Sception

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.

Allegiance: Ossiarch Bonereapers- Legion: Null MyriadMortal Realm: ShyishMortisan Soulreaper (120)- General- Trait: Unsettling and Sinister - Artefact: Baleful Blade- Lore of Mortisans: Arcane CommandMortisan Boneshaper (130)- Artefact: Artisan's Key- Lore of Mortisans: Empower Nadirite WeaponsMortisan Boneshaper (130)- Lore of Mortisans: Reinforce Battle-shieldsMortisan Soulmason (140)- Artefact: Soul Rezervoir- Lore of Mortisans: Drain Vitality20 x Mortek Guard (260)- Nadirite Blade and Shield20 x Mortek Guard (260)- Nadirite Blade and Shield20 x Mortek Guard (260)- Nadirite Spear and Shield- 2x Soulcleaver Greatblades3 x Immortis Guard (200)Gothizzar Harvester (200) Mortisan Trident (110)Mortek Shield-corps (120) Bone-tithe Shrieker (30)Nightmare Predator (40)Total: 2000 / 2000Extra Command Points: 2Allies: 0 / 400Wounds: 102 Casual/friendly (no petrifex, no crawler) 2k list. Null myriad because I like their Lore, though I've been waffling & might switch to Crematorians. Heavy caster focus, plently of recursion, couple decent formations, a unit of immortis because I like the models & to buy the casters a round or two of cover from shooting. If my opponent doesn't bring any ranged weapons, the immortis will escort the soulreaper into melee. One unit of morteks with spears for aesthetic variety will probably camp objective, while the sword units flank the harvester while the casters following up behind pouring on the buffs & healing. 6 discipline points base, plus d3 from arcane command, plus an average of 1 from rolls, should be enough to move the whole army +3" on the first turn if need be, & later on should be more than sufficient to keep the mortek & immortis CAs always active, especially with the shield corp. If anything, I might be generating too much discipline. Maybe would be better to swap the immortis for a liege in order to have a better way to spend it all... but I really like the immortis models, and I'm a bit concerned about ranged attacks sniping out my casters, so for now they stay. Might instead swap arcane command for something else... maybe put drain vitality on the reaper, and mortal contract or protection of nagash on the mason? Also considering a variant that drops the trident battalion, reaper, & one shaper to add arkhan. Most likely first opponents are khorne or skaven. Should be able to get a game in the next week or two.

Not that I think there was any real worry they wouldn't fit, but you can use the Arch-kavalos's lower horse legs with the liege-kavalos's horse head & rider parts if you want to build the generic hero with the special character's rearing pose.

My own order has been picked up - 40 more mortek guard, one of each non-special hero, and a harvester. Refitted an old lich priest conversion to use as a boneshaper as well: I like the official model more, but I'm happy enough with the result to use it as a second shaper when I want to field two.

A warning to anyone who managed to grab feast of bones but hasn't assembled Vokmortian yet: paint him, his sarcophagus, and his base separately. Or at least, paint his base and the inside of his skirt before glueing them together, and paint his back and the indide of his sarcophagus before gluing those together. Doing the base separately is especially important. Normally I'm a lazy painter who assembles everything first with the excuse of 'if a paintbrush can't reach it than my eyes probably can't see it anyway', but because of the hole in back of the robe and the way it opens in front it is both very easy to see the inside of the robe, the back leg, and the ground around his back foot and very hard to actually reach any of that stuff to properly paint it once the model is glued down.

Finished test model, with slightly revised scheme:

Also Arkhan's need for the immortis diminishes quickly after the first turn, because by that point he should have protection of nagash up. It's often enough for him to simply deploy near an immortis unit even if he doesn't plan to stay near them after the game starts. And really, arkhan's pretty content to hang out behind your lines casting buffs until the battle's good & stuck in, so it may be a few turns before he even wants to jump out to position for a charge or whatever.

I have an old liche priest I converted from a high elf wizard and some tomb king bits. Currently planning to reconvert him into my own second boneshaper. Maybe press-mold the mid-assembly mortek from the official model to help make the intent clear to opponents.

Arkhan's playable, but seems very meta dependant. Solid shooting will remove him very quickly. If the opponent doesn't have a lot of shooting, than he's great, but it's a big risk. Theoretically you could take some immortis to protect him from getting shot off the board before the game starts, but that effectively pushes his points cost up to 560, and that's kind of asking a lot for Arkhan. If you are using him in a competitive environment, running petrifex is extra important for that extra bit of armor.

The base still gets another drybrush, & most of it covered in patches of snow.

There's a new Mind of Mengel article on warhammer community with a tutorial on doing crematorians style dark bone with internal glow. Pink instead of read, but technique is the same regardless. Here's a quick test model I did in greens: Less of a hassle than I expected it to be. Relatively happy with the results, which are pretty close to some of the photo edit mockups I posted earlier in the thread. Though I might redo the soul gem black and the armor dark green Here's a link to the guide: https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/11/06/from-the-mind-of-mengel-mortek-guard-iigw-homepage-post-4/

currently yes. I can't imagine it will survive faq.

This is generally thought to be a mistake that will get fixed in faq. Even if it does get fixed he won't exactly be competitively good, but he'll at least be casually playable.

It's worth pointing out that in the case of IG taking mortal wounds for nagash, soulbound protectors is rolled before Nagash's armor's roll to negate mortal wounds.

It goes like this: hit -> wound -> hero's armor save -> soulbound protector roll -> deathless warriors The Immortis unit does not get to use their armor save when using the soulbound protector rule to take wounds directed at the hero. The soulbound protector rule triggers on allocating wounds to the hero, and wounds are allocated only after any armor saves have already been rolled.

I do think the crawler would in general just be better, but I do also like the harvester, particularly in the trident formation (which also helps justify the reaper's existence, though it's too pricey for this points value), or in Crematorians, who want all the recursion they can get. For your petrifex list in particular I'd rate the Liege and the Harvester about evenly, both perfectly good and acceptable uses of 200 points. For the record I'd rate a unit of stalkers about the same and a unit of Immortis not too far behind. Crawler's dang impressive, though, and does things that the morteks can't just do on their own. Like, the harvester's good, and kills things, and can bring some morteks back, but if you wanted more morteks you could have just taken 10 more morteks for 70 points cheaper and they'd be near about as if not even more killy, especially when you throw the petrifex CA on them for rend -2 swords. And the liege can give a unit of 20 morteks 20 more attacks for an RD point, but again for 70 points less you could take 10 more morteks and have 20 more attacks without spending any RD points. Granted, you can use the liege on multiple units, and I think that definitely adds up especially when you move past 1k points, but at 1k points it could be argued that the extra wounds and bodies on objective capturing infantry would go further. The crawler does something the Morteks just can't do - removing large numbers of chaff at a distance, and picking off support heroes hiding behind enemy lines. That's a big deal, and its something almost nothing else in the army can really do. Again, some variant & gimmick lists might put other stuff first - cavalry lists want that liege to be your first model, crematorians will reach for a harvester before a crawler, Nagash lists likely won't have spare points for any other big stuff, etc. But if you're trying to put together a typical-of-the-faction, take-all-comers type list that highlights the strongest and most efficient and most tactically useful elements of the OBR then I do think the Crawler wants to be there right from the start.

First of all, take everything I say with a grain of salt. I read a fair bit, and listen to some podcasts, but I do not have the sort of actual competitive play experience under my belt that would make me any kind of actual authority in my own right. Instead, I'd recommend checking out the 'Just Saying' podcast. Their recent overview of the OBR army book is the source of most of my opinions on competitive OBR, though they do get some things wrong, such as how the Ivory Host trait works - not that it matters because even with my understanding how the trait actually works it's still not very good and in any event it's not relevant to this list, which is of course petrifex, as basically every competitively minded OBR list should be. Disclaimers out of the way, your list looks good for a 1000 point starting force, at least to me. 2x20 morteks feels like a good number for that points value, and the bone tithe shrieker is always good. The soulreaper isn't the best hero, a second bone shaper would be better, but you don't have the points for a 1 for 1 swap without changing something else. The big thing is the Liege Kavalos. I really like the Liege, and rate it higher than the Just Saying folks do, but even so it's very pricey for 1k points, especially with two other heroes already. Personally, I think you might get more mileage out of replacing it with a crawler. RD points would be an issue, but you could mitigate that by giving the Reaper the d3 RD spell, treating it like sort of an infantry field captain. Maybe even make it the general to pull some heat of the Shaper. I'd add the Liege back in at higher points, along with another crawler, another shaper (probably replacing the reaper), maybe a mason, maybe some cavalry, definitely more & bigger mortek units, maybe one or two of the battalions that use units you're already taking anyway. But that's all at higher points. At 1k you have to be really picky.

No, I don't expect it. I *wish* they would get OBR as an ally, I think it would make sense, narratively. I don't think it would break the game at all - OBR units in general depend heavily on their command abilities which in turn depend heavily on getting multiple discipline points a turn, and are reigned in significantly by default when forced to operate in a normal army with only the usual 1 CP a turn, especially in LoN where even that CP is almost always spoken for. They also lack access to their +3 move CA which makes them quite slow, and to their very good spell lore, which significantly reigns in their casters. About the only unit that might be an issue allied into LoN is the crawler, which is currently priced such that 2 could be allied in at 2k points. That's probably not the end of the world, but I'd feel more comfortable about allowing them as allies if the catapult went up to 210. Maybe drop the ballistari battalion cost to 80 to offset the catapult price increase in pure OBR armies. But regardless, I do not believe it would be an issue in the slightest to allow OBR as allies. I just don't think GW will, mostly because I think they're still snakebit over what the addition of grimghasts did to Legions at the start of 2e. Of course, if grimghasts had been allies instead of flat out additions to the LoN that woudn't have been a problem either, but GW's hardly the only game design studio with a tendency to alternate between pushing too far forward and recoiling too far back.

they bodyguard rules transfer wounds as they are allocated, which is after armor saves, but before shrugs like deatheless minions. The character will get their armor save before rolling to pass any unsaved wounds through.

Looks nice. imo bludgeons are better than sickles on the harvester. Additionally, I'd take a boneshaper instead of the soulmasin - healing is too important. That also frees up 10 points to upgrade the soulstealer to a shrieker, which imo is the better dpel for your support caster to cast, and I don't generally like to cast soulbound spells w/arkhan since they eat away at his important casting bonus. Another thing to consider is combining the morteks into one big unit, and splitting the riders into 2 of 5. Consolidates your infantry power, maximizes individual buffs, and lets you be more flexible with your faster units. Also frees up 80 points, which you could use for more endless spells, or drop the one you already have for the ballistari formation, assuming you've also traded the mason for a shaper, to get another RD point a turn, and protect your catapults.

If disposable income is an issue, I recommend not trying to chase competitive builds in the first place. Regular errata/faq/points cost updates often change what the best options are in a faction, to say nothing of meta shifts in responce to new releases. The units you like best narratively and aesthetically will remain largely consistent, but the most effective & points efficient options will not, so unless you have the time and money to signigicantly rework your army once a year or more, competitiveness should be a secondary concern, imo. That said.... Of the various monstrous infantry builds available to tge bonereapers, stalkers with four blades seems the most efficient out of the book. The greatsword upgrade is actually a downgrade mathematically, the trickier comparison is to immortis guard, but there the stalkers purity of purpose wins out. The stalkers just want to kill things, and they do that well. Immortis split their efforts between offense, defense, and bodyguarding, and while they aren't bad at any of that, they aren't exactly efficient at any of it either. If they're hanging back guarding your casters then they aren't putting their melee stats to use, if your casters are up front in melee with them they aren't all that much safer than they'd be on their own in the back lines anyway. Plus 200 points is a lot for a bodyguard. Why spend 200 points to protect one boneshaper when you could spend 130 points to have a second boneshaper instead, with 70 points left over? And, while immortis are fairly tough thanks to their 3+ base save, 2+ in petrifex, any wounds they pull off of your heroes skip their save entirely. None of that is to say immortis are bad. They're a very cool and versatile unit. But in being less focused on a single task than stalkers they end up less efficient at whatwver job they end up doing, and in a competitive scene efficiency matters... Then again, in a competitive contest I'm not sure stalkers make the cut either. While they're more efficient at killing than immortis, they're still less efficuent at it than the real stars of the faction - the mortek guard, who also happen to be tougher point for point than the immortis, and faster regenerating, and more numerous for claiming objectives, and battleline. Both our monsterous infantry units are cool and usable, but in a competitive contest I'm not sure either of tgem can compete with just more mortek guard. Which is too bad, because when this faction was advertised as 'elite' undead, I was kind of hoping that would mean they wouldn't be hoardy, when in practice what it seems to mean is a paradoxical army of elite hoards. Speaking of tge mortek, early consensus seems to be leaning towards sword & shield as the best, since rend can be critical, and with snall bases it's not too hard to get most of even a 40 model unit into combat evwn without the extra reach of the spears. Again, I recommend building for your aesthetic preference as 'optinal' builds vary frequently over time, but if your looking for the best way ti build them here and now, sword and board seems to be the current favorite,

If you're worried about competitiveness, you're often talking about tournament & other time-limited formats. Having to roll the greatsword attacks separately adds up, for an extremely marginal benefit - your own numbers show you need to roll 36 attacks to average even one more wound than swords, and the max number of greatsword attacks a unit can even make in a combat round before buffs is 8. Just not worth the bother, especially not with enhance nadirite being a popular buff.

for mortek guard, the 1/10 greatsword is worth it if the unit has spears. If they have swords it's not generally worth the bother of rolling dice separately to use it, it doesn't really make the unit worse so if you just like the greatswords for model variety go ahead. For immortis guard, there are no unit options/upgrades. They all just carry the shields and Halberds. the parts to make them do come in feast of bone, but the instructions to do so do not. Figuring out which parts of what arms go together without instructions can be a bit tricky, so take your time. If you build the stalkers, four swords is almost always better than paired greatsword, by enough that it kind of foes matter. Their unit upgrade is actually a downgrade, at least for now. Kind of sad. Not a huge one, so if you value aesthetics over gameplay you shouldn't feel too bad for taking it anyway, but yeah.

I'm personally holding off on crawlers for the moment - they look great both visually and in rules, but they're very pricey and just getting the basics off the ground is already stretching my hobby budget about as far as it wants to go. But if I were getting crawlers in my starting pile I'd aim for the formation - which is two plus a unit of morteks and a boneshaper. Then if the crawlers do get hit with a points nerf down the line you can just drop the formation to cover the points without otherwise changing the army at all, since those are good units that you'd want to run regardless. A 4x crawler list with double the formation would be cool... but 4 crawlers is already so many points that paying for the formation twice on top of that is probably prohibitive. Especially since in a 4x crawler list you probably also want a liege for the +1 attack buff. 4 extra shots for 200 points is one shot more than you'd get from a 5th crawler for the same points, after all.