AoS 3 - Nighthaunt Discussion

[dmorley21]

A couple initial thoughts from what we’ve seen of warscrolls:

Ethereal and wholly within bubbles are staying the same. But I’m guessing the army is going to play fast seeing our slow units got bumped to 8”.

Chainghasts might actually see play now. The Scriptor getting bodyguard makes it more usable, but still hard to justify when it doesn’t do anything against 4 armies in the game.  

[EnixLHQ]

Is this from the new box set?

[Arzalyn]

9 minutes ago, EnixLHQ said:

Is this from the new box set?

Yes, you can see the warscroll cards for them in the video talking about what is coming out (picture bellow).

 

[Boggler]

Well, what can I say? At least we have a new Battletome coming!

[mojojojo101]

Changes to Captured Soul Energy as far as I can see:

-Happens at the end of the combat phase, instead of the battleshock phase, and only applies to deaths in that phase. kills must be from friendly Nighthaunt unit melee attacks.

-Triggers if you kill 1 model not 3.

-Range is now wholly within 12'' not within 6''

-Always returns 3 wounds instead of D3.

-As written the ability can be used by multiple Spirit Torments (no range on the killing part), you no longer have to kill a model for each Spirit Torment but you can't use multiple Torment's to heal the same unit.

Feels slightly better to me, not sure though, definitely going to need to play with it before making a final judgement.

[Drujeful]

5 minutes ago, mojojojo101 said:

Feels slightly better to me, not sure though, definitely going to need to play with it before making a final judgement.

The one downside is that you can only heal summonable units. Can’t heal heroes anymore. 

But I’m kinda wondering if the army is going to lean more heavily into summoning, which might make this more of a sidegrade than a downgrade. 

[Vastus]

So now you have to get the Chainghasts to get a buff from your Spirit Torment, and it's no longer around the Spirit Torment. Unless both models were massively reduced in price that is very expensive for worse effect. Spirit Torment may no longer be as much of a staple it seems.

 

I'm curious if we'll see less of a focus on buff-aura heroes in general in the new battletome.

Edited March 27, 2022 by Vastus

[Darkrich]

Looks like the scriptor can also pass wounds off to summonable nighthaunt nearby instead.

Based on the position of the text, there is a third small ability above that one we can't see. Hope its good. He's close to striking out . At least my useless model will live longer.

Edited March 28, 2022 by Darkrich

[Neck-Romantic]

Torment losing his reroll aura?

Reroll hits aura was a huge chunk of my spirit host heavy army

Edited March 28, 2022 by Neck-Romantic

[EnixLHQ]

Yeah, that's a blow. Hopefully that's been moved to another hero or is accessed in another way.

[Neck-Romantic]

Wonder whats happening to bladegheists then, too. Their synergy with the ST doesnt make sense now too (or is at least less intrinsic)

Edited March 28, 2022 by Neck-Romantic

[Kadeton]

49 minutes ago, EnixLHQ said:

Yeah, that's a blow. Hopefully that's been moved to another hero or is accessed in another way.

It seems unlikely. Almost all rerolls are getting stripped in 3rd Ed battletomes, it helps speed up the game.

36 minutes ago, Neck-Romantic said:

Wonder whats happening to bladegheists then, too. Their synergy with the ST doesnt make sense now too (or is at least less intrinsic)

The specificity of that ability always seemed strange to me. Torments having two units that uniquely keyed off their presence, when every other character just worked the same way with all units, felt unnecessary.

[Neck-Romantic]

Well when your main army consisted of 12 spirit hosts with a torment, and 2 to 3 groups of bladegheists also with a torment... yeah its concerning 🤯 

Potentially gutting both my hammer and my anvil. Feelsbad

Edited March 28, 2022 by Neck-Romantic

[Kadeton]

6 minutes ago, Neck-Romantic said:

Potentially gutting both my hammer and my anvil. Feelsbad

Yeah, potentially. On the other hand, we haven't seen the scrolls for either the Spirit Hosts or the Bladegheists yet, nor the faction or subfaction abilities. We have no idea how all this is going to shake out.

[Gitzdee]

I just love that we are getting so many new models and a battletome when i didnt expect it so soon to be honest. Excited to see what they did with the battletome.

[Beliman]

On 3/25/2022 at 1:24 PM, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Here's the thing: Ignoring cover is not even a strong ability. It is worse than dealing most of your damage in mortal wounds, which all the other good shooting units do. Because those mortals usually trigger on unmodified 6s to hit, they ignore the -1 to hit from cover (and Look Out, Sir!). And because they ignore saves, they ignore the +1 to saves from cover. But they also ignore saves period, so they are just better.

Remember that Cover only gives you +1 save. But being in a Garrison doesn't give you Cover anymore, instead, it gives you a flat +1 save and -1 to be hit that is not treated as "Cover".

[Neck-Romantic]

2 hours ago, Kadeton said:

Yeah, potentially. On the other hand, we haven't seen the scrolls for either the Spirit Hosts or the Bladegheists yet, nor the faction or subfaction abilities. We have no idea how all this is going to shake out.

Well unless both warscrolls reroll their own hits Imma still call it a nerf 😑

[Kadeton]

12 minutes ago, Neck-Romantic said:

Well unless both warscrolls reroll their own hits Imma still call it a nerf 😑

Of course, you can call it anything you want! Nobody (including you) has any way to know whether you're actually correct until we have the book in our hands. And even then, it's unlikely to be clear one way or the other - people have a strong tendency to react as if any given change is a catastrophe, and then only work out that things are better than they used to be over an extended period of time.

[Dogmantra]

9 hours ago, Darkrich said:

Looks like the scriptor can also pass wounds off to summonable nighthaunt nearby instead.

Based on the position of the text, there is a third small ability above that one we can't see. Hope its good. He's close to striking out . At least my useless model will live longer.

Either there's a third ability or the flavour text for the bodyguard ability is just very long. If there is a third one, my money's on wizard or a ward, I can't think of anything else that's concise enough to fit.

[dmorley21]

6 hours ago, Neck-Romantic said:

Torment losing his reroll aura?

Reroll hits aura was a huge chunk of my spirit host heavy army

Yeah I had just built 9 Spirit Hosts too; however as others have said this was expected. All re-rolls are going away in 3rd. And as someone who once ran 60 Reapers, that’s probably for the best in terms of game speed. 

20 minutes ago, Dogmantra said:

Either there's a third ability or the flavour text for the bodyguard ability is just very long. If there is a third one, my money's on wizard or a ward, I can't think of anything else that's concise enough to fit.

Not a wizard. That would be keyworded. 

[Dogmantra]

Ah yeah good point. Hm, does mean he's a bit more one-trick than I hoped it seems.

[Neck-Romantic]

Scriptor's quill had better be a ranged attack representing him scribbling down injuries 🤣

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

16 hours ago, dmorley21 said:

Ethereal and wholly within bubbles are staying the same. But I’m guessing the army is going to play fast seeing our slow units got bumped to 8”.

If ethereal gets changed I would expect it to be in the book, not the box set. Because it's an army wide thing, changing the effect on only a few warscrolls would be confusing.

2 hours ago, Dogmantra said:

Either there's a third ability or the flavour text for the bodyguard ability is just very long. If there is a third one, my money's on wizard or a ward, I can't think of anything else that's concise enough to fit.

Since he already has the normal ward and a bodyguard ability, maybe it's some kind of minor buff aura? Reroll charges or something like that.

1 hour ago, Neck-Romantic said:

Scriptor's quill had better be a ranged attack representing him scribbling down injuries 🤣

Finally, the Nighthaunt get their own book of grudges!

[relic456]

Previews have so far given us an idea of a lot of what we're losing, really looking forward to previews of what we're gaining in return! Hard to get excited right now (I might also still be salty at how bad NH have been throughout 2.0 and early 3.0 🙃 )

[Landohammer]

So its hard not to be discouraged at the current leaks. And we know from the Deepking/Fyreslayer release that warscrolls essentially remain unchanged between the box and the battletome release. 

But, the deepkin gained a lot of their strength in their sub faction abilities. Like a thrall is pretty meh based on its warscroll alone, but when combined with tides, rituals, sub factions and character support they become pretty strong. I'm hoping thats the case for us. We currently don't know our primary allegiance abilities, and if its anything like Deepkin or other recent books, they are a pretty big freaking deal. 

But if I put on my rose-tinted glasses, It does seem like the buffs are easier to keep up. The spirit torment heal is more reliable/easy to pull off. And the +1 to hit (RIP rerolls) can just straight up come from Chainghasts as long as the spirit torment is alive, and both are 25% faster. 

How many times have we charged our blocks of troops out of range of the rerolls bc heroes were so slow?