Sception

Intra-faction balance in OBR is actually pretty good, at least on the level of units, formations, and spells. But the subfaction mechanical design is sadly kind of terrible, and kind of obviously terrible to everyone from the moment they leaked. In actual games, particularly pick up games and of course tournaments, we'll be stuck with what's written, which will end up being an awful lot of Petrifex with the occasional Crematorian gimmick list mixed in and maybe a Null Myriad here and there as an anti-meta choice if Tzeentch or Hallowhart look to be ascendant. Which kind of sucks, as all of the OBR subfactions are at least conceptually pretty cool. So, purely as a for-fun thought experiment, how would you fix the situation? Here's my take: Crematorians: they're perfect as they are. Best designed subfaction in the book, maybe in the entire game. Fun, not overpowered, change how the army plays, etc. Praetorians: they benefit more than other factions from katakros, which is already worth something once Petrifex are toned down to not make that benefit obsolete. The main problem is that -1 Bravery just doesn't count for much in a game where battleshock matters less and less and other bravery-targeting mechanics are referencing unmodified bravery more and more. Heck, OBR as a faction provide the latest example of both those trends. So what I would do instead is double down on the praetorians being the most disciplined faction, so instead of -1 bravery, Praetorian units would generate additional relentless discipline points on a 5+ at the start of the turn, instead of a 6. Combined with their command trait (or, more likely, Katakros), they'll be able to take more advantage of the various warscroll command abilities in the faction than any other legion. Petrifex: the problem child. +1 save flat out is just too much. Instead I'd give them re-roll 1s on saves. This is still decent, but nowhere near as strong. It also would mean their mortek guard would benefit less from shield wall. They'd still benefit some, just not as much. To soften the blow on both accounts, I'd let the Petrifex take Stalkers as battleline. Makes sense to me - the faction is made of big monster bones, so they have more big units. Notably this takes the faction from the most synergistic with Nagash in the rules as written to the least, but I don't think that's a big enough problem to bother me, and we'll get to Nagash anyway. Stalliarch: mostly decent, but the redundancy of their command ability with the kavalos formation is, imo, really frustrating. Personally I would change it so that instead of letting a mounted unit retreat & charge in the same turn, which the formation already allows, instead I'd have their command ability give a mounted unit flying keyword until the end of the turn, allowing shenanigans like retreating a kavalos unit over an enemy unit into their backfield, then using the formation ability to charge enemy support units. Null Myriad: their trait is decent, but when combined with the command ability imo it makes games swing too heavily on your opponent's composition, as enemy armies that build heavily around offensive magic basically don't get to play, while those with no offensive magic at all leave you essentially without a subfaction. Personally, I'd change the command ability to something unrelated to their subfaction trait. Specifically, I'd add to their fluff to make them powerful both against magic and with magic of their own, changing their command ability to let you spend a discipline point to re-roll a failed casting attempt. Ivory Host: I honestly have no idea what to do here. +1 to hit seems too good to let through without a disadvantage, but -1 save is just too much. And unlike with petrifex, I don't think swapping out for re-roll 1s works as there are just too many redundancies there. I'm open to suggestions here. .... Special Characters: In addition to thinking the subfactions as written mostly have problems, I also don't like how they interact with the special characters. I don't like how all the OBR special characters are concentrated to one subfaction, nor do I like how Arkhan and Nagash can pick up OBR subfaction - most of those rules relate to the particular construction of the ossiarchs who make them up, and neither Arkhan nor Nagash are ossiarchs, let alone Ossiarchs made in this or that particular way. As such, I'd change how special characters work with the OBR rules as follows: Arkhan and Nagash: do not gain legion keywords. They can still be included in Legion armies, but they don't benefit from their legion traits or command abilities. Katakros: keeps his Praetorian keyword as it currently is. Zandtos: is rewarded for his victories by being given command of the Stalliarch Lords, but when needed he still fights alongside his former master. To represent this he gains the Stalliarch Lords keyword but still keeps the Mortis Praetorean keyword. Vokmortian: is similarly rewarded for his service with a new body infused with powdered gravesand and command of the Null Myriad. Like Zandtos he still responds to Katakros's call when needed, so he gains the Null Myriad keyword but still keeps the Mortis Praetorean keyword. That way the Praetoreans still have first claim to Katakros and can still field all the special characters together as full members of a single legion, but a couple of the other legions can play a bit more nicely with the special characters that most match their aesthetic and narrative themes. Thoughts? Am I wrong about the problems I see in the OBR rules? If you see the same problems I do, how would you fix them?

