AoS 2 - Nighthaunt Discussion

[Evil Bob]

I dunno.  The cannons are looking kinda sexy.

[Blackmaniac]

Can one of you wise folks help me “unlock” Nighthaunts?  I have about 10 games under my belt at this point (having built up from the Soulwars box set)...and I have yet to hit upon the right Stratagem to make things really work.  Our group is relatively new and we have really not branched out into objectives and stuck to playing “First Blood”.  My regular opponents are DoK and Ironjawz.  My games so far have boiled down to: rush the center, hope the dice are favorable and the recursion is enough to whittle down the enemy numbers.  I have tried horde style with all the chainrasps and spirit hosts with only two heroes, and I have also tried support bloat with 4 heroes and a medium but heavily buffed battle line. Our heroes seem kind of squishy so they have not spent much time on the front lines.  I’m starting to get the sense that this is not how Nighthaunts want to approach the game....  As for the models I have to choose from:

Heroes:  Reiknor, Lady Olynder, GoS, KoS, SoT, Executioner, a vampire lord (winged).

battleline: 50 chainrasps, 10 reapers, 4 stalkers, 9 spirit hosts, 4 banshees

other: 2 Mourngul, Black coach (purchased before I realized we might be staying at 1000pts)

We play at the 1000 point level.  I have had the most luck with Lady Olynder and the chaingaurd battalion (for the extra CP), but otherwise I’m getting my bread buttered!  Any suggestions or direction you could point me in would be fantastic.  

[Evil Bob]

2 hours ago, Blackmaniac said:

Snip

We play at the 1000 point level.  I have had the most luck with Lady Olynder and the chaingaurd battalion (for the extra CP), but otherwise I’m getting my bread buttered!  Any suggestions or direction you could point me in would be fantastic.  

At 1k points running a battalion is over ten percent of your points.  You need to ask yourself does the CP/relic/trait outweigh more units/troops?  I deploy Chainguard at 1.5k with two 20x Chainwrasp battlelines and the GoS.

If Olynder is working then continue fielding her.  On the downside in theory she’s keeping entire unit(s) + (lesser) hero of yours off the table.  That reduces your rolling dice, wound count, and tactical flexibility.  Her warscroll isn’t that great compared to her being almost a quarter of your army.  That’s allot of responsibility on her ethereal shoulders.  If you really want a special character in there The Grimhailer might be a better fit when squeezing points.

Since Nighthaunt doesn’t have gravesites.  I almost always bring the GoS and SoT.  Those and the Vampire would be a good core of a 1k army since each offers a good buff to the fighting units.  You don’t have to keep the GoT or Vampire out of combat.   Just rig the fight first: limit enemy attack zones, mix in your guys for anti-pile-in, the fewer swings on you the better.  The SoT with the ginsu-blade option scoops DoK and Ironjaws off the table.  Pro-tip: A SoT supporting in the back but dragged into combat from enemy pile-ins can sit at 2” making him invulnerable to being attacked by many units.

It is possible three characters is a bit much at 1k.  It really depends on your style of play, scenarios, local meta.

What kind of force compositions are these guys throwing at you?

[Undeadly]

1 hour ago, Blackmaniac said:

Can one of you wise folks help me “unlock” Nighthaunts?  I have about 10 games under my belt at this point (having built up from the Soulwars box set)...and I have yet to hit upon the right Stratagem to make things really work.  Our group is relatively new and we have really not branched out into objectives and stuck to playing “First Blood”.  My regular opponents are DoK and Ironjawz.  My games so far have boiled down to: rush the center, hope the dice are favorable and the recursion is enough to whittle down the enemy numbers.  I have tried horde style with all the chainrasps and spirit hosts with only two heroes, and I have also tried support bloat with 4 heroes and a medium but heavily buffed battle line. Our heroes seem kind of squishy so they have not spent much time on the front lines.  I’m starting to get the sense that this is not how Nighthaunts want to approach the game....  As for the models I have to choose from:

Heroes:  Reiknor, Lady Olynder, GoS, KoS, SoT, Executioner, a vampire lord (winged).

battleline: 50 chainrasps, 10 reapers, 4 stalkers, 9 spirit hosts, 4 banshees

other: 2 Mourngul, Black coach (purchased before I realized we might be staying at 1000pts)

We play at the 1000 point level.  I have had the most luck with Lady Olynder and the chaingaurd battalion (for the extra CP), but otherwise I’m getting my bread buttered!  Any suggestions or direction you could point me in would be fantastic.  

