Ossiarch Bonereapers, hideously overpowered?

[JackStreicher]

3 minutes ago, Elmir said:

It is actually the exact opposite... They are the most played faction by quite a large margin if you watch the LLV stats show, but they don't claim many top spots at all. 

Aren‘t they rather often in the top 10?

[Elmir]

Shootcast can have their shot at a good spot, mostly because it's very anti-meta build right now. And I'm sure good players can get into top 10 spots with them (and it will happen therefor)...

But given how often they are played, you'd expect to see them more often in top 10s than they currently do. 

That being said, it's also the most beginner friendly army, so the data is probably muddied a bit by a wide variation in player skill within this one allegiance. If you want a very good breakdown of the current competitive scene, I would refer  you to Rob from the Honest Wargamer: 

 

[schwabbele]

13 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

Aren‘t they rather often in the top 10?

They are, but check the rest of the stats in this post: 

 

[JackStreicher]

46 minutes ago, schwabbele said:

They are, but check the rest of the stats in this post: 

 

Yup, still a 45% win-rate is solid. (everything around 50% +-5% is solid), everything above needs a nerf  

[Charleston]

20 hours ago, Kramer said:

Try it. To have so much terrain that for top army lists like Slaanesh, skaven, FEC not being able to perform you have to exaggerate to the argument to such an extent it’s going to be ridiculous.  Terrain that creates avenues, block sight, and impact the movement improve the game. Period. And all limitations in space go two ways. 
kind of feels like the conversation I had a couple of times when AoS was quit new. Yes it’s easy to break it. But in reality, or more accurately my personal experience, it never happened. Same with terrain.

While I belive that it improves the game experience, I am quite carefull to say it improves the balance of the game. I´ve had several games against faster armies like Nighthaunts or IDK in which I was not able to compete in any form due to terrain. While I had to move around things and was really cut short in terms of moving and attacking, my opponent was free to pick whatever position desired. Especially in a game like AoS, in which movement, charges and pile ins are very important elements, beeing at disatvantage here means often quite a disatvantage for the whole game.

Btw, if you have any suggestions how to play around such disatvantages (which I belive shall be possible) I would be glad to hear them

 

[JPjr]

59 minutes ago, Charleston said:

I´ve had several games against faster armies like Nighthaunts or IDK in which I was not able to compete in any form due to terrain.

Interesting... as NH especially seem to almost universally be looked at like the red-headed stepchild of 2.0 battle tomes. This possibly leans into my somewhat inchoate thoughts here...

When you consider that a lot of those play testing these books,  within GW at least, probably favour more relaxed, narrative, narrative-adjacent games and have access to a hell of a lot more scenery that most of us could ever imagine having it could put the army's perceived weakness into perspective...

Edited November 6, 2019 by JPjr

[Charleston]

1 hour ago, JPjr said:

Interesting... as NH especially seem to almost universally be looked at like the red-headed stepchild of 2.0 battle tomes. This possibly leans into my somewhat inchoate thoughts here...

When you consider that a lot of those play testing these books,  within GW at least, probably favour more relaxed, narrative, narrative-adjacent games and have access to a hell of a lot more scenery that most of us could ever imagine having it could put the army's perceived weakness into perspective...

Well, it is hard to compare metas. Especially casual ones. NH fare quite well in our local group. My post was also never aimed to say NH or IDK are OP as factions, but simply that they benefit in a very big manner from terrain as they can simply skip it. We use rocks with 2"-4" height with out local group which means for my units a -4" to -8" to reach a unit  or a point that is behind a rock which simply does not apply to units that fly. This is a huge factor actually. Imagine your movement 5" unit looses 2" movement to get on that rock, only to be able to pass it in the next turn.

AoS is a positioning game, more than 40k ever will be. Things like the smaller role of shooting, 3" close combat deadzone and even initiative roll make positioning the key to AoS. Terrain is important to this and makes armies that ignore it easier to play. It is as simple as this and has nothing to do with NH powerlevel

[JPjr]

oh no I'm not suggesting they're overpowered at all, I'm just saying that the universal consensus seems to be that Nighthaunt are in fact pretty underpowered and I'm saying that it's possibly because people aren't playing on tables like the ones it sounds like you are, where attributes like Ethereal and Fly are a huge benefit and mitigate the factions perceived weaknesses.

