AoS 2 - Ossiarch Bonereapers Discussion

[XReN]

29 minutes ago, Dracan said:

I didnt get feast of bones, do you maybe know what the rules , requirements and points are for the Volkmortian batalion?

It was somewhere on the previous pages, the composition is Volkmortian, a unit of morghast (archai I think?), a unit of stalkers and a unit of mortek guard. 

You can return 1 model in 1 unit near Volkmortian in each your hero phase. The point cost you can find on wrascroll builder, picture of battalion's rule was somewhere on previous pages

Edited November 7, 2019 by XReN

[Tropical Ghost General]

2 hours ago, XReN said:

Volkmortian's battalion and by killing 10+ wound models near Harvesters

So the battalion might be useful as it doesn't state how many models need to be in the units, unlike a lot of other 'special boxset' battalions.

But isn't Volkmortian locked into the 'Mortis Praetorian' legion, so can't be used outside of that legion?

[XReN]

Just now, Tropical Ghost General said:

So the battalion might be useful as it doesn't state how many models need to be in the units, unlike a lot of other 'special boxset' battalions.

But isn't Volkmortian locked into the 'Mortis Praetorian' legion, so can't be used outside of that legion?

He can be used inside any legion, the same goes for Katakros and Zandtos. They just don't get to benefit from legion's abilities

 

[Tropical Ghost General]

@XReN ok, so for example if he was in crematorians he wouldn't be dealing a mortal wound on 5+(4+) when he was slain?

Edited November 7, 2019 by Tropical Ghost General

[XReN]

3 minutes ago, Tropical Ghost General said:

@XReN ok, so for example if he was in crematorians he wouldn't be dealing a mortal wound on 5+(4+) when he was slain?

Correct

[Lightbox]

1k list

So whereas I have some ideas for my 2k list I'm thinking of this as a dropping it down to 1k sort of thing (also cheaper/easier start to it)

Subfaction: Crematorium

Liege Kavalos - 200
Boneshaper - 130

Mortek Guard - 260
Kavalos Deathriders - 180
Necropolis Stalkers - 200

This puts me at 970 points, might add the prismatic palisade or bone tithe shrieker to take me to 1k.

This means that along with my feast of bones I'll need to buy a liege kavalos, box of deathriders and box of mortek guard (also possibly endless spells box) to get to this list. I may or may not need a boneshaper depending on whether I convert Vokmortian into one (something I'm currently considering as I don't plan to use ol' vokky)

Edited November 7, 2019 by Lightbox

[Lopos]

Hi all, i have a question, i bought 2x feast of bones and i opened only 1 of them.. The other one is better to resell or open it too? Only guard are playable right? 

[Scurvydog]

54 minutes ago, Lightbox said:

1k list

So whereas I have some ideas for my 2k list I'm thinking of this as a dropping it down to 1k sort of thing (also cheaper/easier start to it)

Subfaction: Crematorium

Liege Kavalos - 200
Boneshaper - 130

Mortek Guard - 260
Kavalos Deathriders - 180
Necropolis Stalkers - 200

This puts me at 970 points, might add the prismatic palisade or bone tithe shrieker to take me to 1k.

This means that along with my feast of bones I'll need to buy a liege kavalos, box of deathriders and box of mortek guard (also possibly endless spells box) to get to this list. I may or may not need a boneshaper depending on whether I convert Vokmortian into one (something I'm currently considering as I don't plan to use ol' vokky)

The shrieker is definately a good idea here. I have found list building really tight with the reapers and have trouble getting room for the endless spells, but usually there is at least one of them I'd like to bring, they are pretty cool and also creates quite a bit of board control and pressure on your opponents movement.

I'm not sure besides the theme of course how much Crematorium will help you, but if running those a harvester might be worthwhile instead of stalkers, but that of course is some more investments right now. 

Of course especially with this generalist list petrifex elite would be a far stronger sub faction, but we might all get bored of that sooner or later.

[Kugane]

So I have been crunching numbers quite a bit to try and figure out what I want to do in this army, not counting leaders since they are situational. I might have made a mistake here and there, but I've tried to narrow down to average damage output per 100 points spent when facing a unit with 4+ save. 

