Sception

Love those bases, too. Any terrain plans?

I like it. The red is very nice.

Last I heard those FEC nobles aware enough to have coherent loyalties were split between the Carrion King and Nagash, and even then are largely too crazy to tell the difference half the time, not to mention the Carrion King himself is loyal to nagash half the time, and when Nagash is physically present the lot of them are too saturated with death magic and too weak willed to directly resist him to his face regardless, which puts FEC loyalty to Nagash not at 1/2 but rather closer to 7/8, unless it's a situation that matters enough for Nagash to apply his direct attention, in which case it's closer to 8/8. If they really were an anti-Nagashi faction, they'd be Grand Alliance: Destruction, not Grand Alliance: Death. Regardless, I know my proposed course for the faction is wildly unlikely, in no small part because it would tick off both a number of FEC players AND a number of Legion of Night and Mannfred leaning Soulblight players. Still though, the vamps already have a Mortarch, one who gets criminally misused in the fluff in no small part because she has to share the stage with Manfred. Two soulblight mortarchs is redundant, and Mannfreds creatures of the night / terror tactics style is a better fit for FEC anyway, so yeah, if it were up to me I'd merge Mannfred and the Carrion King into the same character. Maybe have Mannfred involved in a major seige of an Order city with combined LoN and FEC units, have the seige fail at the last minute because CK shows up and turns the FEC against Mannfred. Then Nagash gives Manny "one last chance to redeem himself" by capturing CK and bringing him to Nagash, which he does. Anyway, Nagash rewards Mannfred with a potion that will give him control of the FEC, which turns out to be a poison pill made of the blood & soul of CK, Mannfred gets the control promised, and Nagash control over FEC through mannfred, but at the cost of mannfred's mind breaking, so that part of the time he's fully aware, part of the time he thinks he's back in oldhammer days as his version of the FEC type delusions, and part of the time he isn't Mannfred at all but rather the Carrion King's personality trying to claw back control over Mannfred's body. Maybe reflect that in the rules with a die roll at the start of the turn for which personality is in charge, with each having different effects on the army's behavior. Result gives FEC armies their own mortarch, if not the one they wanted, gives neferata room to breathe in the soulblight, and in general puts the grand alliance into better order. Again, though, that's just what I would do, not at all anything likely to happen.

Arkhan's good, but expensive and fragile. Given his weaknesses, you'd like to be able to at least deploy him next to a unit of immortis so that he can have some protection if a shooty opponent gets first turn before you're able to get protection of nagash up. However, the fact that he's so expensive, combined with immortis being kind of pricey and not super efficient means that you may not be able to justify it. If you're taking him, I'd say you still want at least one other caster. Arkhan wants to be casting protection of nagash, drain vitality, and one cast left that you can use as needed for a buff, endless spell, realm spell, or curse of years. Secondary caster should be casting arcane command to make up the RD deficit of fielding arkhan in the first place. If you don't field another caster then arkhan will probably need to cast arcane command as well, which he can certainly do, but then you don't have an open slot to respond to the needs of the moment, and arcane command is an easy spell to cast anyway, unless you're worried about unbinding arkhan's bonuses are kind of going to waste there. Personally I like to pair Arkhan with a soulmason as you get even more casts that way, and arkhan's revival abilities mean the need for a boneshaper isn't as pressing, and they have similar taste in fancy hats. But honestly any of the casters go well with him. Ideally you want to field him in Petrifex. Yes, Null Myriad is his legion, and yes his healing abilities are theoretically well suited to crematorians, but you want to have access to an offensive command ability option when you need to concentrate damage output. Petrifex have such an ability by default, but other legions need to field a liege kavalos for that, and that's another rather expensive HQ that will be hard to fit along with arkan and a secondary caster. Not impossible, but you're really eating into your points if you go that way. After battleline you won't have much left for fun units & behemoths.

