AoS 2 - Ossiarch Bonereapers Discussion

[Hannibal]

Make the owner of my local game store happy again!

Hi all,

I absulutely love the Harverster sculpt, though I´m not able to build an army around two of them that I really like. The needs are:

• 2 Harvesters
• 1000 points to 1250 points
• well balanced force

 

Can you help me to find a good list? The owner of my LGS would be very happy!

 

[Lowki]

Got my Feast of Bones box last week. Although I bought the set for the Ogers in the first place, and wasn't OBR's biggest fan at first sight, once I got them in my hands couldn't resist painting them  

I am not going to repeat again what I liked and not liked about them, enough said about that here, but in general I think it was basically the "fat" look of their arms and legs, the unnatural grinning faces and the nose that made that I wasn't completely sold with them. Especially when painted totally in the monotone bone color, as what was done in the first pictures shared by GW.

So what I tried is to get rid of that somewhat fatty look by painting the parts that a lot like "melted" bone,  i.e. the plate armor of the legs and arms in another  non bone-like color, while still painting the parts that resembles normal body parts like hands, feet and spine as bone.

For the colors I have chosen the colors I often see on pictures of traditional samurai armor, like black, deep blue highlights and red.

This is my first take:

I must say, within the limitations of my paining skills, I am quiet happy with the result. I think  painting the arm and leg armor black did pretty much what I hoped for, and I think especially the mask was a great idea. I forgot who brought up the idea...but thanks! When I see the result I think it really looks a lot like the real masks, imagine what a more gifted painter than me can do with this and It wouldn't surprise me at all  if it was largely inspired on those masks to begin with.

 

9 more to practise

 

 

Edited November 14, 2019 by Lowki

[Major]

Looking for people opinions as I have 3 boxes and no idea what build to choose - Stalkers or Guard?

[Sception]

5 minutes ago, Hannibal said:

Make the owner of my local game store happy again!

Hi all,

I absulutely love the Harverster sculpt, though I´m not able to build an army around two of them that I really like. The needs are:

• 2 Harvesters
• 1000 points to 1250 points
• well balanced force

 

Can you help me to find a good list? The owner of my LGS would be very happy!

 

Two is A LOT for a list at that points range.  Not unplayable, you'll win some games, but "well balanced" and "40% of my army in two artillery pieces" aren't sentiments that really go together, unfortunately.  Because the fundamentals of that list are so skewed, you're going to run into a lot of binary games - either your opponents can easily deal with the catapults and you just lose, or they can't and you just win.  There will still be fun games that fall inbetween, but maybe not as many as you might like.  Frankly, if you're looking for "well balanced", you might want to limit the 200 point artillery pieces to no more than 1/1000 points.

That said, it's not entirely unworkable.  Here's a crack at a 1250 point list:

Spoiler

Allegiance: Ossiarch Bonereapers
- Legion: Petrifex Elite
Liege-Kavalos (200)
- General
- Trait: Mighty Archaeossian
- Artefact: Godbone Armour
Mortisan Boneshaper (130)
- Lore of Mortisans: Arcane Command
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: 1250 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 0
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 76

You've got some infantry, your catapults, a couple leaders.  That's about all you're realistically going to be able to fit.  Might run the infantry as 1x20, 2x10 instead to spread them out over the board more, but that's less efficient for buffs, and you'll be a bit shy on RD points, so I like the 2x20 personally.  Especially if you play games of this point size on a 4x4 table instead of a 4x6.

Regardless, it's a playable starting list, about as well balanced as you could ask with the starting conditions, and can grow progressively more balanced if you increase it towards 2000 points later on.

