Age of Sigmar: The Ossiarch Bonereaper FAQ Is Weird
And it’s not the only one. It’s time to dig in to the Ossiarch Bonereaper’s FAQ for the new edition of Age of Sigmar.
Let’s just get this out of the way first: Yes, I play Ossiarch Bonereapers. Yes, I was hoping for some more. Yes, I’m a little disappointed with the FAQ and how Relentless Discipline works. But I’m not alone in my disappointment. It’s not just the ORB players out there, either. But I’m not here to talk about everyone else – we’re going to shine the spotlight on the Ossiarch Bonereaper FAQ. The other armies can get in line.
They Stole Our Thing
Here’s the thing – everyone got new Command Abilities and a better way to generate Command Points. Where did they get that idea from? Well, the finger is pointing at how Relentless Disciple Points (RDP) where generated by the OBR. Good for everyone else. Bad for the OBR. Personally, I was really hoping that the FAQ would address this change in some way. And it did. Kind of. Here’s the new way RDP works:
So let’s break this down step by step.
RDP =/= CP
First up, OBR are still basically immune to battleshock tests.After that we get into the actual RDP rule.
One big change is that the army does not receive command points now. How is that different? The old wording was that the OBR couldn’t use command points but you still generated them. This was specified for other armies that could “steal” your Command Points. Now? Well according to the command point rules, OBR don’t receive those points so my interpretation is that other armies can’t steal them.
Generating RDP
For the most part, this stayed the same as in the Battletome. With a couple of changes. The first big change is the whole “if you take the first turn vs second turn” thing. OBR players do get RDP as a bonus (like CP, sorta). Next up, take a closer look at the timing of when you receive your points.
- At the start of each BATTLE Round you generate your RDP from Heroes.
- At the start of each HERO phase you roll for your extra RDP.
- All RPD is lost at the end of each battle round.
So, overall, this is an increase in RDP generation. That should be a good thing, right?
Spend Those RDP?!
To spend the RDP, it works the same way as command points/abilities with the additional caveat that the RPD can only be used for command abilities that appear on Ossiarch Bonereaper warscrolls or an OBR Legion command ability. That means the following:
- NO access to the new command abilities
- You can’t use the same command ability multiple times in a round
- New Core Battalion bonuses are also limited
That means OBR can’t use Unstoppable Advance on more than one unit in the movement phase. And it also means things like Shieldwall can only be used on a single unit per turn. Good luck with Multiple Mortek Guard units now.
So good luck spending all those extra RDP when you can’t actually spend it all because of the command ability limits.
Yeah…this ain’t great.
It’s Not All Bad, Right?
Moving on – there are more changes ahead, too. Petrifex Elite got changed…again.
This isn’t terrible…it means that if you do happen to slap a +1 armor save on a Petrifex Elite unit, they are still going to get to ignore that first point of rend.
On the other hand, if you were planning on spamming Mystic Shield from Nagash, guess again:
You can still sling Arcane Bolts…but you can’t cast Mystic Shield more than once from Nagash. However, Arkhan didn’t get the same treatment. His warscroll still reads:
Keep in mind that Arkhan didn’t go up in points in the GHB, either…
Bone-Tithe Nexus
And finally, the last big thing we’ll cover is how the Bone-tithe Nexus deployment has been “fixed” for the new edition:
The BTN deployment was always different from everyone elses. Now it’s more inline with some of the other faction terrain deployment. It does have the caveat that you can remove terrain so you can attempt to place it. Also, there is the new restriction that you have to set it up wholly within your territory. That’s going to cut down on the nexus getting smashed to rubble by monsters…maybe.
All of the Endless Spells got tweaked – in fact, if your faction has Endless Spells and/or Faction Terrain, you’re going to want to re-read your FAQ about them now. They all have been updated.
So…What Now?
Overall, the OBR didn’t get hit as hard as some with the points changes in the GHB 2021. Does that make up for the lack of access to the new command abilities? It’s complicated. It does suck that ORB are going to generate a ton of RDP and not get to spend them, however. It seems like if GW was going to fix this, they could either:
- give OBR access to the new command abilities and allow them to spend their RDP on them
OR
- allow ORB to use their warscroll command abilities and Unstoppable Advance on more than one unit per round
Will they address these changes? I honestly don’t know. I hope they will take these suggestions into consideration. If you’ve got ideas, you can always submit feedback to them directly at [email protected]. Again, I know that the OBR aren’t the only army feeling put-off by these FAQs either. The game isn’t even fully updated and folks are already getting riled-up. I know I am. That said, I do want to play some more games with the new rules to really get a feel for these changes.
It really does feel like the OBR have one foot in the old edition while everyone is moving on. But hey, FAQs are there to bridge the old edition Battletomes to the new. They shouldn’t be permanent fixes. Let’s just hope that when the new Battletomes start to roll out, the rules team gets more creative.
How is your army faring after the FAQs for 3.0?
