Nullius
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Posts posted by Nullius
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21 hours ago, chosen_of_khaine said:
So after many years of service, my Mannfred (and Arkhan/Neferata) finally snapped at the tail and can no longer support itself, even with my (admittedly mediocre) pinning job. Does anyone have any experience adding a flying stand or extra ruins to the base to support the weight with something that is the appropriate height? All the flying stands I have from are too short. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Use brass rod instead of paper lip for pinning and drill deep holes on both sides of the join. That worked for my Neferata.
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2 hours ago, Ajmaus said:
..Untill it's FAQ I wound play it like any other spell 1 and done tag the units then give them the debuff till the next hero phase
Yeah that would seem to make the most sense. The wording is annoyingly ambiguous, but I think your interpretation is correct. Very powerful spell, btw. Making a zone of -1 attack probably would have felt cooler and more interactive, but I think your version is probably right.
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Quick question folks (and my apologies if this has already been asked):
the spell Choking Mist. Does it tag every unit within six and give them -1 attack until you next hero phase? Or does it create a six inch radius zone on the table in which all models are at -1 attack for as long as they are within the zone. Because this dramatically changes how the spell is played and I have to say the wording is unusually confusing for AoS.
certainly a cloud of mist would seem to hang around one zone, but a casting value of 7 suggests the designers consider the spell powerful, which would favor the idea that it’s an instant effect, affecting every unit near the point of impact at the time of casting. (Though not necessarily units that enter that zone later on).
how are you guys playing this one?
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Try sticking to narrative play missions. The matched play scenarios are mostly designed with tournament players in mind, and they seem to quite enjoy the complexity. All three ways to play have their own, unique, play experiences as a matter of design. Don’t think of Matched Play with a seasonal campaign battle-pack as the default game mode. If anything, open play is the default game mode.
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Hey all, I’m wondering about whether or not to mount the Dread Falchions on my Necropolis stalkers. That 4+ to hit seems like a problem. The big rend and damage is nice but I feel like the guy is often going to whiff entirely. Same problem with Morghasts.
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I’m not sure where the idea came from that Dominion was undersold. The company wanted to avoid the supply chain issues of the last few months so they decreased the number of boxes allotted to FFG’s so as to allow the webstore to sell higher volume at greater profit. Boxes sell out: war gamers complain. Boxes don’t sell out: wargamers complain. What a perpetually Impossible to please bunch! Lol
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Having a hard time figuring out how to make Radukhar’s Court work. Obviously the points cost is large, and the units take up all of your hero slots with analogous, less effective versions of regular heroes. I feel like with the rest of a 2k list being filled with shambling hordes could work (particularly if there are more command points available in the new edition), but this seems extremely slow moving and difficult to maneuver aggressively. Has anyone found a good use for this massive, 700+ point “unit?”
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I feel like there is something very strange about the whole death rattle section of this book. The Warscrolls aren’t very good, but neither are they priced as expendable speed bumps. Only the skeletons have the resurrection rule that seems like all the death rattle units should have had, and the Wight King’s command ability doesn’t make sense. I see an faq for these units very soon. If black knights and grave guard stood back up upon activation they might actually be decent as trouble-maker units. Legion of Blood’s focus on the most confusing warscrolls in the book makes it a confusing allegiance.
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I think battle standard bearers are about to be a thing. Models with the totem keyword will give you a bunch of bonuses relating to command points and will form the linchpin of your battle line.
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6 hours ago, Kaleb Daark said:
Moving aside for one moment.
When lockdown ends the gw stores will operating on a different model moving forward even after all restrictions and social distancing regulation is lifted.
moving forward the stores will still do intro games and intro painting, but you can forget about using your local store for a game or to sit there doing hobby for an afternoon.
the whole move is to maximise the retail rather than community side, which currently they (gw) would prefer you to do at away from stores.
there isn’t a timeframe for this- essentially how long is a piece of string.
I was talking to a gw store manager today who is also a good friend and so this was from the horses mouth.
He was keen to emphasise that this strategy is all about ensuring the retail spaces are as profitable as possible in order to recruit new blood into the hobby and increase profile post pandemic.
anyway... back to blood suckers and centauroids looking at a sleeping mountain..
yeah and I heard they are getting rid of slaanesh because it’s not kid-friendly and then after they make female space marines Games Workshop is getting bought by hasbro and then going bankrupt!!! LOL
This is not even slightly true. Just more nonsense. The stores will be doing demos only until the restrictions on capacity are lifted nationwide, as is perfectly logical and rational. There is a clear series of steps leading to the end goal of the shops returning to normal.
