Scurvydog

Been thinking for a long time that death was in for an overhaul, especially in regard to Nagash himself. Perhaps this is also due to no new freeguild army, but the current mismash of death factions, wityh deathrattle and deadwalkers, just seem horribly outmatched compared to factions and models made specifically for AoS. The armies of the other gods, like stormcasts for Sigmar, Sylvaneth for Allarielle, DoK for Mortahi etc, all are super powered murder machines, far outpacing any regular joe. I feel they dropped the ball on nighthaunt being that counter in the super soldier arms race. The above factions are all made in the image of their god, with a theme, design, armor etc. all fitting the god, or even the models of the god (avatar?). Nagash only has this with his Morghasts, and both Nagash, Arkhan and the Morghasts follow the same design pattern, with a tomb kings vibe, but distinctly its own. It would make all kinds of sense for death to get their super elite faction, possibly still directly led by Nagash, with morghasts and other constructs forming the bulk. The design of Nagash's armor is also on point, so an army taking up that look and making it its own would probably look really good.

I worry if GHB 19 is delayed due to the issues with the Sylvaneth release as well. Bad times for AoS if everything is just stuck.

2 armies with the oldest and worst battletomes around are at the same time lines with new models made for AoS, these are Ironjawz and KO. Leaving their new model ranges made for AoS in the dirt makes no sense and I would expect them to get an update before long. Everyone knows at this point those armies got poor rules and it makes no business sense to let them stay like this. I highly doubt Std, seraphon, aelves or ogors get tomes first, but GW is not prone to make sense, so maybe this is what is going to happen anyway. Not a fan of the short notice release windows, impossible to plan just a tiny bit ahead with purchases.

Did a 2v2 game today with a 1k list Log. List was kurdoss, reikenor, dreadblade general (with wizard trait and amethyst brooch), 2x10 rasps, 10 reapers and 10 bladegheists. My ally was SCE and opponents were beasts and khorne. Playing battle for the pass. Placing graveyards was super important. I placed one in their back line such a way summoning a unit there could overlap the objective, forcing them to worry. After a big fight with most of my force midfield I lost a unit of rasps and reapers. My turn I teleported the dreadblade and got both units back at the gy near their backline, while just the previous turn they had dedicated their forces to fight them in the center... This won us the game and while LoG is just a weaker legion with less options on paper, the inclusion of nighthaunt creates a lot of opportunities and I feel the dreadblade general alone is too good to not use. He creates so many tactical and strategic options, as long as you have a bank of CP and keep him out of combat, your opponent needs to be vary of all the graves. This truly created psychological horror! Just keep him clear of blood boils and lightning cannons

The thing is if I am to run 40 man skeleton blob anyway, I might as well go with the old legions as LoG is the weakest otherwise. Sacrement is better at casting, nagash himself is a beast in his grand host and legion of blood has the exact same rules except more attacks for vampires, twice the traits and artifacts and access to VloZD. Not to mention all have far more spell options and locus of shyish. I guess my point is that this legion is rather disappointing and good for nothing else than using ghosts a bit differently. The legion is by far the worst for any other type of unit to be in.

I will wait and see with the upcoming GHB before making new purchases, as currently I will be lacking battleline to actually play LoG, as I only got 20 rasps, as I use reapers and spirit hosts in my nighthaunt army for battleline purposes. Perhaps I will get some dire wolves and paint them ghostly like I dont know, but myabe GHB has some new goodies to better inform that decision. I just got Olynder and Craven king as well, so rather bummed out that Olynder is so bad for LoG, as she has some of the coolest abilities in the model line.

The text on the FB page says: "Maybe the Sphere of Hysh can give you enough clarity to decipher this week's Rumour Engine! Give us your guesses below..." Seraphon are warriors of Azyr in all the lore so far, so mentioning Hysh doesn ot bode well for them...

At this point it would just be rubbing salt in the wound releasing this image if it is not Seraphon, the forgotten tome and oldest tome, which is just a paperweight due to all the FAQs.

@Undeadly40 man units of chainrasps does not sit well with me, I tihnk it will be near impossible to maximise their use with only 1" range on their attacks. If you reconsider battalions this would fit so well as a condemned battalion. My suggestion is to cut the units down to max 30 man units, this pays for the battalion and now all the chainghasts reroll to hit near your torment and ghasts. You can also then use the artifact to give the dreadblade or torment the midnight tome, possibly taking shademist would could make any unit much tankier. The added command point will also be useful for the charges, or keeping the rasps around if they start taking a lot of fire. Thats just my 2c though.

