We would like to thank Games Workshop for sending these Ossiarch Bonereaper (OBR) kits to review.

Kavalos War Chariot (with alternate Liege Kavalos on War Chariot Assembly)

The Build

Norman: This dude sucked to put together. For reference, I recently built a bunch of Necron wraiths, flayed ones, and lychguard, some of the most hateful kits in living memory, and this was the most annoying model I built this month. The horsies go together alright, but the heads were finicky to get into place. The chariot assembly itself was a little annoying to do if you wanted to sub-assemble it to keep the horses off of it for painting. Where the real pain came in were the riders. First that whip, while it's one piece, is VERY annoying to clean and VERY thin and begging to be snapped off at some point. The other dude was the bane of my existence though. His right leg just kinda slots in there with very little guide or attachment point that I could find. The issue is his foot placement is very important because there isn’t a lot of room on the chariot for him to stand with his pose. There is a cool bit where you can build him with a hammer, bow, or javelin (all cosmetic, there’s no wargear option for this guy), but getting him to sit right was such a nightmare. These guys are mercifully sub assembly friendly and easily sit on a 25mm base for painting.

Oh also don’t drop this model while you’re priming or it will explode everywhere and you will crash out. Don’t ask why I know this.

Kavalos War Chariot Credit: MildNorman

Painting

Mercifully this is way easier to paint (if you have a scheme) than it is to build. The issue is there is so much god damn bone on this thing. If you’re trying to get it done quick you can absolutely prime it white and hit this son of a gun with a pot of Skeleton Horde and get it on the table fast, but if you want it to pop out all the different models and details here you have to figure out at least 3 types of bones to paint. For my scheme I chose to do the black bone you see in some of the schemes for the horses, starting with Mechanicus Standard Grey, washing with Nuln Oil, and drybrushing with Dawnstone. For what I’d call “Standard Bone” I used my standard recipe of starting at Rhinox Hide, then mixing in more and more Ushapti Bone and doing a sloppy overbrush over the whole thing at each step. This gives it that weathered and more natural look. After I was happy enough with it, I hit the whole thing with a Wraithbone drybrush. Besides that, there’s the standard “Armor Bone” which is kinda just painted plates in all the box art so I went with blue for that one. From there it’s a bit wood and metal. There’s a couple opportunities for nadirite here but not a ton. I chose to pick out the prow of the chariot and the tips of the javelins and the whip but that’s kinda it. I managed to get this done in about 4 hours of painting and was pretty pleased with the result all things considered. If you’re painting this dude at home, keep in mind that the bridle for the horses is not part of the horses and looks way better if you paint it a separate bone color.

Mortis Reapers

The Build

Bair: These and the chariot and the main reasons I'm now starting an Ossiarch Bonereapers army; the models are just so great and I'm actually quite impressed by the kit, too. The poses are pretty set to the ones you see, two leaping forwards, two standing pretty still, and one in an action pose that's going to be your unit champion. The champion has a few build options with twin blades (as I've built him) or to be built one of two ways the same as the rest of the unit; each model has the option of being given a dagger in its left hand instead of a grenade with flowing smoke. I like that option a lot, if you use a foam case the smoke clouds get in the way easily and could even break while daggers will be keep the model's silhouette a bit smaller. Also, obviously, if you simply do not wish to paint glass vials and clouds or smoke or if it's just not the aesthetic you like it's nice to have an in-box variant option.

These go together really well but some of the arms are slightly awkward with how the bodies go together with their cloaks, not much of an issue and could allow for some reposing too if you're clever.

Ossiarch Mortis Reapers credit: Bair

Painting

To keep them in theme with the scheme I painted on my Liege-Mortek (which I did before the assassins) but just a smidge darker by not going as bright on the red highlights. They don't have any armour on them at all so I painted their loincloth in teal to keep the colour on the models somewhere. Blades for the army are going to all be bronze with a copper highlight to keep silver off of the models; the idea here being that these are based on World That Was Tomb Kings and so obviously they wouldn't have steel. I'll be writing up a whole thing about a Path to Glory for these guys in the next week or so, keep an eye out for that.

Paints used in order:

Colourforge Hyrax Brown
Pro Acryl (PA) Bone
PA Warm Brown
PA Burnt Red
PA Bold Pyrrole Red
PA Dark Turquoise
PA Turquoise
PA Bronze
PA Copper
PA Faded Purple
PA Titanium White
PA Dark Neutral Grey
Citadel Druchii Violet
Citadel Targor Rageshade

The method is very simple. Spray brown, heavy drybrush with Bone. Paint the Dark Turquoise tabards and Burnt Red cloaks. Straps for the belt and on the torsos with Warm Brown. Use Turquoise and Bold Pyrrole Red to add highlights by painting in lines to show the brush strikes over the raised bits of cloth to add some texture to them. Blades with Bronze and highlighted with Copper. Smoke with Dark Neutral Grey and washed over with Druchii violet. Vials with Faded Purple and highlighted along edges with Titanium White. Then an all-over shade of Targor Rageshade toning down the highlights a touch and keeping it from pooling too much! Nice and simple, done in a few hours! This is the same method I use for the Liege-Mortek below, he just gets some extra red highlights of Pro Acryl Orange Red to be a little bit brighter.

Liege-Mortek

The Build

Contemptor Kevin: This guy is pretty neat. As opposed to some other kits in the OBR range *cough*theChariot*cough*, the Liege-Mortek assembled up pretty quickly. This bony guy comes with three head options and three weapon options. I selected the helmetless head, because 1) Bair chose a helmeted head and 2) the helmetless head doesn’t have as many tall bits likely to snap off. For weapon options, I chose the axe because it had runes built in that I wanted to do glowy runes for.