It is comical is how frothy everyone is getting over this clearly silly idea.
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I believe each battle round should have one shooting phase right after endless spells are moved, and that all shooting units on the table should fire in alternating fashion, starting with the player who is taking the second turn in the battle round.
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19 hours ago, Sception said:
No, these are not specifically vampire werewolves. Rather, all warhammer vampires have maddened feral bestial forms with wolf and bat like features. They can take on aspects of these forms to take advantage of greater strength, flight, enhanced senses, & various other supernatural abilities, but at the risk of losing their sanity and the ability to return to their human forms. They forcibly revert to these forms when starved of fresh humanoid lifeblood. Vargheists, varghulfs, ghoul kings in general are all examples of this to various degrees. It's the physical manifestation of the inhuman, predatory nature of the Soulblight curse, the inescapable truth that the entire vampiric race was created by Nagash's power and will not to rule over the living but instead to hunt them to extinction.
Well said. People are kind of spergy about the fact that Warhammer doesn’t follow the i.p. for Twilight or the World of Darkness, forgetting that Warhammer predates both of those ip’s. Warhammer vampires always borrowed from old Eastern European folklore. The name of the old shape shifting bloodline that Ushoran founded and that eventually became the feral vampires of the flesh eater courts was Strigoi:
From Wikipedia
Strigoi in Romanian mythology are troubled spirits that are said to have risen from the grave. They are attributed with the abilities to transform into an animal, become invisible, and to gain vitality from the blood of their victims.
Neferata and her bloodline often transformed into cats, from house cats to huge predatory cat.
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22 minutes ago, Scurvydog said:
Ah the Soul Reaper, I got one in a box for over a year now, never bothered putting it together...
Haha me neither. It is such a beautiful model, though. I suspect the secret of the soul reaper is that 3rd edition AoS will have a 500 point game-mode like 40k’s combat patrol, and that models like the SoulReaper, or even Eltharion are mostly Intended to be HQ’s for use in those small games.
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1 hour ago, Sception said:
So, anyway, yeah, infantry liege would be cool, and this big tall thing with an ax looks like it could be that. Iirc though, there was a mortisan rune on that axe in the rumor engine pic, so maybe it's another redundant and unwanted melee wizard to join Vokmortian and the Soulreaper collecting dust on the display shelf.
Well I’d say it’s very likely a named-character SoulReaper, given the Mortisan cartouche on the axe and the head dress which is the same head dress as on the soul-reaper.
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A PRISON OF BONE
Careful dissection and dismantling of specimens in my private laboratory has revealed that beneath the apparently skeletal exterior of the BoneReaper is a mechanism of fiendish sophistication.
Some notes before we begin: BoneReapers are, as belied by their exceedingly robust appearance, in large part hollow! They are exceedingly sturdy but also much lighter-weight than they appear, lending them a swiftness we rarely associate with the undead. The form of the BoneReaper is superficially that of a skeleton, but this in itself is ceremonial. Certainly the armies of the Lord of Undeath might have taken a form more macabre and bizarre than it is healthy to contemplate, so we might be surprised that these works of artifice are always roughly humanoid is size and body plan. This is not coincidental, after all the FORM of the skeleton (whatever it’s subtle variations) is as Sacred to the great necromancer as the form of a hammer is to mighty Sigmar Above! But a skeleton is also a powerful locus of death magic in it’s own right. The astromanic symbolism of the walking dead is a critical part of the symbolic framework. We might refer to this symbolic framework as the first magical component in the bonereaper’s construction.
After disassembly and some careful consideration it might be stated that an Ossiarch legionary consists largely of five components working in harmony. The first is it’s above mentioned symbolic and morbid morphology, which inspires terror and draws the wind of shyish like a lodestone draws iron filings.Secondly, Starting at the device’s core, we have a skeleton very much like the skeleton of a human, aelf, or duardin. It is cast in actual once-living bone, seemingly rendered down and reformed to purpose with no evidence of physical tooling. There are clever points of superior leverage that would lend such a skeleton great strength in the flesh, and some bones interface in hinges, sockets, and piston-like structures which no purely natural process could conceivably grow. Furthermore, alchemical treatments which would surely kill any living being have infused the core, hereafter called the endoskeleton, with great tensile and compressive strength, having an almost metallic quality and the dark hue of ancient fossil. All these elegant refinements notwithstanding, the endoskeleton is very much comparable in dimension and proportion to the skeleton of a mortal man. This is critical, for it will be a mortal spirit, or a small host of them at least, that propels this skeleton along and without this harmony of form such an animation might prove awkward or even impossible.
