AoS 2 - Ossiarch Bonereapers Discussion

[Marthen]

For lore reasons as well as the fact I already have Arkhan painted I’m wantingt to go with the Null Myriad as my legion. Does anyone have any list tips? Specifically if taking Arkhan is any additional casting even needed?

[frostfire]

Going to play a against a Tempest’s Eye army who goes with 40 arkanauts and a lots of irondrakes and oh boy they just stab in our weakness since mortek guards only get to reroll save in the combat phase.

How do you deal with such a heavy shooting army?

[El Syf]

 

4 minutes ago, frostfire said:

Going to play a against a Tempest’s Eye army who goes with 40 arkanauts and a lots of irondrakes and oh boy they just stab in our weakness since mortek guards only get to reroll save in the combat phase.

How do you deal with such a heavy shooting army?

Mortek Crawler spam?

[Scurvydog]

9 hours ago, Marthen said:

For lore reasons as well as the fact I already have Arkhan painted I’m wantingt to go with the Null Myriad as my legion. Does anyone have any list tips? Specifically if taking Arkhan is any additional casting even needed?

An example list could look like this:

Arkhan the Black, Mortarch of Sacrament (360)
Liege-Kavalos (200)
- General
- Trait: Unsettling and Sinister
- Artefact: Helm of the Ordained
Mortisan Soulreaper (120)
- Artefact: Baleful Blade
20 x Mortek Guard (260)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
20 x Mortek Guard (260)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
20 x Mortek Guard (260)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
5 x Kavalos Deathriders (180)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
Gothizzar Harvester (200)
Mortek Shield-corps (120)
Nightmare Predator (40)

Total: 2000 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 1
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 108

Especially as Null Myriad this list will dominate magic pretty hard, with a battalion it will generate 5 discipline points baseline and also give a free shield wall per turn, which is just about as good as 2 more points per battle round, as you will probably use shield wall quite a lot with this list every turn. 

This makes it pretty efficient with discipline points, the battalion also allows the Liege to grab helm of the ordained for that 12" +1 hit bubble. The soulreaper fits right into the points to also get the nightmare predator for some potential mortal wound bombing of a hero. The Soulreaper can use whatever spell, but can march along with some mortek and also do so fighting with the blade and his sort of fighty attack profile unlike the other wizards.

The Harvester hits hard and provides even more sustain, but you could also for example take a unit of immortis guards to babysit Arkhan a bit, as he is quite important for the entire army, keep him in range of the +1 hit bubble and Arkhan can also dish out quite a bit of damage, without fearing for his life if the guards keep up.

It is a bit bland though with all those Mortek guards and people get sort of frustrated by them, even though it should be less so not running petrifex. If you wanted you could shuffle around for a Kavalos lance battalion instead, with less guards and at least a unit of riders more, which would increase mobility quite a bit and allow you to use some hit and run tactics instead of attrition.

[Koujow]

Can I point out something that is making me rather bitter? 

Crematorians entire thing is when a model DIES... they have a 17% chance to deal a mortal wound. An entire subfaction, that is their great ability...

Nurgle Slaves to Darkness army have a battlion that gives them mortal wounds when they are wounded on a six, no additional rolls. Plus extra damage when they attack. Plus a -1 cloud of flies bubble around their general.  PLUS their abilities don't incentive you to spam a single unit type. 

I did some real basic math with a dice calculator and if a unit of 40 Crem Mortek Guard somehow all got into combat with a unit of Nurgle Chaos Warriors (whatever size), the Mortek would on kill on average 5.4 Chaos Warriors. The Nurgle battlelion would then kill 7.8 Guard... WITHOUT EVEN ATTACKING. Alternatively, if the Chaos Warriors wiped out the entire unit, they would deal, on average, 6.8 mortal wounds back. 

....wooo....

[Scurvydog]

15 minutes ago, Koujow said:

Nurgle Slaves to Darkness army...

I suspect this very thing will shift the crying from Mortek Guard to Nurgle warriors supported by shrines and demon princes in huge blobs.

100 pts per 5. Rerolls save for free when 10 or more in the unit. The warshrine of nurgle hands out +1 save and the 6++ save.

The Demon prince command gives a nurgle std unit a buff until next hero phase, causing each hit roll of 6 against them to deal d3 mortal wounds back. The enemy will die long before these guys die.

