Sception

you'll definitely want a liege and a boneshaper. if you prefer mortek guard battleline you'll def want a harvester & might want a soulmason. if you prefer big stiff battleline, then 2 to 4 boxes of stalkers/immortis in any combination. you'll prob want at least one unit of kavalos for pur only decent battle tactic, and maybe 1 unit of immortis for the only other battle tactic that isn't bad. (imo, take my suggestions w a grain of salt)

I can still find the tithe echelon under "ossiarch bonereapers battleforce". either that or the vanguard would be a good next step, though probably not both. if you can find a copy of the obr broken realms box, "horrek's dreadlance" (2x kavalos deathriders 1x liege kavalos) still priced at a discount compared to getting those units separately, then that is a perfect complement to the tithe echelon battleforce, and a reason to pick the battleforce over the vanguard. if you can't find the broken realms box (or can't find it cheaper than buying those units separately), then i recommend the vanguard over the battleforce, since i think deathriders are probably more useful than the crawler to a new player right now. either is good, though.

that's cool, though also potentially a mistake that might get errata'd. i still just don't see where it fits in lists or how it justifies its cost. but again, i hope I'm wrong.

this is what used to define the crawler & make it a cornerstone of the faction. Unfortunately the damage is now so low that I don't really feel it projects much of anything, let alone power. I could be underestimating it. i hope i am, because it's a cool model.

liege looks great. the ca is fantastic, effectively 2 free cpoints a turn is how the army wants to work. unrendable or -3 charge aura are fantastic on him, the impact hit damage on charge is great with retreat & charge ca. liege is a beast. the only reason i wouldn't call him an auto include in every list is that he's mounted so he can't be a jelly champ, but were only a few short months away from not having to care about that anymore.

strikes last just isn't the bonus for us that it is for other factions. In soulblight I'd give my left femur for strikes last. I'll take a necromancer just to cast soul cage. but unlike grave guard, mortek guard can take a hit. As can immortis, stalkers, and kavalos - all the main battleline units we're likely to take. And we're not running any melee monsters that suffer significantly from bracketing like a VLoZD might. Why spend 200 points to maybe make the opponent strike after you with a crawler when you could spend more or less the same points to support your units with a harvester. Then the opponent can strike first and fail to do any significant damage through your armor and ward and harvester recursion and then you can just smash them anyway. As for mid-line ossifector, that's just not good enough. The cartouche is a wholly within 9" bubble. He's got to be on the front lines.

4, or even 2d6, chances at strike last when you have to roll a 5+ to trigger it is pretty unreliable. I'm not going to spend 200 points on that, especially in an army as durable as OBR, where forcing the opponent to strike last doesn't seem like as much of a big deal as it would be for a glass cannon hyper-offense army. Does harvester really need +1 rend for 120 points? It can be rend -3 on its own, and you can throw out the save debuff spell on top of that. Is that really going to benefit the harvester more than 3 free wounds back a turn? There are other sources for wound buffs, or other buffs that can achieve more or less the same result in terms of increased damage.

