Sception

there are definitely games you'll win just for fielding them. But if anything in this army is going to see a negative reaction from the community due to unfun play experiences and a resulting points increase it's the catapults that seem equally capable of removing both handfuls of chaff and individual heroes with next to no effort from all the way accross the board. I don't think they're unfair at 200 points, they are easy to neutralize with any sort of fast rush business, but yeah, 4x crawler lists will be a thing, and people will be mad about it, and GW will probably end up nerfing them by the simplest means necessary - a points hike, which will hit 4x crawler armies very hard. Personally, I'd recommend 1x or 2x crawler in generic lists. Still good, but few enough to still have an army left after, and to maybe be able to absorb a small points hike if one comes. Maybe. Honestly, points are so tight in this faction already it's hard to say.

Actually, thinking about it again, it might be better not to put the greatblade on your hekatos in a spear unit, even if the rules allow it. A unit needs to stay 'entirely within' 6" of their hekatos to use them for ability ranges, so you'll likely want him positioned in the center of the unit rather than way up front, especially in big spear blocks, so they may need the spear's extra reach to attack.

It's only fractionaly better than the swords, to the point where it isn't really worth the bother of having to roll dice separately. If you cast the 'enhance nadirite weapons' spell on the unit then it's not any better at all. I'd skip the upgrade in any sword armed unit. In a spear armed unit, it lets you get some rend into your front rank, while still getting your third rank into the combat with the spears, so I'd always take as many as I could there, including one on the hekatos. But the early optimization wisdom seems to be encouraging swords over spears in the first place, if you care about that sort of thing.

2x20 can claim more objectives, sure, but they don't necessarily cover more ground due to wanting to stay in buff ranges of various heroes. And since Mortek Guard aren't the fastest unit in the army a lot of other enemies are going to be able to out-maneuver them and pick their fights, so you could easily find one unit going up against multiple enemy units where even with rerolls you're at risk of losing a full 20, especially if the opponent gets a double turn before you get the chance to heal. And this goes extra for Crematorians, since they won't get the petrifex save boost, so they'll drop that little bit faster. Plus 40 morteks is 80 points cheaper than 2x20, and that adds up. What would you drop to switch to more smaller units? formations? Heroes? That said, yeah, it's all just theory hammer for now. No telling how this stuff's going to shake out. It's just my first impression of what a crematorians list would look like if it's trying to actually make serious competitive use out of the ability and not just be a fun times casual gimmick. Honestly, the fun times stuff is more where my own heart is, so I don't think my own lists will be spamming Mortek Guard nearly so hard. Not least because I'd actually like to have my army be painted for once.

Because you have to take some anyway for battleline (cav lists aside), and once you start tsking them you might as well take more, since they're our most efficient unit both offensively and defensively, plus the faction leans hard on buffs which are more efficient on bigger units. And the unit gets even more efficient at 40, so why not? Spamming MG gets even more tempting in crematorians, where they're by far the most efficient explosion fodder and the easiest to heal to explode again.

Crematorians are cool and fun, but if you're serious about being competitive I thing petrifex are always going to be better. Still, if you're trying to be competitive with crematorians, I'd look at combining the shield guard battalion with the trident formation and just spam as many mortek gruard as you can. Something like: Soulmason, general, legion trait, drain vitality Soulreaper, legion artefact, mortal contract Boneshaper, artisan's key, empower weapond Boneshaper, lode of saturation, reinforce shields 40 Mortek Guard, swords 40 Mortek Guard, swords 10 Mortek Guard, swords Gothizar Harvister Mortisan Trident Mortek Shield-Corps Bone-Tithe Shrieker Total:1990 points 6+ discipline points per turn 2 drop deployment Good set of buffs, lots of casting, one harvester who can position himself between the two big blocks, two boneshapers plus key for healing, ton of morteks to crump things & explode in their faces. Same list would be better as petrifex, but the Crematorians trait would certainly make itself felt here. Not as much wacky fun stuff & different units as I like, but if you're aiming to be competitive you can't always take what you want. Edit: yes I did steal this list from the just saying podcast, apart from diff artefacts & legion. That said, it's kind of an auto-build list for crematorians, since the two formations together combine all their favorite stuff: harvester, multiple boneshapers, and lots of mortek guard.

