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.
Sunday Preview – Reap the bone-tithe with osseous reinforcements
Breathe new life into Nagash’s skeleton legions.
Ossiarchs on Sunday preview, for preorder next week. A full week sooner than I expected.
Exercise relentless discipline and unleash the fury of Katakros with the new Battletome: Ossiarch Bonereapers
A finely tuned martial machine.
First rules preview for the new OBR tome, highlighting the new Relentless Discipline battle trait, and... it looks bad.
Only one hero generates RDP per round, and Katakros generates almost double as many as any other heroes, which seems like it will make him even more of a must-take option, since you'll basically need him for your faction rules to function. Adding injury to the insult, Katakros himself seems to have been significantly nerfed. We haven't seen the full warscroll, but his signature save stacking ability has been replaced by a fight twice buff. Fight twice is a strong buff. But the target must be wholly within 12" and katakros himself cannot be in combat, which seems difficult to pull off plus wastes his own offensive output. And you can't even use it if half your units are dead, AND the RDP cost is based on the targets health characteristic (+1 for a reinforced unit), so it's prohibitively expensive on the units you'd most want to use it on. Katakros going from synergizing with everything except mortek guard to synergizing ONLY with mortek guard isn't an improvement imo.
The strongest generic ability previewed may be a 1/turn ability to let a round of shooting reduce the target's ward save by one, which is cool but feeds in to my worry that the new archers could end up warping the faction's identity.
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But I'm naturally prone to pessimism, and this is only a sliver of the new rules, so we'll see. At the very least, the new system seems a bit more interesting to work with than the current system, even if it does turn out to be weaker and less flexible.
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On that more positive note, I like this line from the end of the article:
"On top of this change to the Ossiarch Bonereapers battle traits, there are numerous changes to warscrolls throughout the battletome that help exemplify the manner in which the Bonereaper legions do battle."
Like yeah, that's a throwaway line that might mean nothing, but that sentiment is the one thing I really like here. The idea that the designer had a vision for 'the manner in which the faction does battle', like a high level concept for how the army is supposed to play, that they're trying to realize. Again, from the bits we've seen so far, I kind of doubt they've been successful in realizing that vision, but I can recognize and respect the attempt regardless. On principle alone, I approve of the way recent battletomes have at least been making that attempt, even if in OBR's specific case the end product might have been better if it had been one of the no-effort faction pack reprint tomes we were seeing early in the edition.
"On top of this change to the Ossiarch Bonereapers battle traits, there are numerous changes to warscrolls throughout the battletome that help exemplify the manner in which the Bonereaper legions do battle."
Like yeah, that's a throwaway line that might mean nothing, but that sentiment is the one thing I really like here. The idea that the designer had a vision for 'the manner in which the faction does battle', like a high level concept for how the army is supposed to play, that they're trying to realize. Again, from the bits we've seen so far, I kind of doubt they've been successful in realizing that vision, but I can recognize and respect the attempt regardless. On principle alone, I approve of the way recent battletomes have at least been making that attempt, even if in OBR's specific case the end product might have been better if it had been one of the no-effort faction pack reprint tomes we were seeing early in the edition.
Master war chariots, osseous archers, and eerie assassins with new Ossiarch Bonereapers units
New units, new rules, new strategies.
Preview article going over some of the new units' rules.
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About what I was expecting. Triaxes look like ok shooting, but the shorter than expected range is pretty painful so they might not be as good as I expected. Maybe a good thing, as I expected they might be faction-warping.
Chariot rules had some interesting ideas, but overall the implementation looks bad. The fundamental problem though is the choice to design them with formations of chariots in mind, instead of aiming to have individual chariots support formations of deathriders the way harvesters are designed to support mortek guard. The chariots on chariots approach compounds any problems with the unit - they don't just have to be good, they have to be good enough to run multiples with a dedicated hero, and that's not what I'm seeing here, though admittedly it's a very limited picture. The ability to prevent pile ins is probably their most compelling aspect, and we don't have the details of it other than it will very unreliable if you only use one (roll a d3 and on a 1 nothing happens, my most hated 4e trope).
