[Ossiarch Bonereapers, hideously overpowered?]

Shhhhh..... Don't tell anyone, but there is a key to this army being incredibly strong.

And that key is....

 

 

.....Mercenary Chaos Marauders 

[Ossiarch Bonereapers, hideously overpowered?]

3 hours ago, readercolin said:

Congrats, you have sunk 840 points (with 1 unit of battleline) into one blob of your army.  You can take your 1 blob and it will be undefeated, and hold one section of the table.  Your blob moves at 4" per turn, unless you run them or spend your RD points on them (which also means you can't spend your RD points on something else).  With this blob, you can control... 1 objective.  There is no feasible way to run 2 of these blobs, and even if you did most games have 3+ objectives.

I'm not saying that this is bad per say, but I think that in most games it will be more viable to have your points broken up across more units.  Additionally, if your blob charges, you can fairly easily get your block of guard into combat, but then you won't be able to get your harvesters close enough because they can't complete a charge (remember, have to end within 1/2").  Or if you bring your harvesters around the edges so that they can complete a charge, they are now vulnerable to being counter charged.  You can kind of get around this by stringing your guard out to keep some near your harvesters, but now you can't get as many on target reducing your damage, which means that it will be even harder for your blob to take and hold objectives.  So now all your opponent has to do is toss some chaff in front of this blob, make it hard for you to maneuver it to objectives, and then win on the rest of the table because almost half your points are tied up here and it can be held back by maybe 1/4 of your opponents force.

I'm not so sure this tactic is so easily dismissed. If you run two blocks of Mortek Guard (our best unit overall anyway), in the shape of "L'" that are side by side (with the bottom of the Ls touching each other), with the 2 harvesters towards the center, you can really cover a majority of the board and take two objectives. Something like this:

 

11111111111111111 2222222222222222
                                               11  22
                                         H  11  22  H
                                         1111  2222

1: Guard block 1
2: Guard block 2
H: Harvesters

Then models you remove will always be in the two clumps near the Harvesters (note that these are not EXACT diagrams), and both will trigger off of both blocks of Guard. Since damage is done one at a time, when you assign the first damage to either unit you simple apply it to the model that is within both 3" Harvester ranges. One dead model = 2 4+ rolls to resurrect one. If you resurrect 1 (or 2...) from this damage, you IMMEDIATELY resurrect the model, place it back on the table within range of both harvesters, THEN move onto the next assigned damage. In theory you won't ever be targeting a model outside of both Harvesters range. 

Does this tactic still have downsides to it? Sure, as said its relying on a big point investment in Guard plus 400 points in Harvester support, but this army should be running Guard heavy anyway. But the blocks can separate if the need arises.  And of course, if you take out the Harvesters, the combo falters. 

[Ossiarch Bonereapers, hideously overpowered?]

5 minutes ago, Dolomyte said:

Yeah it does not say limit once which is an issue. Harvesters are also an issue until they say within 3” of a harvester instead of this model, as you can currently park two behind a unit of 40 Mortek and they are impossible to kill.

I think the Harvester thing will stay as is, because it’s a massive point investment in an army that struggles greatly in that area, and it’s not THAT big of a footprint on the battlefield. What we need is board control, and while opens up some really interesting options to do so, it is quite easy to undermine (get rid of one harvester). 

[Ossiarch Bonereapers, hideously overpowered?]

If a unit finishes a charge and I spend 1CP... then immediately spend another, what has changed? There is no after-effect of spending the first CP that changes the game state. When spending the 2nd CP, has a unit still “finished a charge”? Why yes, it has! 
 

Im fighting the semantics here, because that’s what you are choosing to lean on for this argument. I’m not saying your assessment is wrong in the “intention of the rule”, but again it would have been easy and consistent to just use the word “once” in this CA wording, and they didn’t. 

[Ossiarch Bonereapers, hideously overpowered?]

4 hours ago, Sedraxis said:

I don't get why people automatically assume that the Deathriders Command Ability can be used multiple times. We all know it's not meant to be.

A unit only finishes a charge move once, so there is only one window to do it.  Same with the existing command abilities that happen after a unit fought for the first time and alike.