In 5000 point games I prefer the aegis. At that points value you can actually field it, and the risk of the enemy having enough firepower to blast even your big heroes off the board turn 1 is enough to warrant the extra protection. At 2000 points it's just too pricey, especially with nagash, but the same could probably be said for the deathglaive.

Whoops, I read your collection wrong. You said you had two boxes of mortek guard, and in my head that turned into 20 instead of 40. As it is, with the lance you're actually over by 20 points, with nothing easy to drop to get back under. You could drop the lance battalion itself to get to, yes, 1900. I still definitely recommend getting the endless spells, as endless spells are about the only option OBR has to fill points gaps of 100 or less. Then you can either go: Arkhan Liege Mason 2x5 riders 40 guard 2x crawler nexus all three endless spells Or alternatively: Arkhan Liege Mason 2x5 riders 30 guard 2x crawler kavalos lance battalion nexus shrieker Or even: Arkhan Liege Mason 2x5 riders 2x20 guard nexus soulstealer carrion All are, again, maybe not optimal lists, but at least viable enough to get a feel for whether or not you want to take the faction further. Probably my favorite of the three is the last one that runs the guard as 2x20, letting you cover more of the board/occupy multiple objectives/etc. Granted, that list makes the decision to go with spears rather than swords on the morteks a bit more suboptimal than it already was, but so it goes. If you do decide to expand the collection further, my suggestions stay pretty similar: get a boneshaper, they're a staple unit, and get more morteks. Beyond that, harvesters and stalkers are decent in and of themselves, and immortis are good with arkhan specifically, who otherwise has issues with getting shot off the table turn one before you have a chance to get protection of nagash up, but those are all pretty pricey units and I don't think you'll really be able to get any of them to work in a list that also runs Arkhan AND deathriders AND 2 crawlers, so at that point you'd be branching into variant builds instead of improving the army you already have.

Your current pile comes to 1840, if you include the one battalion you have all the models for - the kavalos lance. To round it out to 2k, I'd recommend grabbing a Mortisan Boneshaper and the Endless Spells kit for a Bone-Tithe Shrieker, as those are both staple units for the army. If you do get a Boneshaper, then you'd have the units for a Mortek Ballistari battalion, but not the spare points without dropping something, and if you're only going to take one battalion the kavalos lance will do more for its units than the ballistari does. For legion, I'd recommend Petrifex. Not only are they just flatly the strongest legion period regardless of list, they're also specifically the one you want to take if you field any spears in your army, as the legion's command ability gives you at least some rend when you need it. The result should be a pretty functional list, if a bit light in number of bodies & board presence. OBR are a rather expensive force points wise, there's not a lot of slack for indulgences. Right now your list is leaning on the more expensive per model battleline option, taking one of the more expensive special characters, and taking two of the big expensive support catapults, when an optimal 2k list probably only does one and certainly no more than two of those things at a time. But even so, the list should certainly be functional enough to get a feel for whether you'd want to pursue the faction any further. If you do, then I'd recommend starting with more Mortek Guard. They're probably the army's strongest and most points efficient unit, and certainly the cheapest way to put models on the table to try to play the objective game.

A solid list. Personally, though, I'd recommend swapping out the nightmare predator for a shrieker, and using the ten points spared to upgrade the soulreaper to a boneshaper in order to get a bit more recursion in there. Maybe move the baleful blade to the liege and give the shaper the artisan's key. For lore spell, I'd give the shaper Arcane Command. At only 5 RD points a turn before rolls otherwise, the extra d3 from the spell will probably be as or more useful than anything the other spells can do, plus its the easiest to cast, leaving Arkhan and his bonuses to handle spells like Drain Vitality, Empower Weapons, and Reinforce Shields. You might also consider swapping the harvester for a crawler. The harvester is good and hits hard and can bring models back, but its ability range is fiddly and the army already has plenty of melee power and decent recursion (provided you make the boneshaper & artifact key changes already mentioned). I think this list might benefit more from the Crawler's ability to threaten both chaff units and hidden support heroes, something the list has difficulty with otherwise. With Arkhan, you'd theoretically want to get a unit of immortis in there for him to deploy next to, but the points really are just too tight. I don't think reducing the morteks any further is a good idea, not unless you're switching over to a lance build which will probably end up costing more points rather than less. You could theoretically swap the liege and kavalos for another caster and some immortis and that might be ok... but it's important to have an offensive outlet for RD points to concentrate damage output where you need it. Petrifex get this for free with their rend CA, but since this list is specifically in response to someone asking for Null Myriad suggestions, well, the Liege is really the only effective offensive RD outlet available for non-petrifex OBR, so I think you're better off keeping it.

