LoN after grimghast reapers.

[dmorley21]

6 minutes ago, Espy85 said:

I would also like more choices, at the end I play only one unit of 30 reapers, the rest are the dreadscythe and the myrmourn for the  shrieker host. if with a nerf the reapers improve the rest, I would be satisfied, but I do not think it would happen. let's assume that they raise the cost of the reapers to 180/10, then how better is the rest? because if you limit yourself to raising the cost of the reapers, in my opinion, bring the players to keep out the other units to play only them. And it would be a pity. You must make sure that a player is encouraged to play the other units as well.

This is my thought too. If Reapers go up in costs, I'm still taking a unit of 30, but it means I have less points to field something different.

Also, this isn't the appropriate thread, but I'm curious to hear about your experience running a Shrieker Host in the Nighthaunt thread.

[Tropical Ghost General]

1 hour ago, Takaloy said:

Also I think you're missing the point. If you're happy to have only one unit in your army, fair play but I rather all options are viable

As a ghost player and LoN player I agree that grims are a bit OP in LoN due to the large amount of healing available and summoning if the unit dies. But in ghosts, without grims the army is garbage. We are a horde army that has weak magic and weak units. Most of our horde units die really easily with only 1 wound and needing to be wholly within to get a death save. Grims are our one decent unit, we literally have no other choices that can even vaguely compete in a comp scene. After Blackout ghosts haven't placed in top 10 and are currently hovering around the middle to the bottom of the results table. I'll say again that I agree with you, more choices is better but pure ghosts don't have any. 

[Espy85]

23 minutes ago, Tropical Ghost General said:

As a ghost player and LoN player I agree that grims are a bit OP in LoN due to the large amount of healing available and summoning if the unit dies. But in ghosts, without grims the army is garbage. We are a horde army that has weak magic and weak units. Most of our horde units die really easily with only 1 wound and needing to be wholly within to get a death save. Grims are our one decent unit, we literally have no other choices that can even vaguely compete in a comp scene. After Blackout ghosts haven't placed in top 10 and are currently hovering around the middle to the bottom of the results table. I'll say again that I agree with you, more choices is better but pure ghosts don't have any. 

Applause. It's what I try to say from some posts. We can not damage the Nighthaunts due to the flaws of Nagash. Our book already has a thousand flaws, it has been objectively written by an inadequate game designer, if we nerf the only thing we have, then it is worth not to play it.

dmorley

42 minutes ago, dmorley21 said:

This is my thought too. If Reapers go up in costs, I'm still taking a unit of 30, but it means I have less points to field something different.

Also, this isn't the appropriate thread, but I'm curious to hear about your experience running a Shrieker Host in the Nighthaunt thread.

exactly, if you raise the cost of the reapers you will only play them and the rest will remain on the shelf.
My experience is excellent, it is the only warscroll battallion able to give you something useful beyond the command points and the artifact. If you want, I'll talk about it in the nighthaunt community.

[Ravinsild]

ITT: OP: Hey Legions of Nagash players what should we do once Grimghasts are inevitable nerfed? 

Reponse: Angry Nighthaunt players telling us how their Army sucks and they need them completely missing the point. 

It’s not only possible but entirely probable the changes will only effect Legions of Nagash so idk why Nighthaunt players are worried and also not coming up with solutions to the posed question  

[Takaloy]

55 minutes ago, dmorley21 said:

Well, based on tournaments, Nighthaunt already is not doing well competitively as a force. They won once , have not placed top 10 since (as far as I know), and it's rare to see them even in the top half of armies at a tournament. 

I just looked at the Angelcore lists, and didn't see a single Nighthaunt list. All of the lists are Legions of Nagash featuring Nighthaunt units.

I suppose we can be pedantic and say you are correct. Let's take Ben's list for example: 

* Nagash
* Necromancer
* Guardian of Souls
* Chainrasp
* Grimghasts

the rests are tax units. Legion of Sacrament is the only non-Nagash list at the top, which runs blocks of spirit hosts. 

The way I see it, everyone's just playing Nighthaunt with GHON allegiance with a creative dude building bunker roadblocks with Spirit Hosts.

