Sception

What about the death save, +3 move ca, and petrifex -1 rend ca?

Im away from book, but my recollection is "has hekatos keyword or fully within 6" of a mortek hekatos or fully within 12" on a bonereaper hero". Just having a hekatos in the unit wasn't enough. But again, im away from book, so could be wrong.

In smaller units, yeah, if you take one or nore greatblades the first should go on the champion. In larger units you might want to keep the champion in the middle of the unit inatead of the front, for the various wholly within 6" of a mortek hekatos abilities, in which case the greatblades should be on regular troopers who you can keep in front.

Stalliarch flee & charge ca is for mounted models only - kavalos, liege, soulmason, arkhan, nagash. Doesn't work for zandtos because he has the pretorian keyword. The run & charge legion trait works for anyone except the pretorian named characters.

Reasons to field them: better than spears, helps narrow the gap between spears and swords. Fractionally better than swords without the nadirite buff spell, which won't be up on all your units all the time Look cool, if you think they look cool Reasons not to field them: Have to roll their attacks separately, which is a hassle Look bad, if you think they look bad Only comfortably fit on one of the unit's bodies, resulting in either awkward assembly or a chorus line effect in your front rank if you field multiples. Honestly, the arm fit for morteks is kind of bad in general.

It loses some value, but not as much as you might (or I did) think. Battalion ability has limited range from the hero, only applies to the two units in the battalion. A cav army is going to run more than the 2 kavalos units in the lance, but isnt going to run two lances, because you won't want two lieges. Stalliarch lets you retreat & charge with units outside of the lance, or lance units not in range of the liege, while the battalion lets you retreat and charge with lance units in ramge of the hero without spending rd points. Compare to shield corps. Everyone likes that battalion and it just lets one unit a turn do something they could have done anyway, just without spending a point. Same deal. While the lance is still good for staliarchs, and staliarchs will definitely want to run it, I don't deny that it does more for other legions, and that doesn't feel right. But the combination is still good. While I won't defend their command trait or artifact, the legion trait and command ability really are quite good, and they're good in ways that meaningfully change how the army builds and plays, which is what subfaction rules should do.

This is pretty much the way to go. Play what you want, and give your opponents time to adjust before making changes to your own list, just be open to making changes of your own if your scene isn't able to react. Personally I lean towards starting with softballs and 'growing the beard out' as appropriate, but that's easy for me to say as the options I most like in the army aren't the obvious strong ones anyway. When I list things that might be problems for fun, I don't mean that they definitely will be. IME most players know it's important to have some rend and some mortal output, know 5 wound heroes are vulnerable to sniping and either look for ways to protect them or don't hang their entire game plans on them, know they need to have some anti-magic game, know they need tools to target your own heroes, etc. Granted, some armies don't have a lot of options in these areas, but for the most part I don't think even petrifex should be a huge problem past the shock to the system of a death army with some actual armor saves. We don't have any of the major system tilting effects that characterize the most broken aos2 factions to date - no summoning, no out of sequence combat attacks, etc. Yeah, this is a big part of the problem with petrifex. Not only are they obviously stronger than the rest, they're obviously stronger in the generic ways that the army is already strong, so they're basically the best for any build. Stalliarch pushes you towards cavalry lists specifically, Crematorians infantry spam & recursion, Pretorians really want you to field their named heroes, Null... well, the Myriad doesn't really encourage particular builds either, personally I'd rather their CA was something unrelated to their anti-magic trait, something that wouldn't be so heavily tilted against caster-blaster armies, would matter a bit more vs. other armies, and could give them a mechanical push towards a more thematically focused build. Probably something caster related. Meanwhile Petrifex might be fixed if you swapped their abilities around a bit. CA at the start of any phase for +1 armor save for that phase only, trait that gives them +1 rend on unmodified six to wound? Same flavor, but significantly cut back. but that's spiraling off into wish listing and home brewing, which is another thread.

Pretty much this. If you think they look cooler, then maybe run one per unit - whether those are units of 3 or 6 or whatever, as a neat looking squad leader. If you don't happen to think they look way cooler than the 4swords, then definitely don't build them, as they're sadly a case where the weapon 'upgrade' is actually a downgrade, especially in the precision stance which is what they'll almost always be using.

