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Ossiarch Bonereapers, hideously overpowered?


HollowHills

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4 hours ago, Inquisitorsz said:


BTW his list was 
Petrifax Elite (+1 save) 
Katakros 
Soulmason 
40 Mortek Guard
20 Mortek Guard
20 Mortek Guard
2 x Mortek Crawlers

Lol. If these are the winning-style lists, I'm gonna lose a lot. I just can't play let's that are (no offense to those who play them), in my view, boring. I like variety and the cool bits (as I see them).

That said, I'm not sure what I'll be able to squeeze in at 2K, because I do want lots of Guard and 2 Crawlers. :)

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2 hours ago, Sleboda said:

Lol. If these are the winning-style lists, I'm gonna lose a lot. I just can't play let's that are (no offense to those who play them), in my view, boring. I like variety and the cool bits (as I see them).

That said, I'm not sure what I'll be able to squeeze in at 2K, because I do want lots of Guard and 2 Crawlers. :)

Also, one of those mortek guard units was probably 10 less as the current points cost of the list is 2,080.

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2 minutes ago, Emissary said:

Also, one of those mortek guard units was probably 10 less as the current points cost of the list is 2,080.

Its 440 points for 40 mortek guard and not the usual 520 you would think. There is a saving for taking larger units. That makes it spot on 2000 points. 

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1 hour ago, Heijoshin said:

Its 440 points for 40 mortek guard and not the usual 520 you would think. There is a saving for taking larger units. That makes it spot on 2000 points. 

Dang, you're right.  Not sure why I forgot that this morning.

Edited by Emissary
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4 hours ago, Heijoshin said:

I think it's really important to give some context to this list though. He didn't just win because he used lots of guard and 2 crawlers. Out of all the lists, this was the only one that went higher than 3-2, despite many of the lists using Mortek Crawlers (I think 5 of the 9 had 2 Mortek crawlers included) and many lists using more than 60 guard (two lists using 60 guard also had 1 harvester). There was even a Nagash list with just him, Liege Kavalos and 70 guard. 

The most important factor in seeing this list place 2nd? Well, if you take this guy's opinion from this video: https://youtu.be/mKJQN9_Cp5E?t=6744,  Adam is one of the best players in Sweden, so is it really that surprising to see him place 2nd and 5-0?  I would argue that his personal skill is what gave him that 5-0, wouldn't you agree? Seeing as if we take Adam out of the equation, how did OBR fare, despite seeing lots of Mortek guard and crawlers? I get you are trying to show that you think guard and crawler "spam" is strong, which I am sure it is, but highlighting one winners list and going "look, see!" without all the context behind it feels a little disingenuous. Lots of other armies took a load of guard and crawlers and fared perfectly average at 3-2

It’s almost like when I’ve said countless times in this thread that they are a 3 and 2 counter meta army with the potential for an occasional 4 and 1 and 5 and 0 depending on player skill and favorable matchups that I knew what I was talking about.

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1 hour ago, Dolomyte said:

It’s almost like when I’ve said countless times in this thread that they are a 3 and 2 counter meta army with the potential for an occasional 4 and 1 and 5 and 0 depending on player skill and favorable matchups that I knew what I was talking about.

Actually I see mostly arguments about how unfun the ossiarchs make a game. I haven’t read anything about OP in quite awhile so your talking of counters is redundant. 

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19 minutes ago, Eevika said:

"Mortek Guard is easy just have a massive ammount of shooting or mortal wounds." A lot of armies cant do that by the way. 

I have read somewhere that they die easily to a lot of rend -2 or -3 damage or massive amounts of mortal wounds.

Which is not a weakpoint, just a fact all armies would struggle with (though rend, of course, has a few ethereals that don't mind as much).

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People are acting like this is the first defensive army in the game and the fact that every army is not a glass cannon ruins age of sigmar.  For me, I think a variety of types of armies is more entertaining and makes list building more fun as I try to make concessions vs one army to strengthen vs another. Now that there is both OBR and SCE, maybe you need to include more options for them than you normally would. Maybe not. Making the decision is part of the fun.  

95% of the negative play experiences I have ever had were listening to players blame "OP" when they lose. 

Shelved Slaanesh to sate the sore losers' whining only to have them re-emerge as soon as my new army arrived in the mail.  

Imo, it is the responsibility of a losing army to improve rather than a winning army to intentionally be worse.  If you don't want to actually try to strategize, maybe you just don't like the game and that's fine.  

 

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After having played against several bonereapers players and lists (~4 games now) I think the faction overall has its hits and its misses. 

 

The big offender is the cost of the basic infantry combined with Petrifax Elite (PE), at least on first games/read-through.

There is almost no point in running the other boneglades because of  bonuses from PE for the basic infantry (mortrek) which become fantastic for their points cost (the only possible exception here is crematorians. They may be capable for competitive play but the cheesier list with double harvesters for mass mortal bounce on death are FAQ'd out. I also overall I despise the wound bounce mechanic for strong combat rank and file as it is a negative play experience to kill opponents forces which is an integral part of exerting board control but I still feel this is a potentially slept on subfaction). Maybe I am missing some insane interaction in the other boneglades but so far they just seem very meh. 

This forces the use of long range spam (rare, rip KO) and/or mass mortal wound spam, which is rare as well, to try and soften them up. I considered spellcasting to deal mortals/debuff, however every single game I have played had Arkhan and the obelisk shutting out all spell based methods of damage. Even spells which on paper seem incredible for dealing with the reapers, such as vitriolic spray from Anvilguard, were unable to get through.  So only lists with ridiculously potent casting like Hallowheart flamethrower or DoT Lord of Change can cast reliably against them? Not a good option.  They are not particularly slow  (which people really tried to sell as their weakness) so they can readily hit or setup on objectives where the re-rollable saves, healing and shrugs while ignoring all battleshock (seriously GW just needs to remove this mechanic if they are going to trivialize it and stop over-costing units for interacting with it) become the fecal icing on the dookie cake that is this subfaction. Very negative play experience to have units 1 combatted while only killing 2-4 mortrek in return  which are resurrected the next turn. I feel the easiest way to defeat PE bonereapers is to just give up on trying to remove anything and just flood the board with very fast chaff to block up those units for multiple turns and score enough points to win while only removing models, which is a horribly boring play style for everyone involved.

The catapults are obnoxious but can be tied up. Harvesters are no longer busted per wording so I will have to play more games to see if they are truly hard to deal with.  Both are expensive points wise so I do not think they will be particularly problematic. I haven't seen stalkers or morghast yet either as they are appear to be flat out worse than mortrek spam. Katakros is expensive as hell and the playgroup OBR players did not seem eager to dump cash on such a points heavy model when Arkhan is around.   

Other than PE the faction seems almost on the weak side.  Overall poor internal balance seems to make this tome a one trick pony. I hope to be proven wrong.

Edited by TheCovenLord
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28 minutes ago, Eevika said:

"Mortek Guard is easy just have a massive ammount of shooting or mortal wounds." A lot of armies cant do that by the way. 

I know it's been mentioned, but I'd just like to re-emphasize this. A big chunk of armies have limited or no access to the obscene amounts of shooting or mortal wounds required for OBR.  When you can't shoot the harvester out or kill it with spells, and you can't out fight the mortek, you're pretty much left with running away all game and trying to desperately get as many scenario points as possible before you're ground under. You can do your best to make a game of it but it's still going to feel bad at the end of the day. 

It's easy to tell people that they just need to get better at list building or strategy, but not everyone has access to the tools required to handle an army like OBR. If you need to take a nail out of a wall and all you have is a screwdriver, well, you can try but you're gonna have a bad time. To me that's where you have the negative play experiences. When you look back over your game and can tell there's nothing you could have done better or nothing you could have put into your list that would have helped. 

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People talking like a 10 wound harvester is the most difficult thing to kill ever. The harvester only brings back models back if things die right next to it and a smart opponent then just focus the harvester. This happened in my last few games, it never made it to the end of the game, for example against a group of trolls, it got picked out by 3 rockgut while standing next to a mortek guard unit, they took it down in 1 go, while the Troggoth boss ate the mortek guard hekatos, auch!

The only thing which is very very (maybe too) strong about this army is petrifex legion alone. If not for that legion, this the OBR is a mid tier army and upper mid tier with Katakros + Praetorian legion. The big problem with Petrifex is not the +1 save alone, as this makes mortek guard incredible (but other armies have incredible units as well) but it makes many other units just worth their points, like morghasts and the harvester, which just rolls over dead without more defense. The real kicker is the command ability for +1 rend, it is when you combine especially mortek guard with the +1 save AND +1 rend it gets crazy and probably too good.

I can only hope for some errata down the road rebalancing the legions, but it does not seem GW wants to mess with that much, just look at DoK and Hag Narr  temple for example. 

Without +1 save Mortek Guard already fall by the wayside compared to other tough and killy infantry and without access to +1 rend their offensive output is also very average for their price tag (which is fine for a defensive army).

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Ironically Petrifex Elite plays a lot like I remember Warriors of Chaos back in 7e WHFB with their super tough infantry unlike anything before (except for some Dwarf units and later Saurus Warriors), strong artillery (okay Warriors of Chaos mainly got it via magic) and tough cavalry. Just that they add healing to it and don't have super killy characters.

Too bad AoS doesn't really have counterplay options like catching a super tough infantry block in the flank and such (catching infantry in the flank gave bonuses to the melee result, denied enemy bonuses from ranks to the melee result and denied the bonus point of armour for wielding handweapon+shield, plus the enemy had less models to attack back with).

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21 minutes ago, Scurvydog said:

People talking like a 10 wound harvester is the most difficult thing to kill ever. The harvester only brings back models back if things die right next to it and a smart opponent then just focus the harvester. This happened in my last few games, it never made it to the end of the game, for example against a group of trolls, it got picked out by 3 rockgut while standing next to a mortek guard unit, they took it down in 1 go, while the Troggoth boss ate the mortek guard hekatos, auch!

Depends on the army. If your losing a Harvester to melee units you probably need to bubble wrap him better with Mortek Guard (and keep more Guard in range of his rez ability). I've been working on my MawTribes and CoS recently. With Mawtribes about the only chance in hell you have of killing a Harvester is with the Underguts/Tyrant Trophy Rack/Ironblaster spam list and that list presents its own issues.  In Cities though, yeah, I don't think killing a Harvester is going to be difficult with things like Scourge Runner Chariots, Irondrakes, and Hallowheart spells.

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1 hour ago, Forrix said:

Depends on the army. If your losing a Harvester to melee units you probably need to bubble wrap him better with Mortek Guard (and keep more Guard in range of his rez ability). I've been working on my MawTribes and CoS recently. With Mawtribes about the only chance in hell you have of killing a Harvester is with the Underguts/Tyrant Trophy Rack/Ironblaster spam list and that list presents its own issues.  In Cities though, yeah, I don't think killing a Harvester is going to be difficult with things like Scourge Runner Chariots, Irondrakes, and Hallowheart spells.

What about a dozen or so frostsabers ambushing at the right moment with 48 4/2/-1/1 attack’s?

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23 minutes ago, Beastmaster said:

What about a dozen or so frostsabers ambushing at the right moment with 48 4/2/-1/1 attack’s?

Lots of problems with ambushing the harvester in melee. First, your opponent needs to give you enough room to get at the harvester. If you have to drop 9 inches away that'll be almost impossible. Second, since it's usually embedded in a mortek unit about half the base will be inaccessible so good luck getting a dozen frost sabres actually being able to fit and attack all at once. Third, even with 48 of those attacks a petrifex harvester survives something like 60-70% of the time. Then return attacks from the harvester and mortek shred the sabres, heal the harvester, and you've blown all those resources for nothing. If all you have is melee, your best chance is your opponent making a mistake and moving his mortek away from the harvester and leaving it vulnerable. If they keep it glued to the mortek there really isn't much you can do. 

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11 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

Imo they should change some rules just for the fun factor, not due to power or anything:

Mortek: Shieldwall only if they didn‘t move. Any way really so the opponent can actually try to outplay them. Exploding 6s only if they charged or have been in combat the previous turn (this way they‘re not a no-brain „I get all the buffs all the time“ push forward unit.

Petrifex: A Second  6++ deathless minions but losing the +1 save 

Crawler: 8 shots, 3+, 3+, -1, 2dmg

 

I really like your ideas regarding the Mortek Guard. Shieldwall only if they didn't move or when they get charged. And their double attack on 6s only when they're charging. I think that wouldn't hurt too much.

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3 hours ago, SevenXes said:

I really like your ideas regarding the Mortek Guard. Shieldwall only if they didn't move or when they get charged. And their double attack on 6s only when they're charging. I think that wouldn't hurt too much.

And then everyone will use kavalos instead... Mortek Guard are not a problem. The specific combo of petrifex and mortek guard is what all this complaining here is about.

Petrifex should just be reduce rend by 1 or keep the +1 save but only for models with 4+ wounds to fit their fluff. The command ability with +1 rend in melee should instead be something defensive, so 1 legion is not best but in defense and offense. 

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1 hour ago, Scurvydog said:

Mortek Guard are not a problem. The specific combo of petrifex and mortek guard is what all this complaining here is about.

I believe that the real culprit behind Mortek Guard spam is something far more insidious than the power of Petrifex.

It's the models.

They are just so easy to assemble, so cool to look at, and such a joy to paint that the super-positive feelings and hobby-worth reinforcement darn near forces you to paint a gazillion of them, and once they are painted, it would be a shame to leave them on a shelf.  Come on, GW, make cruddier models so that we don't enjoy them so much! 😁

Edited by Sleboda
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13 minutes ago, Eldarain said:

I would be completely fine with 3.0 adding costs for faction terrain. AoS has been very good in that regard with most things (Battalions costing points while the 40k equivalent distorted the game)

Please no. I love that the faction terrain is free in AoS. You never see any in 40k because it's just not worth it compared to buying more units. GW just needs to balance them properly.

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6 minutes ago, Panzer said:

Please no. I love that the faction terrain is free in AoS. You never see any in 40k because it's just not worth it compared to buying more units. GW just needs to balance them properly.

That sounds like an indictment of the quality of the 40k terrain rules more than an inherent problem with terrain points costs.

 

Points costs are far more likely to work as there are too many cases where them being free creates imbalance (as Krungharr pointed out in their Spiderfang Gloomspite example)

The nexus having such extremely powerful placement/size/influence just drives home the point currently.

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