Sception

So the General's Handbook is immanent, and OBR have been out just long enough, and had just enough representation at events before the Covid crisis shut the competitive scene down, that I expect we will see some adjustments. What are everyone's hopes and fears? for me: I hope to see points decreases for: Vokmortian Soulreaper morghasts immortis guard all of which I think are possible. I'm not sure if points decreases alone would make the difference on these, mind. Stalkers are enough more efficient than morghasts at more or less the same work that it would take a pretty heft decrease to make the difference. Honestly, what morghasts need, what they've needed for a while is different rules. Scrap the bravery debuff, give them something else better/more relevant. Vokmortian, similarly, I just don't see a points decrease doing it for him. Slow, fragile infantry wizards with spells and rules that want them to get close in is just a really bad starting place unless those rules are especially impressive, and Vok's aren't Soulreaper is in a similar boat, but has the added selling point of already being our cheapest available hero model and indeed the cheapest individual unit in the army, so a further points decrease might make one worth fielding simply on the basis of not being about to afford to get anything else with those points. Immortis Guard I do think mostly suffer from points inefficiency. As I've argued before, their multiple melee weapons let them make decent use of buffs, and their bodyguard ability would be relevant for, like, most of our heroes, if only they weren't quite so expensive per wound. I ran them in casual games, and they've done some work, the problem always felt to be less what they could do and more that they just cost too much to do it, so imo a points decrease could actually go a long way with them. So while I wouldn't be shocked to see points decreases for any of the above listed units, for the Immortis Guard in particular I'm hopeful that such a decrease might actually have a meaningful impact on their playability. On the other hand, I fear we'll see increases for: Katakros Mortek Guard Crawler All of which, again, strike me as possible. Katakros could, I think, absorb a bit of a points increase without being hurt *too* badly by it. He really is very good, and you'll only ever be fielding one of him, so a small points increase wouldn't be multiplied over and over through the list. A points increase for the Crawler would be more trouble. Double crawler lists would double the impact, and 4x crawler lists might be killed outright. Personally, I wouldn't be too upset to see 4x crawler lists go, but then again I didn't personally buy 4 crawlers, so that's easy for me to say. Even with a hike to, like 220 points, though, I still think 1 to 2 crawlers would be a very common sight, as the utility they offer would still be quite significant, and not easily replaced by switching to something else. So if the Crawlers do see a points increase, it would hurt, but it wouldn't be the end of the world. I'm most worried about Mortek Guard, though. They're basically the foundation of the army, there's not really a way to avoid fielding a bunch of them, so even a slight increase there would hit basically any OBR list extremely hard. At the same time, I see a lot of complaints about Mortek's being too strong and too tough, especially in petrifex, particularly when fully buffed up with Relentless Discipline, with such complaints often ignoring just how much of the army's resources they're soaking up to get there. Sure, Morteks *can* be move seven, with 3+ rerollable saves, 6+/4+ shrug, and three attacks each at AP-2, and yeah all that together IS an awful lot for 13 points a dude. But that's only possible in petrifex, and maintaining that all the time on even a single unit requires 7 RD points - virtually all that many armies generate per turn - plus buffs from a 200 point character and a 200 point support unit, most of which the complaints just disregard.... So yeah, I am actually quite worried about this one. If we don't see a Mortek Guard price hike, I'd be inclined to breathe a sigh of relief almost regardless of other points changes..

Morteks are great, but 10 don't really outfight much. IMO you'll get more utility out of the kav's speed. Though dropping down would let you afford an offensive endless spell, maybe the pendulum, up up nagash's offensive threat, so it could go either way. Would def take an offensive spell over the shrieker if you go that route, though. Shrieker's good, but you're not really running enough dudes to properly capitalize on it. Plus I don't like to cast bound soells with Nagash. Half the point of him is the huge casting bonus, and concentrating on a bound spell can eat into that.