Yeah, I've seen a lot of reactions dumping on the soulblight mortarchs, but they actually both look very solid to me, as does Prince Vhordrai - yes he lost the ability to hero-phase attack with another monster, but quickblood for asf that lasts till your next hero phase on a monster hero that tough, that killy, and self healing, is almost a return to the old OP gristlegore days. Regular VLoZD also benefits significantly from the new hunger rule, and has strong and useful buffs in each of the subfactions making them exciting in that there looks to be a bunch of ways to run them that are all strong in different and unique ways. Belladamma Volga remains a very solid double caster for her points, radubeast is a solid beatstick with a good buff attached had hasn't lost a step once you remember that he has full access to Vyrkos subfaction abilities, including traits and artefacts. The wight kings are both better, albeit more specialized. Necromancer is worse, but still a solid support caster with bodyguard protection and access to some excellent debuffs from the lore. Torgillius trades the bodyguard ability for a 5++ aura which is great. The new hero's a silver bullet, but impressive in her particular specialty, which is surprising given that most foot heroes who try to specialize in monster hunting are just bad. Lauka Vai is decent, especially when paired with a VLoZD. The regular vamp lord doubled down on being a support hero instead of bringing back the unit-eating blender lords of fantasy that many have wanted since AoS's release - but that was never a realistic request since that's just not how foot heroes work in AoS. It's not how they've worked since the game was released and it isn't how they work in any other faction. And once you accept the vamp lord as a support hero, he's actually pretty solid - +1 attack that stacks with spells and command abilities is really good, actually! Granted, it would be better if it weren't restricted to summonables, because right now there's really only a single unit in the army worth giving that buff to, and yeah that's a problem, especially as they're also the oldest kit left in the model range and they really don't hold up next to the new skeletons. It's unfortunate that the vampire is as much a dedicated grave guard enhancer as the wight king is, that doesn't really fit the fluff, so yeah, improvements to be made, but if you are taking grave guard then the vamp lord is still very solid. Blood knights lost their better retreat & charge, but hit much harder with +1 rend and 2" reach. They're maybe a bit overpriced, but they're super playable. Honestly, the soulblight heroes in general are very impressive, even if they're not all impressive in the same ways that they used to be. And it's narratively fitting for the faction to have high end heroes and elites at the top with a hoard of suffering peasants at the bottom of the pyramid holding them up. But even then, the peasants aren't terrible. Black Knights aren't the medium cav I want them to be, but they are a cheap source of fire & forget mortal wounds that will get some damage in and die early as starting grist for endless legions. Grave guard are extremely fragile glass cannons, but you've got deployment shenanigans, excellent screens, and healing abilities to get them into combat, and once there they suck up buffs like a sponge before hitting like a train. Zombies are a cheap tar pit that clogs the table with friendly bodies and deals a bunch of free mortal wounds to any enemy units forced to take the time to clear them. Skeletons are slightly more expensive targets that don't do any damage at all, but are significantly harder to clear thanks to their improved self-healing ability. Dire wolves are excellent body blockers, very fast, and can get into combat with dedicated shooty units without provoking unleash hell thanks to their 6" pile in. Fell bats are super cheap and super fast flying chaff, and now battleline in one of the factions for what is essentially a better version of the old 5 model wolf units. Corpse carts can buff our casters and make zombies just that extra big more dangerous to clear out. I don't like the big chariots (mortis engine might be ok with a points drop), or the unridden monsters, or the generic vengorian, or the vargheists. But in a book this big there's going to be some duds, and even setting those aside the army has more than enough for multiple effective builds, including builds that make good use of a lot of the units that are getting dumped on in some of the community reactions.

I think we'll see early consolidation around petrifex big guys and Katakros with little guys - maybe praetorians, maybe crematorians. Arkhan is also sure to see play, but despite how good he is for his cost, that cost is still an issue, so I'm not sure what lists exactly will run him. Can you even fit him in the petrifex list? Can you run him next to katakros, or does that not leave you with enough points for units? would you ever run him instead of katakros in a little stuff army? Arkhan is good, but is anything he can do as good as Katakros's bubble aura? People will try nagash, but I think the points cost is just too high in a book where points are as tight as obr. Maybe new nagash will see some play in the other undead factions. By the time he were cheap enough to run in OBR, he might be /too/ cheap in soulblight or FEC. He might need special incentive to run in OBR, maybe let him issue and receive OBR CAs? I doubt we'll see much out of the new mortek crawler. I'm confident we won't see much of the soulreaper. We might actually see vokmortian on the table in the petrifex list, since the soulmason's buff is now limited to little stuff only. 140 for a dual cast loremaster is Not Bad, and if you're running a reinforced block of immortis as I expect that list will then vokmortian might even be safe enough in melee to threaten his gimmick spell. I'm not sure if the ossifector will see play. IMO the crawlers don't do enough damage to be worth taking, let alone dedicating a hero to buffing them, plus if you're taking an ossifector then you probably want to take their fantastic artefact, and if you do then they need to be up front to spread that aura over your front lines, not in back with the artillery you probably aren't taking in the first place. The harvester doesn't really need or want any of the buffs they offer - added durability is nice in principle, but I don't think 'ignore the first allocated wound per phase' is enough of a durability buff for that kind of points investment given the strong competition in support heroes. In theory I could see morghasts benefiting from the extra rend, but morghasts are so expensive that I doubt we'll see them in the first place, and when we do the idea that you'd have extra points to spend on buffing just them seems unlikely, especially when part of the selling point of morghasts is that they're fast and flying, so the slow small infantry ossifector will have a hard time staying in range to keep his buffs on them as the game progresses. He might never be in range in the first place if you use the harbinger's deep strike ability. If the ossifector's buffs could target stalkers and immortis then they'd definitely have a place in the petrifex list. Right now I have my fingers crossed for that specific fix as a future errata. If they could buff the non-flying monstrous infantry then I'd absolutely make one the general with the -3 charge aura and the cartouche and put it front and center in a block of reinforced immortis guard as the anchor of a petrifex army with stalkers on the wings. Heck, I could see putting a unit like that in a sort of mixed good stuff build too. As it is, though, the boneshaper is the better 120 point support caster for pretty much any build you're actually going to run, while the soulmason in particular is a much stronger caster for an army of small stuff at only 40 points more (though admittedly the mason's artefact is trash, and 40 points is enough to get one of our fantastic endless spells, so even then...) Boneshaper's pretty much our only halfway decent galletian champion, what with most of our good heroes being either named or mounted, if not both. So it's a good thing this season is half over already. In the mean time, maybe you just proxy the new ossifector as a second boneshaper, and hope the next ghb comes with a battlescroll that improves the ossifector somehow. Again, my preferred ossifector fix (short of rewriting it and the boneshaper's scrolls) would be just extending the list of buffable targets to include immortis & stalkers, but a 20 points or more discount might be enough to make them runnable for cartouche and a lore spell alone, and forget their ability. Alternatively, significant points drops for morghasts or crawlers might get them on the table, but the devs don't like to make massive points shifts at once, so I think it'll be multiple adjustments before either of those units sees enough play that you could justify taking an ossifector to buff them.

