Thamalys

Well, it's six mortal wounds flat until he suffers four wounds. Taking into account (1.) the Hunger (2.) the Chalice of Blood and; (3.) Vile Transference, you have quite a lot of room to manoeuvre! In my experience, getting at least two rounds of "shooting" with the Prince in the top bracket is the norm. D6 mortal wounds until he suffers seven wounds is also pretty decent, I'd say! Uhm... not so sure about that. Can you give us some specific examples, please? Genuinely curious - especially about the 280 pts hypothesis! I have been using him both in Soulblight and in Legion of Blood in tandem with a regular Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon - quite the threat (don't forget his command ability!) I'd disagree with that. Sure, with buffs Vhordrai becomes insane, but even without he is not shabby at all. Against a 4+ save, at full health, on the charge, but with no buffs whatsoever (not even his own spell!) he deals on average 14.43 points of damage. Now, that's not shabby in my book - you are deleting most big Heroes in one shot. I repeat, with zero buffs. If you start factoring in his own spell and the command abilities from a Vampire Lord, a Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon or a Coven Throne, the Prince goes absolutely ballistic. We definitely don't have the equivalent of FEC, yes... but Vhordrai is a named Hero anyway, so they wouldn't apply to him? Having said that, this is just my opinion!

I saw this and I went "darn, I'm late, surely somebody went for him already..." but no - a few got close but a "regular" Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon is nothing compared to... Prince Vhordrai Coolest? Yeah, he pops out of nowhere with a flippin' CASTLE followed by a retinue of vampire elites, eternally bound to serve the God of Death because of an ancient betrayal. Checked that box. Most fearsome? I mean, he is literally venerated as a demi-god of war. He has shattered entire dominions, with the help of God Nagash and a few marines Blood Knights. Most offensive? At full health, Shordemaire (the Zombie Dragon he rides) deals 6 mortal wounds FLAT on a 3+ in the shooting phase (8" range). And that's before his Maw and his Claws - oh, and the Prince's Lance as well. On his own, this gentleman is absolutely terrifying; when buffed (in-built own spell [+1 to both hit and wound... bonkers] + 2 command abilities from a Vampire Lord and a Coven Throne) he deletes (almost) everything he touches. Not to mention his command ability... The best looking: well. He's an ancient vampire riding an undead dragon... it doesn't get any better that that, right?

Sure. To start with, Legion of Nagash [LoN] (and Soulblight [SB] as well) can ally Nighthaunt [NH] (as per the LoN battletome). You can ally NH battalions in LoN and SB as well (as they share the <DEATH> keyword and NH are allies of both LoN and SB), but, as per the Designers' Commentary: which means that the Hexwraiths [HW] have to be considered as allies despite you could normally take them in LoN without the need for them to be allies. Hence, you have to pay the points for both the battalion and the HW. Now, this does have implications with respect to the rules. In LoN or SB, this is how the Dolorous Guard [DG] works Let's assume you have two units of HW, five models each, as your DG battalion. Your general is, say, a Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon [VLoZD]. A unit of Heartguard Berzerkers manages to inflict 10 wounds and 5 mortal wounds to your VLoZD. You roll 15 dice and get 2 rolls of one the rest are rolls of 2+. The two rolls of one are not passed to the DG (as per the DG rule), which means that you now roll 2 dice for your VLoZD because of the Deathless Minions Allegiance Ability. You manage to get a 6, so you allocate just the one wound to your VLoZD. Happy days! Now, we move to the DG: in NH, the HW will get Deathless Spirits, but in this case they are allies, so they don't benefit from that ability and have to take those 13 wounds. In order not to wipe out one of the two units of HW (remember: you can't bring them back via Endless Legions as they are allies!) you allocate 6 wound to a unit of HW and 7 wound to the other unit of HW in the DG. The first units loses 3 models and the other unit loses 3 models and has one model on one wound. Ouch. BUT... Let's assume you now have the turn (rule n.1 : NEVER get double turned if you play Death...). In the previous turn, your VLoZD managed to slay at least a model (of course) so he would have healed that wound because of the Hunger. If you have taken 3 or more wounds, consider drinking from your Chalice of Blood as well. Next, your VLoZD casts Vile Transference on the Heartguard Berzerkers: it goes off, it's not unbound and you inflict 1 mortal wound to them which they don't save. As per the Vile Transference rule, you can now heal that HW which was on one wound back to full. This works because Vile Transference works on allies as well! Now, your VLoZD uses it's Deathly Invocation ability twice (he can because that's an ability on his Warscroll which is not specific to the Allegiance!). Once on the first unit of HW - you roll a 6; happy days, you can bring back a HW. For the second unit you roll a 2 - sadly, that's not enough to bring back a HW as they have two wound each. Note that ALL the other characters in your army can use their Deathly Invocation on the HW: Vampire Lord, Neferata, Coven Throne, Necromancer... you see how filthy this is. Not only it's very hard to bring down a VLoZD with virtually 34 wounds that continuously heal, but bringing down the HW is also tough (4+ unreadable save + Deathly Invocation + Vile Transference). You can't heal the HW using the gravesites, though, as that's an allegiance ability while in this case Has are treated as allies. Hope this makes sense?