Imagine witch aelves attacing these guys, they will just explode themselves when they begin rolling dice.

[Arcian]

4 minutes ago, Scurvydog said:

I suspect this very thing will shift the crying from Mortek Guard to Nurgle warriors supported by shrines and demon princes in huge blobs.

100 pts per 5. Rerolls save for free when 10 or more in the unit. The warshrine of nurgle hands out +1 save and the 6++ save.

The Demon prince command gives a nurgle std unit a buff until next hero phase, causing each hit roll of 6 against them to deal d3 mortal wounds back. The enemy will die long before these guys die.

Imagine witch aelves attacing these guys, they will just explode themselves when they begin rolling dice.

Dang, I was thinking of picking some STD stuff up because while I love the undead I also really like chaos stuff... and my favored chaos god is either Tzeentch or Nurgle. I'm worried people will start thinking i'm "That guy". I just really like the models

[Frowny]

I think more likely the nurgle dp ability will be nerfed or clarified to only once per unit. It is outrageously stronger than anything else like it and is indeed very very broken as is

Crematorians is in line with several other things like that, which either do me on 6 to save or 4+ mw on death for infantry (cities of sigmar has 2 I think). It's fine as is

[Ser_namron]

Can i get clarification on the harvester rules for "bone harvest" 

So, lets say hes got a harvester next to a unit of 10 mortek gaurd. 10 wounds go through to the mortek, he fails to save any of them. the harvester ability activates, on a 4+ he gets to bring one of the slain models back to a unit within 6" . 

So he allocates the 1st of 10 wounds, and it goes through and he fails the 4+ "bone harvest" save. the model is removed. He then takes a 4+ roll for the 2nd of 10 wounds and passes. he immediately puts a mortek gaurd back into the same group within 3" of the harvester, and now goes to allocate that 3rd of 10 wounds to the model he just set back up in the unit. this continues until all 10 wounds have been allocated, but hes only had to roll a 4+ on the same 2 models the entire time. 

Is that how this works? It seems incredibly silly that 10 wounds would go through, but technically the same model can be used over and over again to allocate those wounds. flavor wise this would be like 10 arrows coming in at once, but the harvester is picking up and reassembling the same skeleton before each consecutive arrow hits its mark. Where as every other instance of wounds in the game would be - 10 wounds taken, 10 models get saves, the failed saves are removed all at once. 

are we playing this wrong? 

[Bryan I Guess]

Thats how it's supposed to play out. You fail 10 wounds and take 10 damage on the squad. You assign the first damage to one Mortek guard, as they are one wound models that first model dies, and remove one model. After a model dies within 3" of the harvester you roll a die and on a 4+ you can heal 1/replace 1. So you roll for that model that you just removed and on a 4+ you put it back.

 

So to be a clear you kill the model first then roll to bring it back. Yes you could go through all 10 damage with just 2 models. You could save time by just rolling it as another FNP.  Take 10 wounds, roll 10 armor saves(fail 10 saves), roll 10 deathless saves(fail 10), count how many models are dieing within 3" of the harvester, roll that many dice, finally take out any that fail that.

[Ser_namron]

That just seems absolutely nutty to me  
as hard as it is to push wounds through on these units, then you can just allocate the ones that went through to the same exact model over and over with a 50% chance each time. What else in this game functions like that? Just like i mentioned in my description of how that would play out flavor wise, it makes no sense lol. the one skeleton is getting rebuilt instantly before each arrow hits from a spray of 10 at the same time. 

Not a fan, but ill learn to live with it like some other nonsense in this game. 

[Volkhov]

It’s because of how damage and attacks are allocated in the core rules, it isn’t a fault of the bonereaper Battletome.

The process works this way because each attack sequence is rolled and resolved one at a time per the core rules, fast rolling is just to expedite the process but as far as order of operations goes each dice happens one at a time.

[Ser_namron]

Ok, so ive just interpreted it as nutty because for the majority of the game, you roll all at once for ease, but with this unit, it becomes better to do it one at a time. So its always been there, this is just a unit that makes full use of it to get crazy value. 

[Overread]

Basically yes; remember rolls are just representative of the unit. So it might be that the same harvester is rebuilding the same model over and over or that the unit took 10 wounds and the harvester is just repairing each one from minor damage back to full health. 