 

[Charleston]

28 minutes ago, JPjr said:

oh no I'm not suggesting they're overpowered at all, I'm just saying that the universal consensus seems to be that Nighthaunt are in fact pretty underpowered and I'm saying that it's possibly because people aren't playing on tables like the ones it sounds like you are, where attributes like Ethereal and Fly are a huge benefit and mitigate the factions perceived weaknesses.

 

uh, sorry, than it was quite a common case of misunderstanding I agree with you on this point! NH have a lot of small perks and flying and beeing mobile is quite an important one!

[XReN]

I don't get why people are afraid of Crawlers, they aren't scary at all. Their anti-horde shot is nowhere near the damage potentian of some spells, or even Purple Sun. When you'll try to kill a hero with normal shots or slay model shot it's a gamble, you either kill it, or your 200 points investment wasted a turn doing nothing, I don't suppose anyone scared of this thing ever used Knight Venator - he only kills 1 hero every 10 games with his Star-Fated arrow and I used him a lot back in 1st edition trying to pull of a lucky shot. And to even earn back Crawler's point cost it needs to consistently bombard chaff with terrible saves for almost the entire game.

Not to mention that crawlers are quite possibly one of the most cost inefficient shooting units in the game against anything with save of 4+ and better, so what anti-elite purpose can we even talk about?

I think that 1 crawler is fine for it's utility, 2 is pushing it, 3+ is a gimmick that won't work in most circumstances. And without balistarii battalion they will lose damage rapidly even from taking occasional damage.

[Asamu]

1 hour ago, XReN said:

I don't get why people are afraid of Crawlers, they aren't scary at all. Their anti-horde shot is nowhere near the damage potentian of some spells, or even Purple Sun. When you'll try to kill a hero with normal shots or slay model shot it's a gamble, you either kill it, or your 200 points investment wasted a turn doing nothing, I don't suppose anyone scared of this thing ever used Knight Venator - he only kills 1 hero every 10 games with his Star-Fated arrow and I used him a lot back in 1st edition trying to pull of a lucky shot. And to even earn back Crawler's point cost it needs to consistently bombard chaff with terrible saves for almost the entire game.

Not to mention that crawlers are quite possibly one of the most cost inefficient shooting units in the game against anything with save of 4+ and better, so what anti-elite purpose can we even talk about?

I think that 1 crawler is fine for it's utility, 2 is pushing it, 3+ is a gimmick that won't work in most circumstances. And without balistarii battalion they will lose damage rapidly even from taking occasional damage.

Crawlers have 3 shots 2+/3+/-/5 That's 8.3333 damage per round on average before saves. It's very good output for the price and range, and even if they do take damage, you can heal them for 3 per turn with Arkhan/nagash/Katakros or boneshapers.

Compare that with a plagueclaw at 3+/3+/-2/d6 or 2+/3+/-2/2d6 vs units per round before saves, for 4/5 the price.  A WLC only averages 3.5 mortal wounds per round, making it worse vs anything with a 4+ save or worse.

Rocket battery? 2 average damage per round at .65* the price at rend -2 -> nowhere near as good unless the target has a 2+ save (or re-rolls).

The flat 5 damage also means that a lot of hero models are extremely vulnerable to them. If 1 wound goes through, a 5 wound hero is dead, and with a 2+ hit baseline, they shoot at a 3+ even if the hero is benefiting from "look out sir".

While on full wounds, crawlers are quite probably the best artillery in the game, and with 12 wounds and a 4+ save, they're also pretty tough for an artillery piece, and their range means they often aren't even an option for your opponent to target until turn 2 or 3, because they can deploy on the back table edge.

Vs a unit with 3 or 4 very expensive models with a good save, like Varanguard or Stormcast cavalry, their cauldron ability is extremely threatening, as with 3 dice, there's a very high chance of killing one of the models outright and doing more damage than a normal shot. Though both of the 1 time use special shots are highly situational.