I really like this for petrifex.

consider list a but swapping the mason to reinforce the morteks, maybe? less magic, but magic can be shut down more easily than the liege's ca or the shaper's heals

I like the idea of the ossifector, but the mechanics just not doing it for me. The buff to the catapult is ok... but the catapults damage is /so low/ for its cost that it just isn't worth taking even with the buff. the other buffs only target morghasts and harvesters, but -1 rend, good as it is, isn't what those units need. The final buff, an increase to durability, /is/ what those units need, but as a durability buff it's just not as good (and far less versatile) than the healing from a boneshaper. What we needed was for ossifector to have the exact same healing as the boneshaper (I mean, he's modeled doing it), and then a spell that buffs the big stuff, and then swap out the boneshaper's spell for something that buffs little stuff. that way both shapers can shape, and they just differ slightly in signature spell for what units the prefer to stand near while shaping. Then give the reaper a better offensive spell, and some sort of effect to reward getting him close to enemy units. I don't know. Book's too recent, and too good, to be wishlisting changes. But I just don't see the ossifector being worth running. The frustrating thing is that the boneshaper is imo fairly priced, but it's bound to go up in points because he's the only small foot hero people are going to run because the other ones just don't do anything the army wants or needs, and GW is going to read that as 'the boneshaper is too strong, it's crowding out soulreapers and ossifectors'.

Frist draft crematorians list 370 arkhan 120 shaper, key 180 liege, general, -3 charge aura 210 harvester 450 30 morteks, spears 300 20 morteks, swords 200 3 immortis 170 5 deathriders I like it, but I really want to get some of the endless spells in there and I don't see what to drop. Maybe trade liege for a second shaper?

even if you needed a 120 point hero to hold an artefact, why wouldn't you go with a boneshaper, who costs the same, provides the same one heal, but also has a valuable healing ability /and/ access to a better artefact?

i think its wild how different the takes on this book are. some say it's great, some say its trash, most say parts are great & parts are trash, but disagree completely on which is which. :p

i love vokmortian and was hype when i saw he was loremaster. 140 for double cast loremaster is a steal. but then i saw mason /also/ gained loremaster and the same comparison that killed vok in the last book remains sadly in place

mason has a great extra buff & essentially becomes a triple caster if you run little stuff. he's a mortisan to make the big stuff battleline if uou run that. and he's generic to carry items (meh) or co?and trait (yay). imo wprth the extra 20 points regardless of what you run. honestly i don't know why the mason is a loremaster. would still be good without it, & would make vok more special in comparison.

some high points costs that are worrying, like are 10 morteks really worth 150 points? But it's hard to say they're definitely not worth that much, because a reinforced unit especially absorbs buffs like crazy. If you factor in all the possible stacking buffs (50% instant heal, +1 attack, extra attacks on 5+ to hit, +1 to hit, +1 to wound, +1 armor, +1 rend, 3+ models back per each of your hero phases) and debuffs (-2 to hit, -1 to save, -1 ward, cannot rally or Insp Presence) then 300 points for 20 mortek guard or even 450 for 30 looks amazing. But then you add up the cost of all the support units are generating those buffs, debuffs, and heals (440 katakros, 180 liege, 160 mason, 120+ other caster, 210 harvester, 50 shrieker,) you realize those 30 mortek guard are actually costing you 1600 points and, and that's actually somehow worse than paying 150 points for 10 of them with no buffs at all. Finding the right balance of dudes and buffs in this army will be difficult, and I honestly can't say whether 15 points per mortek will turn out to be too many points or too few once the brute force optimization algorithm that is competitive play has converged on the optimum buff efficiency. ... Then again, stalkers just look good, on their own, without having to turn your list into a rube goldberg machine and/or easily toppled house of cards, so it's possible people won't even bother trying to find the optimal buff concentration to maximize morteks.