Alright, here's a tentative "GHB-2020-compliant" LoB list leveraging the points drops we have been discussing. I used to run a similar list with another Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon (VLoZD) instead of Prince Vhordrai, but given than we might have lost the Etheral Amulet I think Vhordrai could be a better choice. The trick with this list is the very tough General who is taking advantage of the Dolorous Guard battalion (allied from Nighthaunts). It takes a lot of effort to take him down - and because of that, your Dire Wolves - will - keep coming back throughout the game (if you have the CPs, which are a problem. You start with 2 [because of the battalion] but you really want to use the VLoZD command ability anytime you can on himself/Vhordrai). Now while your opponent either wastes timeon the close-to-unkillable VLoZD (lethal mistake) or decides to stay clear of him (wiser) you have Vhordrai with Amethystine Pinions, who is another serious threat. If that was not enough, here they come two units of five Blood Knights. This list wasn't possible before the points drops (had to take a sub-optimale Tomb Banshee instead of the Vampire Lord) and it looks quite ok to me. Not many bodies on the board (hey, we are elitistic Vampires, right?) but you have the damage in three / four different places to bring most of your opponent's units down. If you fear tough hordes, group the two units of Blood Knights into a single unit of 10 and buff them - almost nothing can stand in their way. If double buffed (VLoZD and VL command abilities at the same time) 10 Blood Knights on the charge means 60.44 (rend -1) + 15 (no rend) = 75.44 damage; against a 3+ save (that's right...) 30.22 +5 = 35.22 damage.

Point taken - can I just say: that's what I want to do as well! To me, AoS tournament = 5 games in a weekend, that's all that matters. I just accept that there might be a number of people (might be the majority... I wouldn't say that's always the case, though) bringing the latest fashion of the most powerful filth - but even when playing against those lists, I do have fun nonetheless. At the end of the day is mostly the opponent who makes a game enjoyable or not and I don't really think there exists a correlation between filthy lists and non-enjoyable players. In addition, by the time is game 2 or 3 you usually stabilise within that section of the play field where lists are more or less in line with yours in terms of "power level"?

