What is the Ossiarch Bonereapers?
The Ossiarch Bonereapers is the next release for the Death: Grand Alliance in Age of Sigmar. It will be an army comprised of all new models and are based around heavy “skeleton” infantry, cavalry and war machines. They also have quite a lot of different heroes and big models in the army.
No more updates on this article
The release is out on the book is in peoples hands. I have updated the article with everything previewed. If you want to know more, you should check out the list of videos in the bottom where people at the book in-depth.
When did the Ossiarch Bonereapers release?
The first half of the Ossiarch Bonereapers was up for preorder Saturday 26 October 2019 with release Saturday 2 November 2019.
The second half was up for preorder Saturday 2 November 2019 with a release date of Saturday 9 November 2019.
The following things were up for preorder Saturday 26 October for the Ossiarch Bonereapers with release the 2 November:
- The Feast of Bones set, a dual box with Mawtribes (remember, these sell out very quickly and once sold out they are not coming back).
- The Ossiarch Battletome
- Endless Spells
- Faction Terrain
- All Ossiarch Warscroll Cards
- Ossiarch Dice
The following things were up for preorder Saturday 2 November for the Ossiarch Bonereapers with release the 9 November:
- Mortek Crawler
- Mortek Guard
- Mortisan Boneshaper
- Mortisan Soulmason
- Mortisan Soulreaper
- Necropolis Stalkers
- Kavalos Deathriders
- Gothizzar Harvester
- Katakros Mortarch of the Necropolis
- Arch-Kavalos Zandtos/Liege-Kavalos
Several models are part of the army, but their models have already been released at an earlier stage:
The Ossiarch Bonereapers and Mawtribes dual-box: Feast of Bones
As rumoured, the Bonereapers will share an intro box with the release of the Mawtribes. It will include:
- Feast of Bone book
- Warscroll cards for the units in the book
- Tokens
- The handy small version of the core rules
For the Ossiarch Bonereapers:
- 10 Mortek Guard
- 3 Necropolis Stalkers
- 2 Morghast Archai
- Vokmortian, Master of the Bone-tithe (seems he will only be available via this set for a while)
For the Mawtribes:
- 6 Ogor Gluttons
- 2 Leadbelchers
- 1 Ironblaster
- The new Tyrant model (which will probably only be available via this set for quite some time)
Getting your hands on this set will be extremely difficult.
These types of box sets sell out very quickly and once sold out they are not coming back. Get it while you can!
Ossiarch Bonereapers Battletome
Ossiarch Bonereapers Endless Spells
The Bonereapers endless spell behaves differently from normal:
- The player who casts them always gets to move them
- When your wizards cast them they become soul-linked to it as long as the endless spell is on the board or the wizard is on the board.
- A soul linked endless spell moves before any other endless spell on the board (which can be a pretty huge advantage in terms of controlling board space).
- When a caster is soul-linked to an endless spell, he gets -1 on casting attempts
- A caster can only be linked to 1 endless spell
Also, it looks like the Bonereapers Endless Spells costs 0 points!
This is what we know of the 3 Endless Spells so far:
Ossiarch Bonereapers Terrain
Each turn the Bonereaper Terrain, called the Bone-Tithe Nexus, will let you pick between 4 different abilities. We have seen 2 so far:
Bonereapers Warscroll Cards
Bonereapers Warscroll Dice
What is the lore and aesthetic behind the Ossiarch Reapers release?
- This is Nagash’s elite army, the culmination of his great plan and his answer to the Stormcast Eternals and other big dudes. While skelemabobs are cool and all, he needed something bigger
- The reapers are made from bone and souls, but all fused together in a big mass of bulk. Nagash has jammed multiple souls into a big chunky mass of bone. Why? Because he thinks it is cool and stuff.
- Nagash likes bone so much that even the armour of the reapers is made from bone-stuff.
- If you wonder why they look slightly off, remember that this army is made directly from the weird mind of Nagash himself. This is his vision of a grand supreme army (so pack away your own vision of what you wanted).
- The army has parts and hints at many different real-world cultures and Old World armies. This is all drawn from Nagashes own memory (and if you read the stories, you know his memory is pretty messed from all the dying, rebirthing and messing about with soul-stuff).
- Why do the skeletons have big weird noses and freaky smiles? Well, Nagash really does not care how you think a skeleton looks like. This is dudes made from bone (like clay), but not directly risen from bone.
