AoS 2 - Nighthaunt Discussion

[Tropical Ghost General]

7 hours ago, MrRoff said:

First of, is Mournghoul 

Beautiful model, bad rules for the points. Play it in fun games but not competitive. 

7 hours ago, MrRoff said:

Magic: All DEATH WIZARDS

The spell lore in LoN is in 2 parts. Deathmages (Necromancers) and Vampires (Vamp Lord, etc). The mortarchs and Nagash (praise be) can take spells from either lore. All other wizards can only take spells from the spell lore that the keywords on their warscrolls let them. 

Also Nagash and Arkhan have an ability that let's them know the spells of all other DEATH wizards. I believe it was FAQ'd that endless spells don't count, because you need to pay the points for them, so if two death players face each other, one brings Nagash, one brings endless spells, the Nagash player can't use the endless spells as they haven't paid the points to use them. 

If you use GoS in LoN it can't use any of the spells from the spell lore. Also allies don't get access to spell lore, from either the main faction battletome or the ally unit's battletome. Also allies don't get access to artefacts or allegiance abilities (so no death saves). 

7 hours ago, MrRoff said:

please tell me what you think!

Firstly the realm spells can only be used if playing in that realm. Realms are normally picked at random before the game begins. So the GoS can't choose the Shyish spell as a spell for any old game. 

Also you can't ally in Necromancers, I wish you could, but Nighthaunt allies are Soulblight & Deathlords only. Necromancers are deathmages so can't be allied, unless you are playing narrative or open play games, just not in matched play. 

As I've been saying more and more recently, you have to play as many games against as many opponents as possible to figure out what units work for you. In my local meta, it's fairly competitive, lots of behemoth heroes with doppelganger cloaks, etc...so there are only a small handful of units in the book that I can use if I want to survive longer than a single turn. Everyone's local meta is different, so advising on lists is purely speculative and the opinions you'll get will generally vary wildly, and may not be useful to you and your play style. In my opinion you have some good starting blocks but it's missing some key elements. Listen to this podcast for more help on list building http://podcast.justplaygames.uk/how-to-build-a-tournament-winning-list

[miguel_fernan]

12 hours ago, adreal said:

Pulled from the thread in general, this is the list that did well at the SoCal open

 

The thing that surprises me the most of that list is that it has no cogs. It seems really weird not to have it when you are apearing at 9 and want to charge so bad that turn. Also I dont have the chainghast and I am also surprised they are there, are they worth it?

Fast edit: Unrelated, tomorrow Im facing Nurgle in my league. Is the first time I play against them, what should I expect?

Edited November 3, 2018 by miguel_fernan

[adreal]

Would depend on what if anything he puts in the underworld.

 

The buff to bladeghiests that spirit torments and chainghasts give would be why he has them I imagine, it's a 24" bubble of rerolling hits with 3 attacks on the charge, seems pretty good to me (shrugs)

[Tropical Ghost General]

It's the small size of the units of the blades that surprised me. Everytime I've ran less than 15 they get one shotted off the table, even when in the battalion. 

In all honesty, the 3 lists that have done well at major comps (Blackout, GW GT Final & Cali Comp), all of the lists have been wildly different, none of them have followed the conventional 'rules' behind successful list building. That last one has no cogs, 7 drops (which is quite high), and just 10 grims. I also don't think that any of those lists are particularly easy to use for the average player and I suspect that their was a fair amount of luck involved with which missions and realms were played. It's great to see ghosts doing well at comps though, makes me feel hopeful and sad at the same time. 

[MeridarchGekkota]

What would you guys say are "essential" purchases for Nighthaunt?

[Tropical Ghost General]

10 minutes ago, MeridarchGekkota said:

What would you guys say are "essential" purchases for Nighthaunt?

The battletome 

[Tropical Ghost General]

@MeridarchGekkota To be honest it depends massively on your local meta and budget. While board at work today I figured out that I have got:
- 6440pts of built and painted models.
- 2530pts of heroes. 
- 3330pts in units (including doing horde bonuses wherever possible).
- 580pts in behemoths.
I also have 340pts of unbuilt heroes left over from soul wars, plus the 2 of the 500th store bladegheists ?. I also don't own any harridans (yet) and not enough hexwraiths, myrmourns or Black Coaches either. 