That might look something like:

Spoiler

Allegiance: Ossiarch Bonereapers
- Legion: Petrifex Elite
Liege-Kavalos (200)
- General
- Trait: Mighty Archaeossian
- Artefact: Godbone Armour
Mortisan Boneshaper (130)
- Artefact: Artisan's Key
- Lore of Mortisans: Arcane Command
Mortisan Soulmason (140)
- Lore of Mortisans: Empower Nadirite Weapons
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
Mortek Crawler (200)
Mortek Crawler (200)
Mortek Shield-corps (120)
Bone-tithe Shrieker (30)

Total: 1800 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 1
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 101

That looks a lot more 'well balanced' to me, and uses everything from the first list so nothing you get in the short term would go to waste in the long term.  It also has 200 points left over, a magic number that you could spend on any number of things, including:

• another support caster plus another endless spell
• increasing one of the mortek units to 40
• 3 immortis, to protect your support heroes from enemy artillery, and as an extra melee element in games where that isn't necessary
• 5 kavalos to have a faster assault element to hassle enemy ranged units or go after unattended objectives
• 3 stalkers for a slightly less faster, slightly more assaultier element that can also hop over blocking terrain
• a harvester
• even a third crawler, though again one per thousand points is already as many as a 'well balanced' list wants to run

[Panzer]

33 minutes ago, Hannibal said:

Make the owner of my local game store happy again!

Hi all,

I absulutely love the Harverster sculpt, though I´m not able to build an army around two of them that I really like. The needs are:

• 2 Harvesters
• 1000 points to 1250 points
• well balanced force

 

Can you help me to find a good list? The owner of my LGS would be very happy!

 

2 Harvesters is a lot for just 1000 points. I wouldn't recommend doing that. However at 1250p it would simply be adding another to my 1000p list so in my case it would look like this:

Boneshaper

Liege-Kavalos

20 Mortek Guard

5 Deathriders

Harvester

Harvester

Bone-tithe shrieker

 

You would even have 50p left for whatever.

Edited November 14, 2019 by Panzer

[Sception]

46 minutes ago, Major said:

Looking for people opinions as I have 3 boxes and no idea what build to choose - Stalkers or Guard?

Stalkers are more efficient, largely because they have a more narrow role - melee offense, with a bit of speed and terrain circumvention to help target that offense.  Their multiple forms implies they have multiple roles, but nope, not really, and even the forms are a bit of an illusion with one of them far better than two of the others at the same jobs those other two pretend to do.

Immortis have two jobs - melee offense (slightly tankier variant, but melee offense all the same), combined with taking wounds for heroes.  Like many units that can do two different things, they pay for that privilege by being less efficient for the points than units that do just one thing, and that reduced efficiency does hurt.  If you're just using them to beat on things then stalkers are pretty much always better.  And while the hero protecting thing seems really nice in an army that, like most death armies (really most AoS armies in general), is pretty dependant on support heroes to function, the fact that they're not super points efficient means that they aren't exactly amazing at that job either.  Is it really helping your army all that much to transfer wounds from a 130 point boneshaper to a 200 point unit of immortis?  You could have had a whole second boneshaper instead, with 70 points to spare.

I'm not saying immortis are bad.  After all, 200 points of immortis has 12 wounds where a second boneshaper only adds 5, and if you cluster your support heroes together the same immortis block can cover for multiples at once.  And if you don't need that protection, well, they aren't as good in melee as stalkers, but they aren't bad at it either.

And if you're really trying to be as competitive as possible, I'm not sure even stalkers are worth taking.  I mean, yeah, they're killy, but so are mortek guard and kavalos deathriders, and you have to take some of those to fill battleline requirements, so if you're trying to maximize efficiency you're probably better off taking that same 200 points you would have spent on stalkers and instead spending it on better supporting the battleline you're already taking, with maybe a liege or a harvester or just plain old more battleline.  At least the immortis's bodyguard role, while perhaps a bit points inefficient by comparison, isn't something the battleline units you have to take anyway already have covered.

 

Which I suppose doesn't really help your consideration of which to build.  The main thing I'd say is they're both perfectly decent, and while stalkers might have a slight edge in points efficiency, if you were really all that worried about points efficiency you probably wouldn't be fielding either.  So instead just build the one you think looks cooler, or sounds cooler narratively.  Read their lore descriptions in the book and see which jumps out at you.  Look at what the various battalions they're a part of do and decide if any of those sound like fun.

Personally, I assembled my first three as immortis, because I like the look of them better, and because a ceremonial bodyguard type unit makes narrative sense to me in the Null Myriad, my favorite legion, based on their silent, eerie disposition and their arcane flavor that supports fielding multiple fragile casters, including Arkhan himself.  My next three, once I get around to them, will also be immortis, for their formation, and if I get any after that it will be stalkers, because pretty much all the units in the army are at least playable - a big step up for GW in terms of internal book balance - and that really rewards a 'some of everything' attitude towards collecting a bonereaper army.

Edited November 14, 2019 by Sception

[Amradiel]

Lets play some theoryhammer! I saw this list online. Nagash did the heavy lifting (duh) but the guy thought that the Morghast archai where a point sink. So, if you would drop the battalion and the archai how would you opt this list? Or even a totally different Nagash list.

Allegiance: Ossiarch Bonereapers
- Legion: Petrifex Elite
Nagash, Supreme Lord of the Undead (880)
10 x Mortek Guard (130)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
10 x Mortek Guard (130)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
10 x Mortek Guard (130)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
3 x Immortis Guard (200)
3 x Immortis Guard (200)
2 x Morghast Archai (210)
- Spirit Swords
Aegis Immortal (80)
Bone-tithe Shrieker (30)

Total: 1990 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 1
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 82
 

[Major]

On 11/9/2019 at 3:49 PM, Scurvydog said:

Pretty simple really. Wraithbone basecoat, skeleton horde contrast all over, then wyldwood contrast on feet, knees etc. Then a light drybrush of ushabti bone. Lastly extreme highlights with wraithbone is optional, I will only be doing that on larger models.

The white bone is simply apothecary white contrast, with ceramite white highlights. I think the apothecary white is one of the most interesting paints in the contrast range, while all the variations of brown are super effective.

also what did you prime them with? That white bone doesnt look like it was put over top of wraithbone was it?

[Major]

2 hours ago, Sception said:

Which I suppose doesn't really help your consideration of which to build

Not a tall, this helped a lot. Thankyou. I will build 1 of each!

[XReN]

9 hours ago, Hannibal said:

Make the owner of my local game store happy again!

Hi all,

I absulutely love the Harverster sculpt, though I´m not able to build an army around two of them that I really like. The needs are:

• 2 Harvesters
• 1000 points to 1250 points
• well balanced force

 

Can you help me to find a good list? The owner of my LGS would be very happy!

 

I suggest you take this as a core and experiment, I think harvesters are amazing when massed 

Allegiance: Ossiarch Bonereapers
- Legion: None

Leaders
Mortisan Soulmason (140)
- Lore of Mortisans: Arcane Command

Battleline
10 x Mortek Guard (130)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield
10 x Mortek Guard (130)
- Nadirite Blade and Shield

Behemoths
Gothizzar Harvester (200)
Gothizzar Harvester (200)

Total: 800 / 1000
Extra Command Points: 0
Allies: 0 / 200
Wounds: 45

 

You may want to go petrifex elite or experiment with trait and artefact for Soulmason to make him more reliable caster

Edited November 15, 2019 by XReN

[XReN]

8 hours ago, Sception said:

Two is A LOT for a list at that points range.

You messed up Harvesters with Crawlers  

[Dracan]

13 hours ago, Major said:

Looking for people opinions as I have 3 boxes and no idea what build to choose - Stalkers or Guard?

i did the math couple of pages back. 



Immortis are actually surprisingly offensive, thing is though, rerolling the 3 save for stalkers makes them even more durable than immortis on a 2+ save , but then drop way down on offensive capability. (Petrifix army)

Stalkers are more choppy with -1 rend and damage aspect, but are then again less defensive. I think immortis are more forgiving in that they perform well in both roles and can tank for characters, but as stated above they cost so much that you could possibly have just gotten another character if all they are doing is standing backfield being ablative wounds for characters.

In the end I built my 6 as stalker cos... you know POWEEEERRRRR in Jeremy Clarkson voice over...

 

[JackStreicher]

I finally got around to buying one hero and a box of Infantry - though I won‘t start this army since you can‘t ally them into Legions and apparently it‘s utterly unfun to play against.

 

here‘s my first quick n dirty paintjob 

 

 

Edited November 15, 2019 by JackStreicher

[Souleater]

Why aren't they fun to play against? 