Assassins completely fail at their supposed job, primarily because of the 'more than 9 inches from all enemy units" part of their pass through terrain ability. You can't really use it for cheeky charges against backfield heroes even if they're otherwise totally isolated. But it's a unit of 5 infantry with movement tech, so if they're cheap enough they might be effective battle tactic scouts.
The liege mortek loses a lot of reason for its existence because of the way RDP are generated. If each hero generated points instead of just one, then being the cheapest liege would make him useful as an RDP battery alone, and also fit with his thematic role as a subcommander/tactical advisor weighing in on the commander's strategy. As is he has to justify himself on his own merit, and IMO that'll probably come down to whether mortek guard are good to make use of his fight-after ability. Shoot-after for triaxes and crawlers is a neat gimmick, but those units don't want to be in combat, and this guy won't want to be in combat by himself, and if mortek guard are in combat with him then they're the better target.
That said, the designer seems to want OBR to be a buff-stacking faction, and mortek guard have traditionally been the best buff absorbers due to having the most attacks and wounds per point, and they're probably the best buff target for katakros due to the health based cost of his ability, and you want to use katakros because of how RDP work... so there's a good chance mortek guard will be meta which will probably make the liege mortek fieldable... though that's a lot of points in a very slow and static formation so maybe not.
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All in all, so far I think we're looking at a serious downgrade in the strength and flexibility of the faction and the overall quality of the faction rule design. A lot of rules that don't do anything, or don't do what they're supposed to do, or can't be relied on due to random rolls or a laundry list of condition that must be satisfied. Very unfortunate, but we don't have the whole picture, and I'm prone to pessimism, so it might not be as bad as I'm making out.
This army's fat middle and almost every warscroll in the range apart from maybe Zandtos has seen successful competitive play in 4e. TBH we had one of if not the best faction pack in the game in terms of internal balance, external balance, units having rules that mostly do what they're supposed to, etc. Stalkers are a bit too slow and not hitty enough, but even they're seeing reasonable play at the current points value. Even Mortek Guard infantry phalanxes with harvesters and boneshapers and everything - not even running katakros - under the current errata & with one of the soggy battle formations. The rules look dull and flavorless compared to 3e or especially 2e, but so does everything. Compared to other 4e stuff, and especially the other faction pack pdfs, we were actually ok. The only problems I had with our current rules were problems I had and still have and will continue to have with 4e as a whole. From my perspective there was way more room to make things worse than better, so I'm not too surprised to see it starting to look that way.
It's a really incomplete picture though.
We do have news today, though:
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Regiments of Renown
Nothing much to be learned here without the actual unit warscrolls. Assuming the scrolls are decent the Vokmortian formation looks kind of neat, the signature spell's a bit nasty. If bonereapers are painful to run, maybe I'll run a Bonereaper delegation in a Soulblight army.
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Spearhead.
This seems to confirm some supposed leaks that have been going around - eg deathriders losing charge +1 damage (supposedly zandtos gives it back) and their trampling charge and instead gaining an ability to walk away from combat instead of fighting but only if they charged that turn, which is... strange. movement shenanigans are good, so if the aos warscroll looks similar they'll probably see table time, but from a theme & narrative perspective their job is to run down mortals fleeing the tithe, they don't need to be line breaking heavy cav, but they're not scouts, they should be trying to kill things not dancing around and refusing to engage.
Also from the supposed leaks this has teratics as beasts with off an off turn movement gimmick.
Spearhead Warscrolls don't always aline with proper AoS warscrolls, so the leaks could be wrong, or they might have been mistakenly based on the spearhead and not the battletome, but spearheads do mostly try to stick to the basic profiles & generic weapon rules, so losing charge +1 damage on deathriders and teratics becoming beasts are very likely.
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Battle profiles.
zandtos & liege up; arkhan, soulreaper, boneshaper, and harvester way, way up; katakros and nagash down, teratics and deathriders way, way down, which fits with the aformentioned leaks of them losing a lot of their hitting power plus the rules that we used to field them for.
for the new stuff...
reapers are only 90 points, which is cheap, but that's not a good sign as it reinforces the idea that these will not actually be assassinating many heroes and will instead mostly only be used at tactic & objective gophers.
