NinthMusketeer

Is the army overpowered? At the end of the day yes, because while it might not be depending on build the way it will generally be used will result in an overpowered army. This boils down mostly to two things: the petrifax elite subfaction, and the functionality of the gothizzar harvester's ability. The former is straight-forward OP, granting the whole army +1 to saves, access to an excellent command ability and trait, for the 'cost' of a merely good artifact. The harvester is an issue because unlike all other resurrection mechanics in the game it happens immediately. This means that the common counter-play of wiping a unit out before slain models can be returned to it is eliminated as an option. It becomes a list check; can the opponent bring means to snipe a 10-wound, 4+ save, healing monster? If not, they have no answer to it beyond hoping the ossiarch player screws up. However, outside those two things the problem elements are few and relatively mild, so an errata could theoretically deal with the army's main imbalances. A larger issue is of how many elements of the Ossiarch army are designed such that they are unfun to play against. Stuff like that is extremely unhealthy for the game, as it both erodes the current player base and poisons the opinions of potential recruits, should it be encountered.

I feel that command traits and artifacts are not blocked. I'm not sure if RAI is to block command abilities or not but right now I would definitely say they are.

BOOOONNNEEEEEEEE STTTTTOOOORRRRMMMMMM!! Sorry, couldn't resist. At any rate, looking great! I think you are right that the cloth being blue gives a bit of a 'blue overload' with the metal being blue as well. I bet the brown looks much better.

Endless spells are not taken by specific wizards but rather by the army as a whole. If you add cogs to your list then any wizard in your army can cast cogs. However, that command trait does not make a non-wizard a wizard, it simply gives them the ability to cast one specific spell as if they were.

Halberd every time on both variants.

The leader can be in the second rank and still swing, so unless the unit is running at ~5 wide, 8 deep it shouldn't be an issue.

Nope, you should be. And should give the first one to the champion.

Necromancers can bounce wounds off to nearby units, while a mortis engine can do a 1/game aoe heal to keep your heroes alive a bit longer. Vampire lords have their self-heal from blood chalice, while a spirit torment can heal nighthaunt heroes.

IMO Rule of Cool overpowers any argument about effectiveness here. You should clearly be taking the falchions.

You are misrepresenting my statements.

In a vacuum the scraplauncher is balanced against the Iionblaster in being more dedicated to shooting but also vulnerable to being locked up in melee; unable to shoot at all due to minimum range and unable to inflict enough melee damage to threaten even a squishy outflank unit. The ironblaster has less shooting damage generally speaking (underguts not being considered) but has no minimum range and is happy to charge or camp an objective safe in the knowlege that it takes a dedicated combat unit to beat it in melee. That's all well and good but the problem comes with the context of the army; scraplaunchers are good against low-armor enemies, something everything else in the army is already exceptionally good at. The ironblaster provides rend -2 in an army with low MW output and low rend on average (it also has the Ogor keyword and those associated benefits). This is what makes the 'launcher a dud unit in my eyes. Of course this can be rendered a moot point due to local meta; if the 'launcher does not have 10+ model units to shoot at it is extremely poor. If enemy armies aren't providing such targets for most of the game 'launchers just aren't going to be that useful, whereas if the local armies are very swarmy they could do extremely well.

That only goes so far. If I'm an Ossiarch player running mortek guard as my main battleline (or just petrifax elite with anything), and I go up against an opponent that cannot spam rend or MWs, they lose. So what do I do? Handicap myself? Buy different battleline? What happened to just making the army I wanted to play? It creates a different unfun situation. That's why the army is going to have such a reputation, at least for now.

As others have mentioned; hit penalties. -1 hit renders blightkings pillow-fisted. There are a lot of ways to get -1 to hit that you can pick from. Also keep track of the Nurgle allegiance ability, so you know what buff the cycle is currently giving and what it is going to give next round. I'd bet some of those hero-sniping 'spells' are actually him using the cycle, something you can predict ahead of time.

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.

For one, don't feel restricted to the Path to Glory scenarios; GW has released many supplements and even the older campaign books that have fun narrative-styles scenarios in them. I would say in general that for 1v1 battles in Path to Glory it is good to slim the board size down to 4x4 (instead of 6x4) and adjust scenario measurements accordingly. Using that technique pitched battle scenarios from matched play also work quite well provided the number of objectives is cut by about a third; a 6-objective scenario goes to 4, a 4-5 objective scenario goes to 3, a 3-objective scenario goes to 2. The semi-ambiguous way GW does measurements for scenarios works in players' favor here since it makes them intuitive to adjust. But to answer your question more directly, assuming you want to use the scenarios from the PtG supplement specifically: Early scenarios: Cornered! and Beast's Lair. The former can seem like it is bad for early small forces but what it actually does is force the champion to fight since he is unlikely to have enough backup for ablative bubble-wrapping. Highly recommend a 4x4 table for this one. Beast's Lair is nice early on because the beast itself will be more of a threat whereas late-stage warbands will have little trouble obliterating it in short order (just ignore the bit about adding the beast to your warband). Middle scenarios: Monolith and The Sacrifice. I can say from experience that both of these play better when each side has a decent size warband to throw around. Small warbands rarely have the units to allow for strategic maneuvering of defense, offense, and outflanking that makes these scenarios shine. Late scenarios: The Vendetta and Altars of the Gods. The Vendetta actually works pretty well at any time, but can be fun to delay until later because by that point you as a players may very much have vendettas against certain enemy units and that makes the whole scenario much more fun. Altars of the Gods is a four-objective scenario where victory requires holding three of them, something that obviously favors larger forces being used as opposed to smaller ones. Hope this helps!

I am betting they will add rules for additional free cities in future supplements and/or white dwarf.

Small update: -Ossiarch Bonereapers added -Ogor Mawtribes tables updated -Main rules for summoning updated & reworded to be more understandable

I love the crazy wizard-monk in walking bone chair. It is over the top in all the right ways for me with a blend of classic and original. My favorite model release of the year.

Yup, and you pretty much summed up as to what happens; people buy the warscry terrain sets and they naturally transition over to AoS play as well.

So it seems like Hammerhal has much less interest than other cities. Anyone have any ideas as to why?

You can get battleshock immunity from other cities; Hammerhal does it in your territory and Hallowheart has a command trait to bubble it out. Super spray is still just one spell; assuming it goes off without a hitch, which as CB42 established is a 70% success rate under ideal conditions (after paying points for a spellportal), you kill one unit very dead. There's another army that is very good at killing one unit a turn: Kharadron Overlords.

Fair enough. Let us know how it goes.

What would be some ways for an opposing army to counter Hallowheart magic?

Plenty of newer armies are not over performing; Nighthaunt and Gloomspite come to mind, while older armies like LoN and until recently DoK do extremely well. The power creep is basically that armies with 1st edition or no battletomes do poorly.

@KK9T, I think you have a really good design with that list. Obviously you are leaving yourself vulnerable in melee but with the benefit of good shooting and superb magic. I think you'll do well with it.