AoS - 3rd AoS News Thread
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Oppenheimer
Varghulf
The New Year Preview – Fulfil the bone-tithe with new Ossiarch Bonereapers
Build new tactical options from the bones of the conquered.
Preview day was today, and we've got big news for Grand Alliance: Death in a significant release wave for the Ossiarch Bonereapers, the first since their initial introduction back in 2nd edition.
Kavalos War Chariot. Straight off my wish list, this is something I wanted to give some aesthetic variety and heavy support to Kavalos themed OBR armies. These have been a thing in the lore since the beginning, but with only one unit of cavalry and one cavalry hero, they weren't really fully supported in the range. Granted, this didn't need to be a chariot - it could have been dracoth-style monstrous cavalry or the like. Personally I would have liked something a bit weirder, some sort of torturous necrotic bonemold abomination blending the steeds and chasis together. But the chariot we're getting still looks great, so I'm not complaining, and the dual kit hero option is nice even if I do worry about redundancy with the Liege Kavalos.. I think we still need a cavalry wizard and maybe some lighter mounted or centaurish archers or a unit of boney warhounds like out of the warcry kit - something that fits the theme while being lighter/smaller than deathriders - to round out the army concept
On the down side most chariots are kind of baddish in 4e, so I'm not sure this will have much of a role in the game on release. It might need to wait for a more significant rework of the core rules in a future edition for a chance to really shine, but it's a welcome addition to OBR's model range regardless..
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The long awaited Infantry Liege! And I think he just looks great. There's even some respectable build variety in the choice of heads and weapons. I love this guy, maybe my favorite release of the set, love the fingerbone sash especially - so it pains me to admit that I might skip this one and just mount the hero from the chariot kit on its own base instead after building the non-hero version of that kit. Regardless, this is another entry straight off my wish list, so I absolutely love to see it
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Mortek Triaxes - the long awaited mortek archers, a 10 model kit just like I was hoping for. They're a bit weird. Rather clothy, and with a bone mold eyepatch grown over one eye, with another on like an odd crest on the top of their heads? Personally, I would have preferred normal mortek guard heads, or maybe just an extra third eye on their foreheads... but whatever. Honestly, if they're going to be different from what I wanted/expected, I'm happy for it to be in the direction of making them more weird rather than more generic, making them more their own thing rather than ~just~ mortek guard with bows instead of spears and shields.
Rules wise, they sound pretty good - 2 shots each, a pip of rend, something about countering cover, and a rule that suppresses healing abilities on units they shoot. So long as they've got tolerable range and aren't priced too high, I expect they'll see a lot of table time, and they're a very nice complement to the Mortek Crawler. Personally I'd love to see OBR go further down the shooty path in the future. Maybe a big archer version of stalkers/immortis, equivalent to bowshabti from the old tomb kings?
Anyway, yeah, another unit straight off my wish list.
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Last up for new model releases, 'Mortis Reapers' - a 5 model unit of assassins/character hunters. I'm not sure how big they are size wise - if they're on 32mm bases then it looks like they'd be about mortek guard size, as they have more room on their bases than the guard have on their 25mm rounds. If they're on 40mm bases then they'd be sized like the larger scale bridge unit between mortek guard and stalkers that I've been asking for for a while, though their skirmishy assassiny role and cloaked aesthetic is far from the front line warriors to stand toe to toe with stormcasts and chaos chosen that I wanted. Still, they're very cool, and very unique within the OBR range in terms of style and personality. I do think I like the models.
Rules wise... small unit of light skirmishy lone character hunters sounds kind of terrible and pointless in 4e, so I'll be surprised if they're any good, but right now that's a secondary consideration for me.
As is, I hope they're on 40mm bases and are the heralds of that proper warrior unit yet to come in some future release. In the mean time I think they just look neat, and honestly I'm kind of excited to see something relatively unexpected - a bit of a curve ball rather than just a tick of my personal wish list.
speaking of:
Sceptions OBR wishlist
infantry liege- cavalry mortisan
- morghast hero
- warsphinx style centerpiece monster (preferably multi-kit with hero/non-hero options)
- bowshabti style ranged monstrous infantry
mortek archers- stormcast/chaos warrior scale front line infantry
chariot/monstrous cavalry equivalent big unit for kavalos armies- warbeasts/dogs/light cavalry/centaurs
- casket of souls style magic-enhancing buffwagon
- bone walls and gate seige battle terrain
The new model wave of course is coming with a new battletome. I'm a lot less excited about this than I am about the models - 4e AoS hasn't really been much to my liking, especially the warscroll and faction rule design, and the death tomes at least haven't really been making up the difference with new story developments (though admittedly the complete lore refresh for Vhordrai in the Soulblight book was good). This book will completely re-work the Relentless Discipline rule system that are the centerpiece of OBR battle traits. Which, I mean, the current version of those rules is actually pretty darn good, so if anything that makes me more nervous than anything else. Looking at the battle traits for other factions, there is A LOT of room for a revision here to be worse than what we already have.
