AoS 2 - Ossiarch Bonereapers Discussion

[Sception]

The issue with a stalker or deathrider or really anything-other-than-mortek-guard based OBR army is that the overall army trends towards tankiness.  Even our glass cannon necropolis stalkers are a bit less fragile point for point than other glass cannons, at the cost of also being a bit less fatal.  Our deathriders are a really weird sort of tanky cav, rather tough for cavalry but not as hard hitting as most, nor quite as quick.  This doesn't make them bad units - they're actually quite reliable at chasing off speed bumps, small flanking units, msu squads sitting on backfield objectives, etc.  However, if you build your whole army around them then they'll have to go up against the core of your enemies forces.  They're going to have to take big infantry hordes & iron hard elite blocks, and even combined charges of deathriders and stalkers are going to have a hard time wiping out entire core block units like this.  With proper support you still might win, but it'll often require a grinding battles of attrition.  That's just the character of the faction.  That who the ossiarchs are in their marrow, in their souls.

The difference between mortek guard grinding battles of attrition and stalker/deathrider grinding battles of attrition is that the morteks are numerous enough to be actually contesting/claiming objectives while they grind out these fights.  They're winning while they're grinding.  On the other hand, Stalkers and Riders have a bunch of wounds each, which means very few models for the points, which means that even if they eventually win a fight after grinding it out a couple turns, their opponent is probably controlling the objective they're fighting over until the very end.  So they're losing while they're grinding.

If objective claiming were based on wounds instead of models this would be another story.  If 10 deathriders had the objective capping power of 30 mortek guard?  Completely different ballgame.  Even if cavalry counted as 2, that would still be much more workable.

Then again, what do I know?  This is coming from theory crafting and a few proxied test games from way back before Covid.  I'd love to be wrong.  I think somebody was talking up a heavy deathrider concept a few pages back in the thread and I don't remember if they actually got around to posting any game results with it, I need to go back and see if I missed something.  If not, I'd still like to hear results from people actually running this kind of list.

[Sception]

For those who play Warcry, Warcom put up an interesting little pdf campaign for Ossiarchs vs. Lumineth detailing the fight between Eltharion and Arkhan at the edge of Hysh during BR:Teclis.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/04/28/bring-the-lumineth-to-warcry-with-free-fighter-cards-and-a-new-campaign/

[Btimmy]

On 4/28/2021 at 3:20 AM, Ulfast said:

Thanks, this sounds very intersting both of your views. I actually like the models and it´s intersting to play an "elite" force of death as they usually are more of a horde army in most settings. It also sounds that you can do diffrent tactics, all from cavalery charge, wall of undead soldiers, medium monster army and shooting. So thats a fun mix.   

Unfortunately this isn't really true. I mean it is technically true in the sense that if you wanted to you could run an all deathrider army, or go heavy stalkers with minimum units of guard just to fill your batteline, but are those builds good?

No, no they are not.

OBR currently has probably the least variety in list building of just about any army (other than perhaps SoB) in the game due to its reliance on guard and crawlers. If you want to play a strong competitive list of OBR, 99% of the time you are bringing Mortis Praetorian Katakros + two catapults which is already 900/2000 with no batteline, no spellcasting, and no other heros.

There are some meme builds that have found their way to the top table by dodging the good armies and bad matchups (looking at you Stalliarch Lords), but for the overwhelming majority, OBR's tactics and army composition is fairly stagnant at the moment. 

Edited May 1, 2021 by Btimmy

[Sception]

Yeah, if my previous comments gave the impression that there is a range of viable 'builds', as opposed to a range of viable units you can fit in around the edges of a singular viable mortek guard/crawler core then that was a failure to communicate on my part.  For competitive lists you have some choice in what hq and support you field, but the core of the list and thus how the army feels and plays on the tabletop stays pretty consistent.