Well, for starters, start using Objectives! They radically change the feel of the game, and can give even the weakest armies a chance at winning.

 

And here's another tip; Nighthaunt can do really well if you use minimum sized units, You may not get the horde discount, but you do get more chances of a WoT.

[Blackmaniac]

10 minutes ago, Undeadly said:

Well, for starters, start using Objectives! They radically change the feel of the game, and can give even the weakest armies a chance at winning.

 

And here's another tip; Nighthaunt can do really well if you use minimum sized units, You may not get the horde discount, but you do get more chances of a WoT.

DoK is running Hagg Narr

Bloodwrack Medusa general

Slaughter queen on Cauldron of Blood

20 sisters of slaughter 

10 blood sisters

(I have found the combination of enfeeble, Blood Shield and Catechism of murder to be rough to deal with)

IronJawz is running

Megaboss

2 x 5 man units of Brutes

20 hard Boyz

shaman

Iron skulls boys ( as a meat shield for Shaman)

min unit of Gruntas

( most of these games end with everything except brutes wipes off the table....)

tell me more about the min unit Nighthaunt benefits....as in my limited experience if the Ironjawz wipe out your 10 wounds of say, reapers that just sets him to attack again.

I should mention I roll below average ( or at least it feels that way) 

 

[Nasrod]

22 hours ago, Blackmaniac said:

DoK is running Hagg Narr

Bloodwrack Medusa general

Slaughter queen on Cauldron of Blood

20 sisters of slaughter 

10 blood sisters

(I have found the combination of enfeeble, Blood Shield and Catechism of murder to be rough to deal with)

IronJawz is running

Megaboss

2 x 5 man units of Brutes

20 hard Boyz

shaman

Iron skulls boys ( as a meat shield for Shaman)

min unit of Gruntas

( most of these games end with everything except brutes wipes off the table....)

tell me more about the min unit Nighthaunt benefits....as in my limited experience if the Ironjawz wipe out your 10 wounds of say, reapers that just sets him to attack again.

I should mention I roll below average ( or at least it feels that way) 

 

So, minimum sized units idea is to take, say, 3 groups of 5 Bladegheist Revenants instead of 1 group of 20.

The idea is to deploy them in the same exact vicinity; most armies this is an awful idea. For Nighthaunt, our buffs are wholly within 12" aoe from a hero. Separating our units into minimum sized blocks like this means you don't have to choose between losing attacks on a suboptimal pile in vs getting your GoS/Spirit Torment buff. 

You also get to make 3 charge rolls with 3 groups of 5 instead of 1 charge roll with a group of 20. 

Certain lists benefit greatly from this but there are downsides; any aoe attack, especially Endless Spells, become terrifying. Suddenly, Geminids is 3d3 mortals. Aethervoid Pendulum would be 3d6. Regenerating models to a unit becomes less likely as minimum size units are prone to focus fire and being wiped out before you can cycle around to your next hero phase. More drops means less chance of turn priority, but Nighthaunt is offensively bad with efficient battalions so I don't see this as a problem; the only Nighthaunt lists that can threaten outdropping your opponent are ones that aren't going to make good use of Underworlds deep strike, which is one of the only gimmicks that justify using pure Nighthaunt instead of Legions of Nagash. 

Chainrasp Horde and Myrmourn Banshees should never be taken at minimum size, imo. Grimghast Reapers are debatable but imo taking minimum size on Reapers is actually a points LOSS because you almost guaranteed aren't making full use of their 2" attack range, which they most certainly "pay" for. 