The general units that are super easy 'plug and play' types are grimghasts (grims), chainrasps (rasps). Best heroes are spirit torments (ST), guardian of souls (GoS) , Knight of Shrouds on ethereal steed (KoSos) and Reikenor (Riek). Also an ally of a Vampire Lord (VL) is a general staple of most armies. Taking cogs endless spell is also the norm for most players. Other units like myrmourn banshees (myrmourns) , bladegheist revenants (blades), dreadscythe harridans (harridans) are all units that require a little more finesse to play. Then hexwraiths (hexs) and spirit hosts (SHs) are not the best choices when compared with other options in the book. Our only behemoth options are black coach (BC) which is temperamental and the mourngul (old wispy hair) which currently isn't doing enough for it's points. 

Getting the warscroll cards is super handy. Getting 2 x soul wars can be a great starting block for any army. Getting movement trays helps to speed up game play if you play larger horde units. The anniversary GoS is awesome in both sculpt and warscroll. Best advice is go with rule of cool, use proxies to try stuff out, and most importantly play lots of games against lots of opponents, whether large or small, and you'll learn very quickly what works and doesn't work for you. 

 

[Ithlinne]

Talking about Movement Trays... can you recommend some? Element Games ones are quite cool since models are base2base....but only 5 minis each and they are not exactly cheap?

What do you use?

[Tropical Ghost General]

20 minutes ago, Ithlinne said:

What do you use?

Element games ones ?

[MeridarchGekkota]

3 hours ago, Tropical Ghost General said:

The battletome 

Very droll. ?

3 hours ago, Tropical Ghost General said:

The general units that are super easy 'plug and play' types are grimghasts (grims), chainrasps (rasps). Best heroes are spirit torments (ST), guardian of souls (GoS) , Knight of Shrouds on ethereal steed (KoSos) and Reikenor (Riek). Also an ally of a Vampire Lord (VL) is a general staple of most armies. Taking cogs endless spell is also the norm for most players. Other units like myrmourn banshees (myrmourns) , bladegheist revenants (blades), dreadscythe harridans (harridans) are all units that require a little more finesse to play. Then hexwraiths (hexs) and spirit hosts (SHs) are not the best choices when compared with other options in the book. Our only behemoth options are black coach (BC) which is temperamental and the mourngul (old wispy hair) which currently isn't doing enough for it's points. 

Getting the warscroll cards is super handy. Getting 2 x soul wars can be a great starting block for any army. Getting movement trays helps to speed up game play if you play larger horde units. The anniversary GoS is awesome in both sculpt and warscroll. Best advice is go with rule of cool, use proxies to try stuff out, and most importantly play lots of games against lots of opponents, whether large or small, and you'll learn very quickly what works and doesn't work for you.

This is really good stuff, thanks. How would you say Dreadblade Harrows are? I was considering picking them up to paint and see how much I like the sculpts.

[Tropical Ghost General]

47 minutes ago, MeridarchGekkota said:

How would you say Dreadblade Harrows are

As stand alone models not great. As a general for a list built entirely around the teleporting mechanic, they are alright

[Tropical Ghost General]

So I've just found out that the majority of my local gaming group got 4-1's at Blood and Glory. The rest getting 3-2's. And one person getting 1 draw, 4 loses. No wonder I've been having difficulty playing with my spooks against them, they're all decent tournament players ?. 

[Tropical Ghost General]

More instances of bedsheets doing better in LoN at Blood and Glory. 

So I haven't seen the full results, but it looks like LoN took top 3 at Blood and Glory this weekend.