These are the numbers I've calculated:

Harvester with Bludgeons on average 4.6 damage /100p, of which partly mortal wounds. (Sickles are slightly better against horde armies, but not enough to just go for bludgeons instead.)

Stalkers with precision stance 5.1+ damage/ 100p. Because of the precision stance you could increase the average damage of these units slightly by not using falchions.

Kavalos Riders with swords - 4.2+ dmg / 100p, not counting the command ability damage, which may or may not be broken due to stackability. The damage per points is also higher if you take a unit of 15 due to the points reduction.

Halbert Morghast - 3.0 damage / 100p

Mortek Guard with swords - 4.4+ dmg / 100p.

Immortis - 3.7 dmg / 100p, partially mortal wounds

Crawler - 2.1+ dmg / 100p when undamaged. The special shots are additional damage on top of that and I couldn't quantify it properly, hence the +.

 

My thoughts:

It seems for battleline, Kavalos riders may be the more durable option than Mortek Guard when not considering the shield wall ability on the guard. I think therefore that Mortek Guard are best used as a bubble wrap and while escorting your wizards or artillery across the battlefield. Having battleshock immunity makes it less scary to bring riders in our army as well, since we don't have to fear models running away.

Crawlers are less scary on paper than I initially thought, but if you take them you will likely have to run at least 3 for consistency, especially if you plan to use these to delete a hero or two. I'm not sure if at that point cost they are even worth it.

Stalkers seem to win in terms of damage output, but also have much less mobility. In comparison to riders however, they can swap to a +save stance in the opponent's turn, which sort of mitigates the fact that they have less wounds. The mobility, even with their command ability, bothers me. Its likely that these won't see any combat for the first 2 turns, especially if the opponent tries to kite them. At 10+ damage per combat phase they will likely slaughter hordes and due to their rend, monsters and heroes.

Morghast, both Archai and Harbinger seem very poor for what you get. Their wounds total are low, their damage output is low. Their points should go down to at least 150 or 160 to be worth taking if you aren't going for a battalion.

Immortis damage is respectable and consistent, even lashing out mortal wounds against high save targets. They even have some extra damage with their CA, but I'm not sure if its worth using the ability. Personally I'll use a unit to babysit my wizards since they can soak wounds, but, at 200 points I might opt to just get a second wizard instead. They are quite slow after all and don't have access to extra movement through command abilities either.

Anyways, with these numbers in mind, we should probably start putting together a decent list and figure out which ones are auto-include and which are an auto-pass. I think all the Morghasts are an auto-pass for sure and will just take Riders to do their job instead.

Edited November 7, 2019 by Kugane

[Izikail]

I was a big TK player in fantasy so when i saw these guys the nostalgia flooded back, when they were described as an elite army with recursion and we see four of there units are big model low model count units, i was excited. But i am struggling to get excited when building lists, and i think they are in a wired place.

Due to how there RD system works and there hit/wound and save rolls have good averages it makes them very consistant, the issue im finding with them is normaly when you have consistantce in an army, you eithere pay more for them, or you have slightly weaker things for there cost (effectivly modulating there price or power from the norm to balance there reliability).

The issue the ossiarchs have to my mind is they did both, they took a 110 point unit and made it the power of a 90 point unit and at the same time charged 130 for it, the morghast do not benifit much from the healing as they can t be resed, or the CAs as they are so few in number so i would have priced them about 160 but even if we are then going to pay the "consistantce army tax" maybe 180 but as its ossiarchs we have to over pay for them as well so there at 210 (i also think our battleline options should have been much more flexible, if katakros then immortis are bl, if nagash or arkhan then morghast are bl)

This over payment combined with week for there point witch is visable in all units i would even argue the crawler outside of its funky shots (which have limited applications anyway in reality) hampers the army's design space so much, stalkers to me are the only unit worth there points in the whole book but you can use them effectivly as the rest of the army is so prohibative. Its making me sad and kinda feeling maybe these guys arnt so fun as list design is my favourite part l.