For a 1500 point nagash list, I don't think you're going to do better than Petrifex, Nagash, 20 morteks, 2x5 kav. At least, not if the format is 2k-500 points, ie 3 required battle line units. If the format is instead 1k+500 points, with only 2 required battle line, then I'd go with Nagash, 40 morteks, and 1x5 kav instead. Immortis aren't terrible. Multiple melee weapons means they take buffs decently, particularly +1 attack from a liege or Katakros. And the protection they offer is nice for keeping your small heroes from being sniped before the game starts. As for bigger heroes, a few immortis can help you get a lot more use out of Katakros's advisors. They're also nice for Nagash or especially Arkhan for turn one protection before you can put up protection of nagash, though admittedly Nagash is pricey enough that you can't really afford immortis at normal game sizes. With Arkhan in particular, they make a good walking bunker to teleport back to after PoN procs. The main problem is that they're just too expensive points-wise for what they do in an army that just doesn't have the points to spare, but points are updated every year in this game. It's pretty common knowlege that immortis are overpriced, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a points decrease for them, and it woyldn't take too much of one to make them reasonably viable, imo. So if you like them for their models and their style, I'd hold on on tearing them apart, at least until thus year's general's handbook, which will determin if they'll be worth plating for the next year or so. However, if you just don't like how they play regardless of points, if you prefer a faster, more independant threat, no points changes will turn immortis into that. If that's what you want then yeah, rip them down and rebuild them as stalkers. That said, at your points value & with the rest of your collection, I think a harvester or crawler would be a better use of that 200 points than either 3 immortis or 3 stalkers. You're very light on mortek, which really are the backbone of this army, and if you're not ready to buy & paint a bunch more infantry than a harvester would at least help the ones you have last longer. On the other hand, a crawler is just fantastic utility, with tools to tgreaten buff heroes you otherwise can't reach, or chew through hordes that could otherwise overwhelm or just bog down your smaller units, and I can't overstate the value of being abke to pick out and kill a specific model in a unit, even if only once per game. Picking out and removing an important icon or champion, or even just preventing the opponent from stringing out, can have a profound effect on the game.

Long term you might want more than one. For your first, though, for FEC I'd say a Terrorgheist with Ghoul King on. For legions I'd say Zombie Dragon with Vamp Lord on. Though both FEC and Legions do like unridden Terrorgheists as well, especially Legion of Night.

predator's not bad, especially cast by something like a soul mason with the reservoir. I'm skeptical of throwing out bound spells with arkhan, though, since a big part of why you'd want arkhan in the first place is his casting bonus, and as long as your maintaining concentration on an endless spell he loses a point of that bonus. There's a big difference between +1 to cast and +2 to cast in terms of reliably getting spells over enemy unbinding attempts. My own arkhan lists only run a single bound endless - usually the shrieker - and even then only if I'm running another caster along side him to cast it from. What to cast with Arkhan is tricky. Protection of Nagash is obvious if the opponent has any ranged offense at all. After that, though... empower nadirite weapons and reinforce battleshields are your staple buffs, so you kind of want to cast them with Arkhan's bonuses, but I maintain that Arcane Command is our best spell if you aren't already flush with RD points, and most of the time Arkhan lists won't be. Drain Vitality can be critical if your opponents have some of those relatively common 'extra thing happens on a 6 to hit' abilities, and mortal contract is just a really fun spell. And that's to say nothing of chaingunning a few arcane bolts out, or going for a yolo curse of years when a situation's so bad that nothing else has a chance of helping. Even with three casts per turn, it often feels like not enough.

The difficulty with making OBR Nagash 'chew through' anything is that protection of nagash spell. If he gets the spell up, that's an extra shrug against wounds and mortal wounds, and when a couple wounds inevitably get through he redeploys anywhere more than 9" from your stuff. On the one hand you can force him off of and away from objectives that way, and with half the army tied up in nagash and the rest made up of expensive elites that might be all you need to do, but locking him down in any meaningful way is hard to manage.

Nighthaunt should be pretty good against obr specifically. They (we, since I play them) are pretty bad at the objective game since as a general rule they're both rather expensive so they won't have a lot of models or units and kind of slow so they have a harder time reaching objectives outside of their deployment zone. Kind of ironic given the faction's narrative focus on taking and holding territory. Additionally, as you point out they invest a lot of resources in having -1 to -2 rend on most of their units, which Nighthaunt ignores outright. They're also lacking in mortal wound output, and have relatively weak casting for a death army unless they're fielding Arkhan or Nagash, but taking either of them further exacerbates their difficulties with board control. Just take some objectives, deep strike in to silence any catapults since they usually won't have the numbers to properly screeen them without putting themselves even further behind on table control, block the advance of their melee units with some sacrificial ghosts, and you should be good. If you actually have the mortal wound output to kill them outright, that's just adding insult to injury. Don't get me wrong, Petrifex are bad dudes in general, very hard to beat in a scrum for armies that rely on winning scrums to win the game, but in the (admittedly few) games I've played against nighthaunt so far, they've mostly been able to ignore my strengths and turn my weaknesses into fatal flaws. Considering that new hotness Tzeentch are also a less-than-ideal matchup for OBR (very vulnerable to mortals at range, don't have the casting power to even begin to check their magic phase, tzeentch like nighthaunt can run rings around OBR in the objective game), and I'm not sure how much OBR you'll actually have to worry about on the tourney scene, once the scene starts up again. You do still see Nagash sometimes, and I wonder if Nagash lists might be a bigger worry, and thus worth more consideration in terms of countering, than generic OBR lists. His ability to chaingun arcane bolts can down your support heroes, self healing + decent mortal shrug, teleportation protection of nagash to put him wherever you least want him, etc. Again the objective game starts in your favor, and Nagash, much like OBR generally, relies a lot on high rend damage output which you can shrug with ethereal saves, but even so. I haven't run nagash in obr yet, let alone against nighthaunt specifically, so I might be way off base, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on fighting him.