They're still an undead army, so yeah, buffs are still an important part of their offence and healing is still an important part of their defence, and when you take that into account some of the other units in the army start to shine more. With multiple different melee attacks per model, for instance, units like the kavalos, immortis, and Katakros himself benefit more from the +1 attack buff from a liege than stalkers do. Even then they generally aren't quite as efficient in pure offense, but that's because they have other roles as well. Kavalos are a fast unit in an otherwise slow army with multiple ways to access the ability to retreat and charge in the same turn. Immortis can take wounds for your support heroes to keep those critical buffs around longer. Katakros does... basically everything. None of them are as points efficient in damage output as stalkers, but that's because stalkers are pure damage output without much other utility. The only units I'd call 'sub par' are Vokmortian & the Soulreaper, whose abilities want them to risk melee and even then aren't half as good for the army as what a boneshaper or soulmason can do from the comparative safety if your back lines, and the morgasts, who have been a bit lackluster since AoS's release and are still a bit lackluster in this book, but even then they aren't so bad that you couldn't justify taking a minimum squad of them in either the stalker or immortis battalions.

We have some very good artefacts, in particular the +1 to hit and +1 to wound bubbles, and if you're taking a subfaction then battalions are the only way to access them. Most are pretty decent, but cost is an issue as the army is pretty points starved. Most everything is as expensive as it can possibly be without being outright prohibitive. It's mostly all usable, but the only unit I'd call 'cheap for what it does' is Karakros, and that's only because of how much he does, not because he's actually, you know, cheap. So I do think any one battalion is a valid option but taking one is going to cost something painful, one less crawler or harvester, forgoing a liege or downgrading a special character, downgrading from a rhobust battleline to a minimal one, etc. More than one battalion is probably right out, so I think 2 to 3 drop armies are a pipe dream, but I could be proven wrong.

It's a close call. Swords are probably better, but the greatblades get you some rend even in a spear unit, and crematorians pop for mortals too, so I'm not too too worried about armor. At least, not if I stick with crematorians. I plan to test a bit before commiting. Then again, I always say that, and I never do...

I'm currently looking at the following for a fun times crematorian list: Arkhan Liege Kavalos: general, faction trait and relic Soulmason, empower weapons Boneshaper, artisan's key, reinforce shields 20 Mortek Guard, spears & 2 greatblades 20 Mortek Guard, spears & 2 greatblades 10 Mortek Guard, swords 3 Immortis Guard Gothizar Harvester Mortek Shield-corps Unless I'm adding wrong, that's 2k on the nose. Would like to fit a couple endless spells in there, but don't really want to drop anything. Suppose I could drop the formation & soulmason for another boneshaper &10 more morteks.... would probably be better, but still no room for endlesss spells.

Keep in mind i don't have the book yet and am going from summaries and half remembered review videos myself, so i could be wrong on some of that.

Each hero generates one relentless discipline point by default. Each liege (including katakros and the cavalry special character) generate an extra one in addition to the first. Then katakros generates three more if he's your general (so five total from just katakros as your general alone). Then roll a die for each of your OBR units on the table (including heroes) and for each six you gain yet another. You might add more points if you have a command trait or otherwise that does so. All that happens at the beginning of each battle round before determining who goes first. Then in the hero phase one of your eizards can, if they know it, cast the dpell from the faction lore that grants an extra d3 relentless discipline points, and if your army is caster heavy or lacks a liege you'll definitely want one of your casters to cast that spell. I don't have the book yet, but iirc unlike command points, relentless discipline points cannot be banked to use later in the game. If you have any left over from the previous round at the start of the next round they are lost, and you start over with a new pool of points for the new round. so a liege kavalos will give you 2 relentless discipline points each turn, as long as they are alive and on the table, plus a third if you roll a 6 on a d6. By comparison, a mortisan will get you 1, plus again 1 more if you roll a 6. The kavalos is more expensive at 200 points than any of the non-special-character casters, but as they're each more than 100 points the liege is still more efficient in terms of discipline point generation. Speaking of casters, If you take the discipline point spell from the lore then a mortisan could get you d3 more, but only in your hero phase, not at the start of the battle round, and you'd have to give up taking another maybe better spell from the lore, and would have to succesfully cast the spell and not have it unbound. Still, it's an option. Particularly good for arkhan and nagash, who know all the lore spells, have bonuses to cast and multiple casts per turn, and are expensive enough to have trouble getting all the discipline points they'd want otherwise. Apart from them, I could see taking the spell on a soulmason, who gets two casts and has a decent signature spell. Or on a Soulreaper as a cheap field commander in small games, treating it as an infantry version of the liege that trades the command ability buff for a dispel attempt. In general tjough, unless you're starved for discipline, they're probably better off taking something else from the lore.