Legion of Blood (LoB) and Soulblight (SB) are very different factions despite the fact you can run very similar lists as both. This is how I see them / play them: - LoB has Endless Legions, but it's in weird spot in that sense as you desperately want to bring in as many Blood Knights as you can - but these are not summonable, so Endless Legions is useless for them. You could go Grimghast Reapers (which I adore) AND Blood Knights in the same list, which works - but you have to compromise in terms of numbers and support heroes. My current LoB strategy is to invest in Dire Wolves (such an amazing unit...) to leverage Endless Legions (and Deathly Invocations and so on...) AND Blood Knights to make the most of the +1 LoB attack. You can build tough LoB lists based on Endless Legions, but Legion of Sacrament is just better in that sense. LoB is excellent for balanced lists featuring both resilient components (Endless Legions) and punchy units (VLoZD and Blood Knights). The changes re: the artefacts will have an impact on the VLoZD vs Vhordrai debate. I won't go into that yet - let's wait to be 100% sure about the artefacts. - SB can do two things really well: (1.) Be insanely fast/mobile. Swift Death is nuts (flying Blood Knights with a minimum, guaranteed threat range of 18 is bonkers) and we do have access to Amethystine Pinions, Chronomantic Cogs and the Mist Form Command Trait (also bonkers). (2.) Hit like a truck. However, that's not really true / useful in the current meta. Lots of things hit harder or just don't die. Which leaves Soulblight with a very clear issue: survivability. Without Endless Legions, Deathly Invocation and Vile Transference alone are simply not enough. Vargheists are not summonable either and they die like flies. You can also build a +2 to cast list with the Necromantic blood line and an allied Corpse Cart, but the reality is that in the times of Tzeench / Seraphons / Lumineth that's not the best way forward. The way I see it, I think it's fair to say that LoB is more viable, from a competitive standpoint, at this point in time, as what SB does well doesn't have a great impact in most games. However, SB allows me to take all my big monsters, my Blood Knights and my Vargheists and even ally the Mourngul (oh yeah) - as @warhammernerd righteously pointed out, the rule of cool is crystal clear in this case... I do agree re: both Neferata and Mannfred. Vhordrai, though, is sufficiently scary as it is, let's be honest. At full health and fully buffed (his own spell + the Coven Throne command ability + the Vampire Lord command ability) the guy is downright INSANE already... do I want him to have +1 attack in LoB? Of course I do. Would that be in line with the fluff? Oh yes. Would it be sensible rules-wise? I say, probably not... to be fair, I am quite surprised they brought it down in points. 6 mortal wounds flat on a 3+ (potentially a 2+) at full health, folks - flat. Shordemaire, for the win!

Don't worry about it - I just need 50 dire wolves to screen what matters for 5 turns straight 😜

In the context of competitive play, I genuinely don't get the concept of a NPE. Every tournament I have been, every time I have been moving around to a new table I have heard somebody going "ah, the <filthy netlist> list. That's it, I'm done - nothing I can do about this one *sighs*". If anything, I believe it's the opponent who is having a NPE - being blamed for bringing a tool which maximises their chances to win. It's a tournament after all! Note that I play exclusively what are perceived to be low-tier factions (Nighthaunt, Soulblight and Legion of Blood). Do I win tournaments? No, not quite. Is this because I am playing allegedly weak factions? No, it's definitely because I'm not good enough. I believe the beauty of AoS is that your ability play the game outmatches the low-tier top-tier divide. There is always a chance against every list. Do I enjoy the useless process of trying to dislodge 30 Hearthguard Berzerkers from an objective? Of course not, but I shouldn't be in that position to start with. Does my opponent enjoy being charged by my fully buffed 10 Blood Knights? Of course not, but they should have tied them up last turn instead. Don't blame the rules! The Honest Wargamer (love the guy and his show, by the way) would tell you that you have a NPE when you can't do anything about it. Yes, there are things against which you can't do anything (and yes, a couple of those might be coming up with Teclis) but those are just a few pieces of the puzzle that you have to factor in while both building your list and playing your games. If we are talking about showing up at the local shop with Changehost... well, I for one wouldn't do that, but in tournaments? Bring it on, it's fair game - deal with it with your tactical prowess of jump on the power creep train. Both are perfectly valid choices to me. Yes we can - and we should. The same with the dreaded "Salamanders List" - I think I know what to do with that one (he said confidently), I haven't thought about the Lumineth yet... but that's the thing, I welcome new factions, new rules, new changes. They force you to keep working on your list, they force you to stay up to date. There already was a way! I have been using Blood Knights in Legion of Blood (where they get an in-built +1 to all their melee attacks and they auto-rebuff everything with a - 2 bravery) for a while, and with some effort you could really make them work already (small units in cover, playing the rend mechanics to your advantage, using multiple units to work on your charges). The points drop is significant and puts Black Knights in a weird spot. Vhordrai down 20 points is also a significant change that is bound to make an impact on the endless debate (Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon or Prince Vhordrai?). I am obviously very happy about these changes, but I would also say that they still don't change the fact that most Soulblight units need some finesse to be manoeuvred effectively.

Yes you can. You pay the points for both hexwraiths and battalion (used to be exactly 400, now 380!) as allies. Tried and tested in more than a tournament... you can ally Nighthaunt battalions in both LoN and Soulblught - as per the FAQ, you just have to make sure you pay the points for the Nighthaunt units even if they can be taken as part of the LoN roster.