Sun is coolest, in a casual game I'd go with that for theme & aesthetics, but it's very unreliable & can be thrown back in your face. Pendulum is safer and lets you put more damage on individual targets, so if you want to make arkhan as threatening as possible, that's the best. alternatively, you could use those 50 points to add 10 more morteks if you field them as 40-20-10. That's probably what I would do. with only 20 count squads, you run the risk of losing whole squads at a time before you'd have a chance to heal anything. Thatps much harder with a 40 count that's much harder, also gives you a better target for your buffs. The 10 count squad's a bit weak, but can still be useful camping objectives or screening fir your casters. The 20 squad is threatening but still vulnerable, but if the enemy focuses on them then they're letting the max squad trample the board unopposed. I do wish there was an easy way to fit a liege in there. Endless duty us a big deal, and he's good support for the stalkers, especially if you get the helm of the ordained on him. You could keep the mason and drop both endless spells and the shaper, but without any offensive endless spells arkhan is a lot less threatening.

Despairing of alternatives, I'm also starting to look more at scratch built hobby stuff. Based on both pictures in the OBR book, like this one from your sig: As well as the unreleased studio terrain featured in the release materials as seen here: OBR fortifications seem to be fairly standard stone block castles and battlements, with the shaped bone layered overtop as decoration/reinforcement. So aiming for that aesthetic, the first step would be making basic stone block walls, and there are plenty of good tutorials available for scratch building those, including this one from the same youtube channel that made the previously linked OBR terrain tutorial: While I found their OBR tutorial to be a lot of work for an aesthetic I didn't particularly care for, the process for this basic stone wall seems pretty quick and easy for a result that IMO looks pretty darn good, and that looks pretty easy to adapt from walls to towers & gatehouses & such. Also should be pretty low cost, which lets it scale up easily. Of course, the hard part is the part that actually makes it distinctly OBR - the bone molding. For walls, the main elements seem to be: 1. replacing the castle crenulations with railings/fences made from rib bones. Granted, these would be dramatically less effective protection for defenders on the battlements than actual crenulations, but then again the crenulations on most wargame terrain castles are already way too small for the purpose regardless, so aesthetics over functionality is already kind of the precedent. as a variant, you could use these overtop of or covering the gaps inbetween regular stone crenulations. As for how to make it... this part doesn't actually seem all that hard. Making a bunch of individual ribs, whether via molding or just individually carving a bunch shouldn't be too tricky, they're not all that difficult a shape and uniformity in anything other than length isn't that important. If you're making them out of greenstuff or the like you'd need reinforcement from something sturdier every couple inches. Placing these over/between regular crenulations would more or less cover, here. 2. large, archeway-shaped vaguely pelvis-like flatish bone reinforcements over the stone walls, seen most clearly in the studio terrain but also seen on the walls in the artwork. This looks harder to manage. Scultping with some sort of air-drying modeling clay is an option, I suppose, if you've got reasonable sculpting skills. I'm not sure mine are up to the task. Uniformity would also be an issue. 3d modeling & printing could easily cover both issues, but I personally lack the experience or equipment to consider that option. Alternatively, maybe start with stencilled shapes from thick plasticard or thin foam, and carve / build up modeling clay or putty over that? 3. Seen on the artwork but not the studio terrain, you could also have a lone of ossiarch banners adorning the walls. They look close enough to the mortek banners that you could use those if you have some spare. May also be able to bits order some. That's just for plain wall segments - gates & towers seem to have other, more intricate and distinguishing aesthetic features, including the more elaborate large skull, pelvis, & spine bits. But the walls seem like the first thing you'd want or need, so anyone tackling this sort of project should probably start there. In terms of painting - though that really is putting the cart before the horse, since a lot of this hypothetical terrain would be plain stone bricks or blocks, you might want to do something different with the stone. This tutorial on painting ghostly green terrain may prove useful there, particularly if your method for painting bone is darker than that used by GW:

Liege kavalos isn't mostly there for his killing ability - I mean, it's not negligible, but he's more there for the RD points (tied with RD points generated per point with katakros for most efficient character, the only more efficient RD generators are a couple of the formations, and those come at the cost of reduced board presence from spending points on not models), and for endless duty for the +1 attack buff. I do recommend running at least one unit of the kav if you can fit it - they fill battleline and it's important to have at least some faster options that can run for objectives or tie up a shooty squad for a turn. As for arkhan... it's tough. OBR is very vulnerable to magic if you don't take him or nagash, what with lacking any bonuses to unbinding apart from kind of sort of the nexus. But he's very points inefficient, particularly when it comes to RD generation, and he's super fragile, even in petrifex. An army like range spam chaos dwarves with units that can put out 6 to 7 mortal wounds at range is exactly the kind of opponent you *least* want to field a 360 point 11 wound model against. Between mortals and just regular damage, that squad has an uncomfortable likelyhood of one-shotting arkhan at range, even in petrifex, even with protection of nagash up.

They're a mid tier army that wins big or loses big based on your ability to roll 10" charges out of deep strike, like they have been since release. The main changeup is the legion of grief rule set from the stormvault campaign that effectively lets you run a nighthaunt army using legion of nagash faction rules, so you can be an unreliable but aggressive deep strike shock assault army using the nighthaunt rules or a more reliable but less aggressive attrition army banking on ethereal saves + gravesite healing to grind your opponent down over time using the legion of grief rules. neither is exacyly top tier at tournaments lately, but the versatility in play style with more or less the same models is impressive.

arcane command is a soell that reads: cast on a 5. D3 of your units get your choice of +3 move in the next movement phase or +1 attack, -1 rend, or reroll saves in the next combat phase. And you don't have to pick which units or benefits until you need them. Arcane command is dummy good, unless you already have enough rd points for shield wall, endless duty, and blugeon in both player turns with all your engaged mortek units. For just one mortek squad, that's already 6 points, which you might have. The moment your opponent tags a second unit, that's 12 points, and you won't have that.

Maybe, but is it better than Empower Nadirite weapons or Drain Vitality? Maybe for some matchups or in some armies. RBS becomes better if you focus more resources into a single primary unit - say a 40/20/10 mortek base instead of a 20/20/20 base. If you take enough wizards to know all three then you probably don't have 5+ RDP before rolling for 6s, at which point I think Arcane Command becomes obligatory, imo.

To an extent, but rbs can only be on one unit at a time. Depending on list and positioning it often just shifts attention from one unit to another. That can still be valuable, but lately I'm wondering if its a bit overrated, especially in 3x20 mortek lists.

Have you considered nagash, liege, 2x5 kav, 40 mortek, with 120 points left over for endless spells (maybe portals & pendulum, or portals, shrieker, & carrion)? One big block for mortek helps reinforce battleshields go further, at the very least.

The existance and continued release of factions like Skaven, Cities of Sigmar, and Seraphon tell me it's safe to think that Legions of Nagash aren't going anywhere any time soon. They may not be the future of AoS, but they're definitely part of the game's present, and that present will be with us for quire a while, IMO.

Even with RDP, 7' move + run isn't exactly fast, and even with Katakros, burning multiple RDP to move can leave you shy on points to burn on shield wall / bludgeon, making you vulnerable to enemy attack right as you start to come within range. OBR also lack flying units which mean getting around terrain and screens to target vulnerable units is difficult, and speed bumps can be especially effective against us, since we we usually don't have much in the way of magic phase offense - nagash lists of course excepting - to clear them before our movement phase. Park a disposable dire wolf unit 3.1" in front of a block of mortek, and RDP or no, they aren't going anywhere in their next turn. OBR are also lacking outflank/deep strike/teleportation/foreward deployment type shenanigans, outside of protection of nagash - which is really only impressive on Nagash himself - or generic endless spells, which, with Nagash lists again excepting, we lack the casting bonuses to reliably push them over enemy unbinding rolls when we need them. Kavalos in the army, especially as battleline, does help, but they only go so far. Lieges help too, but they're kind of an important unit to be moving them ahead of your lines. Stalkers can help a bit, too, with more speed than morteks and the CA to jump terrain on the charge, but they're really only fast relative to the rest of OBR, not relative to the rest of the game. Morghasts, especially Harbingers, *would* help if they weren't as woefully overpriced for their abilities as they've been since the first general's handbook. And both Stalkers and Morghasts are seriously held back by lacking any option to field them as battleline, since that leaves them competing with Harvesters and especially Crawlers for our extremely limited supply of spare points after obligatory battle line and essential characters are accounted for. So yeah, I do agree that OBR aren't *quite* as slow as they appear... but they are still, overall, one of the slowest armies in the game. They can outfight most anything, but nearly anything can outmaneuver you - especially when you consider that you're almost certainly going to be outnumbered in model count and especially in unit count. This can make board presence is very much an uphill climb, especially if the units you do take are trying to stay within aura range of your heroes & unit champions. Opponents who just charge their armies into a big scrum in the middle of the board will get shreked, but anybody who actually plays for the objectives? Like, I think OBR are a lot stronger than LoN overall, but I'd have a hard time running my OBR against my own LoN, particularly when it comes to dealing with the multiple, cheap, recursive dire wolf units. NONE of that is to say that OBR is at all weak, but even with the +3" movement CA, I'd still say movement and positioning is one of the faction's most exploitable weaknesses.