Sad but not surprising to see spears outclassed by swords in all categories, even on charging cavalry. If there's one thing that we learned from OBR it's that GW simply doesn't do these kinds of basic mathematical comparisons. Otherwise you wouldn't get swords outperforming spears even in their area of expertise, or weapon 'upgrades' that are barely upgrades at all - or in the case of the falchions in stalker units are actually downgrades. We wouldn't get stalkers with multiple combat styles but one dramatically better than the rest, or the petrifex issue where one subfaction outperforms the rest to the point that assigning a fair point value to units becomes night impossible, since any given unit will either be clearly undercosted as petrifex or, if the price is fair for petrifex armies, clearly overcosted for everything else. On a more positive note, though, given that GW *doesn't* do that kind of basic analysis and is clearly instead just 'eyeballing it', it's surprising how decent the internal balance in this book actually is. There are very few dud units, and even some of the more lackluster choices, like vokmortian or soulreapers aren't actively bad. They're still perfectly playable in a casual context. The worst we've got is probably morghasts, and while I wouldn't call them good, they're still nowhere near as bad as you might expect from a book's "worst unit". That extends to these weapon options. Like, the balance isn't good, swords are clearly better, but if you take a spear unit for aesthetics you aren't going to be setting youself back all that far. Especially if you do play petrifex and can tack on at least a little rend when you need it.

Finished my Soulmason For now at least. May go back in the future to edge highlight the dark bone, maybe add glowy bits in the recesses, but that can wait. I'm happy enough with where it is for now.

For the mean time, the Legion rules still exist to play old deathrattle in AoS. I still think they'll see at least one more revision going into 3rd edition, but even if they don't their rules won't be going anywhere any time soon. I doubt they'll be rendered unplayable in AoS, certainly not before the new oldhammer is out, whatever form that takes. Heck, *tomb kings* are still AoS legal, and viable enough that they still occasionally show in tourney results, and they got squatted years ago now. I'd personally probably keep them to square bases, but as long as you're playing them in a context casual enough not to mind that, there shouldn't be any trouble running Legions of Nagash just as they are for years. They maybe aren't the most competitive faction these days, but that's such a moving target that getting hung up on it is imo probably not worth the heartache.

Thankfuly I never got around to rebasing most of my old undead. When & if this old world game ever comes out, I'll have skittles aplenty for oldhammer and ossiarchs for AoS.

I wonder if a mortal society ruled by vampires and worshipping nagash could negotiate a more sustainable tithe.

My preferred vision has for a while been: Flesh Eater Courts: add a couple units, have some plot development that puts mannfred here in charge of the ghouls as the abhorrant mortarch, witj Nagash gaining reliable control over them through him. aesthetic for new stuff stays mostly the same but adds a bit more in weaponry and scraps of clothing & armor, share bat units with soulblight and dire wolves with fleshcraft. Nighthaunt: more or less as is Soulblight: add some mortal cultists/attendants/blood donors, new plastic vamps & blood knights with a bit more of that mortarchy aesthetic. Blood fountain terrain, faction rules emphasizing spies, manipulators, assassins Neferata stays here, mannfred gone. Fleshcraft Academies: arkhan, deathmages, & deadwalkers rolled together into a new faction themed around experimental necromantic chimeras & undead arcane war engines. Almost skryresque but sinew and spirit instead of wires & electricity. Conceptually, the wild innovators of death tasked with inventing novel concepts that can then be ritualized for implementation by the less creative, more systematic undead, and for countering Nagash's more unpredictable foes. Mechanically Death's version of skaven, big hordes of cheap chaff to tarpit enemy units while weird monsters and bizarre war machines do the actual killing, with necromantic casters & engineers "bravely" leading from the rear. Deathrattle: in my original vision deathrattle stuck around as the basic defensive forces of the undead, the legions which occupied and held the territory that the others took. The faction would be expanded with concepts nicked from the tomb kings emphasizing a defensive game - catapults, the existing skeleton sprues recut with larger shields and maybe a ranged option. Add in a new deathrattle mortarch. Maybe krell, maybe khalida (I really like the idea of Nagash bring khalida back as a foil/counter to neferata to keep her scheming in check, only to for them to have left their hatred in the old world and become a harley & ivy type duo scheming and troublemaking together). If not them then maybe someone new. Legions of Death: nagash, all the mortarchs, and morghasts expanded out into their own faction with smaller, flightless versions of morghasts as the core as a stand alone "deathlords" faction. This book would also include "legion" rules: Grand Host of Nagash essentially an alternate ruleset for grand alliance death; Legion of night: deathlords plus FEC; Legion of grief: deathlords plus nighthaunt; etc etc. Then came OBS, which in many ways was both the stand alone deathlords/morghasts faction I imagined and the defensive deathrattle faction expanded with ideas nicked from tomb kings that I hoped for, and yet is neither. Unlike my imagined deathlords, the OBR has exactly zero interaction with other death factions. No "OBR + X" replacement for the existing "legions of", not even any allies. To the contrary, their rules seem to be expressly designed to make any intra allegiance integration as difficult as possible. Further, they're also not an elite force of large base infantry that can look the stormcasts of sigmar or chosen of chaos in the eye as they fight them, but are in fact another small base horde infantry army, more elite than other death armies sure but still grounded in large blocks of 25mm infantry buffed by support characters not far removed from ghouls or zombies or skeletons or chainrasps. Unlike my hoped for deathrattle expansion, OBR seems to replace rather than supplement the existing line of skeletal warriors and grave guard. Which is a shame because the plastic skeletons look great already, and if morteks were only half again as large they could have all existed together under the death banner without stepping on each others' toes. As it is, I'm just not sure I see a place for deathrattle, conceptually or mechanically, going forward at all. Don't get me wrong, as a faction in and of itself I love the OBR. I love their fluff, I love how they look and how they play (despite my unbroken losing streak stubbornly trying to play them without petrifex or crawlers), they're easily my favorite new faction since AoS's initial release. But I'm not sure I like what they do to or mean for the larger grand alliance of death as a whole.

Really doubt it. Way too soon, and the current book, while a bit rickety, still mostly holds together. Maybe a Soulblight book though. I *do* think we'll see an LoN update in the future, if nothing else then just a cleanup for 3e with maybe a grave sites terrain kit. But that's all guesswork and wish listing. For the moment the only real answer is "it isn't currently anywhere on the horizon."

