AoS 2 - Ossiarch Bonereapers Discussion

[Sception]

1 minute ago, Arcian said:

I generally prefer when systems raise up the weaker options instead of dropping down the "one good" choice. Know what I mean? Could end up with a situation where petrifex is nerfed, but nothing else changed and that'd be pretty unfortunate.

It would be unfortunate, but with the petrifex outlier out of the way, future points updates could fix it in time.  As is, though?

Look at this thread.  Practically every list is petrifex, apart from ones that acknowledge up front that they're only avoiding petrifex to be contrarian or softball their opponents.  Multiple comments on games of 'without petrifex I would never have had a chance'.  In discussions elsewhere we have players of other factions complaining that their games against obr are unfun because the army is too hard to hurt, thanks in large part to petrifex.

With the current track we're on, and no changes to petrifex, we're staring down the barrel of points hikes accross the faction, despite non-petrifex legions struggling already, and if that happens it will only make things worse.

Petrifex is a problem.

[Gwendar]

I think I've said my piece on the balance subject as have others and I don't think you can change the minds of some people 😉. Overall I'm happy with it, but the solution is not to bring down the competitive choice but to elevate the others; this would still make Petrifex the tournament choice while making others not 100% horrible. @Sception I'm just going to agree to disagree. If other players don't like playing against Petrifex because it 'isn't fun' then I think those people need to separate fun games from competitive games. If you want to bring your Triple Keeper\Hagg Nar\2 Engine of the Gods + Shadowstike + Thunderquake\-insert tournament list here- then I am most assuredly bringing a competitive Petrifex list because if I didn't things would be much harder and that's okay. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having 1-2 particular setups being the tournament choice. I would never bring my tournament Skaven lists to new\casual players because I'm not that guy... but if we're practicing for a tournament then I would always bring a filth list just like they would.

If someone doesn't like that, play a different Legion. I don't know what else there is to say. You don't need to bring 1 down to match the others, they are balanced differently for a reason.

Edited November 19, 2019 by Gwendar

[Panzer]

19 minutes ago, Gwendar said:

I think I've said my piece on the balance subject as have others and I don't think you can change the minds of some people 😉. Overall I'm happy with it, but the solution is not to bring down the competitive choice but to elevate the others; this would still make Petrifex the tournament choice while making others not 100% horrible. @Sception I'm just going to agree to disagree. If other players don't like playing against Petrifex because it 'isn't fun' then I think those people need to separate fun games from competitive games. If you want to bring your Triple Keeper\Hagg Nar\2 Engine of the Gods + Shadowstike + Thunderquake\-insert tournament list here- then I am most assuredly bringing a competitive Petrifex list because if I didn't things would be much harder and that's okay. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having 1-2 particular setups being the tournament choice. I would never bring my tournament Skaven lists to new\casual players because I'm not that guy... but if we're practicing for a tournament then I would always bring a filth list just like they would.

If someone doesn't like that, play a different Legion. I don't know what else there is to say. You don't need to bring 1 down to match the others, they are balanced differently for a reason.

Agree to disagree then.
It's fine to have a way to bring competetive lists, but Petrifex shouldn't default to competetive lists. It should be possible to play Petrifex without the enemy needing a super competetive list himself.

[jackmcmahon]

The people that rush to internet to say an army is unfun to play against every time they lose will always have a scapegoat for their losses. Can we just ignore those posts completely?

[Dolomyte]

13 minutes ago, Panzer said:

Agree to disagree then.
It's fine to have a way to bring competetive lists, but Petrifex shouldn't default to competetive lists. It should be possible to play Petrifex without the enemy needing a super competetive list himself.

It is. Play big waagh, ironjawz. Ogors, any high rend multi damage army agains them. Play games against it before you all freak out from book hammer experts. 

[Dolomyte]

45 minutes ago, Sception said:

It would be unfortunate, but with the petrifex outlier out of the way, future points updates could fix it in time.  As is, though?

Look at this thread.  Practically every list is petrifex, apart from ones that acknowledge up front that they're only avoiding petrifex to be contrarian or softball their opponents.  Multiple comments on games of 'without petrifex I would never have had a chance'.  In discussions elsewhere we have players of other factions complaining that their games against obr are unfun because the army is too hard to hurt, thanks in large part to petrifex.

