by Peter Atkinson

I still have games where my opponents think Bonesplitterz have got it made. Just sit back and watch the VPs roll in, right?

I’ll say this once, at the start: Bonesplitterz are not Big Waaagh. The Pity Points were dished out to Ironjawz and Kruleboyz only (and BW can use both) – Bonesplitterz were left to rot, one of many reasons we can see GW lurking in the shadows, their knife glistening in the dark as they stare at the spot between our shoulder blades.

We’ll be publishing a separate piece in the very near future on squaring the circle between Big Waaagh’s overperformance and the other Orruks struggling, but for today, just be aware that Bonesplitterz have a far smaller pool of options open to them. So let’s take a look at what they are.

The Criteria

As with the other Battle Tactic articles, these are the standard criteria we are using for assessing the strength of each book’s battle tactics:

• Turn 1 EZ Mode.  Is there a gimme that you can bank turn 1?  Always important because it gives you an easy flow into the game, lifting the mental load on you and putting scoreboard pressure on your opponent.  It’s the first thing people look for in the GHB tactics and even when you can reliably score one of those early on, having a guaranteed one-two punch for the first two rounds is a huge quality of life boost.
• Grand Strategy.  The GHB Grand Strats are often “win more” and are variations on have stuff left at the end of the game / stop your opponent having stuff left.  In this context, having an absolute gimme in the book can swing tight games without any skill or good fortune required – Tzeentch and Fyreslayers are the benchmark here, offering you a 3-0 headstart in every game for no real reason.
• Zingers.  Are there 2-3 tactics you can reliably hit most games, to complement 2-3 from the GHB and give you 4-5 every game?  In the race to five there’s usually more value in a couple of zingers to get you over the line, even if the book is padded out with some dross and filllers, as opposed to having a whole bunch that are all kind of feasible but also dicey. In practice you’d generally prefer a couple of superstars over strength in depth.
• Synchronicity.  How does this army work in with the GHB tactics – are they achievable for common builds?  An example here would be Sons of Behemat – their own BTs aren’t amazing, but they had a really nice run with the first GHB in 3^rd Edition that rewarded Monsters.  With Gally Champs – not so much.  So today we’ll be looking at battle tactics in the context of the 2023 GHB.
• Flavour. Getting hit with the “thematic” stick in Battle Tactics is usually a sign that you’ve been stiffed with something random and dumb, like the one in Sons of Behemat where you have to hit a series of dice rolls to fling a model around to achieve Man-skittles.  While it won’t always help you to hit those consistent 10+3 VPs, good design that makes tactics actually interesting deserves some kind of recognition.

Bonesplitterz Battle Tactics

So which book tactics are actually open to the Splitterz?

The sheer amount of red pen on that graphic illustrates just how aggressively Bonesplitterz have been screwed over. And I’m being generous by not crossing out the Kragnos one, because it’s not really a Bonesplitterz tactic: it requires a 720-point Not Bonesplitterz unit and it only ever works on a 3+.

So really, you get two: one for Bonesplitterz and one for all Orruks. Quick game’s a good game, hey?

Time to Get Stuck In!: Way harder than it sounds, especially when the GHB BTs incentivize you to spread your models out to various board edges.

Early game: Well you literally can’t score it from mid-game onwards. So maybe.

Overall quality: I’ve played Orruks a lot and rarely achieved this one, partly because it’s in direct conflict with what the objectives and generic BTs ask of you, partly because the shape of your army usually means wrapping your support units front and back. And that’s before you factor in the risk that you actually bloody kill something, and take yourself out of range that way. Positional BTs are usually bankers that you can simply choose to secure, but while this one is not impossible, for all of these reasons it’s way less automatic than it might appear.

Kill Da Big Un: Adding insult to injury, the book that stripped away almost all of our assistance in killing Monsters then asked us to go out and kill Monsters. Cheers for that.

A few of the Monster-hunting rules we lost include:

• Bonus damage on Big Stabbas
• Shiv mortals from Morrboys
• The entire Monster Hunter table Battle Trait

Also note that it has to be done with attacks, so you can’t stare them off with a Wurrgog (your actual, remaining way of efficiently killing Monsters). You can stare them down to death’s door, and try to finish them off with your zero-rend “combat” units, but then a Durthu makes you fight last and lifts your unit on your own turn. Such is the life of the Bonesplitterz player.

Early game: Unlikely, more of a mid-game thing.

Overall quality: Depends entirely on your opponent bringing a Monster (which to be fair most will), and then you killing it with attacks (not magic or staring). Of your two Bonesplitterz Battle Tactics, it’s definitely in the top three.

Bonus: Big Grikk Energy

Here’s a cheeky one for ya. The Pity Points dished out to Kruleboyz are still an Orruk Warclans Battle Tactic – it just requires Kruleboyz keyworded units to trigger:

Famously, Orruks cannot ally in with one another, but there’s still a sneaky way to get them in your army: take Big Grikk’s Kruleshots and profit.