Edited November 6, 2019 by Asamu

[Spears]

21 minutes ago, Asamu said:

Vs a unit with 3 or 4 very expensive models with a good save, like Varanguard or Stormcast cavalry, their cauldron ability is extremely threatening, as with 3 dice, there's a very high chance of killing one of the models outright and doing more damage than a normal shot. Though both of the 1 time use special shots are highly situational.

I think we might be reading this rule differently. You don't total up the rolls and compare them to the units bravery, you compare each individual roll to the units bravery. So varanguard and stormcast are completely immune to it, however it can absolutely decimate units of grots.

[XReN]

1 hour ago, Asamu said:

Crawlers have 3 shots 2+/3+/-/5 That's 8.3333 damage per round on average before saves. It's very good output for the price and range, and even if they do take damage, you can heal them for 3 per turn with Arkhan/nagash/Katakros or boneshapers.

It isn't consistent enough to justify the panic it causes, also using heals on it is an outrageous point investment

1 hour ago, Asamu said:

Compare that with a plagueclaw at 3+/3+/-2/d6 or 2+/3+/-2/2d6 vs units per round before saves, for 4/5 the price.  A WLC only averages 3.5 mortal wounds per round, making it worse vs anything with a 4+ save or worse.

Rocket battery? 2 average damage per round at .65* the price at rend -2 -> nowhere near as good unless the target has a 2+ save (or re-rolls).

Now lets compare to something else, like handgunners - a unit of 20 deals 7 damage before saves, but with rend, if they didn't move it's 9,33. Now lets take 2 crawlers with liege against 50 handgunners with general: it will be 22,22 against 36,11. So handgunners are better, yes they will get in range of whatever enemy units only in the 2nd shooting phase but they will stll outperform crawlers over the course of the game, they are battleline, they are capable of holding objectives and can defend themselves in melee, whille a crawler will be boned for the rest of the game when a cheeky flying unit inevitably gets into combat with them. 

Crawler might be a good artillery, but it's overall functionality is mediocre.

1 hour ago, Asamu said:

The flat 5 damage also means that a lot of hero models are extremely vulnerable to them. If 1 wound goes through, a 5 wound hero is dead, and with a 2+ hit baseline, they shoot at a 3+ even if the hero is benefiting from "look out sir".

Read my comments on using Knight Venator and consistency 

1 hour ago, Asamu said:

Vs a unit with 3 or 4 very expensive models with a good save, like Varanguard or Stormcast cavalry, their cauldron ability is extremely threatening, as with 3 dice, there's a very high chance of killing one of the models outright and doing more damage than a normal shot. Though both of the 1 time use special shots are highly situational.

I don't get it, cauldron can't do ****** against stormcast or varanguard and it's skulls will be shruged by good saves half the time.

 

So again, Crawler is primarily good because of it's range and by taking more than 1 or 2 you can harm your army's ability to respond to some threats. 
And that is even without going into the territory of how Stalkers point by point will potentially outdamage crawlers 4 times with the same buffs, and that means even suffering insane casualties they will still come out on top in raw damage, whille eating less RD points and having equal damage drop-off from getting wounded and loosing models

Edited November 6, 2019 by XReN

[Forrix]

3 hours ago, JPjr said:

oh no I'm not suggesting they're overpowered at all, I'm just saying that the universal consensus seems to be that Nighthaunt are in fact pretty underpowered and I'm saying that it's possibly because people aren't playing on tables like the ones it sounds like you are, where attributes like Ethereal and Fly are a huge benefit and mitigate the factions perceived weaknesses.

 

I've always felt like Flying is a very difficult ability to assign a points value too when there isn't any consistency in how terrain is set up/what is used (I know there are some loose rules for terrain set-up but I haven't been in a tournament or gaming group that actually uses them).

[Panzer]

46 minutes ago, Asamu said:

Crawlers have 3 shots 2+/3+/-/5 That's 8.3333 damage per round on average before saves. It's very good output for the price and range, and even if they do take damage, you can heal them for 3 per turn with Arkhan/nagash/Katakros or boneshapers.