P.S. why oh why did they give the best ability, CA, artifact and CT to one legion? Its so clearly the best. J less that legion was designed to prop up there competative side, with people saying ossiarchs are competative or broken because one legion is overbalanced, compaired to a legion like the ivory guys, the disparity is massive

[Kugane]

23 minutes ago, Izikail said:

I was a big TK player in fantasy so when i saw these guys the nostalgia flooded back, when they were described as an elite army with recursion and we see four of there units are big model low model count units, i was excited. But i am struggling to get excited when building lists, and i think they are in a wired place.

Due to how there RD system works and there hit/wound and save rolls have good averages it makes them very consistant, the issue im finding with them is normaly when you have consistantce in an army, you eithere pay more for them, or you have slightly weaker things for there cost (effectivly modulating there price or power from the norm to balance there reliability).

The issue the ossiarchs have to my mind is they did both, they took a 110 point unit and made it the power of a 90 point unit and at the same time charged 130 for it, the morghast do not benifit much from the healing as they can t be resed, or the CAs as they are so few in number so i would have priced them about 160 but even if we are then going to pay the "consistantce army tax" maybe 180 but as its ossiarchs we have to over pay for them as well so there at 210 (i also think our battleline options should have been much more flexible, if katakros then immortis are bl, if nagash or arkhan then morghast are bl)

This over payment combined with week for there point witch is visable in all units i would even argue the crawler outside of its funky shots (which have limited applications anyway in reality) hampers the army's design space so much, stalkers to me are the only unit worth there points in the whole book but you can use them effectivly as the rest of the army is so prohibative. Its making me sad and kinda feeling maybe these guys arnt so fun as list design is my favourite part l.

P.S. why oh why did they give the best ability, CA, artifact and CT to one legion? Its so clearly the best. J less that legion was designed to prop up there competative side, with people saying ossiarchs are competative or broken because one legion is overbalanced, compaired to a legion like the ivory guys, the disparity is massive

Well, it is what it is, all we can do right now is just accept they are a 1 legion faction competitively, and the rest are just memes. Then again, most battletomes end up with 1 thing being superior over another and settling on a single list with 1 or 2 units varying from player to player.

All we can do now is try and figure out the best list/units to take in it and start playing :).

[GDD]

@Emissary @firtahl @XReN @Scurvydog

Thanks for your thoughts.

I  actually sat down and measured cav-bases & pile-ins, and mathammered combats. And yeah, the swords just seem like they are better vs anything that isn't a 6+ save.

It's also reassuring to hear people agreeing with healing not being a mandatory tool in OBR. I'm still quite inexperienced in AoS, but this army does not look like it needs healing as much as LoN or Nighthaunt does.

[Scurvydog]

16 minutes ago, Izikail said:

P.S. why oh why did they give the best ability, CA, artifact and CT to one legion? Its so clearly the best. J less that legion was designed to prop up there competative side, with people saying ossiarchs are competative or broken because one legion is overbalanced, compaired to a legion like the ivory guys, the disparity is massive

I feel the entire army is balanced around this legion basically and overcosted for all other legions. 

having access to +1 save, so basically 3+ saves or even better across the army and access to +1 rend in melee at will is extremely powerful, who else can boast of performance like a unit of stalkers for 200 points,  15 attacks with 3+/3+/rend -2/2dmg with access to rend 3 at any time and 3+ saves?

The second we go outside of petrifex all those falls of drastically, but people perceive the army as the strongest legion now. My entire gaming group already thinks of the bonereapers as the 3+ save army, despite most not having played with or against the army at all.

This has also been expressed here with the false method to analyse a units efficiency, by just including their command abilities as baseline ability and commander abilities and legion abilties all at once. But people taking this biased method to look at a unit just thinks oh this 200 point unit will have +1 save, +1 hit, +1 attack, +1 rend, +3 move, reroll charges. That is already 4 discipline points to make that happen, and Katakros  within 12" (for +1 attack CA) in the list (or a liege with helm of the ordained),

Praetorians - Everything is terrible, only the CA is marginally useful. Katakros makes it playable, but 0 reason to do this over petrifex anyway.