Oh, Praetorians are definitely not the best legion, which is so obviously Petrifex that I'm honestly surprised that made it out of proof reading, let alone play testing. Nor even are they one of the two good ones - the situational anti-magic-meta Null Myriad or the fun & gimmicky Crematorians. But I'd still call them better than the Ivory Host - who just make your army worse - or the Stalliarchs, who are ok for kavalos spam, but their best ability is rendered redundant by the kavalos formation which any kavalos spam army will want to use, in possibly the most blatant example of Skornergy yet seen in AoS 2e. ... If we want to talk about the 'best' legion in terms of the 'best designed', then imo the Crematorians are the best by almost as wide a margin as the Petrifex are the strongest. They do exactly what you would want a subfaction ruleset to do - give a novel thematic spin to the army that recontextualizes its units and how they work together without being clearly overpowered compared to the core faction mechanics, with rules that nudge you towards narratively resonant choices without hard gating whatever options you might want to take for personal or aesthetic reasons. Mechanically they just might be my favorite subfaction in AoS yet. They're making my own legion choice very difficult as, strictly from the lore, I'd be dead set on Null Myriad. The Myriad's rules at least arne't terrible, I'd rate the above ivory host, stalliarchs, and praetorians, but they are extremely situational in a way I don't especially like. Facing an opponent who relies heavily on offensive magic? Null Myriad wins for free, why even bother playing the game. Facing an opponent with no offensive magic - either because they have no wizards or their magic is purely buffing & support? Then you might as well have not even chosen a subfaction. There is an in between range where the opponent has some offensive magic but doesn't rely too heavily on it where the Myriad can have fun games, but there's still too much potential for games to end in feel bads, imo. Frankly, I wish their command ability had done something entirely unrelated to their anti-magic trait. Maybe a healing ability to emphasize their inherent necromantic energy, or something to enhance your own spellcasting which would at least be consistent from game to game? I don't know. Something to make them worth running against non-magic opponents, leaving their unmodified magic trait to be effective but not game destroying against magically reliant opponents.

Eh, he's not locked to the *worst* one. Imo stalliarch & esp. ivory host are worse. Though you really ought to be running katakros if you're playing his legion, and that doesn't leave a lot of character points for vokmortian after the big guy, more critical support hero options, and some actual units. Edit: moved to later reply

You have more optimism than I do then. As for CoY, by my reading the new wording superceeds the old faq entirely, as the new wording very clearly ties follow up rolls to the triggering roll, not the mortal wound inflicted by it, if that makes any sense. Against most targets, the '1s always fail' is a bigger nerf anyway. Full deleted units are still possible, but now very unlikely. Still, any set of rolls that previously would have killed a unit are still probably putting out close to a dozen mortal wounds in the new version, so the spell is still quite dangerous. Overall I'd call it a nerf, but a minor one, more than compensated for by his extra cast & unbind, full lore access (fingers crossed that part is made retroactive to LoN), self healing (only in obr), etc.