Compare that with a plagueclaw at 3+/3+/-2/d6 or 2+/3+/-2/2d6 vs units per round before saves, for 4/5 the price.  A WLC only averages 3.5 mortal wounds per round, making it worse vs anything with a 4+ save or worse.

Rocket battery? 2 average damage per round at .65* the price at rend -2 -> nowhere near as good unless the target has a 2+ save (or re-rolls).

The flat 5 damage also means that a lot of hero models are extremely vulnerable to them. If 1 wound goes through, a 5 wound hero is dead, and with a 2+ hit baseline, they shoot at a 3+ even if the hero is benefiting from "look out sir".

While on full wounds, crawlers are quite probably the best artillery in the game, and with 12 wounds and a 4+ save, they're also pretty tough for an artillery piece, and their range means they often aren't even an option for your opponent to target until turn 2 or 3, because they can deploy on the back table edge.

Vs a unit with 3 or 4 very expensive models with a good save, like Varanguard or Stormcast cavalry, their cauldron ability is extremely threatening, as with 3 dice, there's a very high chance of killing one of the models outright and doing more damage than a normal shot. Though both of the 1 time use special shots are highly situational.

That might be true, however how is the damage per point? The Crawler is quite expensive and I'm not sure how expensive the comparisons are.

[SwampHeart]

1 hour ago, Asamu said:

Vs a unit with 3 or 4 very expensive models with a good save, like Varanguard or Stormcast cavalry, their cauldron ability is extremely threatening, as with 3 dice, there's a very high chance of killing one of the models outright and doing more damage than a normal shot. Though both of the 1 time use special shots are highly situational.

That's not how the special shot works. You compare each roll to the unit's bravery which means a unit 7 or above is completely immune to the shot. 

[Asamu]

1 hour ago, Panzer said:

That might be true, however how is the damage per point? The Crawler is quite expensive and I'm not sure how expensive the comparisons are.

The damage per point is still very good. Generally, it out-performs other artillery unless the target has a 2+ save, assuming it's still at full wounds. WLC are slightly better vs targets with a 3+ save or better, but are otherwise a bit worse. It does significantly more damage, on average, than something like Kurnoth Hunter greatbows, and at longer range.

2 Stormcast ballistas do ~3.1 damage before saves - which is pretty standard for 200 points of long ranged artillery; the crawler doing more than double that, making it only worse vs targets with a 2+ save, is pretty big.

20 Freeguild crossbows do ~13.6 wounds pre-save, so have ~2/3 more output per point than the Crawler, but that's at shorter range with a restriction of not moving, and they also degrade in output and take damage faster, and the faction has less access to healing. If the crossbows move, their output per point is lower than a crawler.

 

1 hour ago, XReN said:

Now lets compare to something else, like handgunners - a unit of 20 deals 7 damage before saves, but with rend, if they didn't move it's 9,33. Now lets take 2 crawlers with liege against 50 handgunners with general: it will be 22,22 against 36,11. So handgunners are better, yes they will get in range of whatever enemy units only in the 2nd shooting phase but they will stll outperform crawlers over the course of the game, they are battleline, they are capable of holding objectives and can defend themselves in melee, whille a crawler will be boned for the rest of the game when a cheeky flying unit inevitably gets into combat with them. 

Sure, but range matters. Crawlers have 36" range, while handgunners have a 16" range, and handgunners degrade and take damage faster, on account of being individual models, making every wound count. If one of those handgunners is a unit of 30, 1 crawler can do an average of 10 damage to it in the first round with the cauldron.

22.22 damage means 2 rounds of putting out ~18 wounds on handgunners (due to them having a 6+ save) before the handgunners can even get in range of them - after 2 shooting phases, the handgunners are pretty much a non-threat. ~36 of those 50 handgunners would already be dead, on average, before they start shooting if the OBR player holds back a couple of turns for the purpose. With Nagash's command ability (re-roll 1s to hit/wound/save),  Arch-Kavalos Zandtos's command ability (re-roll 1s to wound), or the spell from a Soulmason (re-roll 1s to hit), you can further improve the damage output of the crawlers reliably. The 5 wound general is also notably vulnerable to the crawlers, as if it fails 1 save, it dies, and with that save being a 4+, odds are good he dies on the first or second wound from a crawler.