All lists using a unit of either 20 or 30 grims.
The top list used 2 units of 6 spirit hosts. Then buffed them with a necromancers spell 'vanhels danse macabre' to make them attack twice in the combat phase. And then further buffed them with a Vamp lord on dragon to give the unit re-roll failed hit rolls until next hero phase. So that 36 attacks, twice, re-rolling failed hits to create a shed ton of mortal wounds. Just another case of bedsheets being better in LoN than they are in their own book ?.
Hats off to the winner (Russ) for some well thought out list building and combo shenanigans.

[CanHammer-darren]

We all know grimghast are the bomb. Doesn’t really matter what rest of the list is haha

[Tropical Ghost General]

1 hour ago, CanHammer-darren said:

We all know grimghast are the bomb

I'm having to look at other options to grims, they aren't effective against the majority of my opponents any more. Sucks major plums. ?

[Tropical Ghost General]

OK. So latest tournament news for those who are interested.

The Blood & Glory GT results are in. 166 players took part, 8 were bedsheet generals. 5 games over 2 days. 

Placings were 60th, 74th, 92nd, 104th, 113th, 127th, 147th & 163rd. Meta attendance of 4.8% and a win rate of 40%.

Well done to those that took part and a shame that no one could get a 4-1 or 5-0, but as I've said on other posts, we are a mid tier army with a weak book.

Also it turns out that my friend who absolutely smashed by death stalkers list came 24th out if 166. Others in my group came 28th, 32nd and 48th. I think it's fair to say I have a mildly competitive local meta ?. 

Edited November 5, 2018 by Tropical Ghost General

[Neffelo]

2 hours ago, Tropical Ghost General said:

OK. So latest tournament news for those who are interested.

The Blood & Glory GT results are in. 166 players took part, 8 were bedsheet generals. 5 games over 2 days. 

Placings were 60th, 74th, 92nd, 104th, 113th, 127th, 147th & 163rd. Meta attendance of 4.8% and a win rate of 40%.

Well done to those that took part and a shame that no one could get a 4-1 or 5-0, but as I've said on other posts, we are a mid tier army with a weak book.

Also it turns out that my friend who absolutely smashed by death stalkers list came 24th out if 166. Others in my group came 28th, 32nd and 48th. I think it's fair to say I have a mildly competitive local meta ?. 

So, I get that we didn't do well this tournament, but placing top 3 in several recent tournaments does not indicate weak book or mid tier to me. Let's also take into account that the lists were vairied as well in these placings.

[Tropical Ghost General]

Just now, Neffelo said:

top 3 in several recent tournaments

We have had a few good results I agree, but if you look at the overall data from all the tournaments since 2.0, and it's not great tbh. I love the spooks, but I'm also realistic with the data that comes from these events. 

[CanHammer-darren]

How bout if all night haunts get played by poor players? That will skew numbers.   Only 4.8% of the players. That’s not big numbers on which to base anything.  Will need a lot more numbers to show that these finishes are outside the realm of chance 

[Neffelo]

10 minutes ago, Tropical Ghost General said:

We have had a few good results I agree, but if you look at the overall data from all the tournaments since 2.0, and it's not great tbh. I love the spooks, but I'm also realistic with the data that comes from these events. 

It's also one of the new player armies, as well as being a bit more difficult to play well, due to the complexity, compared to say deepkin or dok.  These are both pretty big factors as well.  

[Tropical Ghost General]

1 hour ago, CanHammer-darren said:

Only 4.8% of the players.

The meta percentage shows the popularity of spooks at competitive events. And while the fact that poor players can make up those numbers, the same can be said for every faction. SCE, DoK, Deepkin are also all new armies, but they are performing consistently better at events than spooks. And outside of the comp scene there are a lot of spook players, as they are in the main boxset.

I love spooks, but the army is very different in AoS 2.0 to how it was in AoS 1.0 and I'm not sure if it's better or not tbh. The battletome is weak and has lots of flaws, an example of this would be the command traits for general, in particular - Terrifying Entity - It states that for each unit in 3" roll a  single dice and if the roll is equal to or higher than the units bravery characteristic they have to make a retreat move. So how does this work against bravery 7+, it doesn't. Now if we could bravery bomb, which we can only do with endless spells, it might be effective or useful. Sure we can add the -1 from Aura of dread, but most low bravery  units can also use the bravery characteristics of nearby heroes or other similar buffs. So even if you take one of the lowest bravery scores in the game, a 4, it's a 50/50 chance that you'll do anything with the ability. Why they didn't make it roll 2d6 or something like that I don't know, but it's just one of many examples throughout the book where the abilities and functions of units don't work very well when on the tabletop. 