Yeah, immortis are bodyguard primary, but still have respectable offensive output on top of that so you aren't essentially sacrificing an entire element of your army to add a few wounds to a hero. Which is important because the army really doesn't have the sort of slack that would allow that sort of expenditure. They're still not as fighty as a dedicated offensive unit, of course, so if you don't need the hero protection you're better off taking something else. They are a fantastic example of how even relatively similar units within the OBR have distinct enough roles to all be worth considering. About the only units that fall short in this regard are Vokmortian and the soureaper, both wizards who want to be in close with the enemy despite not really being fast enough to make that happen, or tough enough to make that advisable, or even having good & unique enough abilities to make the hassle & risk interesting. And IMO that last bit is the real problem. I mean, after all, you could use an immortis bodyguard to offset the safety issue, that's practically what they're there for, and if you were to field either of these heroes anyway (they are among the coolest models in the range, imo) then I'd consider a unit of Immortis to go with them absolutely obligatory... but even if you do, what do you get for the effort? A wizard who still isn't doing anything more interesting than your dedicated support casters can manage from the safety of the back ranks, combined with a fighty hero who isn't really all that fighty either? Maybe if Vokmortian's abilities were more reliable & debuff aura more debilitating, or if the soul reaper could convert nearby casualties into improved spellcasting power to actually reward you for committing a wizard to melee... But as it is meh. The best I can say for them is that they aren't too pricey for their 1/2 casts compared to alternative wizards in faction, but even then they aren't really cheap enough to just casually field, not with how expensive all the important components of your army will be already. Still, though, that's only two units out of the pile. Everything else seems to fill a unique and well defined niche that they're at least competent enough at to be worth considering fielding. Which, after playing Legions of Nagash since release, and considering some other recent releases (Cities of Sigmar, I'm looking at you) is really a breath of fresh air. Some combinations of things might work better than others, but in general no matter what your favorite unit in the army is, so long as that unit isn't Vokmortian or the Soulreaper, you should be able to put together a viable & effective list where that unit is a lynch pin of your army, and that's just cool. Such a shame the subfaction balance wasn't on the same level.

If I were running a tournament the way I'd handle it is to let the OBR player swap out one piece of similarly sized terrain on the board for their nexus, with their opponent allowed one veto of terrain piece chosen. But we'll just have to wait and see how it's handled. The faction isn't super dependant on the nexus, I could see it just being banned, which would be kind of sad.

Fine and good, but then bypassing the 'recycling explosions with the harvester' strategy is just a matter of targeting the harvester first.

It's cool in theory but seems difficult to pull off. The explosion rance on crematorians is very short, as is the healing range on the harvester. Your harvester needs to be tight up there with your front lines, exposing it to attacks, to pull this off. Especially if you're the one charging, as the harvester eill have to charge too in order to stay in range. Not saying it's bad, just really awkward positioning. Wish the heal range was just a little bit wider.

I don't want to derail the discussion of OBR as they are, on their own, so I'll just say that I don't really see any balance problems here apart from *maybe* allowing the Crawler to ally into other Death armies, and even then I'm skeptical. But whatever, strange as it may be to me it is what it is.

the fact that you'd be limited to the usual dribble of a single CP a turn plus maybe 1 or 2 extra at the start of the game would already be limitation enough on their command abilities in other armies, I'd think. Meanwhile, the fact that RD points can only be used for command abilities on OBR battlescrolls, and none of the OBR units have the summonable keyword, means I don't think you'd have to worry about any balance problems from non-OBR death units & heroes allying into OBR. I just don't see a mechanical reason to ban allies here. If anything, there should be less mechanical risk to allowing OBR to ally than near about any other factions in death.

Yeah, this is pretty much confirmed. Though personally I'm quite baffled by it - the allies system was and is a good way to support players starting new armies by letting them splash a couple units into their current armies to get a foot in the door. This is in part why the Stormcasts can ally in some way or other with just about any Order faction - so it's weird and kind of frustrating that OBR, presented in some ways as a sort of Death Alliance counterpart to the Stormcast, can't ally with anything. Heck, of all the Grand Alliances, Death should be the most closely knit and easiest to mix and combine. "Nagash is all, and all are one in Nagash," right? My long term vision for what I've wanted to see from Death in AoS has long included "expansion of Deathlords into a proper faction by expanding on Morghasts, introducing a smaller flightless version as line troops that stand as equals and opposites to Sigmar's Stormcasts," and OBR are almost exactly what I meant by that. Except in my vision, the OBR would have been the center of the grand alliance and everything else would have radiated out around them, all the current Mortarch legions would have their model range to OBR +. Legion of Grief would have been OBR+Nighthaunt, Legion of necropolis would have been OBR+Deathrattle, Legion of Blood would have been OBR+Soulblight, etc etc. Instead we're seeing OBR as the most isolated, cut off faction in all of Death, even more so than the half-living Flesh Eater Courts, and while I'm loving the faction in and of themselves, that lack of integration with the Grand Alliance at large is a strange and frustration design decision to me. Maybe the designers are just gunshy about mixed death armies after how the incorporation of Grimghasts into Legions temporarily supercharged Nagash lists?