Rule of Cool, yes. By the math, no. Unfortunately a case where a weapon 'upgrade' is actually a downgrade.

The other legions are not "all bad or boring". Stalliarch Lords and Crematorians at least have fun & effective rules. And Null Myriad aren't bad in a magic heavy meta, though admittedly they do have 'fun' issues due to their abilities being too effective against particular builds and largely irrelevant against others. Mortis Praetorian special character command abilities would largely make up for their lacking legion traits were it not for Petrifex obsoleting the boost from Katakros. Ivory Host is kinda bad, sure, but the biggest problem with the OBR subfactions isn't most of them being weak, its one of them being too strong. If you flat out removed petrifex and Ivory Host, the OBR book would be getting praise for having some of the best subfaction balance out of AoS 2e books so far. Granted that's kind of a low bar, but still. 4 is honestly enough subfactions, anyway, nobody would have even noticed the two missing if they had never been there in the first place. In terms of the army being 'unfun' to play against, that's not the same as being 'unfair' or 'unbalanced'. The crawler isn't at all overpowered for its points cost, but what it does do is remove 5 wound heroes, the lynchpin of the majority of armies out there, outright, from a distance, with little they can do to stop it since even a single failed save kills the entire unit. Even worse for the cursed stele that removes models without saves at all. Again, I'm not saying that's unbalanced, but it is a feel bad moment when it happens. That the catapults can also wipe out swaths of chaffy troops, either based on the bravery attack or just getting multiple 5 wound shots a turn through poor-to-no save units. There are armies that will just roll over to catapult spam, and the fact that there are even more armies that will shrug them off and steam roll them doesn't make the games on either extreme any more fun. The other thing that can be unfun is an army that feels impossible to hurt, taking very little damage and healing up whatever manages to get through. Armies full of 2+ and 3+ rerollable armor save troops can be just frustrating to play against for enemies without a lot of rend, even if their points costs are high enough to be fair. Another thing that really hurts fun is taking a player's command points. Generally your coolest abilities are activated via command points, and most armies get so few of them already. So if you're playing OBR in a casual beer & pretzels setting and you're concerned about opponents who don't optimize their lists having fun, then don't play petrifex, don't spam crawlers, and save katakros for special occasion big games.

Stalkers are more efficient, largely because they have a more narrow role - melee offense, with a bit of speed and terrain circumvention to help target that offense. Their multiple forms implies they have multiple roles, but nope, not really, and even the forms are a bit of an illusion with one of them far better than two of the others at the same jobs those other two pretend to do. Immortis have two jobs - melee offense (slightly tankier variant, but melee offense all the same), combined with taking wounds for heroes. Like many units that can do two different things, they pay for that privilege by being less efficient for the points than units that do just one thing, and that reduced efficiency does hurt. If you're just using them to beat on things then stalkers are pretty much always better. And while the hero protecting thing seems really nice in an army that, like most death armies (really most AoS armies in general), is pretty dependant on support heroes to function, the fact that they're not super points efficient means that they aren't exactly amazing at that job either. Is it really helping your army all that much to transfer wounds from a 130 point boneshaper to a 200 point unit of immortis? You could have had a whole second boneshaper instead, with 70 points to spare. I'm not saying immortis are bad. After all, 200 points of immortis has 12 wounds where a second boneshaper only adds 5, and if you cluster your support heroes together the same immortis block can cover for multiples at once. And if you don't need that protection, well, they aren't as good in melee as stalkers, but they aren't bad at it either. And if you're really trying to be as competitive as possible, I'm not sure even stalkers are worth taking. I mean, yeah, they're killy, but so are mortek guard and kavalos deathriders, and you have to take some of those to fill battleline requirements, so if you're trying to maximize efficiency you're probably better off taking that same 200 points you would have spent on stalkers and instead spending it on better supporting the battleline you're already taking, with maybe a liege or a harvester or just plain old more battleline. At least the immortis's bodyguard role, while perhaps a bit points inefficient by comparison, isn't something the battleline units you have to take anyway already have covered. Which I suppose doesn't really help your consideration of which to build. The main thing I'd say is they're both perfectly decent, and while stalkers might have a slight edge in points efficiency, if you were really all that worried about points efficiency you probably wouldn't be fielding either. So instead just build the one you think looks cooler, or sounds cooler narratively. Read their lore descriptions in the book and see which jumps out at you. Look at what the various battalions they're a part of do and decide if any of those sound like fun. Personally, I assembled my first three as immortis, because I like the look of them better, and because a ceremonial bodyguard type unit makes narrative sense to me in the Null Myriad, my favorite legion, based on their silent, eerie disposition and their arcane flavor that supports fielding multiple fragile casters, including Arkhan himself. My next three, once I get around to them, will also be immortis, for their formation, and if I get any after that it will be stalkers, because pretty much all the units in the army are at least playable - a big step up for GW in terms of internal book balance - and that really rewards a 'some of everything' attitude towards collecting a bonereaper army.