At blood and glory a lot of LoN players were using spooks, especially grims, and due to how LoN got the top 3 and generally dominated at the tournament, it's pretty obvious that a nerf will be coming to grims in the future. So without grimghasts, where does that leave us as a competitive presence in the tournament scene? Personally I have started writing lists without any grims in them, because While I may be negative with my comments on bedsheets, I am at least trying to solve some of the problems that we face as a faction, rather than not accept them. We are a mid-tier army, we are near the top of the mid-tier armies, but we are no way a top tier army. Very good players can make even mediocre units work, but that doesn't mean that everyone can, I certainly couldn't make those 3 winning lists work on the tabletop.

Now I've said these points over and over, and apart from anecdotal evidence, I've yet to have been proved wrong on this.

• We are a horde army, that's a fact. Using lots of small units doesn't work as none of them have enough damage or staying power.
• We play the attrition game, but are not the best at it by a long shot, try playing against Nurgle or LoN and seeing who survives and revives better.
• We have no summoning ability.
• We have no big monsters that can go toe-to-toe with stuff like a VLoZD or maw krusha, adn certainly no big monsters that can take relics.
• None of our heroes are particularly killy. Lord O can be an effective mortal wound assassin, but she's expensive in points cost for what she can do.
• None of our units do multiple damage except myrmourns and they are very fragile.
• The only non hero units that have multiple wounds are hexwraiths and SHs, neither are great choices, hexwraiths become decent in the death riders battalion but are too expensive outside of it and SHs are lauded as the must have choice, but they really are not great not that mortal are unmodified 6s.
• All of our heroes can be one shotted off the board without too much effort, which leaves our units very exposed. GW rules teams have put too much point cost on unrendable save, they always have and always will.
• We have magic but are weak at it. Our spell lore is not good either. We need debuffs and instead we have spells like reaper scythe, which is never worth it.
• We have the most pointless faction specific endless spells. One of which heals D3 or kills D3, yet it doesn't revive D3 though, so useless for almost everything that we have. 
• We have a lot of attacks and abilities that rely on bravery related elements, yet no way of bravery bombing outside of endless spells. I can take harridans in Legion of Blood as an ally and get a -3/-4 bravery with ease. That makes there ability worth while.
• The majority of our battalions rely on a single spell to go off or a single hero to still be on the tabletop, both of these things are incredibly easy to navigate around and nullify the battalion ability. 
• We are incredibly weak to mortal wound spam, especially if our heroes get sniped first. 
• All ghosts are better in LoN than they are in their own book.
• Without cogs we struggle to do what we need to do.

Now as I've also stated before, time and time again, I love ghosts, but I'm realistic with what we have. I'm playing lots of games and running lots of different combos and formations, testing and trying things out. I somehow have managed to amass over 6k of these bedsheets ?, but I know the limitations that we have as an army. A few of us on this forum have bounced ideas around as simple fixes to help things out. And it's not major changes either, stuff like...

• Give named characters a 3+ save.
• Make one of the endless spells a buffing spell, like SCE have or BoC have, rather than 3 rubbish predatory spells that never get used.
• Allow the hero in shroudguard to benefit from the 5+ death save as well as the bladegheists. Lower the cost of The Condemned battalion by 30pts or so as well.
• Have a method to bravery bomb or failing that, have a built in 2d6+3 to bravery rolls, so that the bravery related attacks have a chance to do something. Or have a spell in the spell lore that lowers bravery by half, making 10s to 5s, etc... There is a lot of bravery 8+ currently in the meta, meaning the majority of what we have is useless against almost everything.
• Make Reikenor  cast 2 spells a turn, yet still deny 1. He's meant to be a super wizard FFS. Increase his cost if need be, but make him a decent wizard.
• Make bladegheists, myrmourns and harridans 2 wounds each. Give them a points increase if need be, but give the army some actual elite units.