Maybe you run katakros, with maybe one extra hero for additional support.  If not, then you still need rdp somehow, so you'll probably run 3 to 4 heroes chosen from liege, soulmason, boneshaper, or arkhan for around as many points with roughly the same job of providing buffs, debuffs, & rdp.  What you can't really do is run without spending a quarter or more of your points on heroes, or run a front line hero who is a hammer in their own right rather than primarily a support piece, at least apart from nagash.

maybe you run 5 deathriders, or 10, or some stalkers, or some harbingers.  Regardless, you're maybe taking a unit or two of something faster to grab unclaimed objectives & chase off msu units doing the same, though if you have to drop something you drop this.

maybe you'll run 60 to 80 mortek guard, or maybe you'll run 40 to 60 mortek guard with a harvester to make them last like 60 to 80.  Either way, the core of your army are these heavy infantry blocks that soak up buffs, brawl with the enemy's heavy hitters, and win battles over contested objectives.

maybe you take exactly two crawlers, or maybe you go for something unorthodox and take just 1 ot 3+, but you almost certainly don't take zero.  Your army is built on the backs of mortek guard, and crawlers do what guard don't.

Basically you can run a support unit or two of kav in a guard based army, but that doesn't mean you can run a kav based army and leave the guard at home.

 

Almost all of the units are playable, but that doesn't mean you can build an entire army or game strategy around them.  They're mostly playable as as support for armies that still boil down to mortek guard phalanxes buffed by some support heroes with crawlers hurling death over their heads.  With the exception of Nagash lists, which really are different in a fundamental way, the variations you typically see are mostly cosmetic.

All that said, I don't think its the worst thing in the world for obr to have a consistent play style.  It makes us predictable, but also gives the army a strong identity and flavor.  And we're still a young faction yet.  I'm sure will see updates and expansions in the future that could shake things up.  Again, imo the only thing standing between us and a brutally effective kavalos army is a rule letting the deathriders count wounds instead of models for capping objevtives.  And the underworlds warband implies the possibility of a future archer unit that could mix things up.

Edited April 29, 2021 by Sception

[warhammernerd]

Wow.

So, new leaks suggest ALL unit champions in AoS 3.0 will be able to issue commands from the new generic ones (stand and shoot, flee, defend +1 save and also attack +1 to hit). Which means we can expect some big FAQ’s to OBR, and might give more weight to us getting archers, i.e. we will likely be able to benefit from stand and shoot too and will therefore need a unit able to do this.

[Sharklone]

10 hours ago, warhammernerd said:

Wow.

So, new leaks suggest ALL unit champions in AoS 3.0 will be able to issue commands from the new generic ones (stand and shoot, flee, defend +1 save and also attack +1 to hit). Which means we can expect some big FAQ’s to OBR, and might give more weight to us getting archers, i.e. we will likely be able to benefit from stand and shoot too and will therefore need a unit able to do this.

God I hope this isn't the case.

combined with the other rumours, the only unique allegiance ability OBR will have going into 3.0 will be no battleshock and the +3 move. They would need to do something with OBR to make them unique or they will become super boring to play.

[Btimmy]

5 hours ago, Sharklone said:

God I hope this isn't the case.

combined with the other rumours, the only unique allegiance ability OBR will have going into 3.0 will be no battleshock and the +3 move. They would need to do something with OBR to make them unique or they will become super boring to play.

The pessimist in me says that with the command point generating system being pretty much the same as RDP, OBR will just be left with a shittier version as we cannot use any of the fancy new charge reaction stuff they put in. It would require actual effort for GW to introduce something to make OBR unique, and I don't really see that happening. I hope I am wrong, but thats where my expectations are at. 

[Sception]

There are a few elements of OBR rules that in retrospect feel like play tests for core rules going forward.  The way discipline points are generated is one.  The way our endless spells work is another.

[Heijoshin]

6 hours ago, Btimmy said:

The pessimist in me says that with the command point generating system being pretty much the same as RDP, OBR will just be left with a shittier version as we cannot use any of the fancy new charge reaction stuff they put in. It would require actual effort for GW to introduce something to make OBR unique, and I don't really see that happening. I hope I am wrong, but thats where my expectations are at. 