Liege mortek 120, about what's expected, but still kind of a lot for what is probably a 5 wound hero who isn't a wizard and needs to risk entering combat to actually do anything.
Chariots are super pricey - 170 for non hero and 230 for hero, which means if you want to field the '2 normal plus 1 hero' formation that their rules seem to be written around you'll be spending 570 points (and us$240) on chariots. In 4e so far chariots have been kind of bad, unless they're either super cheap like the gobbo chariots were or super over the top like the soggy black coach, and these seem to be neither. Likely doomed to display shelf, but that was expected so I'm not broken up about it.
the new archers are 140 for 10. That's... reasonable. We might see full shooty obr armies come to the fore. even if the lowish range on the archers prevents that, they'll still likely be a solid utility option for chip damage and heal blocking.
Worth noting that teratics are still infantry in the battle profile pdf, not beasts. But it's far more likely that they'd forget to update the unit type in this document than that they'd change it arbitrarily for the spearhead, so I still think we can expect them to be beasts in the battletome.
The artefacts, heroic traits, and battle formations seem to be completely redone, so there could be some nice surprises there, but we had some pretty strong formation and trait options at least, so again I think there's more room for these to be worse than the current batch than there is for them to be better overall.
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Speaking of those leaks...
Now, some of that can't be right, in particular the boneshaper can't be the same as the soggy version b/c there's a 40 point difference in their points cost. But this went up before the warcom previews, which have subsequently confirmed a lot of what's in here, so the rest is probably pretty accurate as well overall. Some of it sounds interesting, some... less so.
We'll see though.
It's a really incomplete picture though.
We do have news today, though:
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Regiments of Renown
Nothing much to be learned here without the actual unit warscrolls. Assuming the scrolls are decent the Vokmortian formation looks kind of neat, the signature spell's a bit nasty. If bonereapers are painful to run, maybe I'll run a Bonereaper delegation in a Soulblight army.
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Spearhead.
This seems to confirm some supposed leaks that have been going around - eg deathriders losing charge +1 damage (supposedly zandtos gives it back) and their trampling charge and instead gaining an ability to walk away from combat instead of fighting but only if they charged that turn, which is... strange. movement shenanigans are good, so if the aos warscroll looks similar they'll probably see table time, but from a theme & narrative perspective their job is to run down mortals fleeing the tithe, they don't need to be line breaking heavy cav, but they're not scouts, they should be trying to kill things not dancing around and refusing to engage.
Also from the supposed leaks this has teratics as beasts with off an off turn movement gimmick.
Spearhead Warscrolls don't always aline with proper AoS warscrolls, so the leaks could be wrong, or they might have been mistakenly based on the spearhead and not the battletome, but spearheads do mostly try to stick to the basic profiles & generic weapon rules, so losing charge +1 damage on deathriders and teratics becoming beasts are very likely.
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Battle profiles.
zandtos & liege up; arkhan, soulreaper, boneshaper, and harvester way, way up; katakros and nagash down, teratics and deathriders way, way down, which fits with the aformentioned leaks of them losing a lot of their hitting power plus the rules that we used to field them for.
for the new stuff...
reapers are only 90 points, which is cheap, but that's not a good sign as it reinforces the idea that these will not actually be assassinating many heroes and will instead mostly only be used at tactic & objective gophers.
Liege mortek 120, about what's expected, but still kind of a lot for what is probably a 5 wound hero who isn't a wizard and needs to risk entering combat to actually do anything.
Chariots are super pricey - 170 for non hero and 230 for hero, which means if you want to field the '2 normal plus 1 hero' formation that their rules seem to be written around you'll be spending 570 points (and us$240) on chariots. In 4e so far chariots have been kind of bad, unless they're either super cheap like the gobbo chariots were or super over the top like the soggy black coach, and these seem to be neither. Likely doomed to display shelf, but that was expected so I'm not broken up about it.
the new archers are 140 for 10. That's... reasonable. We might see full shooty obr armies come to the fore. even if the lowish range on the archers prevents that, they'll still likely be a solid utility option for chip damage and heal blocking.
Worth noting that teratics are still infantry in the battle profile pdf, not beasts. But it's far more likely that they'd forget to update the unit type in this document than that they'd change it arbitrarily for the spearhead, so I still think we can expect them to be beasts in the battletome.
