Age of Sigmar: ‘Death’ FAQs Bring Clarifications And Nerfs
Looks like the Soulblight Gravelords and the Ossiarch Bonereapers came in a little too hot for the Age of Sigmar.
Games Workshop recently released two new Death Battletome with the Soulblight Gravelords and the Ossiarch Bonereapers. Both of these new armies were looking promising for various reasons. That said, GW might have been aiming a little *too* high for these factions and made some changes to take them down a peg. So earlier this week GW issued a couple FAQ/Erratas for them. We’ll talk about these changes and if they are going to have a major impact for these armies.
Soulblight Gravelords FAQ/Errata
While this is only a single page of changes there are some pretty major ones here. First up, the Nererata Deployment “change” was pretty obvious and anyone who thought that wasn’t going to get changed to work with the battleplan, well, sorry. Did you really think it was going to stay busted? But in my opinion that wasn’t the biggest nerf.
The change to Dark Mist makes it so that you can no longer buff a unit’s armor save AND get to ignore enemy rend. Now, it’s basically ethereal for the target unit. Personally, I think that makes this a lot more fair and it DOES make a few units a whole lot less tanky. It’s a flat out nerf — but I don’t think it’s unwarranted.
Blood Knights also got a nerf in that their Riders of Ruin no longer works on pile-in moves. That might not seem like a huge change but it is a loss of mortal wound generation.
For the Soul Blight these changes do make them less tanky overall and the Knights will do fewer mortal wounds than before. Will this impact the army enough to bring their win-rates more in line with the target? We’ll see! I still think the Soulblight Gravelords are a very durable army and they certainly play the “stand in the circles” game better than a lot of folks out there. With the exception of a few units their damage output isn’t great though. I think once players get the hang of dealing with this army with win-rate will naturally decline and these changes will speed-up that process.
Ossiarch Bonereapers FAQ/Errata
So the first think I want to point out was probably just an oversight but Mortek Crawlers and Gothizzar Harvesters are indeed ‘single’ units. Sorry for the folks who thought they could reinforce those units and have two or three in one unit…
You also don’t get to double (or triple) tap a unit with the Gothizzar Harvester’s Bone Harvest ability. Multiple rolls does seem silly, doesn’t it? I do wish it was on a 3+ instead of a 4+, but eh, we’ll roll with it.
There’s also the other “no duh” clarification that only Ossiarch Bonereapers could issue the Ossiarch Commands. I can see where some uh…allied in units would want to be able to issue those commands. But no. Sorry, that’s not happening.
Aside from that, the Petrifex Elite are still causing problems with their sub-faction ability Unstoppable Juggernauts. I keep going back in forth on the nerf or not camp with this one. I think it’s technically considered a nerf to their survivability. That said, having played an army with a lot of “-1 to enemy to-wound rolls” I can tell you that it’s a SUPER handy ability.
I’m still convinced these changes aren’t going to gut the army or anything. In fact, I think the more games that OBR players get in with them the better they will do as they learn how to manage all those extra commands better. It’s really any that will reward practice and play. I’ve said it before that this is an army that is going to take some time to truly master and I think the ceiling of success with this army is a tall one — if you can make it work!
The downside is that the more folks play against it, the better they will also get dealing with the army. I do think we’ll see a decline for both these armies as the “new” wears off in the coming weeks. Plus there’s another powerhouse army coming to the game VERY soon. I’m positive the Seraphon release is going to have some BIG impacts on the meta of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. And the undead are going to get a wake-up call, too.
Both armies got some nerfs but I think in the long run they should still do quite well.