Early game: Hell yeah.

Overall quality: Notoriously easy to achieve as Big Waaagh players have proven. The only question is whether Biggity Griggity is worth their points? It’s marginal, but with 2 free VPs thrown into the deal, the case stacks up a little better. And you could always make them Bonesplitterz themed.

Grand Strats

More red pen. The only dedicated Bonesplitterz one is dogshit: it’s not unusual to have zero eligible terrain pieces on the board (especially when it’s red and blue quarters), at which point Get Dem Bones! is literally impossible before you even start the game, and you’re playing with a 3-point handicap, because your army being overcosted and having shit rules obviously wasn’t bad enough already.

For context, look at the quality of life disparity with Nurgle’s version:

GW has had multiple opportunities to align ours with the version that is actually fit for purpose, but they couldn’t be bothered because it’s only Bonesplitterz. And then they wonder why the army doesn’t sell.

Waaagh! is a lot better and a pretty standard pick for all Orruk armies. It’s just another win-more thing really – by definition, it’s not getting you over the line if you and your 6+ saves have already lost the tabling game.

As for the generic GHB Grand Strats, Bonesplitterz can score a few of these reasonably well, but worse than other armies: you’re not a magic dom, and your units are fragile as fuck. Most of them rely on keeping stuff with a 6+ save alive so in relative terms (which is literally the only measure that matters), it’s not great. I usually just take Waaagh! competitively.

GHB Tactics

We’ll circle back and update this part after the current Handbook cycles out. Or forget. Time will tell.

So the book tactics are an absolute dog’s dinner – can we make ground back up with the generic BTs for this handbook? To an extent, yes.

You’ve got the standard army-that-has-Wizards play of casting Magical Dominance from the backboard in the early game.

Tip: You can use the Fast ‘Un Mount Trait on a Maniak Weirdnob to moonwalk backwards and unexpectedly get out of unbind range. You can also use it for an unlikely Surround / Intimidate reposition – using this free move has helped me score BTs loads of times.

You’ll quite often have a large number of units on the table, so you can develop and evolve the shape of your army on the board to hit Surround and Destroy and Intimidate the Invaders; and the Bonesplitterz Waaagh! turn should usually leave something alive and in combat*, so Bait and Trap is a solid mid-game bet. The pregame move can definitely help with the positional Battle Tactics too.

I play this army competitively myself, so I knocked together a cheat sheet which I found immensely helpful:

Any thinking you can do away from the table is money in the bank. Prepping something like this will legitimately give you a headstart in mental energy over your opponent.

*Partly because most of your combat units are too crap to kill anything themselves, and inconveniently pull themselves out of combat that way, but we’ll take what we can get.

The Verdict

• Turn 1 EZ Mode.  You can hit Magical Dominance from the backboard or pregame move for Surround and Destroy. Pretty good.
• Grand Strategy.  Not amazing, because the ones you can score are mostly dependent on keeping alive units that aren’t good at staying alive. Behind the curve.
• Zingers.  The ones that are copper-bottomed are the same positional ones from the GHB that other armies can also guarantee. You get nothing handed to you on a plate beyond that.
• Synchronicity.  Similar to Skaven, the Splitterz’ aptitude at scoring GHB tactics rescues them to a large extent. Magic and standing around, we can do. The difference (and why Bonesplitterz are in such a bad spot) is that the Orruks don’t have the generous suite of casting bonuses that Skaven enjoy, and weren’t dished out any candy when the rats got their own unique freebie.
• Flavour.  Well you get one for killing Monsters, but given that GW aggressively ripped out the Monster hunting rules from this army, I’m not giving them any credit there. It’s more like adding insult to injury.

Overall Score: Two out of Five

The Mixed Orruk nature of the book meant that Bonesplitterz were screwed from Day 1 with a half-arsed roster of faction secondaries. It’s an early-edition Battletome and the game was still finding its way, so that’s forgivable, but failing to update it ever since is just piss poor.

Those GHB tactics will do most of the heavy lifting: you can definitely score 4 in most games, but the underlying problem with moving your units hither and thither to hit BTs is that your overcosted screening army can scarcely afford the luxury of dumping junk around the table. And the achievable Grand Strats are “win more” in a fragile and expensive army that wins less.

So I know from experience that Bonesplitterz can score a lot of BTs in most games. But I also know from experience that puts them behind the curve in a game where competing armies can score maximum BTs in every game. You’re more likely to drop one than most, and what’s worse, you’ll need to work harder and go against the grain to get there. In a world where the weakest armies are handed slick Battle Tactics that issue guaranteed VPs for doing what they already want to do, the Boyz in Green have been left to swim against the tide.

Bonesplitterz are a behind-the-curve army with behind-the-curve secondaries, and they’ve been left to rot. For shame.

Credit for the cover image to Games Workshop

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