The artefacts, heroic traits, and battle formations seem to be completely redone, so there could be some nice surprises there, but we had some pretty strong formation and trait options at least, so again I think there's more room for these to be worse than the current batch than there is for them to be better overall.
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Speaking of those leaks...
Now, some of that can't be right, in particular the boneshaper can't be the same as the soggy version b/c there's a 40 point difference in their points cost. But this went up before the warcom previews, which have subsequently confirmed a lot of what's in here, so the rest is probably pretty accurate as well overall. Some of it sounds interesting, some... less so.
We'll see though.
legends rules for the new warband. kind of neat, but im not sure how practical they are, & they're legends, so... *shrug*
Oppenheimer
Varghulf
Just jumping in here to say I totally agree. I have been just playing 3e casually since 4e came out as I'm pretty disappointed in it. But only a short while now until 5e anyway so maybe they'll ramp it back up again.
i strongly doubt 5e will be an index exition. the battletomes will roll over, which means the bad aspects of 4e basically can't change.
Battletome has leaked. It looks...
Ok, so it's not completely awful, there's playable builds here. But the flavor is GONE, even compared to the index. Nadirite gone, masons lost their chair, stalkers lost their aspects, immortis don't guard, deathriders flee from combat, harvesters might not be bad outright but they don't want to support mortek guard specifically. Even the new stuff - reapers don't look bad, but they won't be hunting heroes, and the archers look pretty good but the weird eyes that are such a big part of their models and lore are conspicuously absent from their rules.
The overall flavor of the faction's gameplay is also gone - slow grinding inevitable death katakros castles with mortek guard walls are less playable than ever. Mortek Guard are worse, harvesters want to support morghasts instead, we were afraid katakros would be even more of a must take, but i think the reality is even worse - he looks like a trap to me, too expensive, too conditional, and very easy for opponents to cripple.
Instead it looks like this book will play more like an elf army, based around archers peppering the enemy from range or obnoxious light cavelry dancing out of combat & playing for battle tactics rather than trying to kill anything, because at least the abilities on archers & deathriders are reliable and spammable.
Our core infantry stuff all has a real bumbling oafs/three stooges feel. tons of abilities that have a chance to fail as if the units are tripping over their own feet, or that get saddled with 1/army limits so they get in each others way, like clowns getting stuck in a doorway. I get that GW are getting frustrated with the spam that inevitably resulted from ditching proper army building rules & restrictions, but this means of punishing you for running multiples of units feels both excessive and poorly targeted. Mortek guard are supposed to be battle line staples, their rules should not be punushing you for running more than one unit.
the battle traits are at least theoretically more interesting with resource management forcing more difficult choices, but they are so weak and limited and restricted that they almost might as well not be there, a major downgrade from the faction pack traits that were strong and just worked. the artefacts, traits, and formations all suck. At least the spells are fine, but they're not exceptional, and without the +cast formation they're harder to use.
our faction manifestations are great at least, they were already the best ones & only changed to get better. silver lining in a stormcloud.
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Again, it's not all bad. morghasts still slap. The crawler still hits hard, though the strike last debuff is now 1/army. the archers look very solid. reapers have an impressive amount of attacks and health for their points, though their awful real money price per model will have many avoiding them or looking for 3rd party alternatives.
Zandtos is great, maybe even the new katakros replacement must-play hero, and he essentially turns one unit of deathriders back into actual deathriders that fight and kill things while keeping his strong 1/game strike last debuff.
Arkhan is a bit stronger than faction pack, if not enough to justify the 50 point increase. He hits a lot harder in combat and his signature spell has a chance one one-shotting again - only like a 1.5% chance, usually it'll do only 1-2 mortal wounds, and the range was reduced which means overall it's honestly weaker than the faction pack version. But still it's more fun, though I'm not sure I'd say he feels like arkhan. not a lot of support or necromancy, just a good fast multicaster who is also a solid melee beatstick. At least he hasn't lost flavor compared to the faction pack pdf version.
deathriders on their own or with a liege seem really good - albeit in an annoying way that really doesn't feel like their lore. they can bounce out of combat instead of fighting on a turn they charge, dealing mortals and taking a liege out with them. This is a huge ability for mobility, objective & tactic play, harrassment & blocking/board denial. the liege can even fight first then chain activate into the riders' run away ability. multiple riders can even grab the same liege multiple times in succession - the movement can't end in combat, but (at least pending faq) the liege doesn't need to be in combat range of the enemy, only the activating deathrider unit. So three deathrider units can each grab the same liege, using the movement to position for each in turn, dealing 6d3 mortals and also moving basically wherever they want.
