Playing obr a lot, I tend to think Bone Dady should not be even close to combat, acting rather as a repellent rather than hammer. 5+ command stop is actually very strong, but not op.

Hey Dongo! Thanks for the comment and for checking out the series! OBR is personally one of my new faves and has definitely become my go-to army for 4th edition thus far. What kind of builds are you mainly running with those 5k points?

Hey Rerisham! Thanks for the kind words! Interesting that you're also a big Stormcast guy, as I (Ryan) have now finally started getting some games in again after a long pause pursuing other (newer) books. Also, even though I personally am not a big fan of "horde" playstyles, I'm been intrigued by how many commenters on the channel thus far are disappointed by how weak Mortek Guard builds have become! Maybe I should give it a run with 40 or so max... ; )

@@strategoi Hi, Ryan! Hope you've been enjoying spreading your wings a bit - My playgroup and I Have actually been playing Infinity a fair bit recently, so I also have some catching up to do. As for Horde, I get it - but my image of OBR is fundamentally incompatible with i.e. reinforced Kavalos, Archai and Morghast, and nothing else. To my mental imagery, OBR are a foot infantry ARMY first and foremost. Katakros leads legions, not rampaging monsters. It's the Mortrek guard that are the ideological lynchpin to make this image work for me - and they're just... shit. I'd be more forgiving of them being so bad if you could, for example, layer buff after buff on them, i.e. the Soulmason gives them +1 to Rend if wholly within 12". The boneshaper regenerates D3 every command phase. The Soulreaper grants them +1 to wound, etc. etc. Back in 3rd, my dream list was 40 Guard - 20 with swords, 20 with spears in the backline. Backed up with a harvester on each corner, it was a BRICK of a wall and it was SO thematic that I had these legions marching on you, then I had my outrider Kavalos on the flanks, etc. We're much too reliant on the "big boys" of the faction to cover up the fact that there's no foundation to this house IMHO. Love your work!

Whatcha painting these days?!

@ finishing my riverblades! And thinking on starting with the shrine! Closely getting to getting all lrl painted :)

@@edumh22 Ryan here btw, not Jonas, but still supportive of getting those Riverblades finished! Def one of the strongest WarCry units to-date!

Hey Komoroff, thanks for checking out the video! Totally get your point, and I def knew going in that not everyone was gonna be on the same page with my about Arkhan. My playstyle tends to be a lot more mobile, and I make a lot of use of the Forbidden Power Endless Spells, so for these elements Arkhan has done wonders for me. As I've mentioned a few times, I just have a problem with the built-in costs to Katakros (getting a wizard, having Immortis Guard around, etc...), and that even with an 18" bubble there are plenty of times when your troops are left stranded. But I totally get that he's been performing well and people feel he's necessary. Maybe I'm also trying to stimulate people to experiment a bit more and get out of the Katakros bubble. In any case, thanks for weighing in!

@strategoi I also took him couple of times recently. On missions where the objectives are close to each other it was fine. But still prefer kata(even without immortis) and soulmason with krondspine and had most sucess with it in league. Pre battlescroll took kata+arkhan to a 3 round tournament and went 2/1/0 drawing on top table against tzeench, a game i would have lost if it was not for Arkhan.

@@komoroff69 What was Arkhan doing for you in that game that made such a big difference?

​@strategoi nullifying Tzeench output mostly in the draw game 3. He also smashed LoC tonthe ground. For the ones against skaven and seraphon just casting and oc.

Hey BuffShaman, Ryan here...and thanks for the comment! What are your other 5 armies? Yeah, an army getting a 5-0 has never really been my measuring stick for how good a unit is...I feel like that's much more determined by what you're up against in the meta, which often (due to GW not knowing how to balance things) ends up being broken gatekeepers that discourage trying anything but the things that can deal with them. As a listbuilding guy at heart, that's always been my least favorite way of writing lists, but I get it. I do wonder though if Nagash is still a 5-0 unit after all the changes since the initial index. What're your thoughts?

Thanks for your input BuffShaman! I've never been much for recursion and/or horde armies (this is literally my one and only Death army), so the balance works a little better for me, but I agree that having mostly just cav is not the way to go. Personally I'd like to have more reason to bring the Morghast units and not have them just get wiped off the board after two rounds of combat, but I do know that Katakros + Archai can survive a bit. But yes, fingers crossed for an amazing book once the gaze of GW swings back around to us! And thanks for checking out the content!

