosanct Stormcast or Squig GG army(just straight out of both battletomes which IIRC both of my armies would be naturally handicapped) until the new book comes out next year in order to alleviate frustrations with the issues the army has with the current edition.

I have been more or less speed painting a bunch of bonereapers, too. I would say they are a good army for slapchop.

For efficient slapchopping, sequencing is key.

Start with bone, I recommend the approach of starting from a zenithal undercoat, then a layer of Skeleton Horde contrast and finishing off with a drybrush of light skintone/ivory/off white. Shade in recessed details with agrax. Just don't overcomplicate things.

Next, I would do metallics. In personally do two shades of silver and a glossy black wash. If you paint the armour and shields in silver, too, you can put a mix of purple contrast paint and gloss medium over the top and get that squared away..

Finally, cloth. Since you previously drybrushed the bone there should be texture on all cloth bits, as well. You can paint them with just contrast paint, but I recommend taking an extra few minutes to do some manual highlighting afterwards.

Then there are only details like eyes and leather straps left. The overall effect should be something like this:

 

[Sinfullyvannila]

Do you have any recommendations for glossy washes? GW killing off their line hurt my feelings.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 minute ago, Sinfullyvannila said:

Do you have any recommendations for glossy washes? GW killing off their line hurt my feelings.

I personally make a 50/50 mix of acrylic gloss medium and water with a drop of dish soap and store it in an empty dropper bottle. I mix that with any wash or ink I want to put over metallics. It makes it both more glossy and more transparent.

[Sinfullyvannila]

12 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I personally make a 50/50 mix of acrylic gloss medium and water with a drop of dish soap and store it in an empty dropper bottle. I mix that with any wash or ink I want to put over metallics. It makes it both more glossy and more transparent.

Awesome! Thanks for the advice!

[Flippy]

13 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Start with bone, I recommend the approach of starting from a zenithal undercoat, then a layer of Skeleton Horde contrast and finishing off with a drybrush of light skintone/ivory/off white. Shade in recessed details with agrax. Just don't overcomplicate things.

This is the way 👍

My current plan is to do some more value sketching before the colour is applied - and see how this works out. I’m starting from this:

 

[rattila]

So, to go further in the idea of new mini's, we have the pyramid which show the structure of ossiarch society. What do we have in this schema that we dont in the game ?

https://ibb.co/hC4kCSY

- Morghast Archai seems to be higher ranking than morghast harbinger. So why note making them really different, with one a Leader and the other one a unit ?

- Liege-Mortek : the inevitable combattant on-foot hero

- Aviarch Messengers

- Addendans and exiles

Also, we have 4 guys who follows Katakros but who could be on their own:

- Liege-Immortis

- Prime Necrophoros

- Aviarch Spymaster

- Gnosis Scrollbearer

 

Alas, nothing indicate in this schema new units with missile weapons, despite the fact that of all Death factions, the Ossiarch would be the prime choice to be the "shooting faction" of a Death. I mean, zombies, ghouls and ghost dont really have the profile to be marksmen. But constructs made for war, with bodies and tools designed to kill, on the other hand, made the perfect option for that. I really hope that we will have more than mortek archers. Those creature are magical, they can have thompson machine-gun who throw darts of bones ! Would be hella fun, no ?

 

 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

New battletome soon. Time to start speculating about rules:

From the warscroll cards we can see that OBR now gets command points. And lots of them! The tokens are for three points each, and you will apparently need six of them. Compare this with the Soulblight set: Just four command point tokens worth one point each.

There seems to be a new generic Counter Strike command. Sounds interesting!

Soul Release, Mortal Contract, Enhanced Clawspan, Accelerated Calcification and Ossified Barbs all seem to be new spells, abilities or enhancements. Soul Release sounds like a spell for the Soulreaper or Soulmason, maybe. Mortal Contract sounds like it should be on Vokmortians warscroll (he currently has the Contract of Nagash ability). The other three sound like unique enhancements for big creatures like Harvesters and Morghasts. Maybe the new Ossifex grants them somehow?

[rattila]

Mortal contract is actually one of our spell (put it on a ennemy unit, each time this unit kill something they take mortal wound). No idea for the rest.

I just hope a total rewrinting of the soulreaper and morghast warscrolls. Cant wait to see what change this battletome brings us. Never played a game with that army for now (i'm still finishing to paint the first 1000 pts), but glad i didnt buy the battletome last year! 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

9 minutes ago, rattila said:

Mortal contract is actually one of our spell (put it on a ennemy unit, each time this unit kill something they take mortal wound). No idea for the rest.

I just hope a total rewrinting of the soulreaper and morghast warscrolls. Cant wait to see what change this battletome brings us. Never played a game with that army for now (i'm still finishing to paint the first 1000 pts), but glad i didnt buy the battletome last year! 

Thanks! I thought I had seen Mortal Contract before, but I did not find it on a quick scan of the rules.

I am hoping for a rewrite of a lot of the hero warscrolls, actually. Dedicated wizards should not be one cast with no bonuses. But the Soulreaper really is a stand out. I hope they make him actually good in combat this time around.

I am hoping for a dynamic where you attach one of the foot heroes to a unit in order to customize their role: Soulreaper to increase damage/rend, Boneshaper for healing and Soulmason for... something else? Magic? Maybe the new counter strike ability?

[rattila]

On 4/3/2023 at 11:55 AM, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Thanks! I thought I had seen Mortal Contract before, but I did not find it on a quick scan of the rules.

I am hoping for a rewrite of a lot of the hero warscrolls, actually. Dedicated wizards should not be one cast with no bonuses. But the Soulreaper really is a stand out. I hope they make him actually good in combat this time around.