[Espy85]

I'm not up to date on the latest tournaments, I only saw the facehammer lists recently, and the deaths ended up in the top ten did not have nighthaunts, ianob played deathmarch with vlozd, necromancer and lord, the other player used the legion of blood with court of nuhlamia and 2x5 zombie wolves and 10 zombies.
I do not dispute the fact that the reapers can be overpowered if used in the legions, I thought as soon as I read the warscroll on the net, but I do not think it is right that this affects the army of nighthaunts.

[Tropical Ghost General]

12 minutes ago, Ravinsild said:

Hey Legions of Nagash players what should we do once Grimghasts are inevitable nerfed? 

Good point. I fell into the whinging horde, I am a ghost player, it's thematic. 

If grims get nerfed in LoN, then you go back to the other core hitters, GG, Black Knights, big sword skele blobs. There are lots of viable options, it's not an issue for LoN if grims get nerfed, it's just a case of going back to how it was before. 

Now if grims get nerfed in ghost armies well..... 

[Ravinsild]

2 minutes ago, Tropical Ghost General said:

Good point. I fell into the whinging horde, I am a ghost player, it's thematic. 

If grims get nerfed in LoN, then you go back to the other core hitters, GG, Black Knights, big sword skele blobs. There are lots of viable options, it's not an issue for LoN if grims get nerfed, it's just a case of going back to how it was before. 

Now if grims get nerfed in ghost armies well..... 

Well I still favor Grave Guard, Black Knights and Skeletons by the bucketload myself. 

I don’t have any ghosts and all my lists are either essentially wholly Deathrattle or essentially wholly Vampires

[Ravinsild]

However this begs the question: If it were 80 points for 10 Grave Guard would they suddenly be amazing? 

Is the issue that Grave Guard aren’t good or Grimghasts are too good? 

5 Grave Guard are the same as 10 skeletons and only go up to 30 as opposed to 40. 

They have the same movement, 1 better save, 1 more base attack but no scaling with unit size, actual rend, wound better and hit better by default barring special rules, the same charge and bravery debuff, and a chance for double damage. 

So if it were 10 GG for 80 points would they be OP or just plain old fashioned good? Not too good, and for sure better than before, but in that sweet spot of just right? 

After all rend ruins skeletons, whereas ghosts aren’t effected, the ghosts move farther, the ghosts fly, and have a default better save.... 

even if Grave Guard got buffed via points or something, they’re still slower in every aspect with a worse defense almost guaranteed... would anyone still take them? 

[WoollyMammoth]

Regardless of your opinions there is going to be a change to reapers come the January FAQ. LoN with 60 Reapers and NH with 60 reaper lists are currently 20% of the meta and counting. If GW does not fix this tournaments will devolve into nothing but reaper on reaper games and all of their time spent on all the other armies will be wasted. Too many people will want reapers so they will go out of stock for months and cause all kinds of problems. It is not a question of "if" there will be a change, but what that change will be.

First on the topic of NH, it is an extremely competitive army. Just because the meta is going in one direction doesn't mean that NH is bad. There have been NH competing at the top tables in many tournaments and events in the last couple months. Two weeks ago a pure NH list beat a 60 reaper legion of sacrament list and an insane Khorne list to win a local tournament. The entirety of NH is flying  with good speed and can ambush. Immunity to rend is nearly a hard counter to elite armies, especially monsters. Chanrasp are great, Kurdoss is a beast, Myrmourn have a lot of punch, Reikenor nearly guarantees Endless Spell combos and there is some awesome synergy going on. The only thing about NH is that they are heavily being played by new players (and losing games with them) while experienced players are still working them out.  For these reasons there is no 'netlist' that everyone can refer to. Competitive players have all turned to 60 reaper LoN lists, but that does not mean that NH is not a good army.

The LoN book was probably the most competitive book that came out this year. The entire grand alliance of Death now has a myriad of ways to play with several beatstick allegiance stuff. It got nerfed a little with the last FAQ but it is still very strong, even without Reapers. Reapers takes it to another level to be the strongest list right now.  

Blood Knights took the hardest hit but I agree that Grave Guard could use a point decrease. Even so, they are in a really good place right now. The problem with them was always that you could not afford to have them targeted down, but now you can just bring them back with 1CP - so they are easily worth their points.