OK, Death in AoS as of May 2020... Death as a grand alliance tends to be marked by a few advantages & disadvantages: If there is a unifying mechanical theme to Death in AoS, it's recursion/regeneration/summoning, with necromantic magic bolstering undead forces and returning dead warriors to battle. The extent to which this is present varies from faction to faction, but in general part of the undead strategy will be winning wars of attrition by returning dead models to your units. Other unifying mechanics are leadership 10 - making undead units take fewer wounds from battleshock (though Inspiring presence being what it is most armies in the game autopass the really important battleshock tests - and the 'deathless' save - a 6+ roll to ignore wounds and mortal wounds, generally restricted to a range around your heroes. This makes undead units just a bit tougher than similarly statted peers, particularly against mortal wounds, though the need to stay within range of our heroes can restrict positioning options. These two features combined make it more likely that even if a fight doesn't go your way there's usually at least a chance that a few models will survive to your next command phase, which is when those healing & recursion abilities usually kick in. Death tends to be a very synergistic faction, relying heavily on buffs, or debuffs to enemy units, that come mostly from support heroes and spellcasters, which also /tend/ to be the source of the previously mentioned recursion abilities and dethless saves. Together, these mechanical themes build the narrative of necromantic heroes empowering hordes of dead soldiers and spirits. These undead soldiers rely on those heroes to function, and will falter if those heroes are removed. Again, the extent of this varies from faction to faction and even unit to unit, but even the strongest and most independent undead factions still incorporate these themes to some extent. While slain undead can be returned to the field multiple times, and their offensive buffs can be stacked up to truly frightening levels, this is balanced out by the fact that undead units tend to be weaker point for point than equivalent units in other factions, both offensively and defensively. Again, this varies from faction to faction, but in general you are going to need to rely on recursion to maintain your presence on the table and on your stacked buffs to deal reasonable damage, and to the extent that these features are tied to your heroes you do tend to be more vulnerable than most non-Death factions to the 'just shoot the heroes' meme. Contributing further to the 'weaker undead units empowered by strong heroes' theme, Death units, especially battleline units, tend to be hoardy chaff units by nature - albeit more expensive than equivalent hordes in other alliances - while on the other hand our heroes tend to be even more individually powerful and much more expensive compared to equivalent heroes in other factions. Death factions tend to have good magic *in theory*, but in practice it tends to fall a bit flat lately. Our factions typically have good to great spell lores, & even have some decent endless spells. Our casty heroes also often have good buffing or healing abilities on top of that, while our fighty heroes often have some casting ability as well. Unfortunately, because our heroes tend to be more expensive than equivalent heroes in other factions, we usually have less total casts and unbinds per battle round than other heavy spellcasting armies in the game. Additionally, while there are some exceptions (Nagash, Legion of Sacrament), we tend to lack the big casting roll bonuses & reroll type abilities that other spellcasting armies use to force their key spells past unbinding attempts. As a result, Death armies almost always have at least some decent magic ability, you will very rarely see a death army with no wizards at all, but unless you're running Nagash or Legion of Sacrament you are not going to compete for casting dominance with the likes of Tzeentch, Hallowheart, Skaven, or Seraphon, and to the extent that your army's regenration & buffing abilities rely on spells specifically you can run into some trouble there. In terms of base stats, undead armies tend to lack in range - both in terms of shooting and in movement speed. There are notable exceptions, more than to the previous traits, but it's still a noticeable trend, especially for the core infantry blocks that you often rely on to win games. Again, lots of noteworthy exceptions in terms of shooting range or movement speed - OBR catapults, monster-riding Ghoul Kings, Dire Wolves in LoN - but you *do* want to take note of these units when building your lists. As with weak undead units being counterbalanced by tricky stacking buffs, the low movement speed of undead armies is also often counterbalanced by tricksy deployment & movement shenanigans, ranging from ghouls outflanking to ghosts deep striking to LoN heroes raising units from gravesites to OBR's +3 move CA, and so on. Combined with individual units that are actually fast & maneuverable in their own right, and undead armies are often much better in terms of positioning than their warscroll rules alone would imply, and this can take unprepared opponents by surprise. ... So with some general trends established, what are the current factions to choose from? In more or less reverse order of release, the main subfactions are: Ossiarch Bonereapers. Flesh Eater Courts Nighthaunts Legions of Nagash Legion of Grief Soulblight Defunct, if possibly technically still playable factions: These factions may or may not still be playable, but they're certainly not actively supported, and new players really shouldn't even consider them. And that's the state of Grand Alliance Death as I see it right now. If you're looking for arbitrary power ratings, I'd put OBR and FEC about even, with FEC being stronger offensively and OBR stronger defensively - but still able to pack quite a punch, just not quite as adept at delivering that punch where and when they want it. I'd say both armies are high tier, but not top tier compared to the kinds of shenanigans that armies like Slaanesh or Tzeentch can pull, at least not after a few nerfs to FEC that curbed some of their more notorious abuses. I'd put Nighthaunt and the Legions, including Legion of Grief, a bit behind OBR and FEC, with the Nighthaunt being a slightly weaker and much less reliable offensive army then FEC, and the Legions being a slightly weaker and considerably less offensively threatening army than OBR, albeit one with slightly better magic (not counting Nagash) and much better board control. All of these factions are at least casually playable. They may not all be serious top table tournament competitors, but the tournament meta shifts so frequently and so wildly that it's really a pain to keep up unless you're the kind of player who can collect and prepare a new army every year, sometimes even more than once per year. As a new player to AoS, you really shouldn't worry about it, and instead should focus on a reasonably functional army with models, narrative, and play style you enjoy, and all of the above factions can clear that bar. Soulblight, unfortunately, don't really clear that bar right now. However, they are the most likely of the existing Death factions to see new rules any time soon. Granted some new models have been teased for what looks like FEC and OBR, but the odds are those will be Warcry releases, not new AoS stuff. Otherwise, Death has seen a ton of narrative focus and game content in 2e to date, but at the moment attention seems to be panning away, more towards what the Elves and Chaos are up to, so I don't personally expect any big changes or shake ups to Death in AoS for a while, again apart from maybe Soulblight, so unless you're especially interested in running a vampire themed army, you should feel safe in choosing from the currently available options without worrying that some unexpected new release will change which undead army you would want to field.

