AoS 3 - Nighthaunt Discussion

[Drujeful]

14 minutes ago, EnixLHQ said:

I know they're coming, I'm wondering just how many. As in, I already have 10,000 points of Nighthaunt, I have everything else in droves. If the box only contains one of the new hero (likely) and only one full unit of crossbows I might go the eBay route. Especially if they offer no other ways of getting those models.

The original preview for the box says 44 total models. The image shown in the preview has 44 models in it, so I'm pretty sure we're getting:

• 10 Bladegheist Revenants
• 1 Spirit Torment
• 2 Chainghasts
• 4 Myrmourn Banshees
• 1 Scriptor Mortis
• 5 Craventhrone Guard

With DoK getting

• 1 High Gladiatrix
• 10 Witch Aelves
• 5 Doomfire Warlocks
• 5 Khinerai

[dmorley21]

@Drujeful

The problem with leaning into anti-bravery stuff is that it’s too good against Destruction, too bad against Chaos and Death, and works as intended against most order. Just not something that can be balanced to make for fun games IMO.

@EnixLHQ

Like already noted, it’s just 1 hero and 5 archers in the box. 

[EnixLHQ]

24 minutes ago, dmorley21 said:

@Drujeful

The problem with leaning into anti-bravery stuff is that it’s too good against Destruction, too bad against Chaos and Death, and works as intended against most order. Just not something that can be balanced to make for fun games IMO.

@EnixLHQ

Like already noted, it’s just 1 hero and 5 archers in the box. 

Oof. 6 out of 44 models... Looks like I might pass.

[Drujeful]

22 minutes ago, dmorley21 said:

@Drujeful

The problem with leaning into anti-bravery stuff is that it’s too good against Destruction, too bad against Chaos and Death, and works as intended against most order. Just not something that can be balanced to make for fun games IMO.

Admittedly, I only play open and narrative games at home with my wife and friends so I'm really not versed in the competitive field. Could you expand on each of your points regarding anti-bravery?

• What would it too good against Destruction?
  • I assume Destruction in general is just really low on bravery?
• What would make it bad against Chaos and Death?
  • I know Death has a ton of high bravery units and daemons usually do too. Without knowing Chaos beyond Nurgle, do the other armies have high bravery mortals?
  • Is high bravery even what would make anti-bravery weak? Or is it access to some rules that prevent failed battleshock tests in general? I know Nurgle has a couple abilities that mitigate tests.

[Drujeful]

1 minute ago, EnixLHQ said:

Oof. 6 out of 44 models... Looks like I might pass.

Yeah, if you don't need any of the existing models included in the box, it's not a great value. Hopefully GW continues their trend of producing a ton of supply and the models you actually want show up on eBay for a decent price.

[EnixLHQ]

19 minutes ago, Drujeful said:

Admittedly, I only play open and narrative games at home with my wife and friends so I'm really not versed in the competitive field. Could you expand on each of your points regarding anti-bravery?

• What would it too good against Destruction?
  • I assume Destruction in general is just really low on bravery?
• What would make it bad against Chaos and Death?
  • I know Death has a ton of high bravery units and daemons usually do too. Without knowing Chaos beyond Nurgle, do the other armies have high bravery mortals?
  • Is high bravery even what would make anti-bravery weak? Or is it access to some rules that prevent failed battleshock tests in general? I know Nurgle has a couple abilities that mitigate tests.

The problem with Bravery shenanigans has always been how to balance it.

Either you can reliably mess with high bravery opponents but unfairly devastate low bravery ones, or you're limited to be balanced against the low and mid only to be useless adjust the high.

Legion of Grief tried to balance that by making bravery mechanics mutually exclusive from your other load out choices. You had to lean in hard to access the most useful mechanics, but that meant you were also less capable of handling scenarios where your plans fell apart.

No one likes true RNG games, and so both experiments resulted in defaulting back to more tried-and-true tactics.

If we want Bravery to be more than a trick, it'd have to be balanced against both high and low bravery armies, reliable to use, but not your only win condition.

[Drujeful]

9 minutes ago, EnixLHQ said:

The problem with Bravery shenanigans has always been how to balance it.

Either you can reliably mess with high bravery opponents but unfairly devastate low bravery ones, or you're limited to be balanced against the low and mid only to be useless adjust the high.