I'm personally leaning heavily towards swords. While boxes of 20 make full units of 40 more viable, that's still imo too much invested into a single squad in an army that has trouble fitting everything. Units of 20 make more sense to me, and on 25 mm bases I don't think you're going to get enough more attacks out of the spears to make up for the reduced rend, especially as in AoS it's often better to string out a unit for bubble wrap or objective purposes rather than block up. Admittedly, though, the variety of 'wholly within' buffs and rules in OBR do reward blocking up morteks more than the LoN rules do for Skeleton Warriors or Grave Guard, so if you prefer the spears there's certainly some mechanical justification there.

! If true, that is much much better than I thought.

in OBR I'd say they're both better, arkhan especially, as self healing, faction rules, full faction lore, and in arkhan's case an extra cast per turn make up for what they've lost. Whether it makes up enough to also justify the increased points cost when they weren't really worth their price before is up in the air. If they get subfaction rules probably, but while current rule text supports it, I wouldn't count on that surviving faq. In legions, assuming these changes are retroactive? Where they don't gain full lore access to make up for the lost ability to borrow spells and can't heal themselves? I don't think so. Maybe in arkhan's case with the extra cast, but even then, I don't know.

P much this. AoS is an objective based game, struggling with objevtive grabbing basically means strughling, period. That said, you can use your inspiration points to move your blocks up at a respectable 7" a turn. Numbers will still be an issue.

Boo, didn't catch the praetorian keyword. Did they really have to give all three heroes to the same legion?

Yup. Same for nagash, full lore access, but no longer knows the signature spells of other death wizards. Which is sad, as that rule was quite fluffy and cool, but so be it.

Taking a closer look at arkhan, here are his changes: 1) invocation can target bonereapers in addition to summonable units, range increase to 24", healing increase to flat 3 instead of d3 with a reroll. 2) command ability limited to 1/hero phase 3) curse of years never wounds on better than a 2 4) 3 casts/unbinds per turn instead of two! 5) does not know spells of other nearby death wizards 6) instead my attempt to cast arcane bolt & mystic shield any number of times even if already attempted by another wizard. Nagash can also do this. If they really want a hero dead, between the two of them they can nuke it with 11 consecutive arcane bolts, from 24" away with Arkhan's CA. Am I reading that right? 7) in a bonreaper army he gains the bonereaper keyword (so can invoke himself) and knows all the bonereaper faction spells. losing the ability to borrow other wizards' spells is sad, as is the nerf to curse of years where its way less likely to deleye entire units, but invoking himself and an entire extra cadt/dispel per turn goes a long way towards making up the difference and justifying the points increase. Will still prob need the guard unit to keep him alive, but they're a respectable unit in their own right so that isn't necessarily a terrible drawback.

Bah, oh well. Honestly it's probably for the best. Can Vok's spell be used through the spellportals? That doesn't change the range, just measures it from somewhere else. With the recent points increase it's probably too inefficient to use on a spell that only works 1/3 of the time even after you successfully cast it, but still.