The game has kind of moved away from LoN in general, and especially from grand host since one of the main benefits was running Nagash, and Nagash got rewritten to not work so well outside of obr. Nagash is not a sentimental god, nor an especially loyal one. When his new toys were finished he dropped his old ones pretty fast. LoN in general also suffered from a number of issues right from the beginning in terms of a bunch of redundant units not too many of which are actually very good, and those issues have continuee to vex them. However, while the book is far from top tier, it's also still far from unplayable. Skeletons are still quite threatening battleline, especially in legions of nagash. Deathmarch is good. Vampire lords and necromancers are good. Dire Wolves are nice cheap fast speed bumps, objective campers, and screens for fast characters. Corpse carts are nice caster buffs. Grimghasts no longer dominate at their higher points cost but are still quite good. Our spell lores are still good. Grave Sites are still great as far as faction rules go. The army is still decent and fun to play, even if the competitive scene has kind of left them behind. And it wouldn't take much sprucing up to put them back on top. You could easily imagine a revised LoN battletome with some updated rules & points costs, legion rules re-worked in the style of more recent subfactions, nagash & arkhan given full lore access like in OBR to make up for their lost copycat abilities, actual models for gravesites, more and better battalions, mortarchs and nagash able to heal themselves like in OBR, etc etc. Unfortunately, as easy as it would be to make the legions good again, the future doesn't look great for LoN in AoS. The lore has largely moved away from legions. Nighthaunt and OBR have not just center stage, but the entire stage as far as death goes lately. And the lore for OBR is such that it's hard to imagine deathrattle continuing to exist in universe when Nagash could have ground them up en mass for more bonereapers. Furthermore, Rumors persist of soulblight getting their own battletome in the next year or two. If that happens, the rules for Manfred, Neferata, Vampire Lords, and other vampyric units may be rewritten to work better work better in that book, much as Nagash and Arkhan were rewritten to work better in OBR. The addition of new Nighthaunt units to LoN is thought by many to have been a bad move, so if we do get a LoN 2.0 it's likely to remove those units. Maybe not just them. Other Nighthaunt units could go with. Nagash, Arkhan, and Morghasts might leave to hang with OBR officially. And if Soulblight gets their own book, the vampire units might leave, too. All that would remain is deathrattle, death mages, & zombies. And GW could still make a good battletome out of that, but, like, I'm not sure why they would bother. As a silver lining, LoN, if you ignore the end times releases and the new nighthaunt stuff, all of which is living on in other books, is mostly just the oldhammer vampire counts army, and oldhammer is coming back in the form of the warhammer old world game. Some rumers have the game set in the three emperors era, which iirc is when the vampire wars took place, so new old vampire counts could be a central faction there, potentially giving LoN armies a glorious future, just one set in the distant past. Folks who rebased to rounds from squares probably won't be excited to rebase everything in the opposite direction, but at least it's something.