I built this guy pretty quickly and into effectively three subassemblies: the base, the main body, and the cloak/shield/left arm. This would make it very easy to get into the back of the Liege-Mortek’s lamellar armor and the hero’s surprisingly glorious gams. While I had some concerns that when I assembled the final model there would be a noticeable and ugly seam at the top of the cloak where the model attaches, I made sure to leave the outer cloak at primer black until the seam was fixed and the model ready for finishing.

Bair: Like Kevin said this model assembles really quickly like you'd expect for a simple foot hero. I didn't do any subassemblies and just did him all in one go, I didn't find a need for it. The shield is slightly awkward to slot in but once you figure it out (or I'm just an idiot) it fits in just find and much of it is obscured anyways from the cloak. I did like that there are three distinct weapon and head options, with a little bit of cutting you could easily get a couple models looking in different directions with very different looks to them, if you wanted multiple that don't look too similar.

Ossiarch Liege-Mortek credit: Bair

Painting

Contemptor Kevin: I decided to stick closer to the box scheme, and one somewhat consistent with my Tomb Kings. I decided on three primary base colors: XV-88 (for the bone), Pro Acryl Payne’s Grey (the lamellar armour and metallics), and purple (everything else).

For the bone, I drybrushed from XV-88 to Ushabti Bone to Wraithbone, gave it a wash of Skeleton Horde to warm it up, then another drybrush of Wraithbone. For the lamellar armour, I basecoated it Payne’s Grey, gave it a broad highlight of a Payne’s Grey/Thunderhawk Blue mix, then edge highlighted it with Thunderhawk Bluea and Fenrisian Grey. For metallics, I did NMM using Pro Acryl Dark Neutral Grey, Bright Neutral Grey, and Bold Titanium White. I mostly did this because the “main” bit of metallics was the sword, and I needed to control the light and finish for the magic/OSL. I also didn’t feel like dealing with metallic paint here. Everything else received a basecoat of Pro Acryl Imperial Purple. For the Gold, they then got highlights of XV-88, Flash Gitz Yellow, and then Bold Titanium White. When it was pointed out to me that the gold NMM did not work well against the similar bone color, I used the new Vallejo TMM Imperial Gold wish a wash of TMM Amythest Purple Wash. For the loincloth, I highlighted from Imperial Purple to Bold Pyrole Red and then highlights of a Bold Pyrole Red and Bright Shadow Flesh mix. For the outer cloak, I just went from Imperial Purple to Bright Shadow Flesh.

The gems are probably the toughest thing for me to paint on this model, because the size and paint finish made it hard to see each facet. They were basecoated with Payne’s Grey, and then painted up from Stegadon Scale Green, Warpstone Glow, to Moot Green. I did a highlight of a Bold Titanium White/Moot Green mix.

The OSL was Pro Acryl Dark Hot Pink laid over the metallics, using the lighting already set down. The runes and eyes (of both dude and bird) were basecoated with Dark Hot Pink, and then with very thin mixes of Bold Titanium White to produce a glow effect. I’m pretty satisfied as to how it came out, and want to do more OBR models!

This guy paints up *quick*, and solidly unlike a bunch of other models (the Chariot, the Ossifector).

Credit: Kevin Stillman

Credit: Kevin Stillman

Mortek Triaxes

The Build

Bair: Unfortunately due to some real-life things that came up this week I wasn't able to get them painted. I hate when real-life gets in the way of hobby.

These are a very simple kit that does allow for at least a bit of variation. It's twenty models in the kit which is the same sprues done twice over to make either a reinforced unit or two single units of ten models each with four walking fire things in total. We talk about this in the book review a bit (I assume, I didn't write it) but I think that taking two units of ten in-game is going to generally be better given how these little walking fire tokens work, but a reinforced unit with a Liege-Mortek firing twice a turn is pretty cool too.

When building them there's not really a lot of choice, you get a couple extra heads and there's two different and distinct champion heads which I appreciate. I really like that all of the heads only have a right eye, it makes them feel purpose built as an archer unit instead of just the same mortek guys given bows to use. Simply think it's really cool how every unit is literally created for a purpose in the army and that the models reflect that.

I built one champion with the bird and the other knocking an arrow to the bowstring with a different head each to mark them out as champions easily and avoid using the same parts where I didn't need to. The kit lets you build a total of ten models in a shooting pose, four drawing arrows out of their quivers, up to two in a "just released" sort of pose, and up to four knocking arrows and starting to draw back.

My only complaint about the kit is that the feet on the walking braziers are just slightly too wide to fully fit on a 25mm base. It's a very minor gripe and these are tokens so they can go on any size base you want, really, but they come with 25mm bases so that's what they went on.

New Bones from the Tithe

These are all really cool kits and great additions to the army's line. I don't really feel that any of them feel unnecessary by any means, it's nice to have a foot hero that's a commander and more armoured, especially for Path to Glory campaigns. Chariots and archers are certainly units that feel like they were wanting to put more space between the original death of Warhammer Fantasy to try and make them feel like "not Tomb Kings" but I love that we've got them now. Am I painting mine in the teal of old Tomb Kings and theming my Path to Glory around it even? Absolutely. Undead assassins are also just incredibly cool, thematically, and the unit is even pretty good.

The chariot is a bit fiddly as a kit, but something that size in modern plastics was always going to be. I'm really glad that the infantry all go together very nicely and quickly.

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website, and subscriber-only content covering competitive Warhammer 40K!

Tags: age of Sigmar | Ossiarch Bonereapers | miniature reviews