Banners from deathrattle units also provide -1 bravery, so sprinkle that in as well.. Anything that does not absolutely overwhelm the entire castle will just disappear the following turn, jeez. It will probably lose the objective game though, a wise opponent will just stay well away the maximum 9" of the aura.

Looking through rules for battalions here and there I see nothing preventing the use of battalions based on specific allegiance abilities. If you can use all the warscrolls based on keyword, for example LoG allowing "nighthaunt" and you have the battalion with all "nighthaunt" units in it, I see no reason you can't take that in a LoG army. Such as the Deathmarch battalion, that is not attached to any legion in the LoN book either, as long as the allegiance allows all the units in the battalion, you take them, and also the battalion at the added cost no problem. If anyone got specific FAQ to counter prove this, I'd like to see it, but I can't make out anything in the battletomes or core rules to prevent this.

I like the theme of the list and if you face some up front armies I think it can do alright. I do think it is missing something in a few scenarios which will impact you a lot on different battleplans. For example if you need to hold points with heroes, you will quickly lose steam, as this is very much a huge blob. Also the cost of the chainguard in general seems to be better just to invest in more chainrasps from the beginning, bringing back an average of 3-4 each turn is all you get, and that has minimal impact really. Healing on the utility character might also end up being wasted, if you want said utility on a fresh unit. Basically I dont find chainguard worth it nor the endless spells, as your 2 casters should be busy using their 2 spells already. This could all afford you an entire unit extra of something, actually if you skip the 1 CP, battalion and spells, you can get Kurdoss Valention for 2k on the nose. He can possibly throw a wrench in the CP machine in your favor and provide som hitting power and be very scary with all those +wound bubbles going around and strike last spells. Wychlight is good, but midnight tome for the torment is also worth considering. +1 to cast on one, or you get another dispell and chance to cast another spell, such as spectral tether to heal your heroes who are critical to your gameplan. Just some suggestions for tweaks

Perhaps they show restraint due to a huge buff incoming to the nighthaunt line in GHB.... one can dream, I expect anothing actually, perhaps only very slight point alterations at best. I hope they FAQ battleline and locus to make LoG on equal grounds with other legions. Getting spirit hosts at least, perhaps reapers (or perhaps harridans?) as battleline for LoG could be cool. As for battalions it always puzzled me there was no battalion with either Olynder or Kurdoss. It would be awesome to have one reflecting their cursed relationsship, like "Husband and Wife tagteam": Olynder needs to be general, but gets 1 free use of command ability each turn. Kurdoss is even more bitter near his wife, and gets soul crushing smite on a 5+ and can reroll his damage die. Something like that.

While nowhere near as good as I hoped, as a pure nighthaunt player it still allows me to use my ghosts in a different way, so for that I am happy. IT is disappointing though that the legion is a very watered down copy paste of legion of blood, with half the traits, artifacts and spells, also no locus of shyish to make matters worse. Compared to nighthaunt, then the traits are perhaps better, as NH really only use ruler of the spirit hosts, while I can see all LoG having a use and none are bad. In stark contrast to the artifacts though, which are all horrible and thank Nagash for malign sorcery if you need any (without battalions though, you only need 1 hurrah). Spells is a huge problems, only 3 and I really do not like them much except the -1 save debuff at a 5+ cast, that is pretty nice. The 8+ cast of bravery debuff or a short range spell with the same cast value, but with d3 wounds on only a 4+ is horrible, both a way too swingy and random with too high cast values in an army with no cast bonuses. Again no locus i also a huge hit to the potential of the magic phase compared to any other legion. The NH spell lore is also rather decent, especially spirit prison and shademist, and tether/lifestealer are handy on any hero. The only reason to use this legion is to use more of the nighthaunt range, although it wont break any meta, as a sacrement or grand host list with grimghasts will still be much better. I will still try it though, as the general allegiance abilities are still somewhat better than the NH ones.

Lores of the dead states: "WIZARDS that know an additional spell (or spells) from one of the Lores of the Dead, as described in their army’s allegiance abilities, generate their spells from the following tables..." So it needs to be stated in the allegiance abilities, as each legion in the LoN book has it stated under "Magic". I don't see that in the LoG entry, so I suspect it is separate, and as such no locus either. Unless it appears in a FAQ LoG will be by far the weakest legion in terms of magic, selection of traits and artifacts etc. Only benefit really is that you can use the second wave release of nighthaunt models. Competetively this is probably just flat out worse than any other legion, but for a pure nighthaunt player it gives another option, although not one that will threaten LoN in the meta.