OBR are kind of slow, and lack board presence in both model and unit count. If opponents play for objectives and try to just avoid your stuff, it can be very difficult to get to grips with them. Crawlers give opponents a reason to come to you, give you the ability to threaten key buff heroes behind enemy lines & msu squads camping distant objevtives, prevent enemy units from stringing out, and maul hordes of chaff which can otherwise tarpit morteks long enough to keep them from reaching objectives. Yes, the crawlers struggle to damage high save elite units, but when your regular battleline, in petrifex at least, can threaten 2 to 3 exploding ap-2 attacks per model and save on 3+ with rerolls in melee, elite stuff generally isn't your biggest problem.

1. I'd argue the Liege is almost compulsory in lists that don't run katakros for rdp efficiency and the precious +1 attack ca. even with katakros it isn't bad. In addition to the support hero role, a liege is also fast & solid enough to be a mobile element in and of itself, able to chase msu camping units off of objectives. OBR casters, the main alternative for leaders/rdp generators lack useful command abilities, are less efficient at generating rdps for the points investment, and cannot operate on their own. And while we have some decent spells in their lore, our wizards mostly lack the significant bonuses to casting rolls to reliably push spells past the unbinding rolls of many of the more magically oriented lists in the game. Obviously Arkhan and Nagash are exceptions here, but Arkhan is really too fragile for his points even in petrifex to really be competitively viable, and while Nagash arguably is viable, he dominates your list & leads to very lopsided games with much more pronounced weaknesses than your more typical obr lists. 2. 6 stalkers does seem decent, but you've gotta take morteks, who are already fighty and way tougher, and/or riders who are faster, so stalkers which are kind of a mid way between the two have a hard time fitting imo. Things might be different if you could take even one unit of them as battleline, but as is, well, they aren't bad, but I doubt one unit of three will do as much for you as a single harvester, or a liege if you're otherwise light on heroes, while 1x6 or 2x3 will have a hard time providing the kind of utility you can get from a pair of crawlers. I want to stress, though, that they aren't bad. OBR listsmaming is very tight and it's hard to fit even pretty good units like stalkers in if they aren't strictly critical to the game plan, but if you do make room for them they'll still put in some work. Immortis are in a worse spot. they're too expensive to use to protect heroes - too slow to keep up with a liege and you could get another liege for that price anyway. our non-named casters aren't good or critical enough to justify the investment. nagash and katakros are tough enough thay they shouldn't need them & expensive enough that you can't reasonably fit them even if you did. Arkhan is about the only dude fragile enough to need them, & expensive enough to justify them, but at that point you're kind of throwing good points after bad. plus they're dirt slow and one of Arkhan's best points is that huge flying move, so you're clipping his wings by sticking near them. I don't want to overstate their badness, as they're also pretty tough with some non-negligible hitting power. with two weapons and a double attack ca they also take buffs well, particularly +1 attack from a liege or katakros, which would synergize further with their double attavk ca, but the second attavk round being limited to their shields only takes a lot of wind out of their sails. Plus, morteks are tougher and hittier and take buffs even better and you already have morteks because battleline. As with stalkers, if you could take even one unit as battleline, or if their CA allowed then to fight again with all their melee weapons, then there might be something to talk about, but as is they're rather lackluster. Worse than stalkers, which are good but just really hard to fit at 2k points when everything you need to take is already so expensive. I run them anyway, because i love their thematics and aesthetics, but yeah, can't really recommend them. 3. Havent run nagash in obr yet so I mostly defer to others, but yeah he seems pretty viable, but the monstrous cost combined with everything else in the army being ecpensive makes it very hard to play for objectives, and there are melee hammers strong enough to down him even in petrifex. 4. Shrieker is good if you have the points for it, predator is decent but imo pendulum is better at the same job for only 10 points more. Soul stealer's pretty bad as it only triggers on enemy casualties in its fairly small range, not casyalties to enemy units in that range. most of the time, opponents will be able to just pick casualties from outside the aura to avoid the effect. has some extra utility for nagash, in order to get line of sight on enemy heroes to machine gun them down with arcane bolts, but his flight and height make it difficult to hide from him already, and the bound mechanic cuts into the big guy's casting bonus, which is one of his main srlling points. Other endless spells can be useful as well, so long as you have at least one caster to try them. balewind is nice for a boneshaper or soulmason. Nagash likes his spellportals. I still like shackles even after the hefty points hike. geminids is still pretty good. bridge or cogs can help with OBR's relatively slow speed. palisades can be useful for blocking firing lanes. Because of the high cost of units & heroes in OBR, and our inability to use command points, you'll often be left with 50 to 100 points spare at the end of list construction with nothing to spend it on except for endless spells, so if you're running any wizards ar all then it's worth taking some time to familiarize yourself with the available options. 5. As already mentioned, I think Arkhan's too fragile for the points to be competitive, even in petrifex. Like stalkers, I don't think he's terrible, just worse than ither options. I run him anyway, but yeah. My typical 2k list right now is: Arkhan Liege Boneshaper 40 morteks 20 morteks 5 kavalos 3 immortis crawler shrieker if i were trying to be competitive the immortis would definitely be another crawler. I'd also trade out arkhan for a mason and either a harvester or just more morteks. Or trade arkhan, the shaper, and the shrieker for katakros.