So what changes are needed? I don't think they are just going to add 20 points to reapers and call it a day (though they might). I think the problem is that gravesites are a bit too strong, and reapers are a bit too strong, and when you give them free compatibility it gets out of control. So - the simplest change is to just take reapers out of the list of LoN units and make people pay for them as allies, restricting them to about 30 per LoN army. 

An alternative way to solve the problem is to take a closer look at the "summonable" mechanic. Too much stuff is summonable right now. If they update the gravesites (and Necromancer spell) to target only 'battleline' units, this would preserve much of their strength without completely nerfing them. What is probably the most needed is to give opponents a way to interact with gravesites, but that would require a lot more complicated of a rule - which is not likely going to happen. 

Unfortunately there tends to be a 'rule of 3' with GW nerfs .. so expect reapers to be removed from LoN, get a point hike and have their summonable keyword removed.....

 

[Tropical Ghost General]

4 minutes ago, WoollyMammoth said:

it is an extremely competitive army

Before I start I must stress that I love my bedsheet army and won't stop playing them, but.... 

My local meta is fairly competitive, it's not top table smash face but it's not weak. I've tried numerous different ways to play ghosts, I have spent a lot of money on all the new shinyness and without grims we are weak. Our magic is not great. Our ignore rend is done by lots of other units in the game already, as they either ignore -1 or -2 rend or will be going up against 0 rend attacks. We play the attrition game but are the worst at it (LoN, Nurgle, etc...). We have no summoning. We have no big nasty monsters (Rip Mourngul). Our named heroes (other than Riek) are overpriced. Yes netlists are running 60 grims but look at the pure ghost lists at the major tournaments, they aren't all running 60 grims and where have they placed, not very high unfortunately. It all comes down to the fact that all our other units being too easy to counter. I played 40 rasps and attacked a treelord in a wyldwood as it was on an objective that I needed to claim, 2 rounds of combat with 160 attacks didn't do a single wound. Played with myrmourns in nearly every game since relesse, which to work well and not die in a single turn need a spirit torment, GoS, KoSos and maybe a VL, plus a cheap endless to eat and a cheap screening unit to absorb attacks, so a 210pt unit requires around 640pts of HQ, screening and spell support to be effective, yet can still die really easily in a single turn. Now we do have some good HQ and they all benefit from look out sir, so it's lucky that they can't ever be taken out in a single hero phase of magic, oh wait a minute, let's get realm spells added on to already powerful magic armies and then it's easily a case of "I didn't really want to use that hero anyway, I'm glad you killed it". We do have an amazing 10+ charge mechanic though, it is fully gross and has single handedly won me so many games, but wait, your general has doppelganger cloak which negates the ability altogether, so I can charge you and just get a free pile in move instead of a pile in and attack. And as for the bravery thing, LoB has an option to bravery bomb, yet ghosts don't have any way to buff the bravery attacks and spells we have except with taking expensive endless spells which we struggle to cast due to guff magic. 

Sorry for the long winded whining but to say that ghosts are viable without grims and are extremely competitive is not looking at the results from all the major tournaments or is coming from playing them in a weaker meta than most. I saw how good grims were when the book dropped, and already having 2k of old ghosts tried so many other ways to win games without them, and it wasn't until I started using large units of grims that I was able to survive past turn 3/turn 4.

So back to LoN talk.... 

Gravesites are strong, summoning is strong but it's also really easy to counter gravesites already, if you allow further interactions to prevent summoning then you need to do the same adding interactions to Khorne, Nurgle, lizard, summoning and all the other summoning. A points increase will happen for grims but they are good enough unit at the moment that it probably won't stop LoN players using them. I don't see GW taking them out of LoN though, as it's basically the new Death Grand Alliance book and they want to sell models at the end of the day. 

The end times of 60 grims being used in LoN isn't happening anytime soon and I don't think it will change after points increases. The only thing that I can see having an impact on grims in LoN is having a big change to the general rules, such as Monster Heroes can't take artefacts or some other big change. The current meta is either spamming big monsters or spamming hard hitting troops, look at the current trends in DoK for example. There is nothing for LoN players to worry about. Now ghost players on the other hand, well...... 