 

I have only played mine once  and only 1k. It did cement my thoughts that faction terrain should have a points cost commensurate with it's utility in the army.

[JackStreicher]

47 minutes ago, Souleater said:

Why aren't they fun to play against? 

 

I have only played mine once  and only 1k. It did cement my thoughts that faction terrain should have a points cost commensurate with it's utility in the army.

Yesterday I used my khemri units as proxies for a 1600 pts game and it turned out that OBR don‘t die (due to Petrifex and resurrects), the catapult got two lucky hits and took out his Hammerhal infantry General and the adjutant turn two and massacred his swordsmen (constant 10 wounds a turn). And he couldn’t kill any of my units, I just marched forth, buffing up morteks and using them as my main damage dealers and tanks 🤷🏼‍♂️ It wasn‘t fun for me or him, he just didn’t have the options to deal with any of my units (Gothizzar harvesters are so strong xD)

back in the „are OBR op“ section a Tzeentch Player confirmed my experience a few minutes ago.

 

everyone has to know for him/herself though

Edited November 15, 2019 by JackStreicher
Spelling due to autocorrect

[Panzer]

Pro tip: Just don't use the most broken combinations then? There are other fun legions than Petrifex and the resurrects aren't that bad if you don't go with Arkhan or double Harvesters or some such.
It's like in 40k a double Riptide drone spam list is not much fun to play against for most people, however my typical T'au list doesn't include a single Riptide (I use other bigger suits like Ghostkeels and the occasional Stormsurge instead) and only about 8-10 Drones in total and I have yet to hear someone complain about it.

Can't do nothing about lucky hits with the catapult though. Just like there will always come a game where they won't do anything. *shrug*

[Overread]

Most armies are either "OMG SO BROKEN" or "OMG SO WEAK" at launch. This is often due to inexperience on the part of the players playing the new army and playing against them.

You don't play against Ossiarchs the same way as you would a Skaven army or a Daughters of Khaine army. Sure there are some constants - taking out heroes/leaders for example, is a pretty much good move for almost all armies in the game right now. Opponents just need to learn how to work against Ossiarchs. 

 

For example, they are mostly slow. So moving your army fast onto objectives to get early scoring points can leave the Ossiarch player fighting an uphill struggle. Sure they might not all die, but they won't win by objectives so easily. Furthermore its learning about how to tackle them. Instead of spreading your army out thin, instead focus on a specific part of the map and use a combined fire/attack method to target specific units and models so that, whilst you can't beat all of it, you do beat a very solid segment. Ossiarchs can't bring back a unit once its fully removed from the table. 

 

Some players are more adaptive, others are open to the fact that new armies require a period of learning how to fight against them. Others give up way too easily and cry OP as soon as they start losing. The army hasn't even been out for a full month yet. 

[GeneralZero]

For me, despite I have 3 halves of feast of bones, I just changed my mind. No kavalos (the best and most versatile unit of the whole army), no riders, no crawlers no....nothing. Why?

1. because I have the feeling that several changes will come shortly to adjust the points/rules (FAQ...)

2. many (if not all) units are beautiful (according to my taste); so, even if I grab half of them I'd feel frustrated by not having the other half. 

3. budget wise, it is at least a heavy spending. For just half of this, I could finish my ogor army (with 3 sc! reselling some mournfangs...).

At the end of the day, I know that the hobby is a long term investment. Everything is at full price now. Just wait for next year battleforces or SC!, you'll get some nice bundles. All my budget just went to FINISHING my actual armies. Add to this that 2 of my armies get a tome in the next 2 month. (StD&tzeentch) ... And I'm happy with that (I have to learn to listen to my brain more often than my heart when it is about miniatures!)

[Scurvydog]

3 minutes ago, Overread said:

Some players are more adaptive, others are open to the fact that new armies require a period of learning how to fight against them. Others give up way too easily and cry OP as soon as they start losing. The army hasn't even been out for a full month yet. 

Yea I had to chime in on that thread as well, maybe too headstrong, but can't help becoming a bit annoyed at all the salt from players. Why on earth should these guys be more unfun to play against than all kinds of other good armies. They can't fight first or force you to fight last, they can't fight twice or do so out of turn or anything like that. Except for battleshock, which is a bit of a joke anyway at this point, they work as you'd expect within the core rules.