That and his really solid command ability and benefiting more from the required trait and artefact of most subfactions than most of the casters. He's just a solid, reliable general, and unless you're trying to maximize crawlers, or running a list that needs something very specific that he doesn't offer (Crematorians, for instance, might prefer to get more recursion in their list first), he should probably be the first hero you reach for in 1000 point games. At higher points, you might skip him if running Katakros or Nagash, as Nagash is just too expensive to easily fit him and Katakros is both expensive and does similar work. On the other hand Crematorian recursion lists that might not be able to fit one at 1000 points should probably find the room to do so by the time they hit 2000, as that sort of list still runs big blocks of infantry and those big blocks do benefit quite a bit from the Liege's command ability. They're also part of the Kavalos battalion, which is worth running if you want to field kavalos at all.

Doesn't this depend heavily in the opponent, though? If the enemy is ethereal or has no armor save, then spears are always as good or better. Spears also benefit more from the greatblade upgrades.

The soulcleaver greatblade. They're saying to model the unit leader eith onr to make them easier to spot visually, but to count them as using the same weapon as the unit to make them easier to roll. By my math the greatblade is *slightly* better damage output per hit than the swords, but only by very little (0.44444 damage per attack vs 0.4167), and that advantage disappears if you cast the nadirite buff spell on them. So in a sword unit I'd favor ease of rolling and skip the greatblades. In a big spear unit the greatblades have more of a place, since it lets you mix some rend into the unit. Concentrate your greatblades in the front of the unit, give one of them to the squad leader, and you'll have some rend attacks to threaten armor while still having reach to maximize attacks from the rest of the unit. Then again, spears themselves are only good if the unit is both large and blocked up. A lot of the time a big infantry unit wants to string out to cover ground, bubble wrap more vulnerable targets, or tie up multiple enemy units with a single charge - especially since, if you have a block of 40 morteks, then your opponent probably has more units than you. If you're doing that then you likely aren't getting many extra attacks anyway. Personally, long term I'd like to own 80 morteks, half with swords and no greatblades to field in two units of 20, half with spears and 4 greatblades to field in one big block, but that's more of a long term goal. In the short term I'll be starting with the swords I think,

Ok, so here's an attempt at revising the Ivory Host: Trait: Battle Rage. Ivory Host units are said to be either 'disciplined' or 'enraged'. At the end of any phase where a disciplined ivory host unit suffers unsaved wounds that are not negated but is not destroyed, roll a die. On a 5+ that unit becomes enraged. During your battleshock phase, roll a die for each enraged unit in your army that is more than 3" away from the nearest enemy unit, on a 5+ that unit becomes disciplined. An enraged ivory host unit does not generate relentless discipline points and cannot use or be the target of friendly command abilities other than 'bone frenzy' (see below). If an Ivory Host unit is already under the effect of a friendly command ability when it becomes enraged, that effect immediately ends. Enraged units gain +2 movement and +1 to hit with melee attacks but suffer a -1 penalty to hit rolls with ranged attacks. Command Ability: Bone Frenzy. You may activate this ability at the start of the combat phase on your turn. Choose an enraged ivory host unit that successfully completed a charge move in the previous charge phase. That unit piles in and fights before any other units during this combat phase. If your opponent also has units that fight before other units blah blah standard wording for strikes first. Additionally, the chosen unit suffers a -1 penalty to armor saves until the start of your next hero phase. Command Trait: Controlled Fury. During your hero phase you may choose up to d3 friendly Ivory Host units within 12" of this general. If a chosen unit is disciplined it becomes enraged. If it is enraged it becomes disciplined. Relic: I forget what it currently is, probably unchanged? ... so they still have the battle rage for +1 to hit, but the cost is a loss of discipline, in terms of generating and using relentless discipline points, rather than a flat save penalty. Instead of the versatile OBR command abilities the unit gains a flat +2 move (good but not as good as the +3 move command ability) and +1 to hit in close combat. The save penalty is still there, but optional, and in exchange for a more tactically significant out-of-sequence combat round.