I like being able to have this option, I don't like the only nighthaunt battleline looks to be chainrasps with all those spirit hosts I got laying about... I don't really want to go and buy dire wolves or skeletons. I enjoy fielding Olynder, although her command ability is pretty lackluster, especially when spirit hosts are not battleline, so a wasted command trait in that case. In general all that -bravery seems meh, a very underwhelming and unreliable way to deal damage, still need to make something flee to benefit, and the enemy commander will just save command points for inspiring presence where needed, neutering both endless spells, 8+ cast spells for d3 bravery minus etc, seems very meh. Bloodbound? immune, Beasts of chaos? immune near stone, Gloomspite? same. demons etc dont much care.

If the new legion of grief is not usable in matched play I at least will be extremely disappointed.

Seraphon summon at 0 point investment? That is completely false. A slann as general is required to summon at all. That is 260 points and they also have to sacrifice casting any spells to get summon points. To get the 20 skins you mention a turn an astrolith bearer is needed too for 160 pts. That is then maximum if casting 0 spells 3x3+1+1d3. So you still have to roll a 3+ on that d3 to summon 2 units of 10 skins for a total of 12 points. So your 460 points made you summon 120 points of skins a turn without doing much else. Most games are decided before they even get a point return of investment from summoning.

I also think the NH lore is just reused. The big kicker will also be how this is done, as the soul wars models are usable in legions, which was an incredibly half baked solution. If all nighthaunt become integrated into the legions book, then cool stuff opens up. The legion of grief itself is most likely the same as the other legions with a slight spin next to grave markers etc. The bravery debuffing, while thematic, has me worried. Bravery and battleshock has been ruined a lot in my opinion, with GW handing out battleshock ignoring abilities left and right, such as terrain for goblins and beasts, where they are completely immune, not to mention high CP generation to just use inspiring presence as needed. With many demons as well with 10 bravery, they really need some kind of magic trick in the rules to make playing the bravery and battleshock game worth anything. At the very least the army then needs the banshee battalion effect of ignoring inpisiring presence or it quickly becomes pointless if your strategy can be countered every time på 1 CP.

This is a tool for the tabletop gamer first and the hobby painter second. I have friends playing horde armies, like beasts and skaven who can't wait to just splatter clanrats and ungors in contrast paint, to get a decent tabletop result and save a LOT of time. Spare time is precious when you have a lot of responsibilities, kids etc. So getting your hordes up and looking decent and focus attention on centerpiece models is great. I would use this to just get the 40 man blob of skeletons done, but not to paint Nagash for example.

It looks more AoS than 40k I think. Very much geometric shapes which fit the realm of light ideas going around, the paintjob also looks like it is being illuminated somehow, but perhaps that is just a strong gradient without specific purpose..

I never cared for wave of terror, it is so random and can be so game changing when it happens. I just hope this is not just a campaign book list and that it will actually be usable in regular matched play, in which case I will very much look forward to using all my nighthaunt models in a different way. I also hope the rest of the line gets included with the soul wars box models to be used in the other legions, especially want to use all my models in a list with Arkhan or Nagash. The legion of grief also makes sense, as it seems to be more settled in now and the nighthaunt and olynder prepares for a more grindy siege rather than the guerilla warfare so far, which is then reflected in the rules how they do this, by changing from shock tactics to breaking the morale of their enemies.

Thought about the newly announced legion of Grief in forbidden power? Sounds like Nighthaunt get added as a more "regular" legions of Nagash force, using many of the same mechanics seen in sacrement/grand host/blood/night with grave sites and a few unique mechanics. Think this will be a matched play addition? I'd assume so, but hopefully they go a bit more into that later before preorder time.

GW should be able to look at their sales of chainghasts to see how useful they are. I never saw anyone who bothered to buy the strange hero and 2 ghasts box. I can't see my self buying harridans or stalkers either. The issue with way too many 1 wound similar save and move units, some will just be better

Seraphon had a lot of tricks but does not hold up in a head on fight assuming even skill and luck. Deny skins taking objectives and snipe whatever enables battalions as most depend on 1 model to get any real benefit.