[Espy85]

We start from a preamble, the graveguard cost too much, their right cost should be 120-140 for every 10 models. And in that case they would be played.
I repeat that the problem is not the reapers themselves, but their use in legion of nagash, but I do not find it fair to penalize the nighthaunts, just forbid them for the legions.
On the fact that the army is competitive I am disagreeing to the point.
Guys, we have no resistance, we can not resist against those who saturate, if a unit can do between 80 and 120 attacks, you find yourself trying to save 40 wounds at 4+, 20 injuries suffered means that your unity is dead, and we have no chance of recovering models, except in a situational way. Resistance is the biggest limit of this army, and I'm not a newbie, nor one who plays a little, I speak for what I saw on the field. Surely if we face armies that point to the yield, but with few attacks, we manage, but any unit or army that makes so many attacks sweeps away. And our offensive production is all tied to the grimghast, the only ones able to make 20 wounds when they attack. Bladegheist and Dreadscythe are too light, the first do not make more than 8-9 wounds, the second little more, a big unit we can not handle it.
I sincerely hope that the GW is likely to use the reapers with LoN, but above all that come out of the FAQs that fix some things. If they removed the word "entirely" for the second saving throw it would already be something.

Nighthaunt is a bad battletome, and this is a fact. 

For absurd all our units work better in legion of nagash, today the problem is the reapers, tomorrow will be the dreadscythe, when the players will realize that 80% of the units have bravery 7 or less, then they will use the legion of blood that inflicts a -2 automatically to the opponent, then 80% against us will drop to 5 and the dreadscythe will give the -1 to hit all enemies within 3 ", send them in charge in the company of a unit of blood knight and you will have another fanciful combination. I find it absurd that the nighthaunts have no way to lower the bravery of the opponents, it would be enough to add an additional -1 on the turn that you charge, so in that single phase you get a -2, from the next you go back to - 1.
On Heroes, if attacked they die badly, 7 wounds are very few. This army is ill-conceived and I think the GW knows it well. Moreover, all the armies just came out within two weeks of the wrong, our no, we are still waiting, probably because the game designers themselves had not as clear as it would have made on the field.

Sorry for long text, i am italian and have some difficulty with english, i would be clear. However you just have to wait and see

 

 

[WoollyMammoth]

@Tropical Ghost General
Nice post. You would fall under the  "experienced players are still working them out" that I made reference to. 

A few points-
 

• A lot of people were saying the NH book was complete garbage, I was just saying it wasn't, not that you should not play NH without Reapers. That's like saying try to play DoK without witches. But NH does have an alternative in BG Revenants which other than their 1" range are actually better than reapers and could easily fill out lists in place of reapers if need be. I wasn't saying to take away reapers from NH I was saying take them out of LoN, which is perfectly logical given many units already are not included, as well as the entirety of Flesh Eater Courts. 
• I'm sorry to hear about your attack on the Treelord but that is anecdotal. I've done the same thing with Skeletons and taken down the treelord. That being said the best option to assault a treelord is something with -2 rend, its going to be uphill without that, treelords with 2+ re-rolling 1s and immune to -1 rend is one of the most defensive units in the game. The best bet is to save up and focus all your mortal wound abilities on it and then focus it down. Regardless if you swarm a standard objective with a horde, you have more models and therefore take the objective regardless.
• The fact about other armies ignoring rend is not necessarily true. There are a few mechanics to ignore -1 and very rarely -2. Many units have -2 or better which work awesome against those units, but have no effect on NH. Overall rend is still a key ability sought by most armies.
• NH can get +3 to cast with Reiknor which puts them in a better place with magic than most armies. Certain armies like Nurgle would kill for something like this. In NH it can almost guarantee Cogs which is a huge deal given everything can ambush.
• It sounds like you are playing against armies that are building against you. I've not heard of anyone using the doppelganger cloak. Technically you could counter that with the Gildenbane. I have rolled a 10 to charge but had Kairos change my 6 to a 1 .. that hurts. 

Keep strong with the NH, you have the tools you just have to figure out the best way to use them. You'll get there. I don't think that all the units are as easy to counter as you think.

[dmorley21]

1 hour ago, Ravinsild said:

ITT: OP: Hey Legions of Nagash players what should we do once Grimghasts are inevitable nerfed? 