Ah! Behold, the rise of the Crimson Kin is finally upon us! These are excellent news... not only for Soulblight, but for Legion of Blood as well! I know that - probably - the points reductions won’t bring us up there with the proper filth (Seraphons, Fyreslayers, Tzeench) but to me is about being able to squeeze MORE in those 2000 pts. Also, we shall oppose the utter filth with elegant martial finesse (i.e. move up turn one and charge everything blindly). Now. Word on the street is, Hexwraiths are going down in points as well AND The Dolorous Guard battalion might still be matched play legal. If that is the case, we might have a viable SoulBlight list with a mega-tough Vhordrai (who ALSO went down in points?! That’s mental!) properly supported by a decent lineup of Blood Knights and a Coven Throne (ALSO down in point... this is a sign!) I demand the return of the tournament scene in the UK... dice desperately need to be rolled!!!

No way - if this is true, that’s HUGE. In many of my lists, the changes above would translate in a 100 pts saving... blood knights 180 pts for 5? Wow... please oh please let it be true!

It will have to be warscroll, methink. Based on e.g. the latest Nighthaunt errata (see attached), if points stayed the same the changes will have to be somewhere in the warscroll... if I remember correctly Plaguemonks got a * in the latest Skaven’s FAQ (when their Warscroll got re-done). That’d be really exciting... but I am quite suspicious of the many * I am seeing with no points drop associated to them. Let us hope, but the other explanation is that the leak might be fake (haven’t seen it. If you see actual points drops for, say, Kurdoss, on the same leaked pic, then yeah, I am properly hyped)...

I’b gutted if they got rid of Dolorous Guard. My tournament list (which is in fav a LoN last...) is built around that battalion. I converted 10 - ten - Dreadblade Harrows to make it happen...

Patience, my friend, patience.., let us wait for the bigger picture. (Sadly, I fear you might be right, though...) Man, they are trying with Kurdoss, aren’t they? Anyway - yes. Getting a victory with Nighthaunts these days is like winning a cyclocross race on a single speed...

Sure, that’s also an option! I personally don’t like that particular Legion (I call it “Nighthaunts without Tactics”) but (a.) that’s just my very personal taste and; (b.) against Fyreslayers, bring it on! It’s a possibility, yes, but in my mind they are massively over costed. But then, so it’s the Mourngul (I have a slender hope that the new GHB will bring them both down in points...) so why not? Their -1 to bravery, though, is not something I’d invest too much into. Overall, “bravery bomb” lists (i.e. stacking -1 to bravery, which is one way to go with Legion of Grief) are not the way to go, not with all the bravery 10 armies that we have around - or indeed, armies where heroes make entire blobs immune to battle shock (hello Skavens) . Fyreslayers themselves are immune to battle shock if running Hermdar (and sitting wholly within 12” of an objective marker). Again, for many armies you need a -4 to bravery to bring them down to 6. Is it doable in Legion of Grief? Sure - with a lot of effort, investing a substantial amount of points in specific units, cherrypicking from the Spells Lore as well as rolling decently. Is it worth it? I think not... Tip: if you are going Legion of Grief against Fyreslayers you want dire wolves. 3 units of 5 minimum, but spamming 6 is not a stupid tactics. They are summonable and very fast: let the dwarves chew through endless walls of rotten fur!

I feel your pain... Fyreslayers are a very tough matchup for Nighthaunt, that’s a fact. Many people will tell you that your speed and your ability to move around the board can easily outmatch the allegedly very slow dwarves... but’s that simply not true. Yes, it might take them two turns to get there, but when they do it’s game over (also, some builds are not slow at all!). We will NEVER have the damage to take down big blobs of fully buffed HGBs (almost no unit in the game can) and we don’t have time/ resources to kill the buffing heroes - we usually have to prioritise to avoid being tabled in turn one or two. The irony is that Legions of Nagash (any flavour will do, but particularly Sacrament and Grand Host) can deal quite effectively with Fyreslayers but feeding them endless tides of summonable units which get thoroughly butchered every turn but that can also be brought back the turn after, while some heavy hitters deal with the buffing heroes. With Nighthaunt I had some success with dropