AoS 3 - Nighthaunt Discussion

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

It looks like Nighthaunt are going to live in the jank zone for a few weeks until the battletome comes out. That kinda sucks, I was hoping for a bit of a power boost to tide everyone over. I guess the Nighthaunt release follows the pattern of the previous 3rd edition battletomes: Everything gets weaker on the warscroll, and then the book drops and the allegiance abilities lift everything up again. I think that is definitely in the pipeline for Nighthaunt. Getting subfactions alone should be a substantial boost.

Seriously, if you have been following the Fyreslayers and Idoneth releases, there were posters in those threads who would do calculations for every new leaked warscroll and mechanic, "proving" how every change was a nerf. In the end, both of those books got better. What is happening with Nighthaunt right now is just another instance of that pattern. Not that this makes it any less nail biting, though.

As for the actual changes, here are some mildly hot takes:

Spirit Torment: Losing reroll 1s was to be expected. But if you can only have one buff, then +1 to hit is better, anyway. Even taking mortal wounds into account (in most cases). The reason being, reroll 1s gives you a chance at another hit in 1/6 of cases, while +1 to hit just gives you a hit with the same odds. The extra 1/36 chance of getting a mortal wound is not worth crying about. The only thing that sucks is not being able to stack both buffs anymore, but hopefully there will be more impactful buffs in the Battletome. I like the healing, though: Kill one thing, heal 3 wounds is really nice. I think you can have multiple Spirit Torments, as well, for extra heals? That's potentially quite strong.

Chainghasts: Kinda a mixed bag, but not necessarily a bad one. +1 to hit aura is good and potentially makes stacking +1 to hit and another command ability possible. Fairly fragile, though. These plus a Torment are probably meant to pair up with a larger unit of melee fighters in the new book. There, they would provide some healing, hit bonuses and incidental damage. If they and the Torment get the ability to activate out-of-sequence like Soulblight vampires, they are a good buff piece.

Myrmourn Banshees: A cool little anti-magic unit that doesn't take up a hero slot. I view units like this one and Chainghasts as "upgrade" units for your real power blocks. If you have an important unit that you want to guard against magic and Endless Spells, bring a bunch of Banshees along with it. Not sure how good that particular niche will be most of the time, but you could do a lot worse for 75 points. I think if they get close they can also stop the opponent from casting buff spells on their own units? Their melee profile is good, too.

Bladegheist Revenants: Currently bad and overcosted. Since these guys are drowned spirits, my prediciton is that the boat guy gets a subfaction that turns them back on. Retreat and charge is still good, but not enough with their current damage output and for their current points.

Scriptor Mortis: I still kinda like him. 150 points is steep, though. The bodyguard ability is kinda weak, it only really protects you against chip damage. If your opponent can shoot 6 wounds off the table reliably, they can probably manage 7, as well.

Craventhrone Guard: Currently bad. Their shooting profile and defensive stats are just too weak. But if there is something like Kurdoss subfaction that lets them bodyguard for heroes they could still be good. 95 points is a bit steep, but managable for a bodyguard unit.

Overall: It might be fun to speculate about the intended playstyle for Nighthaunt in the new tome, given what we now know. Let's remember that the last Battlescroll proves the designers know that Nighthaunt are underpowered. Because of this, for all nerfs in Arena of Shades, I would predict that buffs in other areas will follow. As an example, I would predict some kind of change to ethereal. Since saves are dropping on a few units, I think Ethereal is probably getting a buff in some way.

It looks like Nighthaunt will want to play high drops, high synergy lists. There seems to be the potential in the army to buff any kind of unit by giving them a small supporting entourage of stuff like Myrmourn Banshees or a Spirit Torment/Chainghast. There are a bunch of units that act as denial or pressure pieces, as well: Your opponent chooses whether to cast spells into Myrmount Banshees or not, but their presence makes it a lot less attractive. Your opponent chooses whether to snipe the Scriptor, but if they don't they have to expect 2d6 mortal out of nowhere at any time. If there are more pieces like this in the final tome, Nighthaunt can probably play a "tide of trash" strategy, where you flood the board with low-value pieces and make target priority really hard for your opponent because nothing is individually worth focussing on, but with everything at once the synergy adds up. This is not a bad playstyle at all, Soulblight Gravelords do basically the same thing a lot of the time. I think that could make Nighthaunt a good off-meta army that capitalizes on everyone currently bringing very high-quality, low damage units to break high saves, while Nighthaunt is most vulnerable to low quality, high damage.

 

[dmorley21]

I still think Nagash lists for Nighthaunt have juice until the new book arrives. I also think Incarnate lists could be pretty strong. 
 

I’m playing in a GT on May 14/15 that is not allowing new rules after April 28. So I think I’ll be choosing between one of those list types. 

[Drujeful]

6 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Seriously, if you have been following the Fyreslayers and Idoneth releases, there were posters in those threads who would do calculations for every new leaked warscroll and mechanic, "proving" how every change was a nerf. In the end, both of those books got better.

It even goes back to Maggotkin. I checked out the discussion thread back during previews and all the way up until the book released. Tons of worry about nerfs, about how everything cost too much, how the army will be too slow now to be able to grab objectives. Plenty of people said Maggotkin would completely lose any chance at being competitive. But it’s a great army now! It’s the other army I play so I follow it a lot and have been super happy with results and with how awesome the army feels in play and theme. I really do think it’s way too early to say Nighthaunt is bad when we’re missing most of the picture. 

[lare2]

56 minutes ago, Drujeful said:

It even goes back to Maggotkin. I checked out the discussion thread back during...

A great point. My experience of watching reactions to 3rd edition books so far has seen pre-release panic turn into post-release jubilation. On that note, all 3rd edition books seem to be so far really well done. GW's actually been doing a pretty good job, in my humble opinion. Here's hoping they keep up the good work. 

[Gitzdee]

Do hope they will give bonesplitters some love though. I am optimistic about the nighthaunt tome. Dont think gw will release all those new models with a crappy tome.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Iksdee

[relic456]

2 hours ago, Iksdee said:

Dont think gw will release all those new models with a crappy tome

*PTSD flashbacks to Nighthaunts initial release* They 100% are capable and willing to do just that lol

[EnixLHQ]

7 minutes ago, relic456 said:

*PTSD flashbacks to Nighthaunts initial release* They 100% are capable and willing to do just that lol

That's...not true. NH were a 5/0 army at least twice when they were released, and often 4/1.

It's truer to say that whenever there's a new meta NH wins big for the first tournament or so, and then sharply fall off when the meta stabilizes.

[relic456]

Lets not forget that one of those 5-0s the player was allowed to bring their own terrain, which was physically enormous and (imo) provided them a huge advantage.

I would say some early 4-1's and 5-0's (more than likely caused by people just not knowing how to play against them) followed by languishing in obscurity qualifies as "a crappy tome", but you may define that differently.

[Kadeton]

8 hours ago, lare2 said:

My experience of watching reactions to 3rd edition books so far has seen pre-release panic turn into post-release jubilation. On that note, all 3rd edition books seem to be so far really well done. GW's actually been doing a pretty good job, in my humble opinion.

I agree, they've been doing an excellent job with the 3rd Ed battletomes.

Where they haven't been doing a good job is in conveying what makes each faction strong and fun to play ahead of the release. Hence, people think the sky is falling, it gets worse with each reveal, and only after the book actually comes out do people start to realise that the army is actually great - this has been a consistent pattern across all the new tomes.

I don't know if that's mostly down to the player community and their tendency to interpret anything GW does as persecution, or if it's more the fault of WarCom and their tone-deaf hyping up of abilities that are merely reasonable and well-balanced, while downplaying or staying silent on all the stuff that actually makes the armies work.

But yeah, at this point it seems well-established that the previews of 3rd Ed tomes are met with horror and despair, and then once the tome is released it turns out that people were just leaping to conclusions over incomplete info and it's all good. I see no reason to think that Nighthaunt will go any differently.

[Neck-Romantic]

What are we ballparking as the books release/announce date?

[Vastus]

When you want and/or expect + 2-3 weeks.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

9 hours ago, Kadeton said:

Where they haven't been doing a good job is in conveying what makes each faction strong and fun to play ahead of the release. Hence, people think the sky is falling, it gets worse with each reveal, and only after the book actually comes out do people start to realise that the army is actually great - this has been a consistent pattern across all the new tomes.

I don't know if that's mostly down to the player community and their tendency to interpret anything GW does as persecution, or if it's more the fault of WarCom and their tone-deaf hyping up of abilities that are merely reasonable and well-balanced, while downplaying or staying silent on all the stuff that actually makes the armies work.

This is something that I find really annoying. I guess that it's caused by their publishing model and WarCom's role as a promotional outlet. It was really apparent in the case of the Craventhrone Guard. WarCom can only hype the stuff that's in the actual box, which is their basic warscroll. So they present their shooting ability as a huge boon, and as basically the reason to get excited about the unit. When in reality, it's really just not very good. It could well be that there is something in the Battletome that makes them worthwhile. But WarCom can't give us that info, because they are in the Arena of Shades hype phase, and the Nighthaunt Battletome hype phase is not due for another month.

I really wish GW would be a bit more flexible with their marketing. Their recent tomes have had exciting rules in them, so I don't understand why we have to go through a cycle of "this doesn't seem very good" and "oh, it was fine after all" with every release.

[Gitzdee]

Someone might almost think they are trying to sell less Arena of Shades boxes. I guess most people dont compare statlines when looking to buy something because GW does not seem to care about upselling their new stuff.

[Nightseer2012]

2 hours ago, Iksdee said:

Someone might almost think they are trying to sell less Arena of Shades boxes. I guess most people dont compare statlines when looking to buy something because GW does not seem to care about upselling their new stuff.

Now that you mention it, it does "feel" like Arena of Shades hasn't gotten a lot of attention.  I mean, it is available for preorder, and it didn't even get a whole article to itself that day, just the usual copy announcement from the preview article a week before. 

It got an unboxing video, 1 article about the one rule that the Scriptor gets, 1 article about the 1 rule the High Gladiatrix gets, and 1 article about the 1 rule that lets the Crossboos fire through terrain.  Is it just me or does that not feel like a lot?  Did the Fyreslayer/Iodeneth box only get this much coverage, or am I just being over-critical?

[dmorley21]

29 minutes ago, Nightseer2012 said:

Now that you mention it, it does "feel" like Arena of Shades hasn't gotten a lot of attention.  I mean, it is available for preorder, and it didn't even get a whole article to itself that day, just the usual copy announcement from the preview article a week before. 

It got an unboxing video, 1 article about the one rule that the Scriptor gets, 1 article about the 1 rule the High Gladiatrix gets, and 1 article about the 1 rule that lets the Crossboos fire through terrain.  Is it just me or does that not feel like a lot?  Did the Fyreslayer/Iodeneth box only get this much coverage, or am I just being over-critical?

Arena of Shades has gotten more coverage than Fury of the Deep. 

[Nightseer2012]

12 minutes ago, dmorley21 said:

Arena of Shades has gotten more coverage than Fury of the Deep. 

Ah, ok, I fully admit I didn't pay attention to Fury of the Deep very much since I have little interest in those two factions.  Just goes to show, feelings vs facts is hard when it comes to marketing vs my personal laziness.

[Drujeful]

1 hour ago, Nightseer2012 said:

Ah, ok, I fully admit I didn't pay attention to Fury of the Deep very much since I have little interest in those two factions.  Just goes to show, feelings vs facts is hard when it comes to marketing vs my personal laziness.

I also felt like Fury of the Deep got more coverage at first. But I didn't check Warhammer Community every day like a maniac hoping to see something new so there's some bias where every day I don't get news is a day I feel like GW doesn't care about me personally lol.

[lare2]

If it makes you feel better, there's another two 40k articles on WarCom today 👍

[EnixLHQ]

1 hour ago, Nightseer2012 said:

Just goes to show, feelings vs facts is hard when it comes to marketing vs my personal laziness.

Not just yours. Sort of the theme to the thread, really.

[Boggler]

9 hours ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I really wish GW would be a bit more flexible with their marketing. Their recent tomes have had exciting rules in them, so I don't understand why we have to go through a cycle of "this doesn't seem very good" and "oh, it was fine after all" with every release.

Same. But they won't ever be better. They are dumb and every department works in its own secret silo.

We're all hopeful that something in the book makes all this trash that was revealed playable... That is horrible marketing...

They won't sell product on quality models alone and they'll have to change their ways if they want to please the shareholders.

I still haven't opened my copy of Dominion (that I pre-ordered, and have since seen on sale several times for 70% off). I hope at least something in the Arena of Shades box turns out to be playable because pre-ordering before book release seems to be a gamble these days.

[Rors]

Unfortunately I think a vassssst majority of the consumer base just buys new shiney stuff and GW will do just fine on sales.

Most players aren't competitive, then there's the collectors and hobbiest who just like models and don't play at all.

That being said, I think streamers like honest wargamer are having a hugely positive impact on informing the community and dragging GW along for the ride since the company no longer has sole control over their own marketing and the narrative they create when pitching to the consumer.

[EnixLHQ]

I mean, you can actually look up their financial report. There's no need to guess at their business practices or plans for the future, or how things look since 3.0 dropped. Or even since they got their current leadership. It's all there. I won't spoil it for you all, it's actually worth the read and I really suggest people do a bit more data-driven research instead of gut reactions.

I get the feelings. I get the people giving each other likes for all the nay-saying, negative comments, and poor outlooks. The influx of new accounts seemingly here to just ****** on the faction. I mean, we're Nighthaunt, we were already doing that, didn't need the extra help.

But, my brothers (and sisters, and everything in between) in Nagash, GW isn't in the market for releasing subpar work. That's not a business model.

The TL;DR: of the reports is basically that when the game system does well, people will buy things to play in that system. And when tomes/codexes do well, people will buy more than just the models of that faction. And when the fantasy itself does well, people will buy into the ecosystem even more, branching outside of the rules and models and heading into licensed media like novels, animations, and video games.

For a faction that already exists, don't expect GW to release a battletome for us that blows everything out of the water. Instead, just hope that they release a perfectly viable book with perfectly viable options that can stand up in any perfectly normal tournament.

[Rors]

21 minutes ago, EnixLHQ said:

I mean, you can actually look up their financial report. There's no need to guess at their business practices or plans for the future, or how things look since 3.0 dropped. Or even since they got their current leadership. It's all there. I won't spoil it for you all, it's actually worth the read and I really suggest people do a bit more data-driven research instead of gut reactions.

I get the feelings. I get the people giving each other likes for all the nay-saying, negative comments, and poor outlooks. The influx of new accounts seemingly here to just ****** on the faction. I mean, we're Nighthaunt, we were already doing that, didn't need the extra help.

But, my brothers (and sisters, and everything in between) in Nagash, GW isn't in the market for releasing subpar work. That's not a business model.

The TL;DR: of the reports is basically that when the game system does well, people will buy things to play in that system. And when tomes/codexes do well, people will buy more than just the models of that faction. And when the fantasy itself does well, people will buy into the ecosystem even more, branching outside of the rules and models and heading into licensed media like novels, animations, and video games.

For a faction that already exists, don't expect GW to release a battletome for us that blows everything out of the water. Instead, just hope that they release a perfectly viable book with perfectly viable options that can stand up in any perfectly normal tournament.

I hear you and nothing I was saying was directly speculating on NH as this discussion has gone slightly off topic.

I think their recent success, like Lego, is because a lot of us started as kids, left, and have come back as adults with disposable income.

Of course the quality of the game is relevant to sales but GW upper management don't have a clue what game quality is. Until folks from places like honest wargamer started actually tracking stats GW had no clue where their game ballance was at and they had shown very little interest in finding out. Since no one else knew, all they had to do was proclaim it's great and no one can really argue it. That's changing now and it's making them work on game ballance reactively rather than proactively, at least so far.

Now that the community is actively doing stats themselves, GW are reacting to this with greater effort at game ballance because they know the no longer have a monopoly on informing customers about the product.

Anyway, night haunt.. hopefully it's a decent book.

[Neck-Romantic]

Not a bad take on new sources of balancing info 'forcing' to at least acknowledge unbalance.

 

'Forcing' them to actually *deliver* balance... thats still hit or miss.

AoS 2.0 was originally heralded as a more balanced system for comptetstive play after the somewhat more whimsical and unstructered 1.0... and NH was one of the original tomes for 2.0.

So having a weakly balanced book rolling out the gate as a Flagship example of the 'Now including balance!" release is still indicative of their hit or miss nature

Edited April 6, 2022 by Neck-Romantic

[stato]

1 hour ago, Rors said:

I hear you and nothing I was saying was directly speculating on NH as this discussion has gone slightly off topic.

I think their recent success, like Lego, is because a lot of us started as kids, left, and have come back as adults with disposable income.

Of course the quality of the game is relevant to sales but GW upper management don't have a clue what game quality is. Until folks from places like honest wargamer started actually tracking stats GW had no clue where their game ballance was at and they had shown very little interest in finding out. Since no one else knew, all they had to do was proclaim it's great and no one can really argue it. That's changing now and it's making them work on game ballance reactively rather than proactively, at least so far.

Now that the community is actively doing stats themselves, GW are reacting to this with greater effort at game ballance because they know the no longer have a monopoly on informing customers about the product.

Anyway, night haunt.. hopefully it's a decent book.

People were tracking stats long before honest wargamer, infact does he even do it? or just report what others have done.