Reponse: Angry Nighthaunt players telling us how their Army sucks and they need them completely missing the point. 

It’s not only possible but entirely probable the changes will only effect Legions of Nagash so idk why Nighthaunt players are worried and also not coming up with solutions to the posed question  

My main reason was to point out that the unit does function a bit differently in the two armies, but point well taken!

I think the best choice would be to make them allies for LoN instead of just a unit.

1 hour ago, WoollyMammoth said:

Regardless of your opinions there is going to be a change to reapers come the January FAQ. LoN with 60 Reapers and NH with 60 reaper lists are currently 20% of the meta and counting. If GW does not fix this tournaments will devolve into nothing but reaper on reaper games and all of their time spent on all the other armies will be wasted. Too many people will want reapers so they will go out of stock for months and cause all kinds of problems. It is not a question of "if" there will be a change, but what that change will be.

First on the topic of NH, it is an extremely competitive army. Just because the meta is going in one direction doesn't mean that NH is bad. There have been NH competing at the top tables in many tournaments and events in the last couple months. Two weeks ago a pure NH list beat a 60 reaper legion of sacrament list and an insane Khorne list to win a local tournament. The entirety of NH is flying  with good speed and can ambush. Immunity to rend is nearly a hard counter to elite armies, especially monsters. Chanrasp are great, Kurdoss is a beast, Myrmourn have a lot of punch, Reikenor nearly guarantees Endless Spell combos and there is some awesome synergy going on. The only thing about NH is that they are heavily being played by new players (and losing games with them) while experienced players are still working them out.  For these reasons there is no 'netlist' that everyone can refer to. Competitive players have all turned to 60 reaper LoN lists, but that does not mean that NH is not a good army.
....
So what changes are needed? I don't think they are just going to add 20 points to reapers and call it a day (though they might). I think the problem is that gravesites are a bit too strong, and reapers are a bit too strong, and when you give them free compatibility it gets out of control. So - the simplest change is to just take reapers out of the list of LoN units and make people pay for them as allies, restricting them to about 30 per LoN army.

I haven't played in a local meta yet, but the people at my local gaming stores have told me that they don't win often. I struggled this weekend when both of my opponents and I were brand new to AoS after playing WHFB 8th Edition, so our experience level was the same. So when I look at posted tournament lists along with listen to a few different podcasts, in addition to what I put together on paper, I don't see an extremely competitive army.  I see a difficult to play army that can definitely do well, but can also really struggle and needs a lot of expertise.

Back to the thread's topic - I like the idea of making Nighthaunt outside of SH/Hexwraiths/Chainrasp allies.

32 minutes ago, Tropical Ghost General said:

So back to LoN talk.... 

Gravesites are strong, summoning is strong but it's also really easy to counter gravesites already, if you allow further interactions to prevent summoning then you need to do the same adding interactions to Khorne, Nurgle, lizard, summoning and all the other summoning. A points increase will happen for grims but they are good enough unit at the moment that it probably won't stop LoN players using them. I don't see GW taking them out of LoN though, as it's basically the new Death Grand Alliance book and they want to sell models at the end of the day.

Yeah, I played against LoN twice this weekend as my first games and I was able to counter the grave sites in both games. I don't think the grave sites need tobe changed. It's more the synergy between them Reapers.

If they're allies, I think many LoN players will stake take 30 Grims.

[Tropical Ghost General]

@WoollyMammoth

Cheers for the pointers. 

Blades are good, but the 2" range, re-rolls against 5+ models, larger unit size for better longevity and the fact that they are battleline make grims the better choice everytime. 

The treelord was unlucky, it has a 2+ save, re-rolling 1s. He killed my units but I revived them the next turn. The objective needed to be controlled by a hero with artefact or a wizard. It was one of those games where I had lost before any dice were rolled. The 160 attacks = 0 wounds was extra salt being rubbed in ?. Rend is a must against trees, which is why grims are a must ?. 

The ignore rend is useful but it's not OMG ? awesome. I play against lizards and LoN a lot and it's always a uphill struggle, things either ignore rend as well or revive quicker than you can kill them. In an average 2k game against LoN or lizards between 500pts - 1000pts of models can get summoned on, it's gross and makes a 2k game more if 2k vs 3k.