I am hoping for a dynamic where you attach one of the foot heroes to a unit in order to customize their role: Soulreaper to increase damage/rend, Boneshaper for healing and Soulmason for... something else? Magic? Maybe the new counter strike ability?

That is an interesting idea. So the hero could be some kind of « extra » for units.

Battle report tomorrow, lets hope some people will screenshot the best parts !

[Sception]

Battle report is up.  I've been going through slowly picking out rules details over here:   vampirecounts dot net/threads/warhammer-obr-battle-report.33160/

about half way through the video now, but gotta do actual work so I'm not able to finish it or translate over to a new thread here yet.  I'll try to get to that later.

[Sception]

warcom preview article is also up:  https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/04/05/ossiarch-bonereapers-our-top-five-new-rules-from-the-battletome/

looks pretty good to me, but I'm not expert enough at the game to call overall impact out from rules alone without seeing them play out on the table.

[SilverJelly]

OBR rules.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

14 hours ago, SilverJelly said:

OBR rules.

We will have to wait a bit more to get the full picture, but judging by these rules OBR are now at least playing the same game as everyone else. They are not weak rules, either. Probably puts the faction at "can be fixed with points" as a lower bound of how bad the book could possibly be.

I like that the Ossifector can buff Crawlers, too. I just painted my second one. Would be nice if they were viable. Gives me a reason to pick up the singular new model we are getting.

Edited April 6, 2023 by Neil Arthur Hotep

[Sception]

ppints leaks are in, along with nagash's warscroll.  The new one is 'better' as in better designed - cleaner & less confusing.  but they didn't do much to increase his durability and cut his damage output way down by remobing the ability to spam arcane bolts (what are you even supposed to do with 8 casts now?).  some bits did get stronger (5+ ward aura, damage brackets don't reduce his casting & unbinding bonuses), but overall I'd call it another nerf even before the +65 points cost increase he's also been hit with, so pretty bad for those who actually ran him on the table.

honestly everything feels a bit overpriced, even if nagash is by far the worst.  but even if my kneejerk reaction is right about that, the worst case scenario is that points get adjusted down in the future.

Edited April 5, 2023 by Sception

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

7 hours ago, Sception said:

ppints leaks are in, along with nagash's warscroll.  The new one is 'better' as in better designed - cleaner & less confusing.  but they didn't do much to increase his durability and cut his damage output way down by remobing the ability to spam arcane bolts (what are you even supposed to do with 8 casts now?).  some bits did get stronger (5+ ward aura, damage brackets don't reduce his casting & unbinding bonuses), but overall I'd call it another nerf even before the +65 points cost increase he's also been hit with, so pretty bad for those who actually ran him on the table.

honestly everything feels a bit overpriced, even if nagash is by far the worst.  but even if my kneejerk reaction is right about that, the worst case scenario is that points get adjusted down in the future.

Let's not disregard the fact that Nagash gets basically be an extra Gravesite, but in any Death army. That seems pretty strong to me, especially in OBR.

Anyway, I'm not worried about points. The history of this game has shown that they will come down over time.

[Flippy]

Truth be told, this is the least interesting warscroll that could have been revealed. I know that this guy is an obligatory addition to almost every Death book, but still... Give ma Katakros! Give me Arkhan!

[Sception]

8 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Anyway, I'm not worried about points. The history of this game has shown that they will come down over time.

Exactly.  Pretty much the only thing I'm not happy about from the OBR previews are the points, and either I'm wrong and they're actually fine as is or I'm right and they come down over time.  I suppose I'd have preferred if the crawler hit harder, but I'm not surprised that the devs are still snakebit from how strong it was on its initial release.  I mostly like how they've resolved the relentless discipline thing to work with 3rd edition core rules, and that's been my biggest frustration with obr since the edition change.  IMO things are looking pretty good.  I'm eager to see the remaining warscrolls.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

49 minutes ago, Sception said:

Exactly.  Pretty much the only thing I'm not happy about from the OBR previews are the points, and either I'm wrong and they're actually fine as is or I'm right and they come down over time.  I suppose I'd have preferred if the crawler hit harder, but I'm not surprised that the devs are still snakebit from how strong it was on its initial release.  I mostly like how they've resolved the relentless discipline thing to work with 3rd edition core rules, and that's been my biggest frustration with obr since the edition change.  IMO things are looking pretty good.  I'm eager to see the remaining warscrolls.

I like that the Crawlers give Strikes Last now, though. Their purpose in the army was always to give your opponent a reason not to actually engage our slow-moving anvils like Mortek Guard. I think it definitely still does that but now it also supports them in combat. Which is probably for the best, people really hate it when long-ranged attacks can just delete their units.

[Flippy]

1 hour ago, Sception said:

I'm eager to see the remaining warscrolls.

There you are:

 

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

10 minutes ago, Flippy said:

There you are:

 

That all looks really good! I like the new ressurection wording on Arkhan and Katakros. The Soulmason now being an option for a strong, generic caster is appreciated, too. Morghast seem tempting with their "enemies can't receive commands" rule. Even Immortis Guard seem kind of good? Crazy.

[Flippy]

OBR 3.0 Warscrolls - Imgur

[Sception]

I like these warscrolls a lot.  Subfaction rules have also leaked.  They could have been a bit better balanced, but so be it.  I expect a lot of Praetorians and some Myrad & Petrifex, not so much of the others.  Especially sad for Ivory Host, narratively now really should have been their time, yet they seem to get the weakest bonus /and/ got saddled with extra conditions to satisfy first.

Overall I still think the army looks weaker under the new book than it was previously, due to those points costs just not looking right, but their rules look a lot cooler and funner and the points can always come down over time if they do turn out to be too high in practice.