Hey Childhood, thanks for weighing in! I knew going in that my opinion of Katakros/Arkhan was gonna be a little controversial. I do however agree that if Katakros had a wizard keyword (for one of the guys on his base) that it would shift the equation for me. But to your point, I could def see giving both 4 stars. I just can't justify giving Katakros 5 stars when his support units end up raising his price so much.

​@@strategoi after some more Games I would even consider Katakros 3* now. Those 20 on him and 10 on the cohort hurts. Some recent Tier list rate OBR still S-tier which I wouldn't share. For example against new slaves or other stuff with mortals wounds we suffer - or whats your opinion?

@@Childhood.87 Sorry for the delay on getting back to your comment...got pretty sick over the holidays and been a bit out of it! Interesting to hear you're going the other direction with Katakros. I've only gotten a few games in with him but am still finding it difficult to make him work. Maybe I'm missing something. Arkhan is def more my style, but to each their own. And yes I agree that new Slaves is absolutely gross. GW isn't doing a great job with the new books in my opinion...they're largely not understanding what makes the army either weak or strong and then make some random decisions which just reinforce the things that weren't working. But yeah, not sure where I'd rank OBR right now. For some reason I find 4th edition really hard to get my head fully around, but I'm sure everything will eventually click in.

Ryan here! Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Malisteen! Generally agree with all of these points! I'll be curious to see your feedback on the next two videos!

Aww, thanks Christian! Is fun getting back in the action here. Hoping to put out the next two soon as well!

Haha, there are worse corrections 😁😁

Thanks for the comment Simonsaf! Ryan here. Curious what it is about Skaven that you're feeling got so screwed over. I am a huge Skaven fan and agree that many units just can't compete in the current meta, but curious about your thoughts!

Haha, love that transition 😁❤️

I'm tempted to pick up my Soulblight again, so we might get to them eventually! Stay tuned <3 - Jonas

@@strategoiAwesome! With the rumors surrounding the new soulblight stuff coming out, I’m curious to see what is going to happen with their book

Thanks for the comment and for checking out the video! Would def be fun to get to FEC, but we prefer to not talk about the factions unless one of us has had some legitimate playtime with the army to help inform our opinions, and unfortunately FEC isn’t an army we’ve (thus far) committed to. We’ll def keep an eye out for a good opportunity to bring you some solid FEC content though!

Yo Rerisham! Thanks for checking out the video and for your thoughts on the overlooked units! Def agree it would be nice to see the Guard and Harvesters get some love, and not just points drops!

they know everyone already bought morteks and stalkers soo...

Hey Malisteen! Ryan here. Sorry for the delay in getting back to this comment. I feel like that change to RD, where units could use it but only for themselves, is def an interesting direction. Personally I'm hoping we don't get our Battletome until next year (2026) so that GW has some time to stop copy/pasting everything out of the index and start innovating again. Curious as to your thoughts on Stalkers now with the points reductions...

We had something similar in Warhammer fantasy back in the day, where Heroes and Lords gave different bonuses and such. So it's not too long of a shot.

Thanks so much for checking out the videos! Means a lot to me, especially considering how much of a labor of love they all were! Would be happy to get into the nitty gritty details sometime for sure, but we’re about to repeat the whole process we did here with Idoneth but with OBR, so who knows when I’ll get all the other stuff kicking around my head onto the channel. Will def keep it in mind though!

❤️

Aww, thanks Hughzaa! Really appreciate it! I’ll be coming back to the shooting series sooner than later, but we’ve got a series of 4 videos coming out first on OBR (which will often be mathy themselves)

I feel your pain 🥲

Good point!

Agreed. :)

Or is the problem that Fewer regiments = Fewer drops = choosing priority for first turn?

@@Findelas Yeah, that's the point they're making.

I think a simple and elegant change that they could make would be to say that reinforcing a unit uses one of your regiments unit slots. People are taking reinforced units to get around the issue of having 2K in as few regiments as possible. This would really open the floor. Also probably allow more heroes to be taken as units. For a slightly more complex next edition, I'd love it if different characters had different leadership values that corresponded with how many units they could take. The top tier would be Bastian, Katakros and Archaon.

@@RyanPST88 Reinforced units scale better with Command abilities and buffs and even the combat activation system. 40k recently made reinforced units more expensive point for point, I can even see this as part of the solution.

I kinda like the indexes for their simplicity as well, though, because it's now easier than ever to understand an opponent's army. But I can also see how it's disappointing to some.

yea FEC would just wouldnt even be viable anymore if they could only take one unit of morbheg knights. I think you could just do 0 -X per regiment leader.