My guess is that for the tie over until the next battletome, OBR will have an errata akin to that of what Tau had when 9th Edition 40k released.  

Basically in 8th, everyone could overwatch. 9th came along and made it so you had to pay a CP to use it (and only one unit can do it per phase). But Tau can do it for free because shooting is their thing and suck in any melee. 

Im expecting something similar where we get something extra. Perhaps we get more points and can use the charge reaction stuff as a means to make up for everyone now having one of our signature mechanics. 

Edit: I should probably say that I not only guess this, but pray we at least get something like this (or some kind of errata). Otherwise boo hoo. 

Edited May 3, 2021 by Heijoshin

[Sception]

I'd like to see some boost to us if others get this, but I'm not too bothered one way or the other.  Mostly because I don't think we'll have that long to wait until we get a new book, even though our faction is relatively new.  Just a feeling I have.  Could be wrong.

[Heijoshin]

9 minutes ago, Sception said:

I'd like to see some boost to us if others get this, but I'm not too bothered one way or the other.  Mostly because I don't think we'll have that long to wait until we get a new book, even though our faction is relatively new.  Just a feeling I have.  Could be wrong.

Same. I have a feeling that Nagash and Arkhan will get new scrolls too. If Mystic Shield gets changed to +1 save like the rumours suggest, with those two boney b*stards being able to cast it as many times as they want AND GW wanting to avoid mass +1 save (RIP petrifex) AND the fact...

Spoiler

they got royally messed up in BR: Teclis

Then I see them getting new scrolls and an update to OBR. 

Also there was an image going around of all the factions and number of models. Slaanesh, Lumineth and OBR were "recent" factions with only 15ish units and the first two not long after got updates. 

Edited May 3, 2021 by Heijoshin

[Sception]

If teclis is used as an excuse to depower nagash into the 600 to 700 point range instead of the 800 to 900 point range that could honestly be an improvement to his playability.

That said, I don't expect significant changes to either of them to reflect BR teclis.  Rather just a lore update saying 'these heroes aren't currently active, but here are their rules so you can run them in a historical context.  Sort of like how the 7th and 8th edition vampire count books had rules for Vlad, Neferata, and Konrad even though they had all been dead for a few centuries from the perspective of what was considered the 'modern day' in the lore when those books were released.

 

I do expect we'll see some new units, particularly archers, maybe a sphinx-esque monster, along with general tweaks and rules updates to better situate the faction in 3e.

Again, though, this is all just feelings and guesswork.  We could easily be rendered nigh unplayable by 3e and be stuck that way for multiple years waiting for an update that never seems to come.

[jhamslam]

On 4/28/2021 at 8:36 AM, Sception said:

The issue with a stalker or deathrider or really anything-other-than-mortek-guard based OBR army is that the overall army trends towards tankiness.  Even our glass cannon necropolis stalkers are a bit less fragile point for point than other glass cannons, at the cost of also being a bit less fatal.  Our deathriders are a really weird sort of tanky cav, rather tough for cavalry but not as hard hitting as most, nor quite as quick.  This doesn't make them bad units - they're actually quite reliable at chasing off speed bumps, small flanking units, msu squads sitting on backfield objectives, etc.  However, if you build your whole army around them then they'll have to go up against the core of your enemies forces.  They're going to have to take big infantry hordes & iron hard elite blocks, and even combined charges of deathriders and stalkers are going to have a hard time wiping out entire core block units like this.  With proper support you still might win, but it'll often require a grinding battles of attrition.  That's just the character of the faction.  That who the ossiarchs are in their marrow, in their souls.

 

 

I will say this about 40k vs AoS.

AoS boils down to this - put dudes on objectives, make em stay there for 3-4 turns atleast.

This means a lot of fluffy units - Castigators, Deathriders, Vanguard hunters, doomfire warlocks etc will never see play. Because the two things you need in this game are either a. hyper efficient killers. b. Objective holders

Cus if you lose on primary points you lose period. 