Thirdly, there is a hollow space where a mortal body might contain muscle, sinew, humor, and organ. For an active BoneReaper, this hollow is filled with unsubstantial ethereal flesh, pressed flush to the endoskeleton in a skin of dark sorcery. The spirit stuff races through and circulates through the hollow spaces of the body, animating the endoskeleton in the same way that necromantic arts could animate the actual skeleton of a mortal corpus. The endoskeletal head of the BoneReaper, although without a nose mouth or analogue to a jaw, is still very much a skull. It allows a high, hollow chamber and vantage for the spirit stuff of the bonereaper to stare out through two hollow eye sockets, giving the beings the characteristic glowing eyes often reported by our heroic guardsmen on the field of battle. This glow is doubtless the formless ghiest-stuff of the BoneReaper shining through from the interior skull.Fourthly, wrapped around this interior hollow is a lightweight and artfully sculpted framework, hereafter referred to as the exoskeleton. The exoskeleton is of a far more flexible material than the endoskeleton and is a fixed to the endoskeleton with alchemical welds accomplished by no art I dare comprehend. This exoskeleton has much in common with ordinary bone, being mostly pale in color and containing hollows for organs, channels for absent blood vessels, and voids where sinew might attach. This is mostly ceremonial or vestigial however as none of these structures exist on the exterior of the creature. Furthermore BoneReapers are typified by peculiar fans, phalanges, and tentacle-like protrusions of bone which may be-in part artistic follies, or may be essential accumulators of deathly aetheric energy necessary to drive the creature relentlessly forward regardless of prevailing magical winds. I feel these follies are likely both at once, a melding of the bonewright’s art and the necromancer’s science!
Most artfully, a sculpted death mask, as individual to each BoneReaper and as distinct from the next as your face is from mine, is locked across and welded to the interior featureless skull like a muzzle. I believe the function of these exterior masks is, in part, to distinguish one of these creations from the next. Alternatively, these death masks, which are frozen in various expressions of rage, grief, or even mordant and sardonic joy may reflect the humors of the composite being constrained within and help to bind them to the corpus. Most likely these death masks are simply intended to terrify us, which -having seen them closer than most- I can attest they certainly do.The primary mechanical function of the exoskeleton is to protect the hollows occupied by the interior Ghiest form, to powerfully reinforce the endoskeleton in a composite action, and -most subtly of all- to bind the ghiest form of the BoneReaper tight to the endoskeleton -preventing its escape by sealing the creature like a wax seal on a bottle. The interior surfaces of this exoskeleton have subtle curses engraved into them, forbidding the passage of spirit matter. The spirit of the BoneReaper is thus trapped, as the string of a viola is trapped in tension between its two ends. Between the fixed spiritual surfaces of the exo and endoskeletons a powerful spiritual pressure builds up, providing the explosive strength of the fully animated creature.
Why, you might ask, should such efforts be made to trap a spirit? Well I have surmised that this has to do with the peculiarities of the thaumaturgical design of the ghiest itself. Not only is this being presumed to be unrelated to the bone used in its physical construction (and hence having no sympathetic connection beyond the osseous material and symbolic form), but I theorize there are MULTIPLE different spiritual essences all trapped together in this spiritual prison. Rather than being at odds, however, these fragments of once-living beings are ALSO welded together by some act of necromancy so subtle and diabolical I dare not consider it’s particulars. That said, without the cage of the body, these disparate and mutilated souls would certainly disintegrate and flee to their respective final resting places if not for the cage of the Bonereaper’s body and for one final terrifying component.on each BoneReaper is affixed a black gemstone of purest shade glass, an extravagance so profound, sourcing and creating just a handful of these mechanisms could impoverish the city of Hallowheart! Somehow the great necromancer has fist-sized gems of cut shade glass enough to build legions! And the function of the shade glass? It’s position and orientation are the key.
the cut of the gem orients the reflecting crown of the gem inward, affixed to the chest of the creature. The lightning-rod pavilion of the gem faces outwards and conducts aetheric power directly into the creatures hollow interior, but the flat reflecting surface of the gem’s crown, facing directly Into the chest cavity, is where the sinister miracle happens.