Yeah, if the cauldron gets locked in melee, it's pretty bad, but it's not "inevitable" that a crawler will get locked down. Not every army will even have flying units, and OBR have a decent option for screening with Mortek guard.

Crossbows would compare better than handgunners, at ~55.6 damage before saves for the 50 with the general, and they have better range, so could potentially start shooting after only 1 turn against the crawlers.

That said, I'm not saying the crawler is OP, just that it's good, and there's a reason people are looking at taking multiple of them in an army. It's unlikely more than 1 even makes it into the most competitive lists, but that doesn't make them not a competitive option. 2 of them + arch-kavalos Zandtos seems pretty solid for 620 points, and leaves plenty of room for a solid core to the rest of the list.

1 hour ago, SwampHeart said:

That's not how the special shot works. You compare each roll to the unit's bravery which means a unit 7 or above is completely immune to the shot. 

My bad on that. It was a bit unclear with how it's written, I hadn't looked at it too closely.

[tripchimeras]

46 minutes ago, Asamu said:

The damage per point is still very good. Generally, it out-performs other artillery unless the target has a 2+ save, assuming it's still at full wounds. WLC are slightly better vs targets with a 3+ save or better, but are otherwise a bit worse. It does significantly more damage, on average, than something like Kurnoth Hunter greatbows, and at longer range.

Comparing artillery to artillery isn't a great metric, primarily because up till now artillery has not been strong, and it doesn't seem like Cities has changed that very much.  If you are looking at the crawlers base output vs characters, on average you get 1.33 wounding rolls on 3 shots.  This means that you really can only reliably target 1 character per turn (since it vs characters seems to be what the hype is about).  Sure every so often you will have a game where you get super lucky target 3 seperate characters and all die.  But realistically you are getting 1 wounding roll a turn.  Most wizards are going to be screwed, but even they generally have a 5+ or 6+ which pretty much lowers the odds even further to almost exactly 1 wound through a turn or just under 1 wound through at 5+.  This does not take into account ward saves, which while they are not universal among characters many armies have widely distributed 5+ or 6+.  What this means is that if the character has any ward save at all statistically you are on average unlikely to kill a character (assuming min 5 wounds) with 1 catapult in a single turn.  And if they aren't a wizard (generally meaning a 4+ or better save) you are looking at only about a 50% chance of getting the wound through to begin with.

I'm not about to say its bad by any means, but for 200pts it is not going to reliably be picking off characters in the way people seem to be envisioning.  Realistically you are also getting about 2 turns in only before its effectiveness gets decreased if you are fighting anyone who fears it and thus will be devoting resources against it.  Again this isn't a bad thing you are forcing people to focus in on it, and with 2 phases of shooting you will definitely have killed at least 1 hero.  And against low armour horde units or chaffe it seems particularly strong (probably preferable to going character hunting most of the time). 

What I do think it is, is a poorly designed model from a rules perspective, one with a super high variance where if it has maximum impact it is going to ruin the game for an unfortunate opponent.  I am not a fan, and don't think its going to be fun for anyone on the table.  However, if we are talking over the course of a tournament or spread of games I also don't think its going to be a classically OP unit either, though could be wrong.

Edited November 6, 2019 by tripchimeras

[Freejack02]

9 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

Yup, still a 45% win-rate is solid. (everything around 50% +-5% is solid), everything above needs a nerf  

Being the highest played faction and only a 45% winrate is pretty bad; as that table doesn't discount mirror matches. If SCE are the most played it's likely that they play more mirrors than anyone else (or at least the majority), which artifically pushes their winrate towards 50%. If they're still that low with (theoretically) the most "correction" to 50%... they need serious help. 

I'm not saying others aren't in worse spots, because they definitely are - but SCE are not "solid" right now. 

[JackStreicher]

Petrifex Elite Nagash

[Zappgrot]

3 hours ago, Freejack02 said:

Being the highest played faction and only a 45% winrate is pretty bad; as that table doesn't discount mirror matches. If SCE are the most played it's likely that they play more mirrors than anyone else (or at least the majority), which artifically pushes their winrate towards 50%. If they're still that low with (theoretically) the most "correction" to 50%... they need serious help. 

