Nighthaunts vs Stormcast - why can I just not win!

[darranh1]

I really like nighthaunt and everyone says play an army you enjoy, however after losing a lot to Stormcast every time (new so soul wars is initial box set we invested in) despite even 1000pt armies it’s wearing a bit thin lol. My friend and I have even swapped and I won both times I was Stormcast. It’s seems the Stormcast units are self sufficient with abilities that do not require any prerequisites prob ideal beginner army, so I’m looking for some tips as nighthaunt seems tomstruggle

under my command! I don’t want to invest more money on books and more models if on a competitive play they are really non starter. I’ve bought banshees but unless they unbind a spell 1 attack isn’t putting much out and spirit hosts also bought but again they are limited against 5 evocators and even troop of 5 sequitors even with Reroll hits of 1 buff. They obviously a hard army to battle with  and we mostly just playing first blood style rather than hold objectives at moment. 

Any tips or should I switch to stormcast!

[sinksinksink]

Try using the Guardian of Souls +1 attack  command ability to buff banshees. I've struggled with Nighthaunt lately, but there's likely to be points adjustments soon, so I would still say play what you like the look of. 

[darranh1]

My guardian of souls only has +1 wound and spectral lure on battlescroll. (?)

[Kramer]

Always always play objective based scenarios. Give it one or two scenarios a go, and you’ll immediately realise that’s how the game is supposed to play. 

Regarding your match up you will suddenly have a lot more advantages, better mobility due to fly, faster movement, more bodies to control said objectives.

honestly do give that a go! Play the matched play scenarios and you’ll have more fun, guaranteed!

[Zamik]

The Knight of Shrouds gives the the +1 attack to one unit as a command ability.

Take advantage of Deathless Spirits for the 6+ after-save. Wrapping your heroes in chainrasps that get two saves and can be summoned back with spectral lure makes decent objective holders, or they can block off an area.

[Greasygeek]

52 minutes ago, Kramer said:

Always always play objective based scenarios. Give it one or two scenarios a go, and you’ll immediately realise that’s how the game is supposed to play. 

Regarding your match up you will suddenly have a lot more advantages, better mobility due to fly, faster movement, more bodies to control said objectives.

honestly do give that a go! Play the matched play scenarios and you’ll have more fun, guaranteed!

This exactly. Back when we started playing AOS, just about same time the first GHB was released, we never played objective games and Stormcast won 9/10 games against everyone! It got to a point where players lost interest in the game due to always loosing to the golden boys. However objective games is the way to go. I play Nighthaunt myself and has won quite a bunch of games against Sigmars finest. 

Spirit hosts and reapers will hurt their numbers badly and since NH are fast and able to pop up everywhere you can pretty much control your opponents movement keeping him off the most important objectives. 

[Kitsumy]

Nothing u can do. New sacrosant chamber is pretty op i would say?

 

So unless u play with a top army with a top list u will have a really hard game against every new box units like sequitors. Ballistas or evocators. And nighaunts arent one of those top list armyes unless u play them as legion on nagash with nagash or arkhan etc

[Kramer]

1 hour ago, Kitsumy said:

Nothing u can do. New sacrosant chamber is pretty op i would say?

 

So unless u play with a top army with a top list u will have a really hard game against every new box units like sequitors. Ballistas or evocators. And nighaunts arent one of those top list armyes unless u play them as legion on nagash with nagash or arkhan etc

When you are both starting players this absolutely BS. In my opinion of course.

It might be true that the contents of soul wars is not very balanced and that will hurt you. And maybe at the absolute top tables a difference in army strength will make it op. But when your starting out... stormcast is just has training wheels and nighthaunt doesn’t. And without objectives you are basically playing a game of who can balance without moving the longest. Of course the training wheels win, but make it a true race and the disadvantages of stormcast will finally appear. Low number count, after initial deployment low movement, etc.

thats not to say that you might need to invest in some specific units/heroes/models to even the playing field. 

[sinksinksink]

10 hours ago, darranh1 said:

My guardian of souls only has +1 wound and spectral lure on battlescroll. (?)

Oh sorry! I meant Knight of Shrouds.

[Lucio]

The contents of the Soul Wars box aren't well balanced against each other. The Stormcast get a lot more of their toys in it than the Nighthaunt.