 

Please don't force even more and longer FAQs by assuming there are loopholes everywhere, there are plenty of badly written rules already so no need to push the well written ones in there too.

...Because it doesn’t limit you to “once per unit per charge”, and GW has had the “once” CA wording on LOCKDOWN lately. If it doesn’t say “once”, they actively chose it to be worded that way (theoretically). 
 

Also your argument based on “charge phase” is completely invalidated at every turn based on previous GW rules and updates. An aspect of a phase is not given some “finite window” to work within, look at IDK or Orruk spamable CAs, they all work in the same “small window” that you claim this one does. 
 

RAW is it’s spammable. Will I go out and buy 40 horseboners before the FAQ drops? Heck no. But you coming in witg some “lulz so obv quit being such a peasant” attitude is asinine. 

[Ossiarch Bonereapers, hideously overpowered?]

1 hour ago, swarmofseals said:

This is just flatly not true. Any army that relies on either ward saves or cheap wound count is strong against mortal wounds. Generally speaking, mortal damage costs more to put on the table than non-rend damage. So consider 10 mortal damage vs. 20 rend 0 damage. If you are a 10 wound 3+ save unit, you would MUCH rather take 20 rend 0 damage than 10 mortal damage. If you're a 30 wound unit with no save, you'd MUCH rather take 10 mortals than 20 rend 0. The first unit is very vulnerable to mortal damage, the second unit is strong against mortal damage.

As @Dolomyte said, there are plenty of armies that are good against mortal damage.  I'd definitely add Bonesplitterz, some builds of Cities, some builds of Gloomspite Gitz, and Legions of Nagash to the list.

All of these armies rely on either ward saves, cheap wounds, or the ability to bulk out wounds through summoning.

 

Turning the 6+ shrug into a 5+ shrug requires 1" proximity to a vulnerable support hero and requires using an artefact (and thus taking not one but two battalions if you want to go Petrifex and still take the Helm of the Ordained), while the 5+ MW shrug requires you to resolve a spell. Neither of these are reliable. It speaks to the point that I made earlier that yes, this army does have to tools to patch almost any hole but they are all costly and you can't afford to take everything you want to take. You *can* make an OBR army that is strong-ish against MW and spells, but it will severely reduce your offense and your defense against non-mortal damage. 

Also, even with BOTH the 5+ shrug and the 5+ MW shrug spell active, Mortek Guard (the most efficient warscroll in the army) still only have a defensive efficiency of .1875 against mortals. That's decent, but many other factions can do better.

This army’s recursion is respectable, which mitigates MW decently. And that’s not counting double harvester positioning to double dip on the 4+, meaning by the numbers Mortek never go down in number...

[Ossiarch Bonereapers, hideously overpowered?]

4 minutes ago, sal4m4nd3r said:

being vulnerable to something that literally everyone in the game is vulnerable shouldn't be your major weakness. 

Great point. And be aware that we can turn our 6+ shrug into a 5+ shrug, and throw on the additional 5+ shrug buff to the unit about to be hit is much more answers that most folks get. 

[Ossiarch Bonereapers, hideously overpowered?]

I know it's been brought up, but if the Kavalos Deathriders CA isn't FAQ'd to only be used once per charge phase (per unit), it could really be devastating. 

- Unit of 15 Riders, use the CA 5 times on impact (1 for free with the Battalion, and that really isn't an exorbitant amount of CP given how many the army can produce): 75 dice, 25 MW on average (deleting the target), and THEN you get to pile in an extra 15" in the combat phase (whatever else is closest gets rammed). 

- All 15 Riders do not have to be engaged for the MWs to hit, just a unit within 1" 

- It screws over 'fights first/fights last' shenanigans because it happens in the charge phase

- Even if you do get bogged down, with the battalion you can just retreat and charge to do it all over again 

- The tactic is strong enough to even take in units of 10 (points are always an issue with this army) and blow up most threats on impact 

 

Will this get FAQ'd? My gut says yes, as it doesn't feel like its 'the way the rule was intended when written', but dumber rules have stuck around in this game and it requires a pretty heavy investment for you to pull off.