Two is A LOT for a list at that points range. Not unplayable, you'll win some games, but "well balanced" and "40% of my army in two artillery pieces" aren't sentiments that really go together, unfortunately. Because the fundamentals of that list are so skewed, you're going to run into a lot of binary games - either your opponents can easily deal with the catapults and you just lose, or they can't and you just win. There will still be fun games that fall inbetween, but maybe not as many as you might like. Frankly, if you're looking for "well balanced", you might want to limit the 200 point artillery pieces to no more than 1/1000 points. That said, it's not entirely unworkable. Here's a crack at a 1250 point list: You've got some infantry, your catapults, a couple leaders. That's about all you're realistically going to be able to fit. Might run the infantry as 1x20, 2x10 instead to spread them out over the board more, but that's less efficient for buffs, and you'll be a bit shy on RD points, so I like the 2x20 personally. Especially if you play games of this point size on a 4x4 table instead of a 4x6. Regardless, it's a playable starting list, about as well balanced as you could ask with the starting conditions, and can grow progressively more balanced if you increase it towards 2000 points later on. That might look something like: That looks a lot more 'well balanced' to me, and uses everything from the first list so nothing you get in the short term would go to waste in the long term. It also has 200 points left over, a magic number that you could spend on any number of things, including: another support caster plus another endless spell increasing one of the mortek units to 40 3 immortis, to protect your support heroes from enemy artillery, and as an extra melee element in games where that isn't necessary 5 kavalos to have a faster assault element to hassle enemy ranged units or go after unattended objectives 3 stalkers for a slightly less faster, slightly more assaultier element that can also hop over blocking terrain a harvester even a third crawler, though again one per thousand points is already as many as a 'well balanced' list wants to run

IMO catapults are less about average damage and more about the threat of removing 5 wound support heroes from behind enemy lines with a single failed save.

It's actually an extra 3, since you get one for having a battalion and get a free shield wall in both players combat phases for effectively two more per battle round. So its even better than you say, and I *still* don't think it's worth sacrificing bodies for in a list that is already shy of bodies given how objective based this game is. Again, maybe drop one or both a crawlers for it. A pair of them is probably too greedy in a list that's already paying 500 points for a single hero. But as is you're already looking at only marginally better than Nagash levels of board presence in a list that doesn't have a Nagash to show for it, so I'd be strongly disinclined to go smaller there. If you think units of 10 are fine, maybe split one of the 20 man squads into 2x10. I could see 2x20 & 2x10 being better than 3x20. But dropping nodels outright feels like the wrong move. You are right that RD could be better though, that is fair. At the very least, one of the casters should be taking the discipline spell instead of one of the buffs. Probably instead of the weapon buff. Giving d3 units +1 attack or -1 rend or reroll saves or +3 move as needed is better than giving one unit exploding 5s.