 

I'd strongly suggest that you get the AoS app Azyr and look at the warscrolls on there to get some better ideas as to what works well for you and what doesn't

[RuneBrush]

Lots of good advise so far, but I think one thing that would help would be to know what 1000 points you're running

[Tropical Ghost General]

@darranh1 firstly the units in soul wars are not balanced. The box set is designed to be an introduction to the game, being more focused on narrative (hence way it favours the SCE rather than the ghosts 😋).

Playing equal sized armies also doesn't mean that the games are balanced. In my opinion Nighthaunt generally struggle in 1k games, as so much of the army requires hero support and we lack any large centre piece models that are worth their posts and not massively over-costed. Unfortunately it's no secret that the spooky bedsheet book isn't very good, certain elements that sound like they should work on paper just don't in practise. New SCE now have access to all the elements required within the game, so magic, shooting, combat and can do pretty well in all 3. Ghosts only really do combat and we are certainly not the best of the bunch. We have one thing that is good, the 10+ charge, but it's so spikey and unreliable that it's not something that you can build an army around. But that being said....

....More and more ghost players are turning away from the recommended and fluffy style of playing, so large hordes, etc... and are focusing on running lots of MSUs (Multiple Small Units) instead. Ghosts are basically a fast moving ambush army. For some reason GW decided to not give ghosts many options at healing or reviving compared to running the same units in a Legions of Nagash (LoN) army. So theoretically we should be able to bring back all of the dead bodies that we lose, but this is so far from the case. The ghost book doesn't lend itself well to building an effective low drop army either, so generally by the time you have put in the most essential units you need you are already way past the point of being able to look at having the first turn, which is where the MSUs build comes in.

Having MSUs means that for 90%+ of the attacks in the game, your opponent will be forced to split their focus and having the smaller units is more beneficial. You don't need to worry about battleshock or having one or two large targets that your opponent can focus on. We are a very fast army (that can fly), so playing the ambush game works really well. Lots of smaller units also gives much better board control and area denial. SCE trying to deep strike in, not going to happen. If you try looking at having around 10 models per unit (12 if myrmourns, etc...) then you'll find it a lot easier to have unit wholly within 12" to get re-roll buffs and the death save. 

Heroes are key to the army, once they die (and they will die very quickly because they are so weak and there is so much mortal wounds and shooting currently) then the army will really start to crumble. Certain units can only work with hero support, others are more self-sufficient. Generally heroes that offer healing or extra attacks are better than ones that offer re-rolls or modifiers. Most ghost players don't bother using the Knight of Shrouds on Ethereal Steed (KoSos), instead they will ally in a vampire lord. Same points, you don't get the ethereal save or have the death save, but his command ability is better than the Kosos, as it lasts more than that one round of combat, and he can heal himself, and he is a wizard, so he won't know ghost spells, but can be used to cast endless spells or mystic shield or arcane bolt. Torments are just great, they offer re-rolls and healing, and they are so much better when playing against SCEs as well with the healing.

In terms of units, the current go-to choices are grims, chainrasps and bladegheists. Spirit Hosts are OK, but they will not be able to do any consistent damage, so use only as tarpits (but small blobs are often superseded by 10 rasps which are cheaper and a better choice in my opinion). Glaivewraiths are a worse version of blades, harridans are very situational. Myrmourns can be brutal but they require a lot of attention and baby sitting and are incredibly spikey in terms of damage, as well as being very expensive choice, you want to run them as 4 or 12 only. Hexwraiths don't hit hard enough and are too expensive and the rest of the units in the book get out classed by other choices (such as grims, rasps and blades).

Finally, as others have mentioned, play to the missions. We have some of the best looking models but some of the worse rules. By the time that all the other books get updated and released this year, we are not going to be sitting in a very good spot unfortunately (we'll become the grey knights of the AoS world), and due to being super new, it's really unlikely that we'll get any updates for a good while yet, so don't expect any. It strongly rumoured that we'll see some hefty points drops around August with the next General's Handbook (GHB), but I can't see points changes making much difference tbh. Ghosts currently are not too bad, we can win things but we are certainly not in a position to do it consistently and seeing the average meta attendance of ghost armies dropping off a fair bit at tournaments, I imagine it will get a lot worse before it gets any better. I took a break from ghosts but have come back to them due to loving the models too much and at the end of the day that's the important thing. If you let your opponent know beforehand that you are struggling in games, and ask them if they can tone down their list to not be so brutal, they generally will, as the majority of players want a good game, rather than a turn 2 insta-win tabling situation. 

As a last foot note, you will learn a lot more as a player by losing games and talking it through with your opponent afterwards, asking what they think went wrong, etc...than you will be winning. I honestly feel that I've learned more about the tactics of this game playing ghosts than I have playing my other DEATH armies of LoN and Flesh-eater Courts (FEC), because it's so much more difficult to win and that's before any dice have even been rolled. If you get more stuck post on the main nighthaunt group, put your list up and ask for advice as many of us have already been through those stumbling blocks of trying to get to grips with the army and we'll be more than happy to help out and assist a fellow spook.

[Tropical Ghost General]

 

[Unit1126PLL]

Try playing objective games. The Nighthaunt's advantages over Stormcast are mobility related and numbers related, and don't really manifest themselves in a knock-down drag-out fight, but they are absolutely vital when fighting over objectives.

[darranh1]

6 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

Lots of good advise so far, but I think one thing that would help would be to know what 1000 points you're running

Thanks as is all good advice and certain try some other objective now.

list I’m currently playing and can see plenty of improvements myself but that’s the thing I don’t want to buy couple more boxes of models only to be feeling underwhelmed after spending even more money. I had to buy some banshees as they seemed cool but now I’ve played them really disappointed on actually how unlikely it is to get ability attack bonus.

chainrasp 20

GOS 1

Spirit Torment 3

Grimghasts 8

Glaivewraiths 8

myrmourn banshee 4

Spirit Host 3 - bought these as seemed lots raving about how many mortal wounds they put out.

Lord executioner 1 

that totals 960 was wondering about switching lord executioner and 4 glaivewraiths with KOS

it’s just get a lot of Glaivewraiths I’ve got about 12 in the start sets!! Can see how Grimghast are better than Glaives but that means £27 for 10 just for battle line nothing even exciting for us newbies to swoon over! 

🙂 

[RuneBrush]

11 hours ago, darranh1 said:

Thanks as is all good advice and certain try some other objective now.

list I’m currently playing and can see plenty of improvements myself but that’s the thing I don’t want to buy couple more boxes of models only to be feeling underwhelmed after spending even more money. I had to buy some banshees as they seemed cool but now I’ve pla****** them really disappointed on actually how unlikely it is to get ability attack bonus.

chainrasp 20

GOS 1

Spirit Torment 3

Grimghasts 8

Glaivewraiths 8

myrmourn banshee 4

Spirit Host 3 - bought these as seemed lots raving about how many mortal wounds they put out.

Lord executioner 1 

that totals 960 was wondering about switching lord executioner and 4 glaivewraiths with KOS

it’s just get a lot of Glaivewraiths I’ve got about 12 in the start sets!! Can see how Grimghast are better than Glaives but that means £27 for 10 just for battle line nothing even exciting for us newbies to swoon over! 

🙂 

Thanks, this gives us something to work with 🙂  I'm guessing you're running 1 Spirit Torment rather than 3 too 😉  Everything below is written using the assumption that you're using matched play rules and trying to bump up the performance of your army against your opponent at the 1000 point mark.

Your unit of Grimghast Reapers is under-strength - technically running 8 for 140 points rather than 10 means you're losing out on 28 points of miniatures.

Glaivewraith Stalkers are pretty underwhelming as a unit, they die pretty easily and can't really be run in a big enough unit to make an impact on a game.

Spirit Hosts are indeed fantastic - but you really want to be running them in units of 6 or 9.  They also need as many buffs as you can put your ghostly hands on - even a lowly +1 to hit will increase their performance hugely.

Myrmoun Banshees are a bit of an odd one.  They have the potential to dish out solid damage for not too many points - however they're only 4 wounds in total so don't really have much in the way of sticking power.

Grimghast Reapers or Bladegheist should really form the rank and file of your army.  On paper they do come across as underwhelming - however I've quite comfortably taken a Bloodthirster charge on a unit of 30 Grimghast Reapers and killed it in return.  Maximum sized units of these also benefit from a points reduction.  From a financial cost perspective, have a look on places like Triple Helix Wargames or Element Games - or humble eBay!  You shouldn't need to pay full retail for these.

If you were happy to drop the Myrmoun Banshees, you could quite legitimately pick up the Legions of Nagash Battletome and run your army as one of the Legion armies (Legion of Blood for that extra bravery debuff).  Although you'd lose the Nighthaunt Allegiance Abilities, you'd gain the Gravesite mechanic (adds slain models to units each turn) and would give your general the ability to resurrect a slain summonable unit.

Hope that's given you a little food for thought!