With the current track we're on, and no changes to petrifex, we're staring down the barrel of points hikes accross the faction, despite non-petrifex legions struggling already, and if that happens it will only make things worse.

Petrifex is a problem.

It’s really not. People in this thread are expecting petrifex to go all slaanesh on the meta and 5 and 0 every tournament. The army is simply not that good. It’s a 3 and 2 counter meta pick. Maybe 4 and 1 with the rare 5 and 0 under a good general and even better pairing luck

[Gwendar]

18 minutes ago, Panzer said:

Agree to disagree then.
It's fine to have a way to bring competetive lists, but Petrifex shouldn't default to competetive lists. It should be possible to play Petrifex without the enemy needing a super competetive list himself.

Ok.  I don't see why it's a problem that it's the default pick at all... I would go back to the previous arguments of other armies having the exact same 'problem' and I rarely, if ever saw arguments that it was a bad thing.. and if I did that conversation eventually died out since it's irrelevant. Petrifex is no stronger than some of these other builds in other armies and they all have their good\bad matchups. Play what you want, if you think it's broken then don't play it.. don't drag tournament players down because you don't like it or think that it being  the 'only pick' is somehow inherently a bad thing.

This army is not Slaanesh or some other armies (FeC, DoK, IDK) before they fell slightly in the tournament scene. It is not something you are going to see win 70% of the time and absolutely smash people due to Petrifex. Shooting armies and high-rend\damage armies or heavy board control will win against it, even with Petrifex. In time, I expect that to be reflected in tournament results.

[Overread]

Default picks are "bad" in a sense because they can lower the competitive diversity of the army. This can mean that people end up locked into using only certain models and that some others can fall to the side. One benefit of the Ossiarch bias is that the ability affects the whole army. This means that it has less impact on internal army balance. Ergo you can still use pretty much all the models in a Petrifex army. Internally to the Battletome it retains a higher use of varied models.

 

Slannesh and Depravity is a more limiting system because it basically pushes you toward multiwound leaders, which means Keepers of Secrets and it further pushes summoning that way too. This pushes out things like fiends or chariot or infantry heavy armies. As a result it can significantly cut down on army diversity and creation options within the battletome; before we even get to how it balances against other armies. This is bad because it means that you're pushing people to collect only one version of the army whilst isolating other options. 

 

[Sleboda]

Round Two!

Thanks to those who gave feedback on the last batch. I've included the one that got the most love from the last batch, and added two more.

The guy on the left is the one from last time. The other green guy tweaks the colors and contrast levels a bit to incorporate feedback. The guy in the right is another purple variation.

Maybe the biggest change is the addition of brown/orange in the groin cloth and the weapon wrap. I realized (gf suggested) I needed another color. It's hard to see in the photo, but it helps.

The second photo is just for another angle.

Like before, I'm open to, and appreciative of, feedback.

 

Thanks!

 

Edited November 19, 2019 by Sleboda

[Overread]

The left one is warmer in tone and more likely to get positive views; whilst the one in the middle has a much "colder"  colour scheme and might be seen as less popular; however its skeleton colour is more "traditional skeleton white". 

 

Either works but I think the important difference is having contrast between the shield/armour colour and the cloth. To me the left one where the cloth is the same as the armour doesn't look right. So if nothing else the brown/leather cloth with green (or other coloureD) armour I think works better as an approach to colouring them.

 

The right one is good but I'm not a fan of the purple armour and green sword. 

[Sleboda]

Thanks for the thoughts. Yeah, I'm really trying to go with a scheme that's different from the last thousand models I painted for Tomb Kings, so they are distinct and create variety in my display cases. Plus, I want that cold, dead, spooky look, which is why I'm trying to make the whites and purples work.

That said, I have a few back up schemes I want to try, but most involve red, and I've done so much red recently. Ugh.

I'll share those tests when they are ready. It'll look a bit like what I show in this post.

Anyway, thanks again.

 

[Panzer]

The focus of my argument was less on Petrifex being the default for competetive lists and more on no matter what you do it's automatically going to be a competetive list that requires an equally competetive list from your opponent. Every subfaction should be able to be less competetive so people who like that subfaction for other reasons than crunch can use it without having to feel bad playing against weaker lists.
There's a huge difference between lists being competetive because they include a specific combination of units, relics, special rules etc, and a list being competetive simply because it's from a specific subfaction.