I theorize that the shade glass is the ultimate anchor for the mutilated spirit of the BoneReaper, a spiritual gravity so intense that escape is impossible -and indeed- if the ghiest form should ever be so weakened that the bonereaper’s effectiveness be compromised, it’s weakness leaves it powerless against the spiritual gravity of the shadeglass thus causing it to be drawn immediately and with violent force back into the reflecting interior face of the gem. Thus, even if the exoskeleton is sufficiently damaged to allow the animating spirit to begin to dissipate, this loss in spiritual pressure immediately and violently draws the hapless composite soul back into the oubliette of the shadeglass. A prison within a prison, if you will, where the soul can wait in bondage for the body to be remade and sent back into battle again. Ingenious! And terrible to imagine!Thus we have a composite consisting of a stiff interior Skeleton encapsulated by and welded to a flexible exterior skeleton, containing between them the trammeled and mutilated spirits of many mortal beings and anchored to a reflecting surface of shadeglass sunken into the creature’s thorax or skull -rending them effectively immortal but also eternally imprisoned.
How can we possibly defeat such awful creations of dark magic?! THAT, my dear magister, is the subject of the next chapter.
...to be continued.
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...cont’d
A TAXONOMY OF DEATH
It is a matter of little difficulty for a mage versed in the arts of death magic to anchor a vortex of wind from far-off shyish in the remains of a dead thing. A house of ill reputation, for example can act as a lodestone for the aether of far-off shyish. A rose clipped from the bush, or a timepiece does equally Well. Indeed, any symbol of death can act as such an anchor. No object pulls so hard on the winds of shyish, however, than the remains of the unsanctified dead.
The most elementary, vulgar, and vile act of necromancy is to use this wind and bind it to flesh so as to make it dance as some macabre marionette by the will of the magician. Of course this crude manifestation of power is no more lasting than the willpower, available concentration, and available storehouse of motive power possessed by the wizard to created it. A skeleton so animated is likely to collapse as soon as the mage’s mind wanders. A deadwalker will last rather longer, as thew and sinew and organ are semi-intact and prevent the bones from disintegrating. But even these putrid creations are merely a temporary cantrip, and liable to collapse without deeper sorcery to sustain them.
The next class of walking dead takes advantage of the mortal soul as a vessel for necromantic energy. All souls act as retransmission and storage media for the various aethers of the Mortal Realms, and the balance of such humors in the soul’s mechanism does much to dictate the shape of the mortal in question. A nearly departed soul in anguish can be fastened, with some difficulty, into a physical object wherein it acts as a repository for motive energy and will. Properly prepared, this vortex of power will begin to sustain itself without the necromancer’a attention, as a fire in the hearth continues to burn for some time unattended.
Such a curse is infinitely more lasting if the spirit in question is bound into the remains of its OWN once mortal body, the axioms of sympathetic death magic being as they are. (Ref. The Purple Sums of Xereus, Xereus Amaranthine -chapter 4, pg 33,472) These sorts of undead can, depending on the severity of the curse and the prevailing winds of magic, last for a very long time indeed. Some such curses, such as the dreaded Soulblight curse, does not even need a magical source of power to persist -eager as they are to drink deep of the living energies of their victims to power their curse eternally.
The blasted Nighthaunt, of course, have no need for a physical body, but are anchored only lightly to the realm they haunt. Largely unable batten themselves on the humors of mortals, the Nighthaunt are largely an elemental force that waxes strong as the winds of shyish do so, and then retreat to their bolt holes to smoulder like spiritual embers until sufficient aetheric power present itself again. Only beings able to aggregate and harness enormous aetheric power are able to wield the Nighthaunt as a mortal man would wield an army, and such beings are thankfully rare, and so a haunting is mostly a rare and desultory thing (notwithstanding catastrophes like the so called “Necroquake”)
The Body of a so-called Bonereaper is none of these, and yet partakes of all of them in part...
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Musings upon the structure and function of the walking dead of Fallen Ossia
—From Cornelius VonSilence - Ipissimus and Dean of Shyishian Artes, frater of the most honorable and Esteemed College of Hallowheart - to Lord Commander, Magister of Hammerhal and a judiciary representative of the Stormcast Eternals during this time of tribulations, Aventus Firestrike.
Greetings Magister! It has been too long since we have spoken face to face, and so I resort to this missive as a means of sharing the fruits of my latest research. I hope it finds you well and that the samples I have provided have arrived undamaged. (And inanimate!)
It is well established that the walking dead of Ossia, the so-called Ossiarch Empire of Katakros the Undefeated, march in service to the God of Death and Lord of Nagashizzar. Furthermore it is a well established fact that the once peaceful shades of this pastoral underworld have been remade into a weapon of war more formidable and puissant than any mere shambling by-blow of aetherstorm or mad sorcerer’s art.