That means you can counter things, predict movements and make a plan against them, with little surprises, but if your plan is to just try to grind them down in brawl, then expect bad things to happen if you are not equipped for that. From my experience the usual suspects are doing that just fine too though, Ironjawz, Fyreslayers, FeC, Slaanesh etc can easily fight them head on, thanks to high damage and/or rend and/or mortal wound output.

Crafty opponents will be able to make their plans work reliably, but the ones expecting to turn up and just move models forwards and win, without even researching their opponents new tome a bit, will most likley lose, which is fitting in that case.

[Overread]

I think Ossiarchs force good planning on both players in the game. The Ossiarch player has to have a good plan because they lack the speed (and the speedy units lack numbers/board control) to move over the whole board fast. They can boost speed and use endless spells and other tricks to give bonuses to movement - they can push a single area; but they can't do it for the whole army at once. So they've  got to have a plan of attack and securing of objectives/points of control and work toward them.

 

Similarly the opponent has to work out the Ossiarch's most likely plan and then aim to counter or avoid it as best they can and maximise their potential gain. 

 

If both armies just charge over a very terrian light board and slam into each other than Ossiarchs are, many times, going to have the advantage. Because that's exactly what they are made to do - slam into the opponent and outlast them. They don't even really care if they get the first attack or not. A contrast to armies like Daughters of Khaine who really do want that first attack before they start crumbling. 

[JackStreicher]

43 minutes ago, Panzer said:

Pro tip: Just don't use the most broken combinations then? There are other fun legions than Petrifex and the resurrects aren't that bad if you don't go with Arkhan or double Harvesters or some such.
It's like in 40k a double Riptide drone spam list is not much fun to play against for most people, however my typical T'au list doesn't include a single Riptide (I use other bigger suits like Ghostkeels and the occasional Stormsurge instead) and only about 8-10 Drones in total and I have yet to hear someone complain about it.

Can't do nothing about lucky hits with the catapult though. Just like there will always come a game where they won't do anything. *shrug*

I am sorry but the other legion‘s traits are just bad or boring - really bad design to slap all „good“ buffs onto Petrifex.

 

I am not claiming they‘ll rule the competetive scene but they‘re ruining the casual scene. 
So why should I collect an army no one wants to play against? It‘s just DoK all over again but more bland.

Edited November 15, 2019 by JackStreicher

[NinthMusketeer]

A properly built & run Ossiarch force can be extremely unfun for the opponent because it becomes a game of "does your army have the tools to deal with this?" Some don't. And though it is not the fault of either player, it is going to make a match unfun.

[Panzer]

6 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

I am sorry but the other legion‘s traits are just bad or boring - really bad design to slap all „good“ buffs onto Petrifex.

 

I am not claiming they‘ll rule the competetive scene but they‘re ruining the casual scene. 
So why should I collect an army no one wants to play against? It‘s just DoK all over again but more bland.

That's a very binary way of seeing things but it seems like you have made up your mind already. Your loss.  

[JackStreicher]

2 minutes ago, Panzer said:

That's a very binary way of seeing things but it seems like you have made up your mind already. Your loss.  

I could also argue that it‘s your loss (of money and people being fed up with OBR). 🤷🏼‍♂️
I didn‘t expect much agreement anyway, it‘s like posting on a 40K Fan Community and bringing up arguments why 40K is getting worse - all you‘ll get is disagreement 🙃

Edited November 15, 2019 by JackStreicher

[GeneralZero]

1 minute ago, NinthMusketeer said:

A properly built & run Ossiarch force can be extremely unfun for the opponent because it becomes a game of "does your army have the tools to deal with this?" Some don't. And though it is not the fault of either player, it is going to make a match unfun.

This is often the case if you don't know/speak your oponent. Lets say, SCE (not OP at the moment), several armies/builds just don't have the tools to face a stardrake of 4 balistas.  Same for 2 KoS etc... If you go normal builds (fun, up to half competitive) , OBR is not that much more OP than good armies (i.e. armies more than or equal to middle tier).