Spirit Hosts entirely depend on what you want to do; are you trying to abuse Black Coach or Ruler of the Spirit Host? You want a block of 6 or even 9, as your concern isn't efficient or opportunistic attacking here, it is to park a group of obnoxious models on an objective and keep them there the entire game while taking advantage of returning multiple models with a single trigger.

Are you using Olynder Command Trait? You want 3 groups of 3 Hosts all in range of her ability, stacked in 3 x 3 lines so that opposing tar pits crash against 1 model from each unit; the opponent now has to spread his damage/attacks to each of the units instead of just one, and Olynder is almost guaranteed to return multiple models.

If Hexwraiths get a points cost reduction I think they would make excellent candidates for min sized. 

 

Tl;dr Try it, but be sure you try it with units that aren't weakened by it, and not against an AoE spam list.

[Tropical Ghost General]

So has anyone tried using the Penumbral Engine terrain piece yet?

It's odd in that it not only costs 100pts to use (unlike faction specific ones which are free to use) and it counts against our ally points allowance, so no Penumbral Engine and Arkhan together (at least until GHB19 points get revealed).

The benefits of re-rolling 1s to saves if wholly within 12" is basically a free mystic shield, which is of some benefit to us spooks.

And the other effect of an additional free CP each turn is always handy, but it really only benefits a super CP hungry list and currently I don't feel that ghosts have a list that would benefit from only potentially having extra CP rather than having guaranteed extra CP.

I've got a local 2k comp in early July that I'm going to try running it and seeing how it goes, but if anyone else has any experience that they can share that would be awesome.

[Greasygeek]

7 hours ago, Tropical Ghost General said:

So has anyone tried using the Penumbral Engine terrain piece yet?

It's odd in that it not only costs 100pts to use (unlike faction specific ones which are free to use) and it counts against our ally points allowance, so no Penumbral Engine and Arkhan together (at least until GHB19 points get revealed).

The benefits of re-rolling 1s to saves if wholly within 12" is basically a free mystic shield, which is of some benefit to us spooks.

And the other effect of an additional free CP each turn is always handy, but it really only benefits a super CP hungry list and currently I don't feel that ghosts have a list that would benefit from only potentially having extra CP rather than having guaranteed extra CP.

I must say that I am kinda glad that it has a high cost. I already think that AOS has way to many insta buy effects/endless spells that is suffering from being overused. Besides, Im all for terrain but if the engine was that good we would see too many games including 3-4 pieces of tactical scenery on the table. At that point I think it would get outright silly.

As it is now I will try it out once in a while in matched play and else just keep it for the Forbidden Campaign and other narrative shenanigans. Not everything is for matched play and Im very fine by that.

[Undeadly]

So with the GHB, ya'll have any predictions about some units? And viability incase some points go up and down? If Glaivewraiths were brought down to 40, and Harridans to maybe 70 or 60, I think they could really be good. 160 points for 16 unrendable wounds is pretty decent, and I think they could be a better screen unit than Chainrasps.

[Qrow]

4 minutes ago, Undeadly said:

So with the GHB, ya'll have any predictions about some units? And viability incase some points go up and down? If Glaivewraiths were brought down to 40, and Harridans to maybe 70 or 60, I think they could really be good. 160 points for 16 unrendable wounds is pretty decent, and I think they could be a better screen unit than Chainrasps.

Only in my most fantastical dreams would harridans be dropped to 60, I'm hoping for a drop somewhere around 80/280 for harridans, even that feels optimistic. Really hoping for hexwraiths to drop to 140, that would bring them in line statistically with other similar units.

Kurdoss around 180 or 200, I suspect the later, especially of the few leaks so far have been correct. Drop chainghasts to 60 or 70, 80 is too high even with the revenants synergy. Maybe a tiny drop in the black coach, and forgeworld please either buff or massively drop the cost of the mourngul.

Any drops we do get I would like to see reverted in any future nighthaunt codexs, and have them buffed up to be worth taking at their current costs.