Legion of Grief tried to balance that by making bravery mechanics mutually exclusive from your other load out choices. You had to lean in hard to access the most useful mechanics, but that meant you were also less capable of handling scenarios where your plans fell apart.

No one likes true RNG games, and so both experiments resulted in defaulting back to more tried-and-true tactics.

If we want Bravery to be more than a trick, it'd have to be balanced against both high and low bravery armies, reliable to use, but not your only win condition.

Ah yeah very good points. Makes sense that were bravery can be so dramatically different between each army it doesn't balance very well.

Well no matter what, I'm just crazy excited for our new book and I hope it brings us some serious stuff.

[Rachmani]

The problem is mostly that bravery was never fully developed as a combat mechanic. Which in turn meant that it never got a balance pass beyond battleshock.

So now, whenever an army or just a few warscrolls introduce bravery as a means of dealing damage, balance jumps out the window and is nowhere to be seen.

[Kadeton]

It's a real shame that GW have never managed to incorporate psychological warfare as an effective and engaging element in their games. Any attempt to interact with the morale system ends up either ineffectual to the point of largely being ignored, or hits a tipping point and becomes so powerful as to be completely overwhelming.

I'd love to see a mechanic that narrowed the gap between the brave and the cowardly, rather than widening it - a unit with Bravery 10 generally doesn't care about a -1 modifier to Battleshock rolls, while a unit with Bravery 5 cares quite a lot. If instead there was an ability that capped Bravery at 6, I think that would get the "supernatural terror" aspect across more thematically. The cowardly units were already afraid, but now the normally steadfast ones are also quailing in fear! Heck, even an ability that just turned off Inspiring Presence would go a long way towards making terror a more present force on the battlefield.

Definitely would like to see Frightful Touch made into an army-wide rule, as a player new to Nighthaunt it's a real pain to keep track of which units have it and which don't (since it seems to be somewhat random).

[EnixLHQ]

We spitballed our homebrew bravery mechanics quite a while ago on the 2.0 thread. We had some good ones.

One was having an alliance ability that if an enemy unit suffers battleshock while within the range of our -1 modifier then an additional amount of models ran that was the difference between the rolled amount and the total needed, minimum one. So less to do about the actual bravery and more to do with model loss. It hit high bravery units disproportionately, though, in that bravery 10 units were also usually 2 to 4 man units. It also forced your opponent to spend CP.

Another was since we were an MSU army during the days of mega-units, if we had 2+ NH units in range of the same enemy unit, that unit had a -2 instead of -1. Simple, yet effective. But not effective enough. And if you bumped up the max to -3, it was game breaking.

Probably one of the best though, and oddly kind of balanced at the time, was this one: Whenever a NH unit engaged an enemy unit for the first time in the game and had to roll a battle shock test, both players would roll it for the enemy unit and the worst roll would be used. In addition, an additional model would run in that turn. So, in other words, it was meant to operate as the "shock" factor of engaging with our scary ghosts and served to work like a more reliable Wave of Terror once you factored in the model loss. It also meant that even if the enemy unit retreated, it still had engaged a NH unit for it's first time and the deaths can pile up out of combat. It allowed you to strategically choose which enemy units you wanted to engage with and when, as that buff only lasted for the first round of contact per enemy unit.

I'm sure whatever is in the new book will be better. They have actual people paid to come up with and test rules, and NH has to be someone's favorite army among the rules staff. We'll just have to wait and see.

Edited March 8, 2022 by EnixLHQ

[Rachmani]

As long as frightful touch does mortals on wound instead of hit I think it would be fine.

[Warboss Gorbolg]

Still waiting to see if NH receive a start collecting with the models from Soul Wars that you can't purchase currently. I'm hesitant to jump into a faction with several "limited edition" models.

[Darkrich]

Got a local tournament going this weekend. Over 20 people so good showing. I'm bringing emerald host.

Leaders

• Lady Olynder - general
• Krulghast Cruciator
• Guardian of Souls
• Guardian of Souls
• Spirit Torment

Units

• 30 Chainrasp Horde
• 10 Chainrasp Horde
• 20 Grimghast Reapers
• 10 Bladegheist Revenants
• 6 Spirit Host
• 5 Hexwraiths

3 Battalions (warlord, hunters of heartland, vanguard)

I took this to the last local event and took first. I wanted to change it but got lazy and didn't paint. I'll let everyone know how it goes. 

Edited March 8, 2022 by Darkrich

[darkdaysdawn]

On 3/7/2022 at 10:54 AM, EnixLHQ said:

I know they're coming, I'm wondering just how many. As in, I already have 10,000 points of Nighthaunt, I have everything else in droves. If the box only contains one of the new hero (likely) and only one full unit of crossbows I might go the eBay route. Especially if they offer no other ways of getting those models.

You'll get 1 scriptor and a unit of 5 crossbowmen. 

The quantities are explicitly listed in the announcement for all but crossbowmen, but they are a unit of 5 in the picture (4 with crossbows, and 1 with a banner). 

 

[Kadeton]

I had another 1000-point practice game for the casual tournament (this weekend!) last night. Against Beasts of Chaos, with their freshly-updated rules... they're much stronger now.

I thought I'd done quite well on a divide-and-conquer approach initially, using my Nighthaunt's speed advantage to split the opposing forces and wipe half of them out with minimal losses. But between the remaining half catching up to me, and basically being able to summon a new monster every round, my ghosts were wiped out by the top of the fourth turn.

So far I'm finding that Nighthaunt are pretty good at getting into a good position and dishing out some damage. But they're truly atrocious at taking damage (at this point scale, with enforced MSU) and they almost immediately fold. I guess I just need to get better at rolling ethereal saves and Deathless Spirits? My dice were certainly not playing for my team, I didn't manage a single Wave of Terror all game and couldn't roll a 4+ to save my life.

I did enjoy getting to dispel with my Banshees and then get extra-stabby in the subsequent combat phases. Even though they then managed to miss 7 out of 8 attacks, it was nice seeing the combo work, and the look on my opponent's face when that one attack was at -2 rend for 3 damage and he realised how badly that could have gone for him.

I also managed to keep Olynder properly bodyguarded this time, so at least all her Hexwraiths died before she did! (In one round, against a Beastlord.)

[EnixLHQ]

42 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

So far I'm finding that Nighthaunt are pretty good at getting into a good position and dishing out some damage. But they're truly atrocious at taking damage (at this point scale, with enforced MSU) and they almost immediately fold. I guess I just need to get better at rolling ethereal saves and Deathless Spirits? My dice were certainly not playing for my team, I didn't manage a single Wave of Terror all game and couldn't roll a 4+ to save my life.

Sounds like you had a typical NH experience.

[Kadeton]

4 minutes ago, EnixLHQ said:

Sounds like you had a typical NH experience.

Yeah, I knew what I was signing up for. It makes me want to go for a Krulghast to buff up the ward saves (plus it would be nice to have something else to do in the shooting phase) - are they worthwhile?

[EnixLHQ]

32 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

Yeah, I knew what I was signing up for. It makes me want to go for a Krulghast to buff up the ward saves (plus it would be nice to have something else to do in the shooting phase) - are they worthwhile?

I love him. But I'm also a fan of the murder castle formation with a Terminexus. No one beats me on attrition.

[Darkrich]

So, anyone have thoughts on how to beat nurgle without nagash. The blightkings and blightlords relentless attackers ability pretty much beats nighthaunt single-handedly. 

[dmorley21]

8 hours ago, Darkrich said:

So, anyone have thoughts on how to beat nurgle without nagash. The blightkings and blightlords relentless attackers ability pretty much beats nighthaunt single-handedly. 

I've only played them once and had Nagash, but my recommendation would be to try to pin them or feed them screens to prevent them from scoring objectives. 

Expecting we'll be getting new rules (new warscrolls from the boxset soon), so really talking strategy too much is a bit moot at the moment. 

[That Guy]

Looks like Nighthaunt became prime hunters. We might become a top competing army with the 3.0 tome also dropping soon.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/SeAPQtAryX4qcLM9.pdf

[Sutek]

I understand they'll stop being prime hunters when the new book comes out.

[That Guy]

2 hours ago, Sutek said:

I understand they'll stop being prime hunters when the new book comes out.

Oh that will indeed be the case! Keen observation.

[Kadeton]

Nice thematic ability on the Scriptor Mortis: https://www.warhammer-community.com/2022/03/18/heres-how-to-write-the-story-of-your-opponents-doom-with-the-scriptor-mortis-from-arena-of-shades/

[Bayul]

 

Do I have to say

"This unit going is to record the name of a judged soul!"

Seems a bit melodramatic...

Edited March 18, 2022 by Bayul