[Ser_namron]

16 minutes ago, Overread said:

So it might be that the same harvester is rebuilding the same model over and over or that the unit took 10 wounds and the harvester is just repairing each one from minor damage back to full health. 

But the rules are slain models, so flavor wise its not damaged reapers being repaired, its dead ones, and in this case it would be the same dead one dying and being repaired over and over again in an instant lol. Im just arguing semantics at this point though. I appreciate the clarification on the rules.

[Sception]

8 hours ago, Scurvydog said:

An example list could look like this:

Spoiler

Arkhan the Black, Mortarch of Sacrament (360)
Liege-Kavalos (200)
- General
- Trait: Unsettling and Sinister
- Artefact: Helm of the Ordained
Mortisan Soulreaper (120)
- Artefact: Baleful Blade
20 x Mortek Guard (260)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
20 x Mortek Guard (260)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
20 x Mortek Guard (260)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
5 x Kavalos Deathriders (180)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
Gothizzar Harvester (200)
Mortek Shield-corps (120)
Nightmare Predator (40)

Total: 2000 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 1
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 108

 

A solid list.  Personally, though, I'd recommend swapping out the nightmare predator for a shrieker, and using the ten points spared to upgrade the soulreaper to a boneshaper in order to get a bit more recursion in there.  Maybe move the baleful blade to the liege and give the shaper the artisan's key.  For lore spell, I'd give the shaper Arcane Command.  At only 5 RD points a turn before rolls otherwise, the extra d3 from the spell will probably be as or more useful than anything the other spells can do, plus its the easiest to cast, leaving Arkhan and his bonuses to handle spells like Drain Vitality, Empower Weapons, and Reinforce Shields.  You might also consider swapping the harvester for a crawler.

The harvester is good and hits hard and can bring models back, but its ability range is fiddly and the army already has plenty of melee power and decent recursion (provided you make the boneshaper & artifact key changes already mentioned).  I think this list might benefit more from the Crawler's ability to threaten both chaff units and hidden support heroes, something the list has difficulty with otherwise.

With Arkhan, you'd theoretically want to get a unit of immortis in there for him to deploy next to, but the points really are just too tight.  I don't think reducing the morteks any further is a good idea, not unless you're switching over to a lance build which will probably end up costing more points rather than less.  You could theoretically swap the liege and kavalos for another caster and some immortis and that might be ok...  but it's important to have an offensive outlet for RD points to concentrate damage output where you need it.  Petrifex get this for free with their rend CA, but since this list is specifically in response to someone asking for Null Myriad suggestions, well, the Liege is really the only effective offensive RD outlet available for non-petrifex OBR, so I think you're better off keeping it.

[Arcian]

40 minutes ago, Ser_namron said:

But the rules are slain models, so flavor wise its not damaged reapers being repaired, its dead ones, and in this case it would be the same dead one dying and being repaired over and over again in an instant lol. Im just arguing semantics at this point though. I appreciate the clarification on the rules.

If it helps you immersion, the Harvester has a ton of skeletons on his back. Maybe he is just hot swapping the damaged parts with the ones on his back? lol

[Turragor]

So I ordered a bunch of stuff as a core of a new Ossiarch army and am starting to build and paint.

I have:

2 x Crawler kits

2 x Mortek Guard kits (I built all spears - rule of cool - and now hear swords win out until you get like 10 extra spear attacks in)

1 x Arkan kit

2 x Deathhorsies kits

1 x Soulmason kit

1 x Liege Kavalos kit

Scenery kit

Whats the best way forward with what I have? What should I take as 2k to test if I want to expand on this army further? Where would I go if I get a proper Ossiarch bug (right now it's kind of a hobby/tourney crossover project).

[Sception]

6 minutes ago, Turragor said:

Whats the best way forward with what I have? What should I take as 2k to test if I want to expand on this army further? Where would I go if I get a proper Ossiarch bug (right now it's kind of a hobby/tourney crossover project).