My list? If so, I disagree. 3x20 morteks with no other units besides characters and artillery is already few enough bodies that the list will have trouble with the objective game. Swap Katakros for a Liege and I'd agree, 100ish points for one of those battalions would probably be worth it, but with fully a quarter of your list in a single character and nothing else in the army cheap & efficient enough to buy you some slack, I just don't think you have the space. And it's not like these units need those battalions to function. Shield Corps and Ballistari are good, but they don't drastically change or improve how their units function on the table the way the Aegis Immortal or Kavalos Lance do. And while fewer deployment drops is nice, taking one of those formations still won't get the list low enough to reliably choose who goes first or second, and even if they did the list is actually pretty ok either way. If they make you go first, you get your buffs and first round of catapult shots off. If they make you go second they're still probably not doing all that much damage to you and you'll get to heal right after and maybe take the double turn. Basically, while those two battalions are good, they're expendible, and there just isn't room for them with Katakros there imo. That you'd even have to drop infantry in a list already lowballing its board presence is proof of that. Heck, I've been playing around with nagash lists that run as many bodies as that. If you're dropping anything, it should maybe be one or both of the crawlers, in order to pick up more infantry, not less - though if you do that then taking the shield corps does become a reasonable idea in that case, though even there you might be better with just more models, as again the shield corps, while good, isn't necessary for the units in it to work. Mostly it gets you a few extra RD points a round between its ability and just being a battalion, but with Katakros and a couple support heroes you aren't exactly hurting for discipline as is. ... Per the other question, whether it's worth spending the rd point for +1 attack on the crawlers, it is in two cases - first is if you're just not in melee yet, in which case an extra shot from a crawler may be worth more than other uses of the discipline depending on your list, opponent, & so on. Second is if there's a target that you can't reach with your melee units that simply must be dealt with, a critical buff hero or the like, where every extra shot is an extra chance for them to fail their armor save and just get removed outright. It's a nice option to be able to throw onto the crawlers, but not critical to how they work. I wouldn't consider a liege of any sort to be a 'must have' unit when running crawlers or vice versa.

Morghats only changed in that they added the 'Ossiarch Bonereaper' and 'Hekatos' keywords. The latter means they don't need a nearby hero for death saves in a Bonereaper army, which is nice for harbingers in particular who prefer to reach out with their flying move and extended charge range. Still, it's relatively minor and doesn't help them much. ... Nagash and Arkhan changed in a number of ways that make them better in OBR armies than they would have been without those changes. If those changes are made retroactive to legions it'll be a mixed bag there. In particular, losing access to other death wizards' spells will be a pretty painful blow in legions armies if their access to the faction spell lists aren't expanded as they are when fielded in OBR armies. Still waiting on how FAQ pans out, though. For the moment, LoN armies still use their LoN warscrolls, so no actual changes there yet. As for whether 'better' means 'good'? Arkhan is a very good caster, with great mobility and even a decent melee punch as long as you're careful with him, but he's quite fragile for his points cost, which in theory is a fair tradeoff but between cities of sigmar and the bonereaper crawlers you might start to see a lot more shooting from your opponents, which would be pretty bad for him. Theoretically you can deploy him next to some immortis to tank a few wounds for him, but they're also pretty expensive so now you're looking at enough points that you could have just fielded Katakros instead, who's a fair bit tougher and arguably does even more for your army without having to worry about failed casting rolls or lucky unbinds from the opponent. So personally I'd rate Arkhan as fine, decent, perfectly playable, but maybe not great in a take all comers, competitive tournament scene kind of sense. Nagash is a special case in that he doesn't so much support your army as he is your army, and your other models are there support him. He's so expensive that your army is bound to have problems with both fielding enough bodies to cap objectives and generating enough discipline points for the non-nagash units to perform at the level that they do in more typical OBR lists. As such, after Nagash has already taking about half your points in a normal 2k point game, most of the rest of your points will probably want to go into battleline and support characters rather than specialist units like crawlers and harvesters and stalkers and the like. Once he gets going, Nagash should be nigh unkillable in the list, assuming you're running petrifex and keep his CA and Protection of Nagash up, but his offense, while impressive for one model, isn't really all that impressive for 800+ points, and he's only a single model for objectives, so you can run into games that feel hopelessly one sided in your favor as your opponent struggles to even scratch this towering monstrosity in the middle of the board, and then you get to the end and tally victory points and realize that it was you who never had a chance of victory. Which is not to say a Nagash list isn't viable or can't win games, it is and it can, but those games tend to be rather lopsided one way or the other, and can be frustrating for casual opponents who are more about having fun trading blows rather than playing to scenario objectives, so he isn't necessarily ideal for regular use in casual beer & pretzels games. On the other hand, in a tournament setting there are going to be more players who know how to effectively play around him. Nagash OBR isn't *all that* different from Nagash LoN, which was a common list that everyone had to be familiar with and have a plan for only a few short months ago, so while Nagash is valid and viable and you shouldn't be surprised if he wins a few events he's probably not the best option there either. I want to stress that neither Arkhan nor Nagash is bad exactly. They're quite playable, they do enough to justify their points even with the price hikes in OBR. They're just maybe not the tippity top end of tournament viability, and Nagash in particular sucks up a lot of the air on any table you deploy him on, which maybe isn't ideally appropriate for casual pick up games.