At 1000 points, in a mortek guard heavy petrifex list, that should be plenty. If you were running Crematorians or some other really off kilter list with morr specialized needs things might be different.

Looks alright, but I'd take a liege kavalos instead of the stalkers/harvester. A fantastic attack buff, plus two discipline points a turn to spend on it or other abilities that make the army work, is a big deal, and make at least one liege near mandatory unless you're running an off beat gimmick list.

I don't think so. The spell lore is nice to him, especially the shrug + teleport spell. Multicast arcane bolt lets him bully small heroes, his unbind bonus now extending to dispels lets him drop & recast endless spells with ease, and mortek guard are a solid unit even with only minimal support that, while not cheap, are cheap enough to run a fair few of. 880 is a lot, but if they *don't* faq away his ability to benefit from subfaction rules he'll be right tough with 2+ rerollable armor from petrifex, protection of nagash, & self invocation thanks to warscroll changes. He's maybe not top tier like he was in the early days of 2e, but he'll see some use and will catch more than a few opponents with their pants down. Unless I'm adding points wrong, nagash, 3x20 morteks, & one extra support caster of choice will fit in 2k, with enough points spare for your choice of 1 liege kavalos, 1 harvester, 1 crawler, 3 immortis, 3 stalkers, or maybe 2 morghasts depending on support caster choice. Or get two support casters with points left over for an endless spell or two. Petrifex Nagash Soulmason 3x20 Mortek Guard Crawler or Petrifex Nagash Soulmason Bonesculpter 3x20 Mortek Guard Spellportals Both look runnable to me, assuming I'm not off on the points. I'm working from pretty blurry pics. You could also switch to 1x40, 2x10 morteks. Concentrates your board presence in one unit, but shaves points for another endless spell. Granted I'm no authority on competitive play in AoS.

He's pushing the limits, given how fragile he is for those points, but I don't think he's *too* much. I'd probably take Immortis Guard instead of the Stalkers. Still pretty killy, if admittedly not as killy as the stalkers, and they can help protect your heroes from shooty attacks. Or alternatively, maybe a harvester. It just seems like such a definitive unit for Crematorians.

I don't disagree, but then again I didn't think he was that terrible a problem back in the old mystic shield days, either, and that was nerfed before grimghasts and realm spells temporarily supercharged nagash lists. Despite showing up in the tactic article, it still feels more like a mistake to me than a deliberate choice, especially with how the other special characters are so limited by comparison.

to use his retinue you have to be using archai and stalkers, and not part of their other formations. Also, limited box set formations have a history of either not being matched play legal to start, or losing their matched play legality after some time. Either way, not sure that formation can be counted on long term. Special characters can be fielded in other legions & just fon't gain the benefit. As such, petrifex is still probably the best way to run them. Even if they don't benefit, the rest of the army does. Not that big a cost. And honestly I expect arkhan & nagash's subfaction access will get errata'd away sooner or later, too. After all, avoiding 2+ rerollable nagash was part of the reason mystic shield was changed to begin with.