Had a second battle with the same list against the same chaos player but playing a radically different list - a skryre force with one warlock engineer and the entire rest of their points in a single unit of acolytes. Another 'objectives in 4 corners' game, this time the one on where you win if you ever control all four objectives, and played on a 4x4 table. Not much to report about this battle though, as the acolytes increased move and ability to run & shoot ensured that they would get to fire off a shot before I could engage, and between character buffs and the one big unit with -2 rend and d3+1 damage they pretty easily wiped out a unit a turn. I tried to chase objectives & stay out of range, but it wasn't to be. I'm still not too put out, 500 is again an awkward points value and my list is far from optimized. This game was slightly more frustrating as my units didn't actually do anything, not helped at all by much worse dice luck leading to no successful spells cast. It was also a game where it was more clearly apparent that I've been deliberately avoiding some of the stronger options available to the OBR. Even petrifex bonuses probably wouldn't have stopped my units from evaporating like they did, but a catapult in particular would have been able to smash the acolyte unit from far outside its range. Alternatively, I might have done better with a kavalos unit instead of the immortis, who might have been able to charge from outside the acolytes move/run/shoot distance. As it was my only real hope was a double turn, and as the opponent under-dropped me and made me go first that just wasn't going to happen. ... Another thing worth pointing out, something maybe actually relevant to formats other than 500 point games, is that the relentless discipline rules preventing OBR from using generic command abilities hurts a lot more in games using the realms rules. My last game was largely decided by the realm of shadow command ability letting my opponent teleport their units around willy nilly while I was stuck with normal movement, while this game was played in the realm of light, so even if I had gotten the double turn and managed to charge with one of my units before getting blown apart, the skaven player would have been able to activate the CA to fight first with their unit, and I wouldn't have been able to counter by using the CA myself. Not every realm has a strong CA, but enough do that fighting without them is very noticeable.

The general shape of the ossiarch cartouches is generic enough to probably not be an issue, especially squashed & widened a bit to better fit into a square die face. What you do want to do is come up with a unique symbol for the center of it. Honestly, something close to the standard 6 pips arranged in two vertical rows of three would look cool while also being immediately recognizable as a six, so there'd be no confusion over whether the special character represented a six or a one. Maybe instead of circular pips more flattened lines such that the overall effect might vaguely suggest a rib cage. Quick mock up in paint: Simple, clear OBR aesthetic, easily readable as a 6, shaped to fit a square die face, doesn't directly copy any of the published GW symbols.

All the schemes are great. I esprcially like the white & purple with green blades & gold accents.

Played a 500 point game for the local store's new slow grow league. League rules at 500 points: minimum 1 leader, 1 battleline, no behemoths or artillery, play on half tables, use pitched battle plans and realm rules My list: Null Myriad Soul Mason with arcane command and Null Myriad trait and artefact 10 Mortek Guard, sword & board 3 Immortis Guard Bone-tithe Shrieker Opponent's List: Mixed Chaos Plague Priest 10 plague monks 5 skryre acolytes 10 gutter runners 5 chaos warriors 1 doom flayer Scenario was... I forget the name. Total Destruction, maybe? The one with objectives in each corner, score a point at the end of your turn for each objective you control, and an extra point for each that you took from your opponent that turn. Because of the half tables, we decided to halve the distances of the objectives to the table edges, so they wouldn't end up all crammed together in the center of the battle. This had significant game repercussions down the line, but neither of us realized it at the time so no harm intended. Realm was Shadow (rolled randomly from every realm except beasts, since neither of us had any monsters with us). realm trait limited LOS to 18". I went first. With multiple objectives to grab and defend, I split my force, putting 10 morteks on one objective and the mason & immortis on the other. Tried to keep them in range of each other, the los limit from the realm rules made it iffy. First turn I captured my two objectives, moving my units as far forward as they could while still doing so. Successful spellcasting got the shrieker out among other buffs that didn't matter. Chaos turn one used the Ulgu trait to teleport his gutter runners behind my morteks, claiming their objective and both of his. At this point it became suddenly clear that between the chaos team outnumbering me 2 to 1 in both models and units, the ulgu teleportation CA (which I couldn't use thanks to ossiarch rules), and the shortened distance between objectives and the board edges that we had agreed to earlier meaning that any unit that teleported could immediately be in range to claim any objective I wasn't actively sitting on, it was then impossible for me to win. The board right after the gutter runners teleported, and right before the rest of the skaven forces on the left ran back out of reasonable charge range of my immortis. Note that the line of dice in the back is a board edge. Even if my morteks turned back to stomp on the gutter runners and re-take that objective (which they did handily in the following turn), I didn't have enough units to both sit on my objectives and chase his. If I just sat for the rest of the game he'd win on the VP advantage he already had, and if I went after him he'd just pull back, throw up a couple sacrificial roadblocks, and teleport his spare units behind me to claim any objective I moved away from. Which is how the rest of the game went. The road blocks in question were the doom flayer, which the immortis & mason frustratingly took two rounds to kill despite help from the shrieker, and the chaos warriors, which the Morteks did an impressive job of taking out even unassisted, but again it took them two rounds to do which didn't help matters. So major loss, but I'm not too upset over it. 500 is a wonky points value for ossiarchs, and the combination of scenario roll, realm roll, and the adjustments we made to the scenario to fit the smaller table size kind of decided the game from the get go. The units I ran all pretty much did what they were supposed to do, so that was nice. Sadly, the opponent had no wizards, so Null Myriad rules kind of went to waste. I love their fluff, but even setting aside that they're obviously worse than the obviously best legion which I refuse to use on principle, even just on their own the Myriad's rules are very all or nothing, which isn't ideal. I'll give them a few more goes, but may end up switching over to crematorians.