It's really strong, and unlike most other, often weaker warscroll abilities in the book, this has no resource cost or chance to fail or 1/army restriction. it looks really strong... and also about as far from OBR's core gameplay identity as you could possibly get.
Again, though, zandtos turns one unit of deathriders back into something that feels more on brand, with combat buffs they actually have to stick around & fight to use, plus he kerps his strong fight last debuff that plays really well with morghasts, or with msu deathriders who would like to all peace out before the enemy gets to strike.
Shame the chariots look pretty bad, as expected for chariots in 4e, because whether you're taking zandtos and reinforced riders to play for kills or a liege & msu riders to play for tactics or both, I think a staliarch themed cav heavy build has legs. And they have a new Army of Renown which is kinda cool... but probably not worth giving up casting & ranged support from the main OBR rules.
Null Myriad also get an army of renown which again seems kinda cool, but also probably isn't worth dropping access to cavalry. I'll still probably try to run it, because they're my boys and again it looks pretty cool. But I'd be a lot happier with it if one of the two spells wasn't wasted on arkhan & morghasts, or if the other was recastable, or if it just had access to the normal obr manifestation lore proper instead of a weird single spell to summon any of the three, preventing arkhan from summoning multiple manifestations in the same round. basically, I'd like to be able to run an arkhan + 12 morghasts meme list, but it's really hard to make use of his three casts using the Null Myriad rules.
Ok, so it's not completely awful, there's playable builds here. But the flavor is GONE, even compared to the index. Nadirite gone, masons lost their chair, stalkers lost their aspects, immortis don't guard, deathriders flee from combat, harvesters might not be bad outright but they don't want to support mortek guard specifically. Even the new stuff - reapers don't look bad, but they won't be hunting heroes, and the archers look pretty good but the weird eyes that are such a big part of their models and lore are conspicuously absent from their rules.
The overall flavor of the faction's gameplay is also gone - slow grinding inevitable death katakros castles with mortek guard walls are less playable than ever. Mortek Guard are worse, harvesters want to support morghasts instead, we were afraid katakros would be even more of a must take, but i think the reality is even worse - he looks like a trap to me, too expensive, too conditional, and very easy for opponents to cripple.
Instead it looks like this book will play more like an elf army, based around archers peppering the enemy from range or obnoxious light cavelry dancing out of combat & playing for battle tactics rather than trying to kill anything, because at least the abilities on archers & deathriders are reliable and spammable.
Our core infantry stuff all has a real bumbling oafs/three stooges feel. tons of abilities that have a chance to fail as if the units are tripping over their own feet, or that get saddled with 1/army limits so they get in each others way, like clowns getting stuck in a doorway. I get that GW are getting frustrated with the spam that inevitably resulted from ditching proper army building rules & restrictions, but this means of punishing you for running multiples of units feels both excessive and poorly targeted. Mortek guard are supposed to be battle line staples, their rules should not be punushing you for running more than one unit.
the battle traits are at least theoretically more interesting with resource management forcing more difficult choices, but they are so weak and limited and restricted that they almost might as well not be there, a major downgrade from the faction pack traits that were strong and just worked. the artefacts, traits, and formations all suck. At least the spells are fine, but they're not exceptional, and without the +cast formation they're harder to use.
our faction manifestations are great at least, they were already the best ones & only changed to get better. silver lining in a stormcloud.
....
Again, it's not all bad. morghasts still slap. The crawler still hits hard, though the strike last debuff is now 1/army. the archers look very solid. reapers have an impressive amount of attacks and health for their points, though their awful real money price per model will have many avoiding them or looking for 3rd party alternatives.