Yeah, the immortis formation rule is good, but I'm not sure the formation overall is worth it. 6 Immortis Guard will often be overkill for bodyguard work - to say nothing of the archai who gain the same rule. And even if you wanted to field 6, fielding them as one unit would generally be much better than two of three to take advantage of unit buffs when using them offensively. So you're getting probably more units than you really need for character protection and fielding them in not the most efficient way, AND paying extra points for the formation on top of that, in an army that already struggles to fit offensive elements and objective coverage and buffing/support pieces all in the same list. Again, not bad at all, and it's probably what I'll run. Conceptually I just like bodyguard units, and always felt that's what Archai should have been doing in the first place, and I love the way they look next to arkhan. But Arkhan, a Soulmason, a Liege Kavalos, 2 archai, 2x3 immortis, and the formation is already, what, 1370 points? The formation is 60 points, right? That only leaves 630 points left in your army, and you don't even have any battleline yet. You could fit 3x10 Mortek and a single Crawler with 40 points left over for an endless spell, but that's really lacking in bodies on the table. Alternatively you could do 20 mortek and 2x5 kavalos, which is a little better board presence but still not great and costs you your crawler. 20 mortek + 2x10 mortec leaves 110 points left over, but I don't think that's enough to grab anything other than more & more expensive endless spells. You could cut Arkhan back to a boneshaper or something and that'll free a couple hundred points to work with, I guess... but the formation just feels like it's missing something aesthetically without a bigger hero to get the bigger archai bodyguard, doesn't it? I don't know. Again, it's not a bad formation, but I'm just not sure I see it being part of a solid army with all the other pieces in place at less than 2500 points.