Your current pile comes to 1840, if you include the one battalion you have all the models for - the kavalos lance.  To round it out to 2k, I'd recommend grabbing a Mortisan Boneshaper and the Endless Spells kit for a Bone-Tithe Shrieker, as those are both staple units for the army.  If you do get a Boneshaper, then you'd have the units for a Mortek Ballistari battalion, but not the spare points without dropping something, and if you're only going to take one battalion the kavalos lance will do more for its units than the ballistari does.  For legion, I'd recommend Petrifex.  Not only are they just flatly the strongest legion period regardless of list, they're also specifically the one you want to take if you field any spears in your army, as the legion's command ability gives you at least some rend when you need it.

The result should be a pretty functional list, if a bit light in number of bodies & board presence.  OBR are a rather expensive force points wise, there's not a lot of slack for indulgences.  Right now your list is leaning on the more expensive per model battleline option, taking one of the more expensive special characters, and taking two of the big expensive support catapults, when an optimal 2k list probably only does one and certainly no more than two of those things at a time.

But even so, the list should certainly be functional enough to get a feel for whether you'd want to pursue the faction any further.   If you do, then I'd recommend starting with more Mortek Guard.  They're probably the army's strongest and most points efficient unit, and certainly the cheapest way to put models on the table to try to play the objective game.

[Turragor]

16 minutes ago, Sception said:

If you do, then I'd recommend starting with more Mortek Guard.  They're probably the army's strongest and most points efficient unit, and certainly the cheapest way to put models on the table to try to play the objective game.

Already (as they are so awesome looking) I'm leaning this way. Probably 20 blade guard instead of all the spears.

Thank you for the tips!

BTW isn't it 1900 that I have, and therefore have issues with that battalion (which sounds like a good option), or am I missing something?

Allegiance: Ossiarch Bonereapers
- Legion: Petrifex Elite
Arkhan the Black, Mortarch of Sacrament (360)
Liege-Kavalos (200)
- General
- Trait: Mighty Archaeossian
- Artefact: Helm of the Ordained
Mortisan Soulmason (140)
- Artefact: Godbone Armour
- Lore of Mortisans: Empower Nadirite Weapons
40 x Mortek Guard (440)
- Nadirite spear and Shield
- 4x Soulcleaver Greatblades
5 x Kavalos Deathriders (180)
- Nadirite Spear and Shield
5 x Kavalos Deathriders (180)
- Nadirite Spear and Shield
Mortek Crawler (200)
Mortek Crawler (200)

[Sception]

Whoops, I read your collection wrong.  You said you had two boxes of mortek guard, and in my head that turned into 20 instead of 40.

As it is, with the lance you're actually over by 20 points, with nothing easy to drop to get back under.  You could drop the lance battalion itself to get to, yes, 1900.  I still definitely recommend getting the endless spells, as endless spells are about the only option OBR has to fill points gaps of 100 or less.  Then you can either go:

Arkhan
Liege
Mason
2x5 riders
40 guard
2x crawler
nexus
all three endless spells

Or alternatively:

Arkhan
Liege
Mason
2x5 riders
30 guard
2x crawler
kavalos lance battalion
nexus
shrieker

Or even:

Arkhan
Liege
Mason
2x5 riders
2x20 guard
nexus
soulstealer carrion

All are, again, maybe not optimal lists, but at least viable enough to get a feel for whether or not you want to take the faction further.  Probably my favorite of the three is the last one that runs the guard as 2x20, letting you cover more of the board/occupy multiple objectives/etc.  Granted, that list makes the decision to go with spears rather than swords on the morteks a bit more suboptimal than it already was, but so it goes.

If you do decide to expand the collection further, my suggestions stay pretty similar: get a boneshaper, they're a staple unit, and get more morteks.  Beyond that, harvesters and stalkers are decent in and of themselves, and immortis are good with arkhan specifically, who otherwise has issues with getting shot off the table turn one before you have a chance to get protection of nagash up, but those are all pretty pricey units and I don't think you'll really be able to get any of them to work in a list that also runs Arkhan AND deathriders AND 2 crawlers, so at that point you'd be branching into variant builds instead of improving the army you already have.

[NoMaDhOoK]

On 12/11/2019 at 12:27 AM, Scurvydog said:

All this is only a problem as petrifex.

Take stalkers outside petrifex, compare them to a similar big guy unit for 200 points, kurnoth hunters.

against 4+ saves Kurnoth with scythes dish out 7.2 damage and 1,5 mortal wound from stomping, so around 8-9 damage total. 