On a more optimistic note, the new rules do sound to be a bit closer to what we had in previous editions, with heroes providing points to activate abilities and legies providing more points than other heroes, giving them a more defined leaderly type role like as they used to have. 10 points for katakros, 5 for legies, presumably less for mortisans. The show presenters said 10 points for nagash as well, but they might have been confusing him with katakros.
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Two Armies of Renown. One is a kavalry & chariot heavy 'lance of ossia' for Stalliarch players - which to me feels premature. Again, imo that theme is still missing a cavalry mortisan and a lighter cav or warbeast type unit to have enough variety to properly support a themed ruleset that excludes other things. I would have rather seen something crematorian or petrifex themed.
The other is the Null Myriad, with Arkhan, mortisans, morghasts, morteks at least. Supposedly a fairly limited model set, so I wouldn't count on more than that, but it will be getting a battleforce release. Somewhat sadly this includes the current Arkhan model, which makes the rumors of a new arkhan model this edition seem very doubtful. I'm not sure whether nor not this will mean Arkhan is back in the lore. Anyway, the battleforce is Arkhan (or neferata or mannfred), a soulmason, 2 boxes of morghasts, and a box of mortek guard. All older stuff. Nice enough set for newer players, though veteran OBR players will already have as much as they want of this stuff. I kind of wonder if part of the point isn't drawing down stock of the old end times releases? Maybe we'll see new arkhan and morghasts in 5e. I like the current models, but they could stand to be updated - assembly of the morghasts in particular is miserable.
Rules-wise, Null Myriad has enough conceptual and model range backbone (if you'll pardon the pun) to build out a solid Army of Renown, and they're my own favored faction so I'll certianly try the rules out, but in general Armies of Renown seem designed to be bad-on-purpose, so I'm not worked up about it or anything, and if they are bad I won't care so long as I can run the same units using the regular army and be fine.
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Likewise, two Regiments of Renown to run OBR stuff in other Death armies. One is pictured above and will come packaged in a stand alone box. This is, iirc, the same set as the very first OBR release in the vs. box with ogors, albeit minus the pair of morghasts, and with the stalkers built as immortis instead. Vokmortian is the big emissary/herald of nagash guy for the army, so he makes perfect sense in this role, and the box set looks nice, so I approve even though I'm not personally much of a fan of the Regiment of Renown system. In general they're either terrible and thus don't matter, or else they're good and that's even worse.
The article doesn't mention the other Regiment of Renown, and I don't recall if it was stated in the presentation or not.
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And of course a new Spearhead. As has become unfortunately common with battletome spearheads in 4e, this one is lacking in a cool big centerpiece model and hase a warcry warband instead. That said, while it is my least favorite OBR spearhead out of the now 3 we've seen, it's probably my favorite of the Warcry warband spearheads, as the Liege Kavalos / Zandtos kit is big and impressive enough to be a sort of centerpiece all its own. Plus 10 kavalos, a liege kavalos, and some terratics is a pretty coherent little force for new players to add to a collection. I just wish the new chariot was there in place of one of those kits.
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And that's it, that's all the OBR news from todays show, with nothing else undeadly to discuss. I'm honestly pretty excited, especially as I was feeling pretty down about AoS lately. Even if this doesn't turn around my feelings about the 4e rule set & how the game plays, there will at least be some cool new models to build and paint for the army this year. This is honestly the kind of release wave OBR needed to see in 3rd edition, it's unfortunate that the wait was this long. But the undead are nothing if not patient, and this is a great release with a bunch of units that I've long been asking for and one that's neat and new and kind of unexpected. So yeah, great stuff, I'm hype.
Thanatek’s Tithe are here to claim bones, even if they have to find unwilling donors
A new Warhammer Underworlds warband is revealed.
New Underworlds Warband, Thanatek's Tithe. The boss looks to be a chair-less Soulmason, backed up by two Mortis Reapers and the other two are double headed retainers with a heavy casket built into their torso, built to carry and protect particularly valuable bone resources.
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i like the new OBR warband. I mean, I like all obr stuff. But i do have to admit that i liked both kainen's reapers and the teratic cohort more. No one model in the group is as cool as the teratic centaur or kainen himself. Imo Thanatek himself isn't even as cool as the mortek champ with the halberd from the reapers. Model count is small given the apparent size of the individual models - though if they turn out to be bigger than i expect than my opinion on the whole box will improve some. The pose on the reapers is less dynamic than in their actual unit.
I think i would have liked this set more if Thanatek had brought his chair.
But i do like the double headed stone guys a lot. Like, A LOT a lot. They're nice and weird. I like when obr gets weird. Plus, the mornial caste 'foot' icon reminds me of the foot clan from ninja turtles, which further activates my nostalgic association association between OBR and 1980s toy cartoons.