Zandtos is great, maybe even the new katakros replacement must-play hero, and he essentially turns one unit of deathriders back into actual deathriders that fight and kill things while keeping his strong 1/game strike last debuff.
Arkhan is a bit stronger than faction pack, if not enough to justify the 50 point increase. He hits a lot harder in combat and his signature spell has a chance one one-shotting again - only like a 1.5% chance, usually it'll do only 1-2 mortal wounds, and the range was reduced which means overall it's honestly weaker than the faction pack version. But still it's more fun, though I'm not sure I'd say he feels like arkhan. not a lot of support or necromancy, just a good fast multicaster who is also a solid melee beatstick. At least he hasn't lost flavor compared to the faction pack pdf version.
deathriders on their own or with a liege seem really good - albeit in an annoying way that really doesn't feel like their lore. they can bounce out of combat instead of fighting on a turn they charge, dealing mortals and taking a liege out with them. This is a huge ability for mobility, objective & tactic play, harrassment & blocking/board denial. the liege can even fight first then chain activate into the riders' run away ability. multiple riders can even grab the same liege multiple times in succession - the movement can't end in combat, but (at least pending faq) the liege doesn't need to be in combat range of the enemy, only the activating deathrider unit. So three deathrider units can each grab the same liege, using the movement to position for each in turn, dealing 6d3 mortals and also moving basically wherever they want.
It's really strong, and unlike most other, often weaker warscroll abilities in the book, this has no resource cost or chance to fail or 1/army restriction. it looks really strong... and also about as far from OBR's core gameplay identity as you could possibly get.
Again, though, zandtos turns one unit of deathriders back into something that feels more on brand, with combat buffs they actually have to stick around & fight to use, plus he kerps his strong fight last debuff that plays really well with morghasts, or with msu deathriders who would like to all peace out before the enemy gets to strike.
Shame the chariots look pretty bad, as expected for chariots in 4e, because whether you're taking zandtos and reinforced riders to play for kills or a liege & msu riders to play for tactics or both, I think a staliarch themed cav heavy build has legs. And they have a new Army of Renown which is kinda cool... but probably not worth giving up casting & ranged support from the main OBR rules.
Null Myriad also get an army of renown which again seems kinda cool, but also probably isn't worth dropping access to cavalry. I'll still probably try to run it, because they're my boys and again it looks pretty cool. But I'd be a lot happier with it if one of the two spells wasn't wasted on arkhan & morghasts, or if the other was recastable, or if it just had access to the normal obr manifestation lore proper instead of a weird single spell to summon any of the three, preventing arkhan from summoning multiple manifestations in the same round. basically, I'd like to be able to run an arkhan + 12 morghasts meme list, but it's really hard to make use of his three casts using the Null Myriad rules.
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It’s pirates vs. pirates in White Dwarf issue 522
White Dwarf signs up with a swarthy crew of void-reaving corsairs.
Sounds interesting, but before anyone gets too excited keep in mind that 1) White Dwarf armies of renown often are not matched play legal, 2) This will require running Nagash, which burns most of your points and tends to result if lists that look and play more or less the same regardless of death faction anyway, 3) Armies of renown are typically written to be bad-on-purpose, and 4) armies of renown do not keep access to battle traits which can have significant negative impacts on how warscrolls fuction - eg nighthaunt units won't be ethereal unless the aor goes out of its way to put that rule back. So we should not go in expecting this to be a meaningful mechanical addition to the game.
Even so, a big mixed all star death army under Nagash harkening back to ye olde times of late 1st & early 2nd edition could still be fun & cool. I'll definitely be picking it up myself to take a look.
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Sunday Preview – Chaos and Order battle in the City of Ash
What’s coming up next week?
New OBR Null Myriad battleforce on the sunday preview for preorder next week.
As for whether it's worth getting... well, the null myriad army of renown is pretty bad imo, as most armies of renown are, but these units are ok in the main battletome. This is all older stuff, so established OBR players probably don't have any reason to get this box. As for new OBR players... these aren't really the highest priority units to pick up first. IMO the new cavalry heavy spearhead is a better starting point. But if you already have that this isn't a terrible next step, even if most of the previous OBR battleforces were better imo.