The spell refers to "shields" and "nadirite battle-shields". Mortek Guard and Kavalos Deathriders have "shields". Immortis Guard, Liege Kavalos, and Arch-Kavalos Zandtos have "nadirite battle-shields". Those are the units that can benefit from the spell. This answer doesn't change that, it only clarifies that when the spell refers to "shields" it means the specific equipment named "shields", not just any shield at all. Katakros is equipped with "the Shield Immortis", which conceptually is 'a shield', but is not the specific equipment item named "shields" and so does not qualify to be targeted by the spell according to this answer. Nothing has changed.

It would be unfortunate, but with the petrifex outlier out of the way, future points updates could fix it in time. As is, though? Look at this thread. Practically every list is petrifex, apart from ones that acknowledge up front that they're only avoiding petrifex to be contrarian or softball their opponents. Multiple comments on games of 'without petrifex I would never have had a chance'. In discussions elsewhere we have players of other factions complaining that their games against obr are unfun because the army is too hard to hurt, thanks in large part to petrifex. With the current track we're on, and no changes to petrifex, we're staring down the barrel of points hikes accross the faction, despite non-petrifex legions struggling already, and if that happens it will only make things worse. Petrifex is a problem.

That's exactly the problem, and exactly why petrifex needs a nerf. If obr units are overpriced for every legion except petrifex, but can't get a points decrease because it would make the unit too strong in petrifex, then the petrifex rules as written are a barrier standing in the way of the faction as a whole being fun and balanced.

With every passing day it becomes more and more clear that Petrifex is best by so much that it breaks the whole faction. Simply put, petrifex versions of units are so much better than the other legion or non legion versions of those same units that they cannot justifiably be played at the same points cost. For each and every unit, either the petrifex version is underpriced by 20 points or more, or else the non petrifex version is overpriced by the same amount. They need a nerf. Frankly, I'm surprised they didn't see one in the first faq. Then again, I'm surprised they made it through testing as is to begin with.

He's also better in a praetorian army, where you can use his wound reroll ca on other units, not just himself. Not super relevant right now when petrifex is best by a country mile, but if petrifex gets the nerf bat in the future, then praetorians may get more popular.

I like 20s. Beefy enough to make relatively efficient use of buffs while being cheap enough to have a few units to work with. Massive blocks of 40 really are tempting, though, as getting a big horde discount on what is already our most offensively and defensively points efficient unit is really something worth considering, and properly supported (couple boneshapers, shrieker, harvester, maybe a liege) a massive wall of 2x40 morteks can steam roll entire enemy armies. On the other end of the spectrum, 10 morteks for 130 points is our cheapest battle line and is still a functional little unit, much hittier and tougher to budge then its small size would suggest. Especially in (sigh) petrifex. If our non-battleline units were more points efficient then taking minimal mortek battleline would probably be the way to go, but since they are in many ways our best and strongest unit, you might as well beef them up a bit, imo. Honestly, they're a great unit at any size. I'm not sure there's a bad way to run them.