Petrifex - Best of the best

Null Myriad - Situational, very cheesy in a few matchups, useless in others.

Stalliarch lords - This one strikes a good balance of what a legion should be I think. The trait and artifact are really bad though and the kavalos battalion basically kills this legion. Again far better to run the battalion to retreat/charge for free and have 3+ saves and the option for +1 rend.

Crematorium - About in line with Stalliarch lords, this will always do "something" but does not play much into the strengths of the army (not dying in the first place). The CA is dreadful, the trait is horrible and the artifact is very meh at best (what is up with all the weapons, we only got a max of 3 attacks on a hero to use them!).

Ivory host - These guys had a nice idea behind them at some point I think, but are terrible sadly. +1 hit is also available from other sources, simply using the shrieker can bring everyone nearby to 2+ hit as is.

Points wise I quickly run into a wall building lists. Getting enough heroes for discipline points gets expensive fast and most battalions are very specialized and/or relatively costly. Still the selection is good, but many units will struggle badly outside the more competetive choices.

[Scurvydog]

Double post

Edited November 7, 2019 by Scurvydog

[Lightbox]

1 hour ago, Scurvydog said:

The shrieker is definately a good idea here. I have found list building really tight with the reapers and have trouble getting room for the endless spells, but usually there is at least one of them I'd like to bring, they are pretty cool and also creates quite a bit of board control and pressure on your opponents movement.

I'm not sure besides the theme of course how much Crematorium will help you, but if running those a harvester might be worthwhile instead of stalkers, but that of course is some more investments right now. 

Of course especially with this generalist list petrifex elite would be a far stronger sub faction, but we might all get bored of that sooner or later.

So whilst I know that petrifex in general will be far superior I'm not too worried about not having the best allegiance as my local club varies between just-for-fun friendly to a sort of casual competitive. But like I mainly wanna do crematorium because I really like the idea of the paint scheme (though I've also considered a similar one with green or purple for 'necrotic energy' instead of fire to make them more subfaction neutral) I think a harvester could be a good option for sure though and do eventually plan to get 2 of them for my 2K. Though if I really find crematorium to be a bit gimmicky / hard to build around I may opt for a more cavalry stalliarch list or something but that seems potentially costly £££ wise for all the cav boys.

[Gwendar]

So, how are people still feeling about Arkhan as the competitive choice in lists? I've seen a lot of discussion elsewhere (and sorry if you've been discussing it the last few pages... the threads been moving along fast and I've not had time to read back pages and pages) and it seems mixed, especially when it comes to shooting.

Seems to me there's a lot more running Nagash than Arkhan, but that appears to be quite a different playstyle and one that lynches on Nagash whereas most Arkhan builds don't require him 100% of the time but it can definitely be crippling when he's the most obvious target.

[Arcian]

1 hour ago, Lightbox said:

 but that seems potentially costly £££ wise for all the cav boys.

Yeah, the $60 for twenty guard I don't mind too much, but the $60 for five cav hurts a bit

[Altair554488]

Does anyone else think that ivory host would have been a lot more in interesting If it gave a +1 to wound bonus instead of +1 hit?

[Arcian]

57 minutes ago, Gwendar said:

So, how are people still feeling about Arkhan as the competitive choice in lists? I've seen a lot of discussion elsewhere (and sorry if you've been discussing it the last few pages... the threads been moving along fast and I've not had time to read back pages and pages) and it seems mixed, especially when it comes to shooting.

Seems to me there's a lot more running Nagash than Arkhan, but that appears to be quite a different playstyle and one that lynches on Nagash whereas most Arkhan builds don't require him 100% of the time but it can definitely be crippling when he's the most obvious target.

Arkhan having access to our entire spell lore does seem pretty powerful I think. And with a unit of immortis you can at least delay your opponent trying to blow him to pieces

[Lightbox]

48 minutes ago, Arcian said:

Yeah, the $60 for twenty guard I don't mind too much, but the $60 for five cav hurts a bit

It's the cost of heroes too that really hurts me. Especially the liege kavalos.

