AoS 3 - Nighthaunt Discussion

[Ranzou]

Don't you see any problem in stalkers, who have two-handed glaive (the longest weapon in whole nighthaunt army) with only 1" reach?

What about wikipedia?

Quote

Typically, the blade is around 45 centimetres (18 in) long, on the end of a pole 2 metres (7 ft) long

Weapon of 2.45 metres long with 1" reach. LMAO.

[EnixLHQ]

7 hours ago, Neck-Romantic said:

I still dont understand how Hexwraith's spectral scythe has a 1" range... grimghasts' scythes are 2" range... cavalry with 2 handed polearms with ahort range is goofy

 

3 hours ago, Rors said:

It does seem goofy. I guess if you need to justify it in your mind thematically, being on horseback puts you further back and they're flying over the units so if their weapons are the same length as grimghast the loose an inch due to having to reach further to get passed their own horses?

Was it ever 2"? I don't recall, but it's been 1" forever now. I wish I could sit one of these designers in a corner and force some answers out of them about things like this. This and the Mortis Engine would be my first two questions.

[Ranzou]

2 minutes ago, EnixLHQ said:

This and the Mortis Engine would be my first two questions.

I have the answer to Mortis Engine. It is operated by Necromant, a meatbag from another codex.

It's like looted wagon in ork codex - something ghostly, but looted by meatbag,

[NinthMusketeer]

So I just finished reading the new NH tome, wanted to stop by and express my sympathy, seriously. It isn't even about how strong the army is but rather... they just sucked the soul out of the warscrolls. Most of the fun, flavorful mechanics are gone and the army is left with loads bland mechanics only sporadically interrupted by something interesting. The fluff is nonsensical, disjointed, self-contractory and mismatches with the rest of the lore so badly I have a hard time even seeing it as cannon, let alone how poorly it matches up with what the units actually do in-game.

I'm glad the charge mechanic got a new version that works (and works well) and that NH got the inspiring presence denial they always should have had, but it just really sucks that the depth, narrative, and theme of the faction was hacked up to get it.

[lare2]

Packed up the below for my game tonight. No idea who I'm fighting. Forget who posted it above but wanted to see how it does - teleporting mayhem, I imagine. Also want to just run my black coach as finished painting it last night. 

 - Army Faction: Nighthaunt
     - Subfaction: The Scarlet Doom
     - Grand Strategy: Hold the Line
     - Triumph: Bloodthirsty
LEADERS
Lady Olynder (340)*
     - Spells: Spectral Tether
Knight of Shrouds on Ethereal Steed (155)*
     - General
     - Command Traits: Spiteful Spirit
     - Artefacts of Power: Pendant of the Fell Wind
Dreadblade Harrow (145)*
BATTLELINE
Bladegheist Revenants (350)*
Bladegheist Revenants (350)*
Hexwraiths (160)*
Hexwraiths (160)*
BEHEMOTH
Black Coach (335)*
     - Reaper Scythe 
CORE BATTALIONS
 -  *Battle Regiment
TOTAL POINTS: 1995/2000

[The_Dudemeister]

4 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

they just sucked the soul out of the warscrolls. Most of the fun, flavorful mechanics are gone and the army is left with loads bland mechanics only sporadically interrupted by something interesting.

First time I don't even intend to buy the warscroll cards. One of the best game aides a war game can have and something I always mention when comparing 40k to AoS. There's just so little on them and with Nighthaunt having very monolithic stats (8" fly, 4+ Ethereal), memorizing the few outliers is very easy.

 

That being said, there's a fair bit of good too when removing rules clutter that just make the game slower. A good example for both sides is Kurdoss.

 

D6 damage instead of d3 on a wound roll of 6 just slows down the game. Gameplay-wise the intention is to give him a higher average damage output, but this was done in the worst way possible to actually play. So getting rid of that without replacing it with another special rule and just giving him higher flat damage is a great choice.

On the other hand he lost the full hit reroll against enemy generals called "Suffer no rival". This is what you're talking about and truly inexcusable for his fluff

[dmorley21]

Just catching up… 

Back to the Black Coach discussion, I’d echo that I’m disappointed by it. I think the laser is situational and it’s more of a teleporting anvil - the problem is there’s just so many better options for the points cost. It also just doesn’t sync with the army. It’s too pretty not to use on occasion, but I’m not impressed.

Also, I’ll have to add the links to my blog post when I have time to sit down at a computer, but two podcasts dropped this week that talk about NH.

Cubic Shenanigans goes warscroll by warscroll and is worth a listen.

Party at the Allpoints goes into less detail, but also chats about them. 

So if you’re a podcast person, look into those. 

 

[DionTheWanderer]

A lot of people talking about stacking WoT - but other than the save modifier, it doesn’t stack, right? 
 

best you can do is -1 to hit, no save and strike last, which given that requires multiple 8+ charges and at least one 10+ is both harder to get and arguably worse than the old WoT where you could fight twice.

[Liquidsteel]

20 minutes ago, The_Dudemeister said:

On the other hand he lost the full hit reroll against enemy generals called "Suffer no rival". This is what you're talking about and truly inexcusable for his fluff

His scroll has space, they could easily have given him +1 to hit and wound vs heroes. Shame.

[dmorley21]

19 minutes ago, DionTheWanderer said:

A lot of people talking about stacking WoT - but other than the save modifier, it doesn’t stack, right? 
 

best you can do is -1 to hit, no save and strike last, which given that requires multiple 8+ charges and at least one 10+ is both harder to get and arguably worse than the old WoT where you could fight twice.

You can stack -1 to hit so that the opponent gets no bonus from a +1 to hit from something like all out attack. 

[Rachmani]

So, to share some perspective.

I recently had a game not as NH but as Kruleboys against NH. I played a body heavy grinnin‘ blades army with only moderate shooting against Scarlet Doom with MSU and all in all a low wound count and absolutely smashed the living spirit out of my opponent.

I expected a different outcome but it seems that high volume attacks with some mortals output absolutely wrecks MSU NH.

We‘ll play a few games over the course of the next weeks, but so far low wound count seems to be problematic for NH armies. Saves are still good with 4+/5++ but super swingy. Too swingy imo. A block of „something“ seems to be needed to not lose the center and much needed board presence.

[Arzalyn]

2 hours ago, DionTheWanderer said:

A lot of people talking about stacking WoT - but other than the save modifier, it doesn’t stack, right? 
 

best you can do is -1 to hit, no save and strike last, which given that requires multiple 8+ charges and at least one 10+ is both harder to get and arguably worse than the old WoT where you could fight twice.

As @dmorley21 said, the -1 to hit can be staked, but to me when we talk about stacking it is more of getting the different options (-1 hit, -1 save, strike last) or trying to get multiple -1 to save to improve our damage. There more charging units you have, more chance to get the ones you want.

1 hour ago, Rachmani said:

I expected a different outcome but it seems that high volume attacks with some mortals output absolutely wrecks MSU NH.

In my game experience, Mortal wounds is something we have trouble dealing with. Most of our units are 1 wound, which make it very easy to destroy a MSU unit with the output some units are capable nowadays. Against enemies that use high rend or quality attacks (specially 2 or more damage), we have the tools to reduce/nullify their advantage, but against mortal wounds we only have our 5+/6+ ward and each failed roll is a model gone. High volume of attacks is also problematic, but a little better, as we have more chances to save them.

In general I think having at least a reinforced unit of 20 models is a must in most list. We have the recursion effects to keep it alive, but we need to have a better total amount of wounds to make use of those effects.

[dmorley21]

1 hour ago, Rachmani said:

So, to share some perspective.

I recently had a game not as NH but as Kruleboys against NH. I played a body heavy grinnin‘ blades army with only moderate shooting against Scarlet Doom with MSU and all in all a low wound count and absolutely smashed the living spirit out of my opponent.

I expected a different outcome but it seems that high volume attacks with some mortals output absolutely wrecks MSU NH.

We‘ll play a few games over the course of the next weeks, but so far low wound count seems to be problematic for NH armies. Saves are still good with 4+/5++ but super swingy. Too swingy imo. A block of „something“ seems to be needed to not lose the center and much needed board presence.

Yeah, this was something mentioned by Dayton Obre on the Party at the Allpoints podcasts. He said that he had 90 Bladegheists and still barely had them all survive a game. His thought IIRC was to go for a block of 20 Grims. But he thinks if you run MSU, you gotta lean in heavily and go for maximum redundancy. 

[NinthMusketeer]

3 hours ago, The_Dudemeister said:

First time I don't even intend to buy the warscroll cards. One of the best game aides a war game can have and something I always mention when comparing 40k to AoS. There's just so little on them and with Nighthaunt having very monolithic stats (8" fly, 4+ Ethereal), memorizing the few outliers is very easy.

 

That being said, there's a fair bit of good too when removing rules clutter that just make the game slower. A good example for both sides is Kurdoss.

 

D6 damage instead of d3 on a wound roll of 6 just slows down the game. Gameplay-wise the intention is to give him a higher average damage output, but this was done in the worst way possible to actually play. So getting rid of that without replacing it with another special rule and just giving him higher flat damage is a great choice.

On the other hand he lost the full hit reroll against enemy generals called "Suffer no rival". This is what you're talking about and truly inexcusable for his fluff

Totally agreed about the varying damage thing, it was a chore. But for me... why does the guy who is explicitly cursed to never be the general and be unable to issue commands not have an ability preventing him from being picked as the general or issue commands!? 

And who the hell came up with the new hexwrath fluff? Did someone lose a bet?

[Rachmani]

2 hours ago, dmorley21 said:

Yeah, this was something mentioned by Dayton Obre on the Party at the Allpoints podcasts. He said that he had 90 Bladegheists and still barely had them all survive a game. His thought IIRC was to go for a block of 20 Grims. But he thinks if you run MSU, you gotta lean in heavily and go for maximum redundancy. 

That’s what my opponent did, but as it happens I‘ve started to experiment with „msu-like“ kruleboys myself (hence grinning blades) with lots of hobgrot screens, 3 times 10 Gutrippaz. Msu boltboys and basically the NH units just folded. Not on their turn but in mine. 
But we’ll see. Was his first game as 3.0 NH, so there will be a learning curve. And personally I don’t look forward to playing against Emerald Host.

[EnixLHQ]

For anyone who was ever like "oOoH, gHoSty bOis, wHo wOuLd EVAR bE aFrAid oF gHosTs iN aGe oF sIgMar?"

Here's why: 

 

[EnixLHQ]

12 hours ago, dmorley21 said:

Yeah, this was something mentioned by Dayton Obre on the Party at the Allpoints podcasts. He said that he had 90 Bladegheists and still barely had them all survive a game. His thought IIRC was to go for a block of 20 Grims. But he thinks if you run MSU, you gotta lean in heavily and go for maximum redundancy. 

Granted that I've only played a handful of games under the new rules, and against armies who can't really answer these new rules, so my opinion here is wildly uneducated as of yet, but I think MSU is the way to go.

Edited May 27, 2022 by EnixLHQ

[dmorley21]

@EnixLHQ I think you miss a lot of nuance by calling NH lists hammer and anvil. While the basic strategy is simple, there’s a lot of similar or offshoot strategies. 

Generally, I’d argue only 2.0 Nagash and Big Drogg were true hammers for us. Maybe a unit of 20 Bladegheists in Scarlet Doom now. So it wasn’t and doesn’t remain a strategy for us.

However, there are other reasons to create anvil style units: pinning enemy units, board control, dominating a more valuable objective, distraction pieces, Death Stars, etc.

Heroes that support this type of build include: Guardian of Souls, Spirit Torment, Krulghast, Lady Olynder, Nagash. Shademist and Discorporate support this. 
 

I honestly don’t think there’s one right way to play Nighthaunt now… and that’s pretty cool. 

[EnixLHQ]

I agree there's no one right way, for sure. I just don't want us to fall into the hammer-and-anvil style play as the only one for Nighthaunt. I've seen so many posts since the leak that say exactly that, and then they lose their games and wonder why.

Edited May 27, 2022 by EnixLHQ

[Neck-Romantic]

Im list building for either Scarlet /Emerald MSU with 1 large group of Grimghasts backed by Cruciator and 2 Torments, with the rest being Bladegheists, Myrmourns and Hexes.

The idea being to slap defensive buffs on the Grims to be a very fighty tarpit while the BG's and Hexes focus on units that can be eliminated in a single round due to impact hits and subsequent combat 

[Jaskier]

It's weird to me that anyone would think a faction with army-wide retreat and charge and super high mobility fits a hammer-and-anvil playstyle and not a hit-and-run playstyle. This army's baseline tools are designed to let you choose your engagements with ease. If you approach Nighthaunt as you do Stormcast or Soulblight then you're not using the tools provided to their fullest. 

The closest thing to a traditional anvil in the army is a Grimghast blob with Discorporate in the no retreat subfaction, but even that is best used more as a pinning tool abusing the ridiculously powerful combo of retreat and charge/no retreat to mess with how enemy units are piling in to pull them away from where they want to be rather than a "grind it out" type of unit. 

Edited May 27, 2022 by Jaskier

[anorek]

Gotta say, I enjoyed the Warhammer weekly and kinda agreed with 90% of the stuff there.

- Lady O could've gotten a command ability (like other Mortarchs) for the price we are paying for her and calling her a warmaster.

- Black coach certainly needs a run/charge or pts cost reduction

- Kurdoss seems unfinished... Given the small fluff lore on picture and empty space on warscroll...

- Scriptor needs a change in some way.
- Touching all our models 3 times per turn, minimum...

 

But overall, these are refreshing change - a unique battletome; units with "weak" stats with awesome allegiance abilities.

Someone said that bringing NHs as allies is really bad, but you lose Ethereal status and can use defensive modifiers now 😂

After watching a weekly video, I made a list inspired by it for a friendly match against Seraphons:

Spoiler

- Army Faction: Nighthaunt

 - Subfaction: The Emerald Host

 - Grand Strategy: Hold the Line

 - Triumph: Bloodthirsty

LEADERS

Krulghast Cruciator (150)**

 - Artefacts of Power: Lightshard of the Harvest Moon

Kurdoss Valentian (210)***

Guardian of Souls (150)****

 - Spells: Seal of Shyish

Spirit Torment (115)****

Knight of Shrouds on Ethereal Steed (155)****

 - General

 - Command Traits: Spiteful Spirit

 - Artefacts of Power: Soulfire Ring

Reikenor The Grimhailer (190)*****

 - Spells: Soul Cage

BATTLELINE

Chainrasps (110)*

Chainrasps (110)*

Grimghast Reapers (160)**

Grimghast Reapers (160)**

Spirit Hosts (125)***

Spirit Hosts (125)***

Spirit Hosts (125)****

OTHER

Chainghasts (95)*****

CORE BATTALIONS

 -  *Hunters of the Heartlands

 -  **Vanguard

 -  ***Vanguard

 -  ****Warlord

 -  *****Vanguard

TOTAL POINTS: 1980/2000

Wondering if I grab an Arcane tome for an additional spell, Shademist or something.

I believe that my opponent will play Thunder Lizards, maybe an additional HotH battalion?

Edited May 27, 2022 by anorek

[That Guy]

Caught up reading here and the tome. Sad to say we had to delay our games because of unfortunate situations happening to my friends’ family. Loving the tome. The lore could’ve been a bit thicker, but i think it’s overall okay… i will watch/listen to the warhammer weekly today. Overall i’m sad to see the black coach is unpopular. Interested in the hero hammer builds though, fun how heroes we first disregarded are showing up to be solid options. Love reading all you guys battle reports and the success of the army! Looks like we are doing good. I especially liked reading about the fight against the ironjawz, it seems we can wither the storm. Soon i will see if i can say the same vs Idoneth. I also haven’t seen too many reports on damage check armies although the one vs sons of behemat was a nice one. Soon i can provide one vs nurgle(i feel it might get rough). Also… Any…. news on the Mournghul?

[Darkrich]

Played against Belakor's LotFP yesterday. My list was

Emerald Host

Olynder - Shademist

Cruciator - General, Lightshards

GoS - SoulCage

Spirit Torment - Arcane Tome, Seal of Shyish

20 Grimghast

30 chainrasp

10 chainrasp

3 spirit host

5 Hexwraiths

4 myrmourn banshees

2 chainghasts

Hunters of Heartland and Warlord Battalions.

He was running Belakor, Great Unclean one, Kairos, Khorne Prince, 2 flesh hounds and 10 plaguebearers. We were playing veins of ghur. 

Without going into a play by play, I moved up in a big ball with the characters supporting my reinforced units. He stopped all my spell casting except for seal of shyish which I managed to cast every turn. Grimgasts fought over the first objective that appeared against belakor, demon prince, and summoned plaguebearers. But they had the kruciator and spirit torment and GoS in range. Belakor does laughable damage with that setup. His GUO with fourfold blade does scary damage. He went into that fight and did like 8d3 mortal wounds plus his big sword and flail. I survived with a handful of grims left but he killed himself out of combat. I used Olynder as bait to get him to back out of that fight which he took. I wanted the grims to survive and heal up so I continue to fight that objective. Lady O dies in a storm of mortal wounds. He dark mastered the 30 chainrasps, but once they were free, they charged the GUO at the end of the game 1 shotting him through finest hour. I used lightshards on the 5th turn when it didn't matter to see what would happen. 

I rolled 2 for the emerald curse which I used on Kairos and Demon prince. This was pretty substantial damage. Kairos took 12 damage from it and the demon prince took 8 wounds and forced him to recovery those heroes. The banshees prevented all offensive magic save one enfeeble.

I think this is a pretty favorable matchup after playing it. LotFP likes to control the board and use magic to snipe support characters and leverage their powerful monsters. But NH reduce the damage and ignore the rend of these big guys so he couldn't chew through my big units and I was resistant to his magic. Next week I'll try to get a game against stormcast dragons with friendship bows or morathi bowsnakes. 

[Caesar1802]

Quick question: can nagash benefit from shademist or the +5 ward? I assume not because he doesn't have the keyword but just wanted to make sure.