You're probably right, but there is definitely something to say for Vyrkos VLoZD paired up with a unit of Blood Knights, using the subfaction trait to attack sequentially and either Driven by Deathstench to re-roll charges for both units for free or Hunter's Snare to count the dragon lord's wounds characteristic for contesting objectives. I'd be more excited to run VLoZD + Blood Knights in Kastelai, except for the faction trait bonuses specifically not enhancing the damage or attacks characteristics of mounts, which seems odd for the 'all cavalry' themed subfaction. Though with its big base and durability/healing, a VLoZD can probably make good use of their 'masters of retaliation' heroic action, and Kastelai do also have a re-roll charges aura command trait, and the Fragment of the Keep does synergize nicely with the big base. And Avengori stuff is good for monsters in general, as expected. So yeah, LoB VLoZD are probably the best, but I think we're going to be seeing a lot of them in the new book, regardless of subfaction.

I'm mostly very happy. I like how most things work. slayer still sucks. vokmortian still overshadowed by soulmason. crawler still has terrible damage... but it has a side use. Artefacts are mostly trash, but the command traits are fantastic. Katakros and arkhan are both amazing (the real Nagash was the Mortarchs he made along the way). Overall most of these units are really cool, even if a lot of them are over-priced. I like it a lot. I want to play them. I'm like a third of the way into painting my Nighthaunt PTG army, but I already want to switch. This army just looks really fun.

corpse cart mortals aura on 6s to wound instead of to hit does dramatically reduce my assessment of zombies in the new book. 😛 I don't know, overall I'm still ok, but I may mood may be lifted unfairly by my general positive response to the OBR leaks. A lot of their scrolls are over-pointed & will need to come down, but pretty much everything unit is cool. As for people being mad about the vamp lord on foot not being a unit blender, I'm not surprised, people have been mad about this since literal day one of AoS, but also since literal day 1 of AoS GW has made abundantly clear that they do not want foot heroes beating units in melee single handed. In every single battletome foot heroes are there for support heroes and maybe a couple extra points of damage thrown into a desperate combat. That's just the game AoS is. Units can be there to fight. Monsters (including monster-riding heroes) can be there to fight. Foot heroes & cav heroes are support units. And as a support unit, I really like the vamp lord. Pick a summonable unit, +1 attack in melee. Every combat. Stacks with other combat phase buffs. Can't be negated by things that negate command abilities, because it isn't one. If you have two vampire lords in your army, each can buff a units attacks, because it's not a command ability. This is a huge buff over the current vamp lord, and for this his points went down by 10.

Nerfs are everywhere and a lot of the old tricks are gone, but buffs are everywhere too. A non-exhaustive list: 1) Vampire lord +1 attack to a summonable unit buff is no longer a command ability. So it doesn't take command points, can't be blocked by roar or morghasts, can stack with other combat phase command abilities, and can be used multiple times in the same combat phase if you have more than one vampire lord and more than one summonable unit in combat to buff. This is big. 2) zombies nerfed to hell - no mortals on 6s, no 6" pile in... or are they? they deal mortals on 5+ as they die now, and a nearby corpse cart gives them the mortals on 6s proc, and they're 2 attacks base now. Zombies on their own are way weaker, but zombies with a corpse cart nearby? Plus maybe a vampire lord to grant them an extra attack? Brutal. 3) Vyrkos, now the zombie faction, can heal those zombies more, give them extra movement, and a 5+ ward 4) rend 2 blood knights, a big deal to help with our current lacking rend 5) spell lores generally improved, particularly for vampires. fewer total, but no duds. 6) Neferata's redeploy gimmick is cool (finally some hint of her subterfuge & espionage specialty) and twilight allure being automatic instead of a command ability is good 7) Legion of Blood just looking kinda good in general - why choose between fighty and casty when you can do both instead? I don't know. Just, a lot different. Old tricks won't work, but there are new tricks here. It could pan out worse than previous book, but overall I'm feeling pretty positive.

wight kings are probably summonable and thus can be raised once after they die, which is probably where the difference is there. I'm pleased with the massive buff to vampire lords, though it's kind of funny that basically since the start of AoS we've seen old VC players asking for vampire lords to be tougher, stronger, better casters, anything more than support heroes, and this book shows up with a huge buff... to their support ability, making them more of a dedicated support hero than ever before. 😛

I like these warscrolls a lot. Subfaction rules have also leaked. They could have been a bit better balanced, but so be it. I expect a lot of Praetorians and some Myrad & Petrifex, not so much of the others. Especially sad for Ivory Host, narratively now really should have been their time, yet they seem to get the weakest bonus /and/ got saddled with extra conditions to satisfy first. Overall I still think the army looks weaker under the new book than it was previously, due to those points costs just not looking right, but their rules look a lot cooler and funner and the points can always come down over time if they do turn out to be too high in practice.

blood knights are rend 2 all the time, damage 2 on the charge