[Tropical Ghost General]

With points drops the rumours were originally 20%-25% across the board for ghosts, but as it's got closer and closer to release of the GHB the percentage has decreased. At the moment it's generally rumoured that 20pts is the largest drop you might expect to see from anything which isn't going to be that helpful. 

The issue is that the GHB was printed before the release of Skaven and FEC books, so all the latest and bent battletomes aren't going to have any changes to the points. So when a verminlord costs 260pts but Death characters like Mannfred cost 420pts there is no way that it's even vaguely balanced. And I'm not wanting a chess style balance to the game but when certain units are so much more overcosted than others while in a similar role for the army it's not good for the game in my opinion. 

The other issue with points drops is that it leads to longer games. When CA18 came out the 40k community in my area generally moved from 2k games to 1750pts games, because yes the new points drops allowed more models to be in an army but it made the length of games much longer.

I do feel that if we are lucky and say get 20% points drops, that allows us to put more bodies on the board, great, but do those extra bodies become any more effective at tanking the 700+ attacks of 30 wytch elves or hearthguard or eels?

Do the extra points suddenly helps us overcome some of the fundamental issues that we have with our book being written ahead of the subtle changes that have taken place to rules, such as how unmodified 6s now do mortal wounds in addition to regular damage rather than instead of? Or how newer books have a change to re-roll mechanics with re-roll hits and re-roll wounds, rather than re-roll failed hits and failed wounds, which allows them to bypass negative to hit modifiers? 

I am looking forward to seeing what changes the GHB brings but I've lost hope after the lack luster LoG in FP that it will help address that of the books released for AoS 2.0 we are clearly at the bottom. 

[SleeperAgent]

3 hours ago, Tropical Ghost General said:

With points drops the rumours were originally 20%-25% across the board for ghosts, but as it's got closer and closer to release of the GHB the percentage has decreased. At the moment it's generally rumoured that 20pts is the largest drop you might expect to see from anything which isn't going to be that helpful. 

The issue is that the GHB was printed before the release of Skaven and FEC books, so all the latest and bent battletomes aren't going to have any changes to the points. So when a verminlord costs 260pts but Death characters like Mannfred cost 420pts there is no way that it's even vaguely balanced. And I'm not wanting a chess style balance to the game but when certain units are so much more overcosted than others while in a similar role for the army it's not good for the game in my opinion. 

The other issue with points drops is that it leads to longer games. When CA18 came out the 40k community in my area generally moved from 2k games to 1750pts games, because yes the new points drops allowed more models to be in an army but it made the length of games much longer.

I do feel that if we are lucky and say get 20% points drops, that allows us to put more bodies on the board, great, but do those extra bodies become any more effective at tanking the 700+ attacks of 30 wytch elves or hearthguard or eels?

Do the extra points suddenly helps us overcome some of the fundamental issues that we have with our book being written ahead of the subtle changes that have taken place to rules, such as how unmodified 6s now do mortal wounds in addition to regular damage rather than instead of? Or how newer books have a change to re-roll mechanics with re-roll hits and re-roll wounds, rather than re-roll failed hits and failed wounds, which allows them to bypass negative to hit modifiers? 

I am looking forward to seeing what changes the GHB brings but I've lost hope after the lack luster LoG in FP that it will help address that of the books released for AoS 2.0 we are clearly at the bottom. 

I'm certain Nighthaunt need a new book to get out of the lower tiers. Too many armies have mortal wounds on 6's now and get to keep attacking, AND have better to hit and wound. Spirit Hosts are a big example of this. Hitting on 5's and wounding on 4's without rend is atrocious. Not to mention the fact that some units are basically unkillable for our army if they take Ignax's Scales. We just came out too early in 2.0 and got the shaft. And because of Nagash, I fully expect Grimghast Reapers to go UP in points or lose their horde discount.

Regardless, I will be happy to field more spooky bois.

[Tropical Ghost General]

1 minute ago, SleeperAgent said:

Regardless, I will be happy to field more spooky bois.