[Euphanism]

If anyone is interested I took Ossiarch to a 5 game tournament last week. I had a week to get the list fully painted and based, so it's by no means optimized, but it was a lot of fun even if I did walk away 1/4. 

 

 

[Arcian]

5 minutes ago, Euphanism said:

If anyone is interested I took Ossiarch to a 5 game tournament last week. I had a week to get the list fully painted and based, so it's by no means optimized, but it was a lot of fun even if I did walk away 1/4. 

 

 

Glad you had a good time! And yeah, I could see how your list slightly handicapped you with the lack of available models

[Euphanism]

17 minutes ago, Arcian said:

Glad you had a good time! And yeah, I could see how your list slightly handicapped you with the lack of available models

Oh yeah, I felt the lack of options a lot, but honestly the generic Mortek Guard are SO good they can act as anvil and hammer at once with only a few buffs.

I'm looking at that Harvester/Arkhan/Crematorian list though and I think I'll work towards that, just to have a silly way to run them in more casual games.

[BadDice0809]

10 hours ago, Scurvydog said:

I agree the internal balance is not very good. Petrifex makes the army strong, while I think most other legions are too weak.

I feel Praetorians with Katakros in, will probably be the more balanced setup, but petrifex just steps on that by also having the superior forced artifacts and especially command ability. If you already get +1 hit from katakros, rerolling hits vs chargers i far worse than getting +1 rend, that CP is so universally good.

Switch the command abilities of Mortis Praetorians and Petrifex and the balance gap would have been far closer, and at least we would probably see Katakros in his own legion on the table. 

The army is relatively squishy as a whole without +1 save, every wound is super expensive and removing a 200 point harvester with 10 wounds and 4+ save is not harder than a unit of 5 liberators, which is why that save makes a huge difference.

This by itself hurts the other legions badly, but there could have easily been far more balance.

Ivory host should have been +1 to wound instead of hit, there are so many other +1 hit sources already and they should make Morghasts, stalkers and immortis battleline, just for laughs and kicks.

Stalliarch lords are decent, but has no reason to have so poor artifacts and traits, improve that and it would be ok, although not meta probably.

Nulls are decent, they are niche but that is ok.

Crematorium are cool as well, but the command ability should have been something more interesting.

Petrifex would probably be more balanced if they had rules like reduce rend by 1 instead of +1 save, which often adds up to the same but does not shaft low or non rend armies against them. CP should as mentioned be swapped with Praetorians to hit home the defensive nature perhaps.

All this and give morghasts another wound and +1 attack for polearm and +2 for swords and I think the book would be much better internally balanced from these few things alone.

Ivory Host with +1 to wound is really really interesting. As it is now, total garbage.

[Gwendar]

10 hours ago, Panzer said:

it's automatically going to be a competetive list that requires an equally competetive list from your opponent.

Every subfaction should be able to be less competetive so people who like that subfaction for other reasons than crunch can use it without having to feel bad playing against weaker lists.

There's a huge difference between lists being competetive because they include a specific combination of units, relics, special rules etc, and a list being competetive simply because it's from a specific subfaction.

This is ok.

I disagree here, otherwise I think you have a more homogeneous feeling if everything is just as good as everything else but in a vaguely different flavor. Hell, if you go down the 'I like the flavor of this one so I'm picking it regardless' then just house rule the +1 save or whatever you find broken to one of the many suggestions given here. If you want it to be less competitive then put yourself at a handicap, I've done it plenty with Skaven.

Sure, but you still need a good pilot and a good list (not hodge podge units thrown together) to make it work 100%. Does it inherently make it easier? Well yeah, that's why it's the best... but again, when it comes to playing in tournaments, people are always going to pick what's best. If someone doesn't like that, then I would advise to not play competitively. I play casual games against casual players (and will sometimes use weaker armies\lists to do so) and tournament players I use tournament lists. If Petrifex was hit as hard as some people suggest, you would see a huge drop-off in their use.

[Dracan]

11 hours ago, Euphanism said:

Oh yeah, I felt the lack of options a lot, but honestly the generic Mortek Guard are SO good they can act as anvil and hammer at once with only a few buffs.

I'm looking at that Harvester/Arkhan/Crematorian list though and I think I'll work towards that, just to have a silly way to run them in more casual games.

How did you find the morghasts?

[Phasteon]

34 minutes ago, Dracan said:

How did you find the morghasts?