Reik is awesome, no complaints there, but overall our magic is weak AF. Cogs is an essential must take. And Nurgle may wish for a +3 to cast for a mortal wound but they have the stupid wheel of 'turn it to whatever bonus I feel like', they're not allowed a +3 to casting. 

If you haven't heard of doppelganger cloak then you need to start abusing it before it gets FAQ'd. It's gross. I have considered gilden bane, but it's a gamble as non of our heroes have the staying power to make it worth while. 

27 minutes ago, WoollyMammoth said:

I have rolled a 10 to charge but had Kairos change my 6 to a 1 .. that hurts. 

This makes me cry ?. 

 

Back to LoN... 

GG are expensive but they brutalise a lot, though they lack the speed of grims. 

Regular skeles are just too slow to replace grims. 40 sword skeles in GHoN with our Lord and saviour for the win every time. 

Morghasts are not fulfilling the same job role as grims, so aren't a suitable replacement. They are still good units, a little bit over priced imo. 

Black knights though I think are just as good, if not better than grims. If grims get nerfed beyond being useful then BKs are going to be the best 'non ghost' replacement. They have the speed, can put out the damage on the charge, can have their target debugged with spells. 

[WoollyMammoth]

@Tropical Ghost General
If the nerf reapers NH can still use bladegheists. You can use other battleline. Blades are 3+ so they dont rely on re-rolls, have extra attacks without buffs, and also reroll (against everything) with buffs. The 1" range is annoying since they are on 32mm, but its not a major issue if you are good at maximizing your charges. 

The treelord issue is just a stack of problems.  There was no point in charging him with your rasps. When I build lists, I think about every battleplan and how I can use the list to win. The one with monsters 24" can be really hard to build around, but the ones that require heroes should be expected. But Sylvaneth is probably the hardest list to beat with that battleplan so I get where you are coming from. The only thing worse is probably if Nagash gets on the objective first.

Ignoring rend is variable depending on your opponent. Against armies with a lot of mortal output its useless. Against armies that have a million attacks its not enough. Against elite and monster heavy armies its 100% OMG awesome. Its particularly annoying against other NH, which feature a lot of rend ... which is why I'm not currently playing a lot of NH (about half the local meta plays them now). I went three years only seeing one or two other death players .. now I can't not see them.







 

[AverageBoss]

If Reapers get nerfed, 1 of two things is going to happen to LoN at the competitive level.

If they are not nerfed enough, people will continue to use them and just shelve other units.

If they are nerfed enough, people will just go back to the lists we saw pre-NH, more skeleton and wolf blobs.

[Lucky Snake Eyes]

6 hours ago, dmorley21 said:

Grimghast Reapers play differently in the different armies. They're the best and only true hammer unit that Nighthaunt have whereas they're an elite horde unit in Legions of Nagash and are outclassed by Black Knights in terms of a hammer dealing damage.

As for Grave Guard, I know that it seems like GW doesn't re-write rules, so this is wish listing, but would they be worth their points if their Cursed Blades dealt a mortal wound on a 6 like Frightful Touch?

As a LoN player who runs both these units I can say that gg as they are are decent for milling fodder units like bloodreavers, but they lack the staying power to survive against other elite infantry... or most stormcast units (my most common opponents are a pair of stormcast players). As for black knights, they have the potential to outdamage grimghasts on the charge but if they get bogged down then they're screwed. My grimghasts on the other hand can do pretty well if they get bogged down. I honestly just use black knights to suicide charge stuff to pressure my opponent. I run a lot of spellcasters so summoning them back is never an issue. I also don't think gg should get a mortal wound ability like frightful touch, that's kinda nighthaunts gimmick. If anything they should get better attacks to reflect them being elites or make them harder to kill with more wounds, a better save or wound mitigation.

[Lucky Snake Eyes]

4 hours ago, Espy85 said:

Nighthaunt is a bad battletome, and this is a fact. 