As coal can be melded with iron to forge steel, so too are these magnificent and terrible creatures an alloy of multiple necromantic manifestations and curses, greater than the strength of their constituent parts.
What, then, are these constituents I endeavored to discover? How is the grim corpus of the so-called “BoneReaper” constructed and by what fell arts is it given the semblance of life and, indeed, terrible intellect and skill? This is the subject of this missive.
At the cost of a great many fine young men and women, I have procured the inert and fragmentary remains of no less than eight of these terrible creatures from various battlefields near the tragedy of the Harrowgate in the Waning of last year., and I have begun to discern the answers to some of these questions. These answers have both terrified me, and frankly delighted me with their monstrous ingenuity!
.....more to follow.
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I do love the idea of the blissbarb archers or what have you firing arrows seemingly ineffectively at multiple units just causing a bit of damage here and there but wracking up a ton of pain and suffering in the process. That feels cool.
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This mechanic for depravity points makes WAY more sense than the old one. The only thing that will maybe make it run out of control is that is seems to generate from your units and the enemy units. I expect with a bit of shooting this will make for a disastrously large amount of summoning. Hard to tell without seeing the English version though. Also seems like it will taper off towards the end of the game when there are fewer units running around.
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I think the main reason is that the game uses six sided dice. With small order dive it’s hard to get a less step-wise and larger probability distribution they introduce two dice rolls for a smoother 36 step probability density function. One could argue they would have a much easier time just using d10’s or d20’s, but I think one of the original design constraints back in the 80’s and 90’s was that the game be playable with ordinary dice
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9 hours ago, Samukai said:
Sounds to me you need to embrace the flame and the meme that is Crematorians. Sure is fun at 80 Mortek Guard.
Haha that hadn’t Occurred to me, but yeah that makes sense. Would be brutal.
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Has anyone ever tried running 80 Mortek guard? I been working on 60 for the last month and just finished. Thinking of Adding another box so I’ll have 40 with Spears and two units of 20 with swords. I expect I will rarely run all 80, but it sure looks cool.
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Even if I continue to play mostly AoS These will double as splendid proxies for Cities of Sigmar armies (or whatever the equivalent eventually is). The cool thing about AoS is that it’s large enough to encompass all these factions. One could imagine the kislevites as an ancient and dour human culture somewhere deep in the frozen tundra of Shyish for example, or the Cathayan army as being natives of Azyr or Hysh. I really hope there is an easy back and forth base-wise. Movement trays with room for embellishment with thematic scenery would be lovely. I would much prefer my models to be able to do double duty in both games, and having rebased Throgg and my Troll country monster horde I really don’t feel like switching them back to squares.
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2 hours ago, Noserenda said:
Warmaster wasnt a great hit, its arguably the least popular legacy specialist game and with Horus more mainstream and now a titan class using the name a rebrand wouldnt be unexpected, though id expect a different rules system as Warmaster, while a great wargame, wasnt very "warhammer feeling".
Gosh it really was a masterpiece of game and model Design though. One of Preistly’s absolute best. Really evocative and deeply tactical game. I sometimes wish GW could tempt Him back into the fold.
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AoS 2 - Ossiarch Bonereapers Discussion
in Death
Posted · Edited by Nullius
Typo
have you found the units to be especially strong? Lol I think these are some of the weakest warscrolls in the game. They were all conceived to have multiple RDP command abilities stacked on them, which is no longer possible. The only barely functional unit in the army (mortek guard), essentially act like a weaker version of grave guard, which feels very off. Now that bounty hunters do extra damage against them, they are no longer strong on the defense.
the new GHB has unfortunately been the nail in the coffin for OBR for me in this edition of their battle tome. I have a lovingly painted and massive BoneReapers force but I’ve stopped resisting accepting the obvious, sadly: this is a BAD army at this point in the game. It struggles against practically every faction. (Unless your opponent is unskilled) There is no damage dealing unit in the army. Mortek die easily to even weak shooting and fall in droves to any cheap units in the bounty hunter battalion. Lack of access to basic commands is devastating, and every unit is overcosted by at least 20-30 points, and often much more. We have the largest war machine in the game which shoots less effectively than ten elves with bows or three stormcast eternals. We have no fast units, no shooting, no teleports, and no command abilities.
The only path to victory I’ve found is simply allowing the enemy to table the army but trying to get a win on points. If you can avoid the tabling until the bottom of turn four, you can sometimes win. It’s not much fun, even in victory. Now I understand how gloomspite players feel.