There are official rules for tomb kings, just not a supported model range to go with them. There was a branding/trademarking push, but imo it's overstated among bitter fans. GW could, if they wanted, absolutely put out a new and AoSmarized Tomb King army. They just don't want to. It isn't something the devs are interested in. And, honestly, fair enough. I mean, I'd like to see some version of TK back, but it's not like the undead in AoS have been left to gather dust like we were for most of 1e. GW's chosen to go in another direction, but it's not like the direction they've chosen is a bad one. At least we're going somewhere. And there's always hope for the upcoming old world game, which is a better home for TK anyway, as non-Nagashii undead really don't fit in AoS's narrative. TK probably won't be one of the first factions in that game, or even the first undead faction. Rumors put the primary setting in the "Three Emperor's" period, which would make vamp counts pretty central as that's basically when the Von Carstein wars were happening iirc. But GW knows people miss the Tomb Kings, so if the old world game is successful I expect it won't be too long of a wait for some mummy support.

Bologna. there is no overall structure or balance to the GA's. The relative lack of shooting in death and chaos is a legacy inhereted from the oldhammer armies that originally made them up, nothing more or less than that, and no reason it should have to stay that way.

Tomb Kings can already be built for range, with tomb queen, ssc, archers, horse archers, chariots, bowshabti. not the most effective build, admittedly, but it exists. Or rather, rules for it exist, you're on your own for models. I could see ossiarch ranged options getting expanded, especially as they have little to no crossover ability with other factions. wouldn't take much, just ranged versions of morteks, maybe a ranged cav or stalker box. I put the odds of this happening within the next few years at about 40%. Ossiarchs were popular enough that I think GW will want to revisit & expand on them, & ranged units are one of the more obvious open options for doing so.

Probably my biggest and onlyest *major* disappointment with the OBR release was that the bone wall & gate terrain pieces heavily featured in the promotional material turned out to be studio display conversions and not an actual new model kit. construction and fortification is a major theme of the Bonereapers lore, but there really isn't much in the way of first party terrain to reflect that. yeah there's the nexus, but that's more a monument than a fortification, and none of the other AoS terrain remotely fits the bonereapers distinct style. I've seen at least one conversion/build guide: But it looked like a lot of effort for results that felt more orky or beastmannist to me than ossiarch. So I've been looking for 3rd party alternatives, mostly 3d printed stuff on etsy. Here's what I've found so far, though note that I havent purchased any of these so I can't vouch for the particular sellers linked: https://www.etsy.com/listing/728009527/dnd-necromancer-tower-warhammer-evil Pobably the best I've found, looks like it would work well as a watchtower. Not really an ossiarch aesthetic, but at least it feels like it's made of bones. https://www.etsy.com/listing/773082178/ Not a fortification, but these columns/pylons/obelisks have a pretty ossiarch aestheric to them. could probably do something with that. https://www.etsy.com/listing/773078712 Again more monument rather than fortification, but there's a bonereapery feel to it. Honestly no amazing options so far. i would have figured 3d printer types would have a bunch of knock offs up after the teased terrain was so widely desired and then not sold, but maybe i was reading too much into my own desire to buy that kit, and there hasn't been the big demand from elsewhere? Anyway, has anybody seen any of these in person to vouch for how they turn out? or do you have alternative bonereaper terrain suggestions, whether purchasable or hobby tutorials?