For absurd all our units work better in legion of nagash, today the problem is the reapers, tomorrow will be the dreadscythe, when the players will realize that 80% of the units have bravery 7 or less, then they will use the legion of blood that inflicts a -2 automatically to the opponent, then 80% against us will drop to 5 and the dreadscythe will give the -1 to hit all enemies within 3 ", send them in charge in the company of a unit of blood knight and you will have another fanciful combination. I find it absurd that the nighthaunts have no way to lower the bravery of the opponents, it would be enough to add an additional -1 on the turn that you charge, so in that single phase you get a -2, from the next you go back to - 1.
On Heroes, if attacked they die badly, 7 wounds are very few. This army is ill-conceived and I think the GW knows it well. Moreover, all the armies just came out within two weeks of the wrong, our no, we are still waiting, probably because the game designers themselves had not as clear as it would have made on the field.

 

 

 

Nighthaunt and sacrosanct both feel weirdly balanced in a bad way. A lot of the sacrosanct stuff for stormcast seems to dominate same way grimghasts do in my local meta, especially celestar ballistas. I', a darkoath/slaves to darkness player on the side and I worry that once that army get's their battletome it will have the same rough treatment as the previous two malign portents releases. It may end up a similar situation where darkoath units would work better in other chaos armies. Nighhaunt fairs alright in my local meta thos get curbed by myself and the other LoN player. Olyeander in particular feels weak, she's supposd to be a mortarch but the Lon mortarchs have so far put her to shame, she has too few wounds for a character designed to sit in the middle of a bunch of enemies and proc wounds on AoE abilities/spells. I actually managed to nuke her first turn with curse of years in one game. Kurdoss valentian feels a little better especially with a chance to steal command points and reiknor is a cheap wound nuke but both might as well be paper with all the mortal wounds LoN and stormcats (the two dominant armies in my area) can throw around. I do run the lord executioner tho, he does well for me when i need to kill off an elite unit with few attacks or bring down a cheap hero without throwing any of my important stuff at it.

[JackStreicher]

9 hours ago, Tropical Ghost General said:

As a ghost player and LoN player I agree that grims are a bit OP in LoN due to the large amount of healing available and summoning if the unit dies. But in ghosts, without grims the army is garbage. We are a horde army that has weak magic and weak units. Most of our horde units die really easily with only 1 wound and needing to be wholly within to get a death save. Grims are our one decent unit, we literally have no other choices that can even vaguely compete in a comp scene. After Blackout ghosts haven't placed in top 10 and are currently hovering around the middle to the bottom of the results table. I'll say again that I agree with you, more choices is better but pure ghosts don't have any. 

Even in our NH army they‘re way too good.

remove their rerolling of hits and add 20pts per 10 and they‘re still good for their points.

Removing them as a no brainer does not hurt the army but the  play style of many players.

[HollowHills]

Is the problem with LoN placing so well even to do with Reapers? I'm not saying they don't work well but it's not hard to imagine that they get nerfed and then the next best unit down the chain comes in to fill the gap, your grave guard or chainrasps or dogs etc. They are probably slightly undercosted while other units in NH could use a slight reduction. 

The problem is that LoN has a slew of powerful allegiance abilities and in particular ways to restore units that have lost models. Coupled with the fact that Nagash and his mortarchs are absurdly good. The new 30 unbind pretty much allows nagash to shut down all your opponents casts. 

[AverageBoss]

28 minutes ago, HollowHills said:

Is the problem with LoN placing so well even to do with Reapers? I'm not saying they don't work well but it's not hard to imagine that they get nerfed and then the next best unit down the chain comes in to fill the gap, your grave guard or chainrasps or dogs etc. They are probably slightly undercosted while other units in NH could use a slight reduction. 

The problem is that LoN has a slew of powerful allegiance abilities and in particular ways to restore units that have lost models. Coupled with the fact that Nagash and his mortarchs are absurdly good. The new 30 unbind pretty much allows nagash to shut down all your opponents casts. 

I have heard that the majority of LoN wins at big events is due to the combination of Nagash + spell portal + realm spells. I do not know if this is true or not, it is very hard to corroborate. The tournament data collection document that has been floating around does not even separate LoN by allegiance (but rather lumps all 4 together), much less whether they run Nagash or not.

[Tropical Ghost General]

5 hours ago, WoollyMammoth said:

I went three years only seeing one or two other death players .. now I can't not see them.