In 40k atleast we have thematic secondaries that sort of tailor to what your army wants to be doing or how you built to your army. These secondaries score about the same points as primaries so holding points on a map isnt the most important thing (although it still matters).

so OBR cant make deathrider lists because the primary way to score is to stick dudes on objectives, and mortek guard are the best at it

[Sception]

A secondaries system could change that, and I do hope AoS 3e takes some notes from 40k (though hopefully not too many, as the current edition 40k has enough other hassles in its system that I still consider it the inferior game).

Even without it, these units can still be useful to your army, even if you shouldn't be building your entire battle plan around them.  Just being fast and tough enough to run out in the way of some big enemy block unit's advance, preventing them from getting to a central objective for 2 to 3 extra turns while your slower mortek guard take up their own central position, can make even a single, minimal unit of deathriders absolutely game changing.

[SilverJelly]

I start working on a Nagash conversion for my Samurai themed OBR army. It's a WIP but too stoked to not share how it's turned out so far. Please feel free to comment.

[Harioch]

@SilverJelly it's dope. Love it.❤️

I would have extended the head a bit given the size to make him more majestic. But I really like what you've done with the armor and adding that dragon.

It's Nagash...where is the big hat ?!

[Sception]

Very nice!

[Aeryenn]

Can somebody please post that typical tournament list with Katakros, two crawlers and morteks you speak of?

[EchoHavoc]

2 hours ago, Aeryenn said:

Can somebody please post that typical tournament list with Katakros, two crawlers and morteks you speak of?

Something like this 

[Aeryenn]

5 minutes ago, EchoHavoc said:

Something like this 

Thank you. Won't this list really struggle in battleplans where heroes are needed to control objectives?

[EchoHavoc]

5 minutes ago, Aeryenn said:

Thank you. Won't this list really struggle in battleplans where heroes are needed to control objectives?

I’ve not found it that bad. Use the crawlers to pick off enemy heroes. Kata is very hard to kill. Plus mortek with harvester support just do there thing.

[EchoHavoc]

It struggles more due to lack of speed and when there’s more than 4 objectives. 

[Sception]

There's variants as long as you have the katakros, 2 crawler, buncha mortek core.  Echo posted one fairly typical one.  Here's a few more:

With a mason:

Allegiance: Ossiarch Bonereapers
- Legion: Mortis Praetorians
Katakros, Mortarch of the Necropolis (500)
- General
Mortisan Soulmason (140)
- Artefact: Artificer's Blade
- Lore of Mortisans: Empower Nadirite Weapons
40 x Mortek Guard (440)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
20 x Mortek Guard (260)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
20 x Mortek Guard (260)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
Mortek Crawler (200)
Mortek Crawler (200)

Total: 2000 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 0
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 130
 

With some kavalos:

Allegiance: Ossiarch Bonereapers
- Legion: Mortis Praetorians
Katakros, Mortarch of the Necropolis (500)
- General
Liege-Kavalos (200)
- Artefact: Artificer's Blade
40 x Mortek Guard (440)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
20 x Mortek Guard (260)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
5 x Kavalos Deathriders (180)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
Mortek Crawler (200)
Mortek Crawler (200)

Total: 1980 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 0
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 126
 

With Arkhan:

Allegiance: Ossiarch Bonereapers
- Legion: Mortis Praetorians
Katakros, Mortarch of the Necropolis (500)
- General
Arkhan the Black, Mortarch of Sacrament (360)
40 x Mortek Guard (440)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
10 x Mortek Guard (130)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
10 x Mortek Guard (130)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
Mortek Crawler (200)
Mortek Crawler (200)
Prismatic Palisade (30)

Total: 1990 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 0
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 115
 

With more heroes

Allegiance: Ossiarch Bonereapers
- Legion: Mortis Praetorians
Katakros, Mortarch of the Necropolis (500)
- General
Liege-Kavalos (200)
- Artefact: Artificer's Blade
Mortisan Soulmason (140)
- Lore of Mortisans: Empower Nadirite Weapons
40 x Mortek Guard (440)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
10 x Mortek Guard (130)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
10 x Mortek Guard (130)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
Mortek Crawler (200)
Mortek Crawler (200)
Geminids of Uhl-Gysh (60)

Total: 2000 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 0
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 117
 

...