- Is Katakros the big bad evil hinted in Forbidden Power? Some say yes, some say no. Right now I cannot get a clear answer.
- It will be interesting to read some novels based on these guys. Will they be walking mindless automatons, or will they have weird split personality dude to the multiple souls inside?
What miniatures will be in the Ossiarch Reapers release?
So far we know about the following miniatures being released:
- Infantry called Mortek Guard
- Cavalry named Kavalos Deathriders
- A priest/wizard dude Mortisian Soulraper
- A big beast bumbling beast in the form of the “Gothizzar Harvester”
- Big infantry with four hands, Necropolis Stalkers
- Big infantry with four hands, Immortis-Guard (same kit as the Stalkers)
- The Mortek Crawl – a semi-sentient war machine
- A special character called “Katakros”. He is the big leader guy.
- Mounted hero “Liege-Kavalos”
- A special character called “Arch-Kavalos Zandtos” (same kit as the Liege-Kavalos).
- Mortisan Soulmason. Speciale character that seems to buff the Mortek Crawlers.
- Vokmortian, Master of the Bone-tithe. He is sort of a tax collector, only he collects bones!
- Mortisan Boneshaper
Warscrolls for the Ossiarch Bonereapers
If you want to have a look at the warscrolls for each unit, you should check out the AoS app where they are all up.
Mortek Guard
Kavalos Dearthriders
Mortisian Soulreaper
Necropolis Stalkers
Immortis Guard
Gothizzar Harvester
Liege-Kavalos
Arch-Kavalos Zandtos
The Mortek Crawl
Vokmortian, Master of the Bone-tithe
Mortisan Soulmason
Mortisan Bonesheaper
Katakros
Morghast Archai
Morghast Harbingers
Arkhan
Nagash, Supreme Badass
Rules and Allegiance Abilities of the Ossiarch Bonereapers
- They are immune to battleshock
- A lot of models will spread a buff that gives the +6 shrug of a wound or a mortal wound. This combined with good saves makes the army quite though
- The units in the army are not summonable, but it will be possible to heal models back
- Bonereaper Endless Spells work differently (only you move them) and they all cost 0 points.
Unique command point ability
Instead of generating command points, the bonereapers produce a resource called relentless discipline.
This is used on command abilities, but you will produce a lot more of these points than normal command points.
The bonereapers will have a lot of command abilities and units that will have special command abilities that use this resource.
The champions in each unit seem to be able to use these command abilities, so you are not relying on your heroes to be in range to use those powers.
At the end of your turn, you will lose all of your relentless discipline points (so you cannot build up a big stockpile).
Katakros, battalions and heroes will produce more relentless discipline points.
Sub-factions
Like a lot of newer battletomes, the Bonereapers also have the ability to select a “sub-faction”. It works like picking a Warclan in the Orruk Warclans or a skyport for the Kharadron.
The Subfaction will give all your Bonereapers the sub-faction keyword and you will gain access to new allegiance ability stuff (artefacts, command traits, traits and so on).
Note: the abilities below are only the ones previewed in the community article, so not all of them!
Coverage and Reviews of the Ossiarch Bonereapers
The reviews are coming in and people are pretty hot on the bone-bois.
Off the bat the damage output on the warscrolls, compared to their point cost, seems quite weak. But it looks like the buffs are very strong and different synergies can make the army really good.
GMG gaming are of course quick to get their review out.
As per usual, their “reviews” are just a dude reading aloud what it says in the book. It is good if you want to get the spoiler and every possible detail about the rules before buying.
In my local club the channel goes by “man who reads book aloud”.
A combined Mawtribes and Bonereapers chat from 2+Tough (AoS lore youtube guy).
If you can stand the banter, the Honest Wargamer is by far the best content regarding competitive AoS. Their review of the book was quite good.
The offical podcast with the talk about the bone daddies
Community Articles about the Bonereapers
If you are interested in reading more about the Bonereapers (or where I have pulled all this information from) you should read the Warhammer Community Articles yourself:
- Article about the Feast of Bones box and the other first wave releases
- Article with a closer look at some of the sprues for Bonereapers
- Article about allegiance abilities and a bit on a few warscrolls
- An article detailing some of the sub-factions in the army
- Endless Spell and Terrain article
- Preorder article for bonereapers wave 2 (the actual models)
- 3 army list or army concepts for Bonereapers
- Bonereapers “tactics” article
- A closer look at some bonereaper lore stuff