Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

As a long time death player, each new reveal of the OBR brings a fresh tear to my eye. Really not my cup of tea and I honestly didn't think that could be possible.

And yet for me they are far more interesting than the other Death Armies.

Which isn't to say that the others look bad, they just don't grab me as a whole army. Flesheaters I like a few and the zombie dragon but not really the whole force; same for nighthaunt and legions its only a few models of the many that I like.

Importantly for me I like the infantry and cavalry of the Bonereapers as well as the exotic one-off models.



That said I'd also likely really like a redone TK style army with actual skeletons moving around and Reapers DOES leave the door open for such a force appearing in part or in full in the future.

Clearly, they are not actually made of bone as previously alluded to, but are instead constructed entirely of frozen Marmite.

I love him so much. He is ridiculous in the most perfect of ways, that his OTT elements are a blend of classic Warhammer and original new design. Who the hell rids around in a walking bone chair with a hat bigger than his torso? This fething guy, that's who. And of course he's a wizard, only a wizard would do something that stupid. And it's awesome. Favorite miniature of the year for me.

I think it would look better if the bone actually looked like bones. Like, a mass of femurs or something.
The hat is ok. Much better than on that horseman. I can tell they were going for the cardinal look.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I think it would look better if the bone actually looked like bones. Like, a mass of femurs or something.
The hat is ok. Much better than on that horseman. I can tell they were going for the cardinal look.

Part of their background is that they're not just made of bones, but the bone is reshaped into the forms we see.

I think the reshaping helps. When you look at the cavalry leader its got multiple bones forming sections of the leg structure. Now it would take LOADS of bones to find different people of the right size and shape to produce a structure like that which could work for a functional creature.

Far better that its the product of bones being adapted and moulded to a new form to allow for exact designs to have evolved.

It also makes them different from regular skeletons in both lore and visual design and increases the options for the designs to create things.



To my eye its GW giving us an undead construct army that leaves the door wide open for developing a regular skeleton army later.

Except, of course, they don't want to. A 'regular <X> army' is the kind of thing they want to avoid, because IP something something.
Its also something they had (multiples of, in fact), and actively moved away from.

Plus, at this point, four Death armies is already flogging the extremely dead horse.

Yet there's still Skeleton Warriors in the Legions of Nagash battletome...

 Ghaz wrote:
Yet there's still Skeleton Warriors in the Legions of Nagash battletome...

yep. Which makes 'make a regular skeleton army later' make even less sense.

Voss wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:
Yet there's still Skeleton Warriors in the Legions of Nagash battletome...

yep. Which makes 'make a regular skeleton army later' make even less sense.

Yet they made a Nighthaunt battletome and still let a Legion of Nagash army take a large number of Nighthaunt units.

Voss wrote:
Except, of course, they don't want to. A 'regular <X> army' is the kind of thing they want to avoid, because IP something something.
Its also something they had (multiples of, in fact), and actively moved away from.

Plus, at this point, four Death armies is already flogging the extremely dead horse.

In your subjective opinion.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Voss wrote:
Except, of course, they don't want to. A 'regular <X> army' is the kind of thing they want to avoid, because IP something something.
Its also something they had (multiples of, in fact), and actively moved away from.

Plus, at this point, four Death armies is already flogging the extremely dead horse.

In your subjective opinion.

To be honest, I'm expecting them to to a vampire/soul-blight army like they did for the nighthaunt

Voss wrote:

Plus, at this point, four Death armies is already flogging the extremely dead horse.

Nah Zombies and Vampires are themes that could both easily be expanded into there own forces.

GoatboyBeta wrote:

Voss wrote:

Plus, at this point, four Death armies is already flogging the extremely dead horse.

Nah Zombies and Vampires are themes that could both easily be expanded into there own forces.

And it's not like entries from the generic but rare category couldn't make for great additions either. How many undead elves or dwarfs or ogres are out there? Why don't we have an undead dinosaur army yet? Or how about some undead Egyptians?

The Grand Alliances are skewed towards Order and Chaos in a big way. Releasing nice things for Death and Destruction is a good thing, even if I don't particularly care for what Death got.

I can well see that GW will one day give Vampires their own Tomb. Lore and story wise they are very big players and they've still got a fair chunk left over; just lurking in Legions of Nagash. I can see a time when they rise up and get their own identity and force and suchlike. Most likely just like the Reapers, they'll get their own Tome and poach a load of models out of the Legions to make use of.

Skeletons could also get their own force, though its hard to say if they will get their own full army or if they will be paired with Vampires. Vampires coudl go either way in running armies of mostly mortals thralled to them; or armies of mostly undead. GW could even make it a two-army-tome much like Orruks; where there'd be a Skeleton heavy version; a mortal heavy version and then a united vampire force all in the same book.

I'd like to see them do Vampires as a book with thrall troops, and maybe just the Wight units from death rattle, and a separate Deathmage book to cover the normal skeleton units and then expand the freshly dead to include flesh hulks and the like.

 Geifer wrote:

GoatboyBeta wrote:

Voss wrote:

Plus, at this point, four Death armies is already flogging the extremely dead horse.

Nah Zombies and Vampires are themes that could both easily be expanded into there own forces.

And it's not like entries from the generic but rare category couldn't make for great additions either. How many undead elves or dwarfs or ogres are out there? Why don't we have an undead dinosaur army yet? Or how about some undead Egyptians?

The Grand Alliances are skewed towards Order and Chaos in a big way. Releasing nice things for Death and Destruction is a good thing, even if I don't particularly care for what Death got.

Be nice to get a "Cities of Nagash" supplement as there are plenty of these...

Be good to get more non human undead - although recent Kickstarter gave me alot more options in this area

Huge amount of different Soulblight vmapires and armies out there inthe lore - at least the merc rules in last Generals handbook gave you the option of a Vampier lord and Blood Dragon escorts for anyone

Bonereapers might actually be GW trying to do "skeletons of every race of the realms." in a practical way that doesn't require them to make a dozen skeleton armies. Have the Reapers reap from everyone and grind the bones down to make new warriors. Then GW can release a human skeleton army without any worry of people saying "Well what about the non-human undead" because they are all ground into Reapers.

 Mr Morden wrote:

 Geifer wrote:

GoatboyBeta wrote:

Voss wrote:

Plus, at this point, four Death armies is already flogging the extremely dead horse.

Nah Zombies and Vampires are themes that could both easily be expanded into there own forces.

And it's not like entries from the generic but rare category couldn't make for great additions either. How many undead elves or dwarfs or ogres are out there? Why don't we have an undead dinosaur army yet? Or how about some undead Egyptians?

The Grand Alliances are skewed towards Order and Chaos in a big way. Releasing nice things for Death and Destruction is a good thing, even if I don't particularly care for what Death got.

Be nice to get a "Cities of Nagash" supplement as there are plenty of these...

Be good to get more non human undead - although recent Kickstarter gave me alot more options in this area

Huge amount of different Soulblight vmapires and armies out there inthe lore - at least the merc rules in last Generals handbook gave you the option of a Vampier lord and Blood Dragon escorts for anyone

Yeah, after Tomb Kings got squatted my first alternative for an army, and the one that I actually played as much as that was possible at the time, was a Shyish army of mortals led by vampires. I would have like to see this idea gain more official support. But GW seems stuck in their Grand Alliance delineation far too much for that.

Mercs? Cool. I'll take it. But it is only a shadow of what a properly realm themed army list with matching keywords so the units can actually function together could look like.

 Overread wrote:
Bonereapers might actually be GW trying to do "skeletons of every race of the realms." in a practical way that doesn't require them to make a dozen skeleton armies. Have the Reapers reap from everyone and grind the bones down to make new warriors. Then GW can release a human skeleton army without any worry of people saying "Well what about the non-human undead" because they are all ground into Reapers.

I really hope this is not actually GW's motivation, because quite frankly, that kind of attitude would suck pretty bad. Remember how people originally thought Sigmarines were also reforged dwarfs and elves and how the missing physical representation of that led to a disconnect and complaints being voiced? This would be the undead version of that.

It would be the laziest, most unimaginative way of giving us something a fair number of people have asked for for forever. It would be the model version of forging the narrative.

No thanks.

It's not so much lazy as it is short term practical without GW having to make dozens of armies. The realms have infinite possibilities and GW has limited production. Reapers might well be the answer for many years yet in terms of "other bone creations"

 Overread wrote:
It's not so much lazy as it is short term practical without GW having to make dozens of armies. The realms have infinite possibilities and GW has limited production. Reapers might well be the answer for many years yet in terms of "other bone creations"

You and I have different ideas of what's practical. You're not wrong about infinite possibilities versus limited production, it's possibly the most important consideration for GW. My problem is the same that it has been since the first real details about Age of Sigmar reached the public. GW started with the fantastic high end stuff, released whole armies' worth of models for that, and completely neglected to invest even a fraction of that to build a foundation. We have a single example of a post-AoS normal human (as much as you can call a priest of Sigmar normal) thanks to Warhammer Quest. Until Shadespire and Warcry we had one Slaves to Darkness chieftain from the same game, and a queen added later, with not a single minion to order around. Was and is it really that much to ask for to see baseline units introduced?

Here's a radical idea. Since GW is doing basically monopose models anyway, why not have a box with twenty free city militiamen and women. Humans, dwarfs, elves maybe Lizardmen if GW wants to rewrite them whenever they get their battletome. Size and investment-wise that wouldn't be much different from Tzeentch bodybuilder librarians. Make new models with new looks that fit the Mortal Realms. Then have the same for Death with undead versions of that, with clothes and equipment that echoes the design of the living. Then do the Chaos version of that. Three little boxes that establish what regular folks that pick up arms to defend home and hearth (or pillage it) look like and that can be used to as the basic troops in a battletome (each) that can then be filled with all manner of more elite troops, using new or old models.

GW loves selling books. Actually making these baseline books wouldn't be out of the ordinary and when you consider that we already had two versions with warscroll collections (that's the Grand Alliance books) and the refined battletome iterations(Cities and Legions, with Slaves to Darkness still missing). It's not like GW would actually shy away from this because, again, they'd just have three more books they can sell to people.

From there you can fill the books with a variety of sculpts that bulk them out into full armies and that fit the theme. You could use elite units in them as sneak peeks at what will eventually get a full army release.

I'm not saying Ossies shouldn't exist. They and Idoneth and Kharadron did more to give Age of Sigmar its own character than anything else GW did because they were made for the setting and will never have to put up with the problems of repurposed old armies (like "it's cool I can still use my models, but their new background is bogus" and such - Flesheater Courts seem to feature prominently in this category). They just shouldn't happen before a baseline is established. It's GW getting ahead of themselves. And considering how many people take issue with the ill-defined setting I can't help but think much of that could have been avoided with design from the ground up to lay a solid foundation for all the out there stuff to stand on.

As such I'll have to repeat that if GW thought that undead variant race desires in the fanbase could be satisfy by a bone stew army would be lazy because there are actual, practical alternatives and this would be the easiest, cheapest approach with the most marginal impact imaginable.

 Overread wrote:
. . . they are all ground into Reapers.

Ossiarch Bonereapers: The chicken nugget of the Mortal Realms

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
The only big dumb hat I could think of from WHFB was on Nagash's old model.

Chaos Dwarfs?

Teclis had a hat as big as his body.

Apparently Slaneesh gets to double their depravity generation now? Not really following but is it as bad as it sounds?

 LunarSol wrote:
Apparently Slaneesh gets to double their depravity generation now? Not really following but is it as bad as it sounds?

White Dwarf is written/published months in advance of any tournament results.

There's a lot of handwringing over the WD stuff for Slaanesh, but that's an important note to stress. It would have been finalized before the Hedonites book came out.

As a Slaanesh player...we don’t NEED to double our depravity. Hell, I don’t even know if I can bring enough stuff to utilize extra depravity. That’s just...wow.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
As a Slaanesh player...we don’t NEED to double our depravity. Hell, I don’t even know if I can bring enough stuff to utilize extra depravity. That’s just...wow.

Maybe you and Slaanesh should establish a safeword for when he starts asking you to double your depravity but you are uncomfortable with it?
No shame in it man, we've all got limits...

Links/pics, by the way?