Katakros/Arkhan lists still seem pretty popular at some events, either with the pair of crawlers or dropping them for more respectable number of morteks.  Personally I'm kind of surprised by that, given Arkhan's vulnerability to the strong shooting going around today, but these are lists run by actual players who play actual games and go to actual events presumably with the intention to do well, where as I'm just a dude who sits in quarantine dreaming of the day I'll be able to play again, and when I do will probably mostly be running mostly fluffy lists in narrative games, so I'd take their experience over my own unsupported thoughts.

[Aeryenn]

I have obr for about a year now but only recently bought Katakros and look at possibilities. I'm surprised people don't play Stalkers. They've been my most reliable unit so far in obr army.

[Btimmy]

4 hours ago, Sception said:

There's variants as long as you have the katakros, 2 crawler, buncha mortek core.  Echo posted one fairly typical one.  Here's a few more:

It's it's interesting that people keep posting these lists with blocks of 40 guard. This is a terrible idea for several reasons, in my opinion.

First, in an extremely shooting heavy meta giving them an obvious target to focus all their firepower on means they are going to do so, especially if they are any good at the game. True, it MIGHT not be that they manage to completely wipe the unit from one round of shooting, but many of the meta armies will not blink at putting some 30-35 wounds into that unit. Sure you can bring 3-6 back, but you just gave them an easy target that also costed you roughly 25% of your army. For this reason, I think it is better to bring multiple minimum sized units of guard to force them to split their shots, and guard are still good enough in close combat to be a threat. 

Second, there are many multi-objective battleplans where you must hold 1-2 "home objectives," contest 1-2 neutral objectives, and ultimately try to take 1-2 opponent home objectives. Investing 440 points into a unit that will only be able to take and hold one of these objectives is asking to lose on multi-objective maps, as you literally are short on units to stand on those points and hold them for you. This is especially dire when your opponent has any sort of threatening deepstrike ability, as you can no longer simply leave your crawlers/kata/support heros naked on your home objectives as you push forward.

Lastly, any gamed opponent with fast units will tie up your giant block of guard with garbage units from multiple angles, forcing you to be unable to pile them in effectively, or even forcing you to run/retreat them to be able get them to objectives. You can argue that you would attempt to clear such units with your crawlers, but shooting happens AFTER movement, so even if everything goes well, you would be completely unable to move the unit for the entire turn. 

Drops don't matter as OBR doesn't really have the luxury of taking battalions, so n my opinion, a better list looks something like this:

Allegiance: Ossiarch Bonereapers
Katakros, Mortarch of the Necropolis (500)
- General
Arch-Kavalos Zandtos (220)
Mortisan Boneshaper (130)
- Artefact: Artificer's Blade
- Lore of Mortisans: Empower Nadirite Weapons
5 x Kavalos Deathriders (180)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
10 x Mortek Guard (130)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
20 x Mortek Guard (260)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
10 x Mortek Guard (130)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
Mortek Crawler (200)
Mortek Crawler (200)

Total: 1950 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 0
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 111

You can take an endless spell if you like, or swap the shaper for a mason to give the crawlers rr'ing ones. If you want to abandon magic completely, drop the wizard and take more guard of course, that would be solid too.  The general idea to the double down on the crawlers, giving them each an extra attack, and then allowing them to rr1's to wound/ or reroll all wounds from Zandros depending on your opponent. If your opponent makes you go first - Great, you get to buff the entire army and put the big hurt from a round of shooting with your crawlers into them. If they go first, they have to try to and split their shots between your smaller units of guard, kill a hero, or think about shooting the crawlers. No matter the outcome, they probably are now in range to be charged and they've opened themselves up to a double.