The 5+ shrug from the spell would be applied after any wound are transferred, since it applies to allocated wounds and the bodyguard ability just changes who those wounds are allocated to. Example: Your army includes a Mortisian Soulreaper within 3+ of a unit of 2 Immortis Guard (the third model in the unit having been slain earlier in the battle). The Soulreaper knows the spell 'Reinforce Battle-Shields' and has successfully cast it on the Immortis Guard in your previous hero phase. During the enemy's hero phase, an enemy wizard scores a lucky arcane bolt on your Mortisian Soulreaper, causing 3 mortal wounds. The hero does not get any armor saves against mortal wounds, so now you skip straight to allocation. Normally the mortal wounds would just be allocated to the unit that was targeted, but the Immortis Guard's ability triggers, so you roll for each mortal wound and on a 2+ that mortal wound is allocated to the Immortis Guard unit instead. You roll 1, 3, and 6, so one mortal wound is allocated to the Soulreaper and two are allocated to the Immortis Guard unit. The Soulreaper is an OBR hero, so you roll the normal 6++ shrug against the mortal wound allocated to them. You roll a 5, so they suffer one wound, and have four remaining on their profile. The Immortis Guard are a Hekatos unit, so they also get the 6++ faction shrug against any normal or mortal wounds allocated to them. You roll a 2 and a 5, so neither mortal wound is stopped by the faction shrug. Because of the 'Reinforce Battle-Shields' spell, they have an additional 5++ shrug against mortal wounds that are allocated to them, so you roll again and get a 2 and a 6, nullifying one of the mortal wounds. You don't have any shrugs left so one wound is applied to one of the Mortis Guard, leaving three remaining on that model. Another example, the same Soulreaper and Immortis Guard are later charged by a unit of 5 enemy cavalry. between the reach of their weapons and careful charging & piling in, the entire unit is able to target your Soulreaper in the combat phase, scoring a total of 5 successful wounds, each with rend -1 and damage characteristic 2. The Soulreaper has a 4+ armor save normally, which is modified to a 5+ due to rend. You rol 1, 2, 2, 4, and 5 for armor saves, stopping one of the successful wound rolls. The four remaining each cause two wounds due to the enemy's damage characteristic, so you have 8 wounds to allocate. As before, you would normally allocate wounds to the unit attacked, but the bodyguard's rule kicks in. WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN: technically wounds are allocated and resolved ONE AT A TIME. You just roll shrugs in batches normally because normally order doesn't matter. In this case order technically might matter, so what you are supposed to do is, one at a time, roll the bodyguard roll. On a 1 the wound is allocated to the Soulreaper - roll their 6++ faction shrug and apply the wound to the model if you fail, on a 2+ the wound is allocated to an Immortis - roll their 6++ faction shrug and apply the wound to the unit if you fail. Note they don't get the 5++ spell shrug as that is for mortals only. WHAT WILL PROBABLY HAPPEN IN A CASUAL GAME: order of allocation is relatively unlikely to matter in this situation, so you'll probably just roll all the bodyguard rolls at once. You get 1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 6. Two wounds are applied to the Soulreaper, he shrugs one of them and is up to two wounds total. 6 wounds are applied to the Immortis, they shrug only one, one immortis is removed as a casualty, with two wounds applied to the last remaining model in the unit. WHY YOU TECHNICALLY SHOULD ROLL THEM ONE AT A TIME: the amount of damage inflicted is theoretically enough to eliminate one of the units in question. Since wounds are theoretically allocated one at a time, if one of the units is slain then no more wounds can be transferred. For instance, lets say you roll nothing but ones. The first four wounds all go to the Soulreaper, who fails each shrug in turn. Then the soulreaper is dead. The remaining wounds cannot be allocated to the Soulreaper in the first place, so they cannot be re-allocated to the Guard, so while your luck is pretty terrible right now you at least don't have to risk taking damage to the Immortis Guard trying to protect a hero who is already dead. Conversely, lets say you succeed on all your bodyguard rolls, but your shrug rolls are still abysmal. The first six wounds get transferred to the Immortis unit, who fail each shrug in turn. The immortis unit is now dead, and thus cannot attempt bodyguard rolls to prevent the last two wounds, both of which go through to the hero without any protection apart from the standard shrug. NOTE: in the cavalry attacks example, if the cavalry had attacked the Immortis Guard directly, they would have had a better chance to negate attacks with their superior armor saves. Unfortunately saving throws are made before damage is allocated so they don't get to benefit from their better saving throws on wounds they redirect to themselves. .. It's a little confusing, but it's not too bad if you take things in a step by step fasion. 1. Roll to hit 2. Roll to wound 3. Roll armor saves 4. Determine damage from unsaved attacks The above steps can generally be done in batches with no problem. The following steps should technically be done for each wound or mortal wound one at a time, and can only be done in batches if there's no chance of the outcome changing depending on the order of results. Note that mortal wounds typically skip the above steps and go straight to allocation. 5. check/roll for any special rules that would result in damage being allocated to another unit instead of the target unit. If such a rule is triggered, treat the other unit as the target unit for the remaining steps. 6. allocate the wound or mortal wound to a model in the target unit. If one of the models in the unit is already wounded, you must allocate the wound or mortal wound to that model. Unless otherwise stated, the controller of the target unit chooses which model to allocate to if none of the models in the unit are already wounded. 7. roll for any other abilities that trigger on allocated wounds or mortal wounds to the target unit - typically these are shrugs saves but there are some damage reflecting abilities & the like that also might trigger here. These can be done in whatever order the player using the abilities likes, though if both players have abilities that trigger at the same time then the player whose turn it is resolves their abilities first. Generally order doesn't matter here, but it can. For instance, when rolling to negate mortal wounds, Nagash should roll for his armor - which might reflect mortal wounds back on the unit that caused them - before rolling the typical death shrug, which just negates the wound with no further advantage. Also note that some shrugs only work on regular wounds or mortal wounds but not both. For instance, the 'Reinforce Battle-Shields' spell mentioned above can only negate mortal wounds. 8. assuming the wound is not negated, mark a wound off of the chosen model. If the total wounds on the model equal the units wounds characteristic, remove the model as a casualty. ... There's a lot of steps, but they're relatively straight forward, and there's a mechanical logic to the order which you'll internalize with repetition.

Keep in mind that you don't get shrugs from the original target, just regular saves. So attack targets the hero, rolls to hit and wound as normal, hero rolls to save, unsaved wounds result in damage. Before that damage is allocated to the hero (so before they get any shrugs), roll to shift the damage to the bodyguard unit. After allocating the damage (either to the guarding unit or the hero depending on die results), you then roll any appropriate shrugs, before finally applying wounds to the units in question. In the end it's the same number of saves/shrugs as you'd get otherwise, with an extra transfer step inserted in the middle.