Death is rising once more in the Mortal Realms! With Feast of Bones bringing a brand-new faction to Warhammer Age of Sigmar this weekend, we’re looking into just how the Ossiarch Bonereapers play on the tabletop – a rewarding and unusual army that’ll let you unleash your inner grand strategist.
This article was orignallypublished on the Warhammer-community page.
Who Are They and What Do They Want?
The Ossiarch Bonereapers are Nagash’s vision for the future of the Mortal Realms. Created from carefully-harvested souls and given bone-forged bodies, each is a new consciousness, specialised for conquest. Every Ossiarch Bonereaper has lifetimes of experience to draw upon and deadly martial might, used to great effect in the collection of the bone-tithe – you can learn more about that in our look at the lore.
An Army That Will Not Die
Ossiarch Bonereapers armies are tough. We mean really, really tough. Most of their units boast excellent saves, bolstered even further by Deathless Warriors.
Wondering just what the heck a Hekatos is? The Hekatos are the lieutenants of the Ossiarch Bonereapers, and capable commanders in their own right. In practice, this means they’ll help spread out the aura of Deathless Warriors and give you a 6+ chance to ignore wounds even when your Heroes are far away.
The Ossiarch Bonereapers aren’t just hard to kill – they’re impossible to break with battleshock, too! Every unit in the army is immune to battleshock tests, allowing you to take massive units without having to worry about a bad dice roll causing them to run off the table.
An Army Where Every Unit Is A Hero
Where the Ossiarch Bonereapers really kick things up a notch is with relentless discipline points – a system unique to their army that represents their unparalleled use of strategy and tactics. Rather than generate command points, Ossiarch Bonereapers forces generate a bounty of relentless discipline points, with bonuses for Heroes, warscroll battalions and of course, using Katakros himself. Units also have a chance to generate relentless discipline points on a 6 – after all, even the least of the Ossiarch Bonereapers is a warrior with thousands of lifetimes of battlefield experience under their belt.
Relentless discipline points are used like command points, but only for command abilities found on Ossiarch Bonereapers warscrolls. Representing the tactical diversity of the Ossiarch Legions, many units have their own command abilities in the same manner Heroes do. Kavalos Deathriders, for example, can form up to make deadly charges capable of scything through units before blows have been struck.
Relentless discipline makes the Ossiarch Bonereapers dynamic to play, rewarding your use of strategy and careful planning. Unlike other armies, you’ll nearly always get to benefit from your command abilities, with a wealth of relentless discipline points to spend every turn.
Best of all, relentless discipline points don’t need Heroes to use them, meaning your army will fight at peak efficiency even if your commanders are slain.
An Army With Cool Friends
So here’s a neat thing – any Ossiarch Bonereapers army can include Nagash and Arkhan, not as allies but as fully-fledged commanders of your force! While Ossiarch Bonereapers are not Summonable units, they can still be healed and restored to life by these sinister overlords of death. We’d recommend taking Arkhan if you’re looking to make the most of your hero phase (not to mention giving yourself access to Curse of Years) and Nagash if you’re looking to build an elite force with a cadre of Immortis Guard to keep the Great Necromancer safe.
An Army With Deadly Warscrolls
In general, Ossiarch Bonereapers units are slow moving, durable, and possess solid attacking characteristics. Take Mortek Guard, the backbone of any solid legion…
…these hard-wearing warriors can also choose to lock shields, making them nigh-indestructible in defence!
Many Ossiarch Bonereapers boast similar versatility – none more, perhaps, than the Necropolis Stalkers. On the surface, these deadly constructs have some impressive attacks.
But it gets better – they can shift aspect mid-battle, letting you tailor your strategy on the fly.
Need to keep a key foe in place? Use Blade-parry Aspect. Looking to finish off a particularly well-armoured foe? Precision Aspect is the perfect pick. Ossiarch Bonereapers units are incredibly rewarding to play and have all sorts of unusual abilities like this. The Gothizzar Harvester, for instance, can recycle fallen units (both friend and foe) to make new ones. Indeed, Katakros himself changes as he takes wounds, starting as a contemptuous commander capable of drawing on the powers of several retainers and ending up as a brutal combatant in his own right. He’s not so much a Hero as a mini-boss fight for your enemies!
You’ll have to get Battletome: Ossiarch Bonereapers to see all of this new army’s rules for yourself! We’ll be bringing you more Feast of Bones previews before too long – in the meantime, if you can’t wait to start your Ossiarch Bonereapers force, you can get yourself some Morghasts, Nagash and Arkhan today.
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