 

I'm looking to convert my vokmortian into a boneshaper just to avoid having to buy 2 at their price lol (also would make them look different too)

[Sception]

Arkhan's playable, but seems very meta dependant.  Solid shooting will remove him very quickly.  If the opponent doesn't have a lot of shooting, than he's great, but it's a big risk.  Theoretically you could take some immortis to protect him from getting shot off the board before the game starts, but that effectively pushes his points cost up to 560, and that's kind of asking a lot for Arkhan.

If you are using him in a competitive environment, running petrifex is extra important for that extra bit of armor.

[Sception]

3 minutes ago, Lightbox said:

I'm looking to convert my vokmortian into a boneshaper just to avoid having to buy 2 at their price lol (also would make them look different too)

I have an old liche priest I converted from a high elf wizard and some tomb king bits.  Currently planning to reconvert him into my own second boneshaper.  Maybe press-mold the mid-assembly mortek from the official model to help make the intent clear to opponents.

[Gwendar]

2 minutes ago, Sception said:

Arkhan's playable, but seems very meta dependant.  Solid shooting will remove him very quickly.  If the opponent doesn't have a lot of shooting, than he's great, but it's a big risk.  Theoretically you could take some immortis to protect him from getting shot off the board before the game starts, but that effectively pushes his points cost up to 560, and that's kind of asking a lot for Arkhan.

If you are using him in a competitive environment, running petrifex is extra important for that extra bit of armor.

My meta in particular has very little shooting (aside from me with Skaven and CoS...) but I generally try to make all-comer lists which is why it's a difficult decision with his inclusion.  Petrifix was definitely the only thing I'll be running anyway so.. no question there.

As I already have him I'll definitely be testing it out. I see the value, but I don't see myself trying to find 200 points to throw in Immortis Guard.. we'll see.

[Heijoshin]

On 11/6/2019 at 1:47 PM, Dracan said:

Quick question regarding dethriders ability 

 

You can use this command ability when a friendly KAVALOS DEATHRIDERS unit that includes a Mortek Hekatos finishes a charge
move. You can pick 1 enemy unit within 1" of that KAVALOS DEATHRIDERS unit and roll a
number of dice equal to the number of models in that KAVALOS DEATHRIDERS unit. For each
5+, the enemy unit suffers 1 mortal wound. In addition, in the following combat phase, that KAVALOS DEATHRIDERS unit can move an
extra 3" when it piles in.

 

do you guys think this is stackable?

ie.  I use 4 cp and do 4x models mw on 5+ and then they are able to pile in 15" ??

charge chaff 10" away blow them up with mortal wounds pile into something other side of table???

 

On 11/6/2019 at 2:03 PM, Sception said:

currently yes.  I can't imagine it will survive faq.

 

On 11/6/2019 at 1:57 PM, XReN said:

Yes, it seems stackable

It does not matter if its stackable or not, as it doesn't matter if you can move an extra x", you still have to be within 3" of a unit to make a pile in. If what you are trying to say is: you charge, dump CP, kill the unit, then pile in another unit thats far away, fhen you can't then pile into another unit more than 3" away. It gives you extra distance when MAKING a pile in, not DECLARING one. In other words, it gives you extra distance on where you can pile in TO, not where you pile in FROM. Hope that makes sense.

The Sisters of Slaughter Dance of Death ability on the otherhand specifically states it can pile in FROM 6" and pile in 6".

 

 Still, it will be probably FAQd to not be stackable, so I wouldn't treat it as such. 

Edited November 7, 2019 by Heijoshin
Clarity

[XReN]

5 minutes ago, Heijoshin said:

It does not matter if its stackable or not, as it doesn't matter if you can move an extra x", you still have to be within 3" of a unit to make a pile in. If what you are trying to say is: you charge, dump CP, kill the unit, then pile in another unit thats far away, fhen you can't then pile into another unit more than 3" away. It gives you EXTRA distance when making a pile in, not declaring one. 

The Sisters of Slaughter Dance of Death ability on the otherhand specifically States it can't pile in FROM 6" and pile in 6".

You can pile in on a turn you charged no matter what my man

Edited November 7, 2019 by XReN