On a competitive end, yeah, I doubt they'll be top tier out of the gate, what with being somewhat inefficient overall and lacking the major game breaking mechanics like strike first, summoning, etc that might otherwise make up for it. That said, while nothing seems super points efficient, nothing seems unusably inefficient either. Everything has a distinct role it's at least competent at - with the arguable exception of the morghasts, but as pointed out they're the only non-hero flying units, so even they have something. And coming from LoN that's a big deal because it means every unit can be useful, you don't have any situations like in legions of nagash or cities of sigmar where half a dozen units are doing the same thing in the same way so only one will ever be good at a time. Balance is less good in the subfactions. Petrifex should probably be 'reroll saves of one' not +1 to saves. As is they're far and away the best mechanically, though in casual games I'll still probably run the Myriad for the lore. ... Almost no changes to Nagash and Arkhan, except... did I hear right that their invocations now work on summinable OR ossiarch units? Does that mean they can invoke themselves when fielded in ossiarch armies? If so, that's pretty neat. Petrigash with a 2+ save, rerolling ones from his CA, 4+/6+ vs mortals, auto healing himself 3 wounds every turn before you touch any other healing spells or abilities, plus immortis guard if you want extra protection? Sounds almost runnable. Has arkhan's command ability been rewritten not to stack with itself? If not, with all the discipline points the army generates that could make for some surprisingly long ranged spells. Vokmortian's signature spell is a lot more threatening at 25" range than it is at 1", so I could see the two of them being good friends. All in all, while I don't think it's meta redefining in the competitive sense, I'm still loving what I'm seeing for just casual funtimes play. I'm thinking Null Myriad, Arkhan & Vokmortian, some immortis guard to protect them, couple infantry blocks, cav with a fighty hero general, extra support caster or two, and a catapult? That's probably pushing 2k already, with no battalions either. Hrm. Maybe Arkhan OR Vok, depending on points? Eh, plenty to tinker with.

I agree with those saying the points feel too high. Especially disappointed on the morghasts. Not overly put out by it, though.

No, i did not. It's nice. Still with their stats & attacks had been buffed a bit, but hekatos could give them more of a place in the army. Still skeptical, though.

Yikes on the prices. Not entirely unexpected, but still, yikes. I hope they're elite enough to run small, b/c there's no way I'm affording 60 of them any time soon. No hoard bonus implies they're at least workable msu, though no battleshock & unit wide buffs kind of asks for big units. No changes to morghast scroll is disappointing. Also a bit disappointed with Vokmortan. His rules imply he wants to get in close to enemy heroes, except that his protection and threat against them are super unreliable. if he pulls off the 5+ dodge great, but if he doesn't he's dead, and even if he does he still has to survive till your next hero phase and successfully cast his spell and roll yet another 5+ to assassinate anything. That said, he's still a double cast wizard and imposes a -1 to enemy dispel attempts against him, which is almost as good as +1 to cast, so if he's not too expensive in points & the faction spells are good he could still be worth running.

Talk to your individual tournament or campaign organizer, rulings on it are likely to vary, but I wouldn't count on it. The removal seems to have been a deliberate move to avoid any risk of competitive events being dominated by limited release models that some players won't have access to or even a reasonable chance to be aware of or prepare for.

I would be surprised if the LoS thing is the only thing the bird does, but for now, yeah, right now the least useful out of the three. Otherwise, pretty decent stuff. I agree that the terrain's anti-caster ability is the best of it. Yeah, in most games that's all it will do, and if that's all it does in a game then that could be somewhat underwhelming for such a large and imposing model. It's certainly no where near as game-affecting as the legions' gravesites or the skaven's gnawholes. But still, decent, and a good enough 'counts as' use for a casket of souls for tomb kings players looking to use the bonereaper book as updated rules for their existing models. Bringing back the old list, we've got: casket -> terrain carrion -> bird spell catapult -> catapult tomb guard -> infantry necroknights -> cavalry (pushing it base wise, but probably the most workable fit) ushabti -> stalkers bone giant -> harvester various heroes -> various heroes If there's ally overlap with deathrattle you can add: skeleton warriors -> skeleton warriors skeleton horsemen -> black knights tomb king/prince -> wight king The main things missing are archers, which unfortunately I doubt we're going to see, scorpions, old stalkers, sphinxes as there are no big non-flying undead monsters in any faction (though zombie dragon stats work well enough for necrosphinx), tomb swarms (though bat swarms work if they can ally in) and chariots. Admittedly chariots are a pretty essential part of the tomb king identity and most any existing tomb kings armies. The mounted hero is big enough that you could reasonably use a royal chariot as that, or settra as the named version, but the cavalry are probably too small to work as chariots. Here's hoping the ossiarchs are more enthusiastically embraced by the wider community than they have been online, such that GW might see fit to expand on them in the future. Archer infantry, a dracoth style unit on larger steeds similar to those of the heroes, and a large non-flying monster would go a long way towards fleshing out the above list.