I don't exactly recall who of us said that, but we might have meant something more like what you're saying anyway. I agree with your last sentiment here: freedom in picking what you like, is where it's at. I think that's also sort of the sentiment that's hidden behind that comment. 'Forced to use different stuff' doesn't mean you only use that stuff. I think it was mentioned during a section where we were advocating for more variety, right? So in that case we meant you would not solely bank on the same one or two units to carry your games. Later on, we do agree that that wouldn't work for all armies though. :)

@@strategoi thanks for the reply! And my apologies if there was a misunderstanding. Though glad to hear we're basically on the same page ❤️

I feel you. The recursion for monsters feels very thematic for Sylvaneth though. Would you feel differently if it wasn't based on a roll? A once per game guaranteed recursion for ONE monster?

@ I would be happy if it was key worded like other armies. Non unique characters like the tree Lord ancient and units. That’s fair. The army needs to have some housekeeping. They needed to fix them. They may have made the trees too strong. I really like the army. I don’t want people to hate playing them.

Yeah I agree. More small foot heroes need to be able to join other regiments. For armies like ironjawz you need at least one wizard or priest but they're individual drops. It means most ij lists are 3-4 drops

The entire army building system in 4th is just terrible. It feels like one of those things where someone had an "idea" and they just wouldn't accept that it wasn't a good idea. It's the worst place we've ever been in terms of encouraging low drop.

@@assistantref5084 I think the issue is that they were to afraid to use the paragon system more? definitely feels like more heroes could have been those.

@@Dereck1234 Yes, but that's just a band-aid on a fundamentally bad system. What is the point of this system? What does it add? Nothing. There are no incentives for going high drop. It's just pure penalty. It's a complete step back from 3rd, where although low drop was still the most powerful, at least you got *something* for going higher drop. Now you get nothing.

@@assistantref5084 I think what they were trying to do was make the army more about the heroes and possibly limit it by what they could take. The issue is really good heroes in some factions can take the relevant good units of that faction compared to some that take a mediocre one to get access to good units. And then some like LRL need to bring named characters to bypass those restrictions.

Sure thing, Miles! Thanks for checking out the content!

Yeah it's a whole new approach

Yeah, man, it's a bummer! We might get some of it back at one point though. Just hang on long enough 🥳

Thanks Michael! Glad you’re enjoying it! We’re really just getting started, as this content is still a bit too abstract for a lot of people’s tastes I think, but once we start getting into what you can do with it, it’ll get especially interesting I think

Don’t worry, though Cities units didn’t make the Top 30 with just a standard All-Out Attack, Darkshards, Fusiliers, and Irondrakes will all be making appearances later on!

Thanks for checking it out! In retrospect I probably would have made a separate video for the math introduction, but in any case this sort of material can definitely come across a bit dense. Once we get into the more faction-oriented computations I think it will start being a bit more easily digestible and/or more applicable to listbuilding in a practical sense.

Thanks, dude! Really appreciate checking out the video, and always nice to have someone else out there like yourself that’s into the math of it all and doing the work! How’re you feeling about Hunters with Darts and Skinks as shooting units in Seraphon? Do they feel like they’re some of the more efficient units out there?

Oh, and I’m playing a Catapults list these days myself. Agreed on the swinginess, but into the right army they just obliterate things. Def questionable for a Covering Fire unless you really need them to be striking last

@@ryanburruss Very nice!!

Glad you enjoyed it!

Hey there, thanks for double-checking my work! While it could be that I had initially counted their base profile as mobile and didn’t take into account the new FAQ, even when I run the numbers with the Fortified profile I only get an output of 2.92 per 100 pts when averaged out equally against 6+ -> 2+ saves. So the following before converting to per 100 pts: 5.25 / 4.38 / 3.50 / 2.62 / 1.75 Average of these: 3.50 Adjusted for 120 pts cost: 2.92 So do me a favor and double check your math, and let me know where we stand. If I’m right, they still wouldn’t have made the cutoff for the video, but they are in deed close!

@@ryanburrussI have to apologise. Somehow I have added the dmg against 6+ save twice and completely messed up the average sum.

@@xammit7579no apology needed! I messed up the super long video Jonas and I made about Kurnoth output so badly that I had to take 3 hrs to fix my formulas and then we had the rerecord everything. It happens!

Thanks Nephilimi! Yeah, I’m not much of a doom and gloom sort of guy, and though I get why certain players don’t like shooting, I think it makes for a multi-faceted game indeed.

The concept of shooting is not the issue, it's just a unit here and there that is too cheap for the impact it has (vanguard raptors).