Yeah, I have a lot of death in my meta, it's partly why I've shelved LoN and am running pure ghosts, as there is barely any ghosts players. But lots of death is good, it makes our lord and saviour happy. 

 

3 hours ago, Lucky Snake Eyes said:

Nighthaunt and sacrosanct both feel weirdly balanced in a bad way. 

I can't speak for the new SC book, but the battletome for ghosts feels rushed and incomplete. On one hand you have a lot of attacks and abilities that rely on bravery but then no way to utilise bravery bombing and when the majority of the meta is bravery 7+ or even 10, it's all useless. And the whole book is like that, as if they had one idea to start with and then changed their mind half way through but didn't bother to re-adjust anything. 

52 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

Even in our NH army they‘re way too good.

I agree that grims are a gross unit, but every army has at least one or two gross unit, such as witch elves in DoK. I think if you take away the re-roll then they shouldn't get a points increase. As the effectiveness of the unit attacking a horde unit compared to a big monster is vastly different, but so many other units have access to gross re-rolls, such as swooping rippers in lizards, who re-roll everything. 

 

44 minutes ago, HollowHills said:

Is the problem with LoN placing so well even to do with Reapers? 

Spot on with this. Nagash in realms is great. If the TO is not running realms, LoN is good, but not OMG awesome.

I think a lot of this grims in Lozn is salty backlash from a very strong unit being used in an already strong army. It's always going to happen. I have friends complain that the 10+ charge of ghosts is broken when it messes up their game plan, but when we sit down and go through the various gross and broken mechanics of their own factions they realise that actually "Yes, it's gross and a bit OP, but so is my army's own ability to do....." 

If GW decide to nerf grims it will effectively nerf ghosts, in the same way as smash captain nerfs has nerfed pure BA armies in 40k. Also if they nerf grims they will have to re-think their new core set which includes this unit. Ghosts are the new poster boys of AoS as Khorne were before them, if they make the army even more unplayable it will hurt sales. Since the new sets have come out lots of players jumped on the ghost wagon and a lot have since stopped as they've found out that it's not an easy army to play and it's mid-tier at best. 

But I can't see how this is even a problem for LoN players. LoN was on the top tables before, it's on the top tables now, it will more than likely remain on the top tables afterwards. What ever happens to grims in LoN, it won't hurt the army enough to cause any issues. 

[HollowHills]

As someone else said, the decision to allow LoN to take almost all Nighthaunt faction units is probably an issue. It isn't that the Nighthaunt allegiance itself is poor, it's rather than because it is weaker than LoN and that LoN allows you to use all the best units there is not a massive reason to take Nighthaunt allegiance. All you really lose out on are the named heroes from Nighthaunt, which are subpar comparative to Nagash or Arkhan. Also the Nighthaunt allegiance abilities are fine, you get a bravery debuff which is good against some armies, a deepstrike which is handy, the charge mechanic and a deathless minions. Unfortunately the LoN ones are better, especially the fact their deathless minions does not depend on being wholly within and their gravesites allow a much greater number of models to be restored.

Nagash is just an absurd model. His rules were written in the era where AoS didn't have points and was fundamentally designed to be a narrative game rather than a competitive one. He should have been entirely re-written when LoN came out to ensure that his rules were closer in line with other more recently released name heroes. I personally believe without a full rules rewrite he is impossible to balance. If you keep putting him up in points he either becomes impossible to include in a 2k game, totally undesirable because he limits other models you need to make any form of list work, or he's still so good that you pay the price anyway.

No model should be casting that many spells, have that many bonuses to cast and unbind and a spell that gives you a 50/50% chance of killing any model in the game should not exist.

The solution to the Reapers issue in my mind would be thus;

Remove all new Nighthaunt from LoN, but allow them to ally in.

Increase the points of Reapers and reduce the points of other units in the NH tome.

[Luke1705]

Tbh I don’t really think that Nagash + Grims is a list that needs to be nerfed. Maybe let the grave sites only affect a unit once per turn? I just see a bunch of stuff in the competitive meta that is very good and it’s not like we’re crying for a wych elves nerf, even though they’re obviously a spectacular unit. I think each faction should have a standout unit or two.