100% this

[SleeperAgent]

Just now, Tropical Ghost General said:

100% this

To make us competitive without making a whole new book they could give us a sweet terrain piece. Ive long since said I want a Herdstone type model, but it debuffs bravery. Starts at 6", goes up 6" every turn. Give non-nighthaunt units -1 bravery equal to the current battle round. Maybe also heal summonable units in range to match the battleshock immunity of herdstone.

[Tropical Ghost General]

@SleeperAgent a terrain piece that gives full revival to a dead unit would be great, failing that bravery debuffs and healing buffs would be mega helpful. The last few months have definitely been a 'coming to terms' with the fact that NH are not going to get any help any time soon, at least not until all the other books have been updated.

[SleeperAgent]

3 minutes ago, Tropical Ghost General said:

@SleeperAgent a terrain piece that gives full revival to a dead unit would be great, failing that bravery debuffs and healing buffs would be mega helpful. The last few months have definitely been a 'coming to terms' with the fact that NH are not going to get any help any time soon, at least not until all the other books have been updated. 

Well I have hopes that we will get a terrain piece much sooner than the updates. Stormcast IDKn and DOK all  need terrain pieces as well. So I could see Nighthaunt getting their terrain piece in short order with those others. Bare minimum for them to be 2.0 fully.

[Tropical Ghost General]

Deepkin already have a terrain piece (spooky boat). SCE are buffed with the new scenery stuff and tbh will always be in line for updates. DoK are definitely not in need of any help at the moment 😂.

There are other armies that are also 2.0 that haven't had the spells/terrain treatment as well, LoN, Maggotkin, etc...and as we technically have endless spells (even if they are the worst in the game) I don't think we'll get any help until everything else has been updated.

It's worth remembering that DEATH has another book release this year as well.

[dmorley21]

I don't see either happening anytime soon, but I'd rather have a new book that rewrites some war scrolls instead of a piece of terrain. To me, Nightmare Lanterns and Black Coaches should be as close to terrain as the army gets due to the lore of the army.

As for the new GHB, is anybody else hoping for battalion point drops? I think that could have a large impact.

[Spears]

So its pretty blurry and possibly completely rubbish but from what I can make out.

Dreadblades - 10

Both Knight of shrouds -20

Olynder-10

Reiknor -10

Coach -40

Chainghasts -10

Harridans -10 Still have some sort of max size discount.

Hexwraiths -20

Myrmourns -10 no discount at max size

Shyish reaper and vault of souls -20

Grimghasts and Kurdoss have changed but I cant make it out at all.

Edited June 14, 2019 by Spears

[Qrow]

1 minute ago, Spears said:

So its pretty blurry and possibly completely rubbish but from what I can make out.

Dreadblades - 10

Both Knight of shrouds -20

Olynder-10

Reiknor -10

Coach -40

Chainghasts -10

Harridans -10

Hexwraiths -20

Myrmourns -10 no discount at max size

Shyish reaper and vault of souls -20

Grimghasts and Kurdoss have changed but I cant make it out at all.

Where did you get the leak from? Because I want to believe

[Spears]

Twitter.  It's some promotional material advertising the GHB booklet in german, has nighthaunt and some destruction points on it.

Like I say its fairly blurry though. 

Edited June 14, 2019 by Spears

[Ahn-ket]

6 minutes ago, Spears said:

Twitter.  It's some promotional material advertising the GHB booklet in german, has nighthaunt and some destruction points on it.

Like I say its fairly blurry though. 

Can you Post a Link to it or tell what you use to search

 

[Qrow]

That looks like a 420 next to the grimghast reapers to me... ouch but sadly expected.

Kurdoss at 200

Harridans 80/280 (YES)

bladeghiest 90/320

Hexwriaths 140

If this leak is real then I'm a pretty happy camper

[Spears]

It seems to go some way to sorting out our internal balance, will need the whole book to see how Nighthaunt stand as a faction post points though as I don't think these do much for the more common builds.

[Qrow]

At 20 points, while not optimal at all, the endless spells may at least be seen occasionally.