I'm not saying others aren't in worse spots, because they definitely are - but SCE are not "solid" right now. 

The more played a faction is the more likely that the win rate is poor. Not only is the chance higher the the players are new and just useing the faction cause it is populair.  If the faction is played a lot that means every one has experience fighting it. 

[Freejack02]

26 minutes ago, Zappgrot said:

The more played a faction is the more likely that the win rate is poor.

I just disagree entirely with this statement - look at the current tournament Top 5 in played % and win rate:

1. Stormcast - 45.8%

2. Skaven - 55.9%

3. Khorne - 48.7%

4. FEC - 58.1%

5. Slaanesh - 67.7%

[tripchimeras]

38 minutes ago, Freejack02 said:

I just disagree entirely with this statement - look at the current tournament Top 5 in played % and win rate:

1. Stormcast - 45.8%

2. Skaven - 55.9%

3. Khorne - 48.7%

4. FEC - 58.1%

5. Slaanesh - 67.7%

 

This proves nothing in either direction other then that 3 of the top 5 played armies are above average and 2 are below.  What he is asserting is that the more players you have in a faction the more it drags the win rate down, not that it instantly makes it bad.  It is just going to be lower then if that army had only 5 players.  Now is that necessarily true?  Idk you can't determine that from these stats.  In theory though the higher percentage of the meta an army comprises the more mirror matches you get.  The more mirror matches you get the closer to 50% your win rate is going to get dragged to (in either direction).   Generally speaking more data points also do not correspond to change in 1 direction or another, but instead simply to reversion of the mean.  But that only is true when their are quality controls on a data set, which our AoS stats unfortunately do not have.  There are no quality of play standards, or min tourney sizes for these events.  They pull whatever they can get data for that is 2 days and a certain min size I suspect.  This can effect the data in random ways.

So I think using just these data points above it is undeterminable which of you is right.  Statistically there would be a slight change the more people play it due to mirrors, but since no one occupies more then 10% of meta it shouldn't be huge.  It should only make the data more accurate for the most part.  However, like I said the data set available to us is not necessarily well representative of even mix of good and bad players, so none of this is necessarily true.  I think anecdotally from my perspective, between mirror matches, and looking at some of these win % compared to podium's it seems that the win percentages do seem to be lower in some of these cases due to volume (maybe a lot of new players picking up army because it is good), or in the case of something like skaven (which should be over 60% I would have guessed) maybe a plethora of options resulting in more sub-optimal builds.  But this could easilly be confirmation bias due to that 1 data point on my part and has no basis in anything tangible.  Regardless you would need to do some pretty steep statistical acrobatics to come up with a remotely accurate answer to this question.

All that being said I think this line of thought is veering off the main topic here (bonereepers and their percieved OPness) as interesting as it is.

Edited November 6, 2019 by tripchimeras

[Freejack02]

32 minutes ago, tripchimeras said:

The more mirror matches you get the closer to 50% your win rate is going to get dragged to (in either direction).

I'm aware; I already covered that in my previous post.

32 minutes ago, tripchimeras said:

So I think using just these data points above it is undeterminable which of you is right.

I didn't make any claims about the correlation of play-rate to win%, only Zappgrot did - I'm simply saying that the numbers don't support his random claim... and as a baseless claim it should be ignored. 

[Zappgrot]

13 hours ago, Freejack02 said:

I'm aware; I already covered that in my previous post.

I didn't make any claims about the correlation of play-rate to win%, only Zappgrot did - I'm simply saying that the numbers don't support his random claim... and as a baseless claim it should be ignored. 

I am sorry but

18 hours ago, Freejack02 said:

Being the highest played faction and only a 45% winrate is pretty bad; as that table doesn't discount mirror matches. If SCE are the most played it's likely that they play more mirrors than anyone else (or at least the majority), which artifically pushes their winrate towards 50%. If they're still that low with (theoretically) the most "correction" to 50%... they need serious help. 

I'm not saying others aren't in worse spots, because they definitely are - but SCE are not "solid" right now.