Now all of those points listed would be great in a dream world scenario, but it will never happen. So all that we can do, is try and figure out how to play with what we have got, which is what I do, but I find repeatedly that a lot of players reference odd single victories in competitions or in personal games. I've started working on a nighthaunt specific table of competition results, to get a much more in-depth picture of how we are doing as an army, and it's not great.

I'm also finding that there is this delusional optimism amongst many spook players, and I've never experienced it with any other faction or army, and that's in both AoS and 40k.  To have negative opinions on things gets chastised and denied by a lot of ghost players, yet without proving any evidence to back it up, with the majority of comments going along the lines of "Well it works for me, so therefore...", now this attitude is not helpful to a community, as it prevents any real discussions taking place on how to fix the problems, replacing discussions with denials that the problems even exist. If I took the same approach, I'd be constantly saying that grimghasts are rubbish and taking 30 is pointless, don't bother with grimghasts, but that's because I've recently discovered from the results at Blood & Glory, that I have a really competitive local meta, where all the players know how to very quickly dismantled 2 x 30 grims in a turn or two. So for me grimghasts aren't the best choice, but that doesn't mean that they aren't the best choice for 95% of every other player out there, and my opinion doesn't magically change the maths behind how much of hammer 30 grims are, because they are gross, they really are. A classic example of this delusional optimism is going onto something like fb group and stating that SHs are not very good, because the maths shows that they are not the best choice of the options we have available, yes they have a 1/6 chance of doing mortal wounds, but other than those mortal wounds, they hit on 4s, wound on 5s, with 0 rend. That is not a good choice, to revive a dead model requires a 5+ as well. Yet even with this information, these hard facts, you'll get a torrent of denials of why they are the best thing in the book. It's really odd and as I stated above, I've never experienced it in any other faction group. Now the whole reason for that rant was to highlight that it's not healthy for the community, it's not helping anyone to overcome the issues that players are facing on a regular basis. So many ghost players have switched over to LoN, because it's a much better book and way more forgiving to mistakes in gameplay. 

Basically, there are have a few good results, but the majority of tournament results have been in the mid to bottom half of the table. So how can we improve on this? I think we need to identify where we have issues. One I've recently found is that we struggle when trying to deal with big monsters with relics. The solution I've found is to stick the Chamon relic 'Gildanbane' on a Lord Ex. As the relic negates enemy relic abilities within 3". Also the Lord ex makes enemy heroes have -1 to hit when within 3". Also, out of all of our heroes, due to the extra 5+ against mortal wounds, the Lord Ex is the tankiest hero we have, and you want him to survive long enough that your 30 grims can charge a doppelganger cloacked monster on a 10+ and get the free attack and wipe it off the board, Also at 80pts, it's relatively cheap to make happen. It's by identifying the issues that solutions can be found, not by denying that there are any problems.

Edited November 5, 2018 by Tropical Ghost General

[Espy85]

@Tropical Ghost General I understand what you say, because I also have to endure those who do not play nighthaunts but are convinced that it is a great army. I have already abandoned the reapers. now I'm getting along with 2x40 chainrasp and 2x4 chainghast and I'm trying to figure out what else to add. the book should be rewritten, but it will not happen. But I always remind you that our army has not yet received personal Faqs, so I still hope that they will change something.

Edited November 5, 2018 by Espy85

[Future]

Insert comment about many worse factions who could never win 3 big events. In all seriousness the only issue I have is that the units perform better in soup, that sucks.

[Spears]

Just to pipe in as the player in 92nd, game 1 was my second game of 2k Aos which I stupidly won and then faced the top Idoneth player followed by the top Daughters of Khaine player so I wouldn't put too much weight on it.

[Neck-Romantic]

 Adding a reroll armor save mechanic would go a long way for our survivability imho.

Blades and Harridans 2 wound would be a disaster with our current heal OR rez mechanic; if you think about it