Stalkers in precision stance is 11.1 damage.

So stalkers deal a bit more damage, they have 1 more move. In any of the other offensive stances they have a pitiful output of 5.9. If they choose reroll saves 4.4...

Kurnoth hunters have 5 wounds each instead of 4. If they do not charge they can reroll saves too with no less damage output, only 1" pile in then, but 2" reach.

In summary, anything but precision stance on Stalkers is grossly overcosted. If they did not have that, there would be 0 reason to ever take them.

Precision stance AND the +1 save and possible +1 rend from Petrifex brings them over the top.

Stalkers in any other legion and precision stance er balanced just fine for their points, if they did less damage, there would be no point to them next to even Morghasts for about the same points and 6.7 damage and 9" fly and either 5+ mortal wound save or 3d6 charges.

Yeah the stances are really wack. This is stance comparison right now (for a unit of 3 models, all spirit swords) 

Maybe if the +1 damage was made baseline, and then the reroll all changed to reroll 1s to hit/wound, it would be better internal balance

This does make them slightly more powerful fighting against 6+ saves. They could have even dropped the to_wound to 4+, and the falchions up to 3+ to hit (to actually make them worthwhile) 

Edited December 13, 2019 by NoMaDhOoK
Clarification

[Turragor]

1 hour ago, NoMaDhOoK said:

Yeah the stances are really wack. This is stance comparison right now (for a unit of 3 models, all spirit swords) 

Maybe if the +1 damage was made baseline, and then the reroll all changed to reroll 1s to hit/wound, it would be better internal balance

This does make them slightly more powerful fighting against 6+ saves. They could have even dropped the to_wound to 4+, and the falchions up to 3+ to hit (to actually make them worthwhile) 

Maybe faqs, errata and rules in general will get tighter if gw uses tools like yours (and others)

I mean they MAY already have something like that going on but I think it's probably taking modifiers and base stat lines from different buckets and assigning points after a series of test games against other factions (and if any are already imbalanced, the teeter-totter effect continues) 

/edit 

I don't mean to imply the rules guys don't work hard more that I'm more convinced they create rules based on a kind of organic expertise they've built over years of products and experience rather than based on tools and maths etc 

Edited December 13, 2019 by Turragor

[Turragor]

2 hours ago, Sception said:

Whoops, I read your collection wrong.  You said you had two boxes of mortek guard, and in my head that turned into 20 instead of 40.

As it is, with the lance you're actually over by 20 points, with nothing easy to drop to get back under.  You could drop the lance battalion itself to get to, yes, 1900.  I still definitely recommend getting the endless spells, as endless spells are about the only option OBR has to fill points gaps of 100 or less.  Then you can either go:

Arkhan
Liege
Mason
2x5 riders
40 guard
2x crawler
nexus
all three endless spells

Or alternatively:

Arkhan
Liege
Mason
2x5 riders
30 guard
2x crawler
kavalos lance battalion
nexus
shrieker

Or even:

Arkhan
Liege
Mason
2x5 riders
2x20 guard
nexus
soulstealer carrion

All are, again, maybe not optimal lists, but at least viable enough to get a feel for whether or not you want to take the faction further.  Probably my favorite of the three is the last one that runs the guard as 2x20, letting you cover more of the board/occupy multiple objectives/etc.  Granted, that list makes the decision to go with spears rather than swords on the morteks a bit more suboptimal than it already was, but so it goes.

If you do decide to expand the collection further, my suggestions stay pretty similar: get a boneshaper, they're a staple unit, and get more morteks.  Beyond that, harvesters and stalkers are decent in and of themselves, and immortis are good with arkhan specifically, who otherwise has issues with getting shot off the table turn one before you have a chance to get protection of nagash up, but those are all pretty pricey units and I don't think you'll really be able to get any of them to work in a list that also runs Arkhan AND deathriders AND 2 crawlers, so at that point you'd be branching into variant builds instead of improving the army you already have.

Thank you once more! I'll move forward with the building and painting confident that when it's done I've something reasonably solid to test out. I actually just got 3 stalkers ( on sprue) cheap but can't think of where they'd fit in. It gives me the base of the option of taking 6 instead of crawlers in future for example. 

[Clewz]

Does anyone use Katakros at all? If so any tactics you would recommend?