Ossiarch Bonereapers, hideously overpowered?

[swarmofseals]

Now that I have the warscrolls and points costs, I've crunched the numbers on everything. At baseline, it's not good. In terms of efficiency on both offense and defense there isn't a single warscroll in OBR that is even close to being good on its own. I guess the catapults are OK, but even that is somewhat debatable.

That said, the faction does have access to a lot of strong buffs so it may be able to overcome the weak warscrolls.

 

[Nizrah]

Yes, but you can buff them to oblivion. You have no way removing blob of 40 mortek guard with 3+ sv full rerolls 5+ then 6+ ward with 3 attack each, explosive attacks on 5 and rend -2 :). And dont forget harvester +4 model is not slain

[Lord Krungharr]

I have full confidence that Archaon will come to all of our rescues in the Slaves to Darkness tome!

[Forrix]

4 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

That said, the faction does have access to a lot of strong buffs so it may be able to overcome the weak warscrolls.

I feel like there are a lot of euphemisms in that sentence... For the record, I think the title of this thread is hyperbolic but I am concerned about how this army will turn out. If anything the extreme power granted by some of the subfaction (i.e. + 1 save army wide) makes balance extremely difficult as the value of the units changes so much between the subfactions and especially vs no sub-faction.  Also, if in 6 months, this faction is sitting at a sub 50% win rate (barring major FAQ changes) I will eat my own shoes. A 3+ save, rerolling saves, battleshock immune unit for 130 points per 10 is incredibly strong even before factoring in another buffs and model recursion.

[Overread]

Well they just beat a triple keeper slaanesh army on Warhammer Twitch. 

It was played out quite how people thought - the first part of the game was very much Slaanesh winning; then once the reapers made it into combat they pushed their flank hard and soaked up the damage and won. Granted there was one flank that lasted longer than it should for the reapers (lucky dice). But still they did win very well. 

I think one key that was identified is that Reapers are tough, but part of their power comes from other units in the army. Target prioritising is going to be key in weakening them. Take out the harvester instead of guard etc... So I think early on there will be some new learning on how to face them. Plus I think an opponent wants to try and hit them on a flank more than head on - try to whittle away as much of their force with overwhelming attacks so that they can take whole units off the table before recovery tricks can kick in to bring things back. 

[Dead Scribe]

May be time to sell the slaanesh army while they are still hot so I can invest in this army now.

[HorticulusTGA]

1 hour ago, Overread said:

Well they just beat a triple keeper slaanesh army on Warhammer Twitch. 

It was played out quite how people thought - the first part of the game was very much Slaanesh winning; then once the reapers made it into combat they pushed their flank hard and soaked up the damage and won. Granted there was one flank that lasted longer than it should for the reapers (lucky dice). But still they did win very well. 

I think one key that was identified is that Reapers are tough, but part of their power comes from other units in the army. Target prioritising is going to be key in weakening them. Take out the harvester instead of guard etc... So I think early on there will be some new learning on how to face them. Plus I think an opponent wants to try and hit them on a flank more than head on - try to whittle away as much of their force with overwhelming attacks so that they can take whole units off the table before recovery tricks can kick in to bring things back. 

Thanks for the report here and in the rumor thread. Can you please tell us in more details how it went ? (Sorry I don't have Twitch and wasn't at home this evening). Txh @Overread !

[Overread]

1 hour ago, HorticulusTGA said:

Thanks for the report here and in the rumor thread. Can you please tell us in more details how it went ? (Sorry I don't have Twitch and wasn't at home this evening). Txh @Overread !

In brief the slaanesh force took the middle and both objectives early in teh first turn and held them for the second; When the Reapers hit they basically broke the slaanesh line and drove them back and then wiped them off the table. The reapers did get one flank survive longer than it should with lucky reaper roles and bad slaanesh roles. However the core powerbase of harvester and morteks did well; whilst cavalry were a faster hard hitting force (even though one unit of 5 got wiped off the table in turn 1). 

Katakross was fearsome and the Slaanesh player avoided him as much as possible; leaving him free to buff the army and also steal command points which seriously ate into the Slaanesh players ability to react. In addition the nexus terrain feature took pride of place in the middle of the board; letting its 36 inch range ability affect most of the table (its likely going to be a popular spot for it unless the player on the defensive in the mission). 

The Catapult did some serious damage in general and helped wipe out two keepers early on. Though it also survived longer as it was on the abnormal flank where otherwise I'd have expected it to have been destroyed. 

 

 

The upshot at the end from the Slaanesh players point of view is that the reapers are tough and that you've got to pick targets very carefully to knock out their combos and support elements. It's also clear that reapers did well because they could heal/return if the slaanesh player didn't drive whole units off the table fast. So whilst in theory bringing units back gives Slaanesh more depravity generation; the fact that fighting last doesn't phase the reapers gives them the edge. 

Katakross stealing command points also proved to be very powerful, even if it only works a few times that can seriously hamper an opponents ability to maximise their performance. 

[zilberfrid]

Ah yes. Balancing a new army to just over the level of the most broken army out there. Always a good idea.

[Emissary]

27 minutes ago, Overread said:

In brief the slaanesh force took the middle and both objectives early in teh first turn and held them for the second; When the Reapers hit they basically broke the slaanesh line and drove them back and then wiped them off the table. The reapers did get one flank survive longer than it should with lucky reaper roles and bad slaanesh roles. However the core powerbase of harvester and morteks did well; whilst cavalry were a faster hard hitting force (even though one unit of 5 got wiped off the table in turn 1). 

Katakross was fearsome and the Slaanesh player avoided him as much as possible; leaving him free to buff the army and also steal command points which seriously ate into the Slaanesh players ability to react. In addition the nexus terrain feature took pride of place in the middle of the board; letting its 36 inch range ability affect most of the table (its likely going to be a popular spot for it unless the player on the defensive in the mission). 

The Catapult did some serious damage in general and helped wipe out two keepers early on. Though it also survived longer as it was on the abnormal flank where otherwise I'd have expected it to have been destroyed. 

 

 

The upshot at the end from the Slaanesh players point of view is that the reapers are tough and that you've got to pick targets very carefully to knock out their combos and support elements. It's also clear that reapers did well because they could heal/return if the slaanesh player didn't drive whole units off the table fast. So whilst in theory bringing units back gives Slaanesh more depravity generation; the fact that fighting last doesn't phase the reapers gives them the edge. 

Katakross stealing command points also proved to be very powerful, even if it only works a few times that can seriously hamper an opponents ability to maximise their performance. 

What was the contents of the OBR list?

[Dolomyte]

OBR have good matchups and bad matchups. Slaanesh is a good matchup. I think we will see them spike hard at a tournament or two while no one understands how they actually work and then they will fall to a solid counter meta army like deepkin. 3-2 regularly with a flash of 4-1 and 5-0 rarely. Which is a great place for every army to be. The dream is every army averages 3 and 2 or 2 and 3

[HorticulusTGA]

Thank you @Overread for the write up !

Do you remember, grosso modo, the OBR and Slaanesh lists' contents ?

[Panzer]

7 hours ago, zilberfrid said:

Ah yes. Balancing a new army to just over the level of the most broken army out there. Always a good idea.

About as good as judging the balancing of a new army after just one game on a stream. ^^

[Panzer]

5 minutes ago, HorticulusTGA said:

Thank you @Overread for the write up !

Do you remember, grosso modo, the OBR and Slaanesh lists' contents ?

Slaanesh had 2 regular Keepers, Shalaxi Helbane, two Endless spells, 3 Fiends, 3 units of Hellstriders iirc and potentially some other stuff I don't quite remember.

OBR had Katakros, the mounted named character, a Boneshaper, 1 Crawler, 1 Harvester, 5 Deathriders and some Mortek Guards. Also the terrain piece right in the middle of the board.

Edited October 31, 2019 by Panzer

[zilberfrid]

31 minutes ago, Panzer said:

About as good as judging the balancing of a new army after just one game on a stream. ^^

It's our only data point so far.

[Eevika]

Slaneesh running the best tournament list in the game vs random assortment of boney bois.

[Panzer]

1 minute ago, Eevika said:

Slaneesh running the best tournament list in the game vs random assortment of boney bois.

Not sure it was that random but also as already said before there was a lot of lucky dice involved. The flank with the Crawler was holding for much longer than it should have effectively keeping the Slaanesh player away from the other half of the board with the rest of the Bonereapers including Katakros.

[Tronhammer NZ]

I also watched the battle and the report above by @Overread is pretty spot on. 

Here are the lists:

 

[Kramer]

8 hours ago, zilberfrid said:

Ah yes. Balancing a new army to just over the level of the most broken army out there. Always a good idea.

Judging a new army based on one battle report. Always a good idea  

[zilberfrid]

59 minutes ago, Kramer said:

Judging a new army based on one battle report. Always a good idea  

Since I think Slaanesh wins about 80% of non-mirror matches, we'd need about 20 matches for any sort of good data set.

If it's balanced well with normal armies, that should not be more than 4 extra wins and about 15 losses.

Edited October 31, 2019 by zilberfrid

[Overread]

Lets face it the Slaanesh player didn't appear as experienced with dealing with the Reapers, so target priority and learning how to work against them wasn't as good as it could have been for them. This even affects things like deployment. Both players deployed to challenge both objectives at once, each one having a stronger and weaker flank in opposites. 

In theory both had the same idea - challenge both; secure one and then meet roughly in the middle and push for the second. 

Where it fell down was that the Slaanesh core army failed to break the weaker Reaper flank, which delayed them a full turn or more in bringing the keepers to the main Reaper army. In addition the Slaanesh player wasn't used to losing command points nor dealing with some of the combos in the army. The result was that the high resilience of the reapers and the relative lack of ranged power in Slaanesh all played to the Reapers advantage. The Reaper player was more able to hold the left flank in a lock and pick off the rest of the army in bits - chipping away at it and removing threat after thread and then moving onto the next threat. 

 

Perhaps the slaanesh player next time might have kept their army in a more solid core force, three keepers able to face down the reapers and target prioritize taking out whole units at once. With Reapers I think that's going to become a common sight that opponents focus in on a specific unit and try to wipe them out in a single turn so that healing/resurrection can't come into play (which the Slaanesh player did start out with - a keeper slicing 5 Deathriders into nothing). Rather than, perhaps, holding a line and hitting multiple units at once. But this may also be affected by how much support a Reaper army comes with. If they just load up on deathriders and morteks and take few support units then the dynamic changes.

 

Overall it was a close fight and the Reaper player could easily have lost if one flank had fallen and then the Slaanesh player had locked them in combat in the middle of the board. If the Slaanesh force had just held onto one objective for 3 or 4 turns they'd have likely won on victory points alone. Plus the slow speed of the reapers meant that they hit the start of turn 3 with 0 points to the Slaanesh players 7. So the Reapers far from had it easy. Indeed had they not been spread out and able to threaten both objectives (even if it meant the very likely loss of one whole flank) the Reapers would have likely won a lot of combat, but would have lost out on objectives. 

This plays into the idea that Reapers are strong, but have to be controlled in a smart way thinking about an overall game plan not just getting distracted hunting the enemy. Otherwise they run the risk of losing to the game objectives. 

 

 

Indeed the 5 Deathriders on their own didn't get to do much. Hard to say as a keeper is a very powerful target, but it might be that for a proper flank harassment unit you may need to go up to 10 Deathriders, whilst 5 remains more of a support unit designed to strike with harvesters and mortek guard. 

[Dolomyte]

That is also a suboptimal slaanesh list. Good but not broken

[zombiepiratexxx]

Shalaxi not killing a single hero model due to dice variance, a couple of failed charges too (was 1 inch short of getting Summoned Keeper into the catapult) didn't help either. Summoned fiends killing the hero rather than Shalaxi meant that the left hand objective didn't transfer (duality of death was the battle plan) also worked against Slaanesh. I know that this is the way that games go sometimes, but it could very easily have totally swung into Slaanesh's favour. 

Katakros stealing a command point every turn (4+ ability) really screwed over Shalaxi and the Kippers though. Not having the ability to fight twice and constantly being at -1 to hit was rough without factoring in the constant -1 to cast from the Nexus in the middle of the field. It does seem that OBR are an army where the output seems greater than the sum of its parts as the heroes and their interactions seem to be what pushes the power level of the army up, which is kind of typical for Death armies in my experience. 

[SwampHeart]

Does anyone also want to point out that you have Adam Hall (GW staffer, not a known great tournament player) playing against Tony Moore (of Warscroll Builder fame) who is always a guy in contention/playing in the top quarter of events? 

[smartazjb0y]

5 hours ago, zilberfrid said:

Since I think Slaanesh wins about 80% of non-mirror matches, we'd need about 20 matches for any sort of good data set.

If it's balanced well with normal armies, that should not be more than 4 extra wins and about 15 losses.

It just seems weird to acknowledge that "we'd need about 20 matches for any sort of good data set" while simultaneously making sweeping claims off a single data point. 

If you know you don't have enough data points, you don't proceed to start making claims off said data points. It's like claiming a dice is weighted because it landed on a 6 the first time you rolled it.