Here's a cursory crack at one: Allegiance: Ossiarch Bonereapers- Legion: Petrifex EliteMortal Realm: ShyishKatakros, Mortarch of the Necropolis (500)- GeneralMortisan Boneshaper (130)- Artefact: Godbone Armour - Lore of Mortisans: Empower Nadirite WeaponsMortisan Soulmason (140)- Lore of Mortisans: Reinforce Battle-shields20 x Mortek Guard (260)- Nadirite Blade and Shield20 x Mortek Guard (260)- Nadirite Blade and Shield20 x Mortek Guard (260)- Nadirite Blade and ShieldMortek Crawler (200)Mortek Crawler (200)Bone-tithe Shrieker (30)Total: 1980 / 2000Extra Command Points: 0Allies: 0 / 400Wounds: 114

Because they look like they should be. They're huge and impressive models, more monster than unit, so they just look and feel like they should be 100+ points a model, and that's clearly caused someone in the dev studio's circuits to short out. Frankly, I don't want them to cost less, I want them to be buffed until they're worth the cost they already have. +2 wounds each, +1 attack each, an extra -1 rend on the swords, +1 move for harbingers, +1 save / -1 move for archai. Maybe swap out the archai's mortal shrug for the immortis's bodyguard ability, so they can do what their fluff says they do outside of a battalion. Differentiate them from immortis by restricting the immortis bodyguard rule to non-monster heroes. Definitely give morghasts in general a better signature ability than a bravery debuff. Maybe instead an ability to force a non-death units within 3" to take a battleshock tests even if they'd otherwise be immune. Not only would that be better than a bravery debuff, it would make all the other bravery debuffs in death armies worth something. Maybe make it a command ability if it's too strong as a passive. With all that, they'd finally be close to as strong and terrifying as their models imply. They might even need to be more expensive than their current 105 points per model, but I'd be fine with morghasts costing more so long as they were actually worth the price and impressive enough to live up to both that their models.

@Aryann The second list is almost good. Swapping ballistari for shield corps and adding a shrieker would help. Note that the list as written isnt legal for a ballistari anyway, unlike the shield corps, ballistari doesn't give you a choice of caster hero, it requires a boneshaper specifically. Also, if you're fielding 6 stalkers it's probably better to run them as one big unit instead of two smaller ones, especially as your rd supply is limited. One unit is cheaper to buff, and hits all at the same time in the combat phase. 2x3 is still good and lets you spread your threats around a bit, try them both ways. Longer term you'll definitely want to be able to field more battleline, and wull want the healing ability of a boneshaper, but in tge mean time this is good for now and a reasonable list to work towards.

It extends the range of the entire ability, so any ossiarch bonereaper unit wholly within 36" gains +1 to hit, and any mortis pretorian unit wholly within 36" gains +1 to saves.