I played the Archai lately and i find them pretty strong. Very mobile and good output/ defense. They can destroy a weak flank on their own by turn 2. Even their pointscosts are absolutely justified, cant understand why people would say otherwise. 

 

I personally switched to Immoris though for better hero protection. For me Stalkers are the most bland out of the 3, because all they do is done by everything else in the army, just less efficient but with more versatility. 

[boots468]

45 minutes ago, Phasteon said:

I played the Archai lately and i find them pretty strong. Very mobile and good output/ defense. They can destroy a weak flank on their own by turn 2. Even their pointscosts are absolutely justified, cant understand why people would say otherwise.

This is the opposite of what I found, I hated my Morghast!

I took them as Harbingers rather than Archai (the army is already good at tanking, but reliable long charges are unusual), and spirit swords over halberds (with petrifex, can get them to rend 2 when you need them anyway), but found myself much rather wanting the cavalry instead.

The cavalry are quicker (base 12 move, with +1 to run and charge Vs flying 9" move (and a 3d6 charge if Harbingers, so even if Harbingers the average move + charge from the cav is better (20" Vs 19.5"))) and effectively tougher (you are paying 69% of the points per wound for the cav vs for morghast - they do lose the Archai 5++ extra save, but are eligible for the enhance shield spell and are easier to heal).

Offence I rate the cavalry higher too, but that's less clear cut. Sometimes the Morghast swing well and just delete things, sometimes they whiff. By having more, worse, attacks the cavalry are more reliable in what they put out - and even post FAQ, being able to put a couple of MW out after the charge can be a very useful option. Plus, they are 5 models for objectives rather than 2!

 

 

[Scurvydog]

Played another game against my friend playing Sylvaneth in a 2k game. He played an allarielle, durthu, treelord ancient list, while I used basically what I had in my collection: liege, mortisan, boneshaper, 20 and 10 mortek guard, 2x5 kavalos, harvester, morghast achai, stalkers, deathrider battalion and predator spell.

We played battle for the pass and my opponent went first. He got to place a lot of woods, playing a short end to short end deployment was of great benefit to him in that regard.

It was a pretty bloody game, with bitter fights to take the top and bottom center objectives. Unfortunately for me, his woods gave him great board presence, while all but my riders were relatively slow and had a hard time getting out to the objectives in force. I had to dedicate my riders to cap the bottom to not get too far behind, and they managed to kill a stray arch revenant who flew there to cap, but in turn perhaps overextended in doing so. The same kavalos got obliterated in his turn 2, by kurnoth, treelord andcient and allarielle all in 1 fight (ultra overkill).

At the top my liege, morghasts and harvester tried going after durthu, this went terribly wrong and due to woods and terrain they had a hard time going anywhere. In the end Durthu managed to kill both my Liege, Morghasts and Harvester after battle round 2.

I managed to pull of a draw, mainly due to a 11" charge roll from my 20 man mortek guard, getting deep into his lines and piling in near his backline objective, while my 10 mortek supported by the boneshaper held my own backline for 3 turns against a unit of kurnoth hunters summoned by allarielle (Both units never killed each other, ending with 7 mortek and 2 hunters...). 

My opponent who has played and gotten destroyed by the new orruk warclans a couple of times as well as my Seraphon said his impressions of the army was that it was strong but also rather fair. I had nothing that completely locked anything down, so he was free to use his own strengths and tactics, which made for a fun game.

My own takeaways:

Do not count on a 2+ armor save Liege in cover to make his 3+ saves against Durthu, 2 failed saves still result in 12 damage

Losing the Liege early on hurt my DP generation, and my mortisan never once managed to get of the d3 point spell. You really feel the loss, especially in a game where you need the +3" move on many things for a chance to keep up.

The harvester never even got to swing once, but 200 points for 10 wounds is still squishy, even as Petrifex and very difficult to have within 3" of anything dying. Being forced to move it away from mortek to reinforce a failing flank did it no favors to show its strengths though. These strict range limitations and relatively low move makes it tricky to use and will take some practice.

The morghasts whiffed as usual, they should not be that bad, but somehow always ends up disappointing... If I did not like their models so much, I would probably not use them much at all. Flying is still nice to have though and gives them a few options nobody else but Arkhan has in the army.

Mortek Guards and Kavalos are just great units and rarely disappoint, the high move of the kavalos feels invaluable especially in some battleplans and I would never go completely without them I think, as they are the only options to get deep into enemy territory before turn 3-ish and threaten backline objectives etc.

I never managed to cast the predator, always failing or getting unbound, I did manage to get some Drain Vitality of on Durthu, which was good, but did not save the entire flank from him anyway. I really like the spell though and possibly the best one we have to deal with similar threats.

Remember the free battalion abilities, I managed to forget the entire game, doh. For petrifex every point counts, you can always make use of that +1 rend command!

Facing an army with lots of mortal wounds and rend 2 made even the Petrifex fall relatively quickly. I am sure I would have been beaten as anything but Petrifex in that matchup, as my backline mortek would have crumbled to the Kurnoth with Scythes if reduced to 6+ saves. I have a hard time seeing the reapers work at a high level as anything but, if you face armies with decently high rend especially. (This is why I believe though should have reduced rend by 1 instead of +3 save, to balance the legion between high and low rend army matchups).

 

[Euphanism]

7 hours ago, Phasteon said:

I played the Archai lately and i find them pretty strong. Very mobile and good output/ defense. They can destroy a weak flank on their own by turn 2. Even their pointscosts are absolutely justified, cant understand why people would say otherwise. 

 

I personally switched to Immoris though for better hero protection. For me Stalkers are the most bland out of the 3, because all they do is done by everything else in the army, just less efficient but with more versatility. 

So full disclosure, bringing 4 Morghast Archai was more necessity than anything as I already had two built. The biggest thing with them in Petrifix is to remember the command ability that increases their rend by 1. Out of my whole list, they were the absolute best damage dealers; combined with the Shrieker, the unit threw out 20 attacks at 2/3/-2/3, which was a fantastic blender. However they go down pretty fast as they don't have any defense against regular wounds besides their save and Deathless Warriors save, as their armor only effects mortal wounds. I think one big group of 4 is overkill, a pack of 2 can still threaten a lot of the board with their movement and attacks.

Plus the models get tangled on EVERY SINGLE THING ON THE TABLE

[Dracan]

Made some MTG style gaming aid cards for myself and added them to my other death cards on here, if anyone is interested.

Pity there isn't a lot of art for them out there.

 

[Tidings]

Hey everyone, I'm poking in here to hopefully get some suggestions. As a Cities of Sigmar player, what the hell do I do about Crawler spam? They obliterate way more than 200 points of my army without issue, and they can fight off deepstriking Shadow Warriors on their own. Last game I used a flame Phoenix to run down 1 crawler, which spent all game just retreating. Phoenix is 300 points, so he got the better deal there. 

I feel like my ONLY solution is to do Greywater Fastness and shoot them in the first turn, but bone daddies will always get the choice for which turn on deployment, and crawlers have better threat range than anything in cities. I don't have the models to play Greywater, and the crawler just existing means taking any other city is just asking for it. When I play Hallowheart, I'm stuck hoping the table will have a place for my wizards to spend all game hiding, making them far less useful. Otherwise they are gone before they get to cast their first spell.

Any suggestions are appreciated! 

[Gecktron]

21 minutes ago, Tidings said:

Hey everyone, I'm poking in here to hopefully get some suggestions. As a Cities of Sigmar player, what the hell do I do about Crawler spam? They obliterate way more than 200 points of my army without issue, and they can fight off deepstriking Shadow Warriors on their own. Last game I used a flame Phoenix to run down 1 crawler, which spent all game just retreating. Phoenix is 300 points, so he got the better deal there. 

I feel like my ONLY solution is to do Greywater Fastness and shoot them in the first turn, but bone daddies will always get the choice for which turn on deployment, and crawlers have better threat range than anything in cities. I don't have the models to play Greywater, and the crawler just existing means taking any other city is just asking for it. When I play Hallowheart, I'm stuck hoping the table will have a place for my wizards to spend all game hiding, making them far less useful. Otherwise they are gone before they get to cast their first spell.

Any suggestions are appreciated! 

Drop Deep striking units or fast units like Dark Riders/Outriders within 6" so the crawler cant shoot or drop an Everblaze Comet on them if he has them all in one place. Even a few wounds means their damage drops off by a lot. 

If you play Hammerhal I would advice going for the cindercloud spell. -1 to-hit helps a bit. 

Also, high-save units will do quite well against the crawlers as they lack the rend. Cheap 4+ save Freeguild guardsmen especially.