Boneswarm
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Boneswarm |
The boneswarm is an undulating mass of osseous debris given horrid life and animation by lingering necromantic energies in places where many have died. Gatorman bokors have learned to control these horrors, directing them to envelop foes in a mass of biting, toothy skulls. The bones of its slain victims are incorporated into the boneswarm itself, allowing it to heal damage and grow stronger and more resilient.
Contents
Basic Info
Boneswarm | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Warbeast - All warbeasts share a huge stack of special rules. The short version is they're big, furious, and beat stuff up pretty good. Click here for a newbie-friendly recap, or click here for the full rules.
Abilities
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Amphibious
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Pathfinder
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Undead
- Bone Picker - When this model destroys a living or undead enemy model with a melee attack, this model gains the destroyed model's corpse token and the destroyed model is removed from play. This model can have up to three corpse tokens at any time.
- Death Feast - During its activation, this model can spend corpse tokens to remove d3 damage points for each token spent.
- Death-Powered - This model gains +1 STR and ARM for each corpse token currently on it.
- Steady - This model cannot become knocked down.
Weapons
Bone Strike (x2) | ||||||||||||||
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RNG | POW | P+S | |||||||||||
1 | 4 | 12 | ||||||||||||
Animus
COST | RNG | AOE | POW | DUR | OFF | ||
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Swarm
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2 | SELF | - | - | Round | No | |
The spellcaster gains concealment. Living enemy models suffer -2 to attack rolls while within 2" of the spellcaster. Swarm lasts for one round. |
Theme Forces
- Minion
- The Blindwater Congregation
- The Thornfall Alliance (only if in Midas's battlegroup). It gains Salvage in this theme.
- Will Work for Food
- Other Factions
- Skorne players can use this warbeast in the Disciples of Agony theme.
- If taken by a Gatorman Lesser Warlock (Wrong Eye or Underchief Mire), it can be taken in a butt-load more themes (omitted for brevity).
Recent Changes
2021. 10 Mega Update
- Doubled the number of initial attacks
Thoughts on Boneswarm
Boneswarm in a nutshell
The Boneswarm is a cheap light melee warbeast with Steady and Pathfinder. If you have a good way to power it up with corpse tokens (e.g. a Boil Master & Spirit Cauldron) it's definitely worth it - if you can't power it up it's probably too pillow fisted.
Combos & Synergies
- Boil Master & Spirit Cauldron hands out corpse tokens. Suddenly this light beast will pack a bigger punch.
- Gatorman Witch Doctor - it's already undead, so Death Ride is useful.
- Park it in a blob of Gatorman Bokor & Bog Trog Swamp Shamblers to create a truly obnoxious tarpit.
- Maelok the Dreadbound can bump the Boneswarm all the way up to armor 20 on his feat if it's sitting on max corpse tokens.
- Barnabas, Lord of Blood can stack Execration of Blackest Night on top of the Boneswarm's Swarm animus to make it effectively debuff enemy attack rolls by -4 , promoting the warbeast from being simply annoying to legitimately a problem. Plus Barney's Boneshakers are essentially pocket sized Boneswarms. It's like poetry, it rhymes.
- in Disciples of Agony they can benefit from Enrage and Prodding, which mean they hit just as hard as an Archidon.
Drawbacks & Downsides
- They need Corpse Tokens to be anything other than walking casualties. And they don't have good threat ranges even with Pathfinder.
- Mediocre POW and short reach. You will need some additional damage buff for it to pull its weight.
- Undead mean it can't benefit from Primal or Abuse. Or from the feat of Naaresh.
Tricks & Tips
- Use Gatorman Posse to screen it so that it can get up the field. The Posse is more durable than the bone swarm. With the Boneswarm hiding behind the gatormen/screening unit, it can use it's animus to make the Posse harder to hit in melee.
- Put Rage on the Boneswarm and it can hit much harder, combine this with it's corpse tokens and it can suddenly start denting heavies.
- Cheap Warbeast for Midas to revive with his feat and able to heal itself with corpse tokens.
Other
Trivia
- The Boneswarm originally appeared as a model to accompany the Iron Kingdoms Roleplaying Game, which used the D&D 3.0 ruleset.
- It was released into the Hordes game in Hordes: Domination (2011)
- This model has a limited edition sculpt, released in 2021.11.
Who can take this warbeast
With the way Minion battlegroups work, this warbeast can't simply be taken by any Minion warlock, and instead it must be controlled by one of the following:
Gatorman Warlocks (Edit) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Warlocks | Barnabas1 - Barnabas2 - Calaban1 - Jaga-Jaga1 - Maelok1 - Rask1 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Lesser Warlocks |
Alternatively, a Skorne warlock can take this warbeast in the Disciples of Agony theme. Also, Midas can take this warbeast.
Other Minion models
Rules Clarifications
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Rules Clarification: : Warbeast (Edit) |
See also the Warbeast page for a recap of the core warbeast rules.
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Rules Clarification : Amphibious - None yet. (Edit)
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Rules Clarification : Pathfinder (Edit)
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Rules Clarification : Undead - None yet. (Edit)
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Rules Clarification : Bone Picker and/or Bone Pile (Edit)
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Rules Clarification : Death Feast (Edit)
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Rules Clarification : Death-Powered - None yet. (Edit)
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Rules Clarification : Steady (Edit)
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Rules Clarification : Ashen Veil and/or Swarm (Edit)
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