The first question is how you assemble feast of bones. You've got got 20 small infantry, (see the spears vs. swords thread for thoughts on assembling those from posters who know what they're talking about more than I do), 6 medium infantry (stalkers or immortis), 4 morghasts (harbingers or archai, and 2 vokmortians. First up is vok - you clearly don't need two of an extremely recognizeable special character. While his rules are a bit lackluster (fingers crossed for faq adding the mortisan keyword at least), his model looks amazing, and there are a lot of bonereaper players out there who didn't managed to snag a copy of feast of bones before it sold out, see if you can find somebody who will trade you any of the generic mortisans for your spare vokmortian. In terms of spears or swords on the mortek guard, swords are widely accepted to be better, long term you might mix a few spear units into your collection for visual flair, but safe to go with swords for your first 20. In terms of the greatblades... they are only barely fractionally better than the swords, a difference that disappears if you cast the weapon buff spell on the unit. Up to you whether that's worth the hassle of rolling their dice separately. I'd decide based on aesthetic preference. If you do add spear units to your collection later though, those should always take the maximum number of greatblades. The big question is how you'll assemble the medium infantry and morghasts. Personally, I recommend choosing one of the three battalions that combine medium infantry and morghasts and assembling the models according to that choice. The options are: 1) Vokmortian's Reginue. This is the battalion from the Feast of Bones box, combines vokmortian, one unit mortek guard, one unit stalkers, one unit morghast Archai. The battalion brings back one model a turn to one of it's units within 8" of Vokmortian. One of the bigger selling points is that you only need one unit of stalkers, so you can field them as 1x6, which is more efficient for buffing & better in combat than the 2x3 set ups from the other two battalions. Stalkers are also more efficient in their single role than immortis are in their dual role, so that's nice, though archai are arguably the lesser morghast variant. This battalion at least gives you a reason to run Vokmortian beyond looking cool, so that's something. This is the only way to bring back entire slain stalker or morghast models, but to use it the units - which are otherwise relatively speedy - have to stay in range of vokmortion, who isn't really. 2) Aegis Immortal. 2x3 Immortis Guard, 1 unit of archai. Arguably the lesser vesrion of both your medium infantry and your morghasts, but the battalion does do a lot for them, arguably more so than the other battalions do for their units. If you like Immortis and Archai aesthetically, this is the best way to run them. 3) Katakrosian Deathglaive, 2x3 Stalkers and 1 unit of harbingers, arguably the better builds for both units, gives them a pre-game move which is nice in an otherwise slowish army. Regardless of which you pick, I'd only assemble two of the morghasts for now. They're not the most efficient unit, so minimum is probably better, and you can decide later whether you want to expand the unit you have or build the other build to have a pair of each. Otherwise, all three of these formations are decent but not great, the kind of thing you run more as an excuse to field models you like rather than for strictly competitive reasons, as such I'd base the decision on aesthetic preference rather than worrying about competitive viability. If you're trying to be on the bleeding edge of tournament viability, you're probably not fielding medium infantry or morghasts at all anyway. They aren't bad, but they're not *as good* as some other units in the army that are better. Speaking of, if you're worried about fielding the 'best' stuff, that's probably either Katakros or a Liege, a boneshaper, either a soulmason or a second boneshaper, 1-2 catapults, the shrieker endless spell, and as many mortek guard as you can fit in the points you have left over. Maybe with one of the formations that includes some of the mentioned units if you have the points for it, which probably comes down to whether you took katakros or settled for a liege. All in petrifex for the extra save and the extra rend CA which are just so far above anything any other subfaction has that it's not even funny. That's the stuff that looks most efficient, and therefore most competitive, right now, BUT that's just the thing, isn't it? It's only how things look right now. GW have shown with their regular erratas and points updates that they're not afraid to shake things up, and any or all of the mentioned options and units might see a rules nerf or points hike or both, and then suddenly they aren't the most efficient options anymore. That's the problem with chasing competitive variety over aesthetic preference, what units are competitive is a lot more volatile than what models you like. Probably the best thing about OBR is how good the internal balance between the units is right now. Almost every unit has a unique role that it's at least reasonably competent at and that nothing else in the army can do in quite the same way. About the only exceptions are vokmortian and the soulreaper, and even they aren't bad, they just aren't doing anything as unique as the alternative caster options. There's very little redundancy. As a result, you can collect the units you happen to like, and the result will probably be something reasonably playable. So what I've been doing, and what I recommend that you do, is pick units you like, and aim to collect the battalions that use those units, to give your army project some organizational structure and tangible goals to shoot for as much as to actually use the battalions in game. Start with one of the two main battleline battalions - either the shield-corps (a couple more boxes of morteks, vokmortian can lead this but I'd look to pick up a boneshaper and/or soulmason) or the lance (two boxes kavalos, one liege). Either way that'll get you up to a respectable battleline for a 2k point game. After that, the next purchases should probably be the nexus (it's free, you should take it, but it will be a bit of a project to paint) and the endless spells (shrieker is real good, the other two are playable, and there's really nothing else to fill 100 point or smaller gaps in lists). From there, again, pick a unit you like, start working towards a battalion that includes it. You said you like the crawlers, they're fantastic in game, working towards the ballistari is not a bad call, all those units are fantastic. And by the time you've finished that you'll have a huge collection with a variety of viable 2k lists, so you might want to pick up one of the big special characters - Katakros, Nagash, or Arkhan - as a sort of captstone to lead your army in big games. Of the three, Katakros is probably the strongest, Arkhan is the easiest to fit into more regular lists, and Nagash is the most dramatic to field, turning any encounter into a sort of narrative theme game. In your case, I'd personally build your feast of bones models for the aegis immortal based on purely personal aesthetic preference, I just really love how the immortis and archai look. Then I'd grab two boxes of kavalos plus the liege for a lance - shield corps are probably better, but you've already got some morteks, variety is the spice of life after all, and maybe I'm just a bit tired of skeletal infantry spam after years of playing Legions of Nagash. After that, the terrain & the endless spells. You'll be able to put together a playable & fun 2k list at that point. Once that's all done, a boneshaper and a couple catapults and expand the moirtek unit to 40 for a solid ballistari, swapping out with the aegis immortal for a different and probably more competitive alternate 2k list. Wrap it all up with Arkhan, because I've always loved Arkhan, and you can put everything together for special occasion 3000 point big game, though to fit points you'd have to drop the one of the battalions to fit points (not the units, just the battalion upgrade, probably the ballistari since it isn't as critical to how the units play as the lance or aegis are), and will have to split the morteks into two squads of 20 to meet battleline requirements. But that's just one example of what you might do, based on my personal aesthetic preferences. Again, almost no units in the army are actually bad. Pick and assemble what you like, and as long as you have enough battleline for a valid force you should be able to put together something fun and perfectly playable out of it, even if it isn't necessarily top table competitive, but again imo chasing that is kind of a losing game, as points updates, errata, and meta shifts can easily pull the rug out from under a tournament list with very little warning.

If you want to field archai and immortis regardless, then yeah. But if you weren't taking those units already than it's not reason enough to do so, really.

Katakros is more useful in more lists than nagash. 500 points is a lot, but it doesn't dominate you entire army like 880 does, so you can still reasonably field an army with katakros, where nagash is the army. Based on first impressions from players with some tournament experience, the strongest units available to OBR are katakros, boneshapers, mortek guard, and the big catapult. Less good are morghasts, arguably also immortis guard, vokmortian, and soulreapers unless you're running the trident battalion in a game using realm spells. Other units are good, just not as good as the best stuff. That said, internal balance is qctually pretty decent in OBR. Even the less good units aren't exactly bad, so if you happen to really like vokmortian or morghasts or whatever you can still run them and do fine. In terms of what to get next, you'll need the nexus terrain and more battleline, either more mortek guard or kavalos deathriders, whichever you prefer. I'd recommend picking one you like aesthetically and working towards their formation, either the shield corps (another box or two of morteks plus a small caster, preferably a boneshaper) or the deathlance (2+ boxes of the kavalos plus a liege). Both are good. After that, if there are particular models you really like, go ahead and get those. Again, internal balance in obr is pretty decent, between units at least, so even the "bad" units aren't all that bad. If nothing else comes to mind, start saving towards katakros or one of the other battalions, in particular ballistari (2 crawlers, boneshaper) or trident (soulmason, soulreaper, boneshaper), as the components of either are pretty generally useful even outside of the battalion, with the possible exception of the soulreaper, which is at least a cool model.

Nadirite weapons are weapons with the word nadirite in their names, and the Nadarite Weapons special rule. 'Nadirite battle shields' and 'shields' are specific pieces of equipment with exactly those names. Eg liege kavalos & immortis guard are equipped with 'nadirite battle shields', and mortek guard are equipped with 'shields'.

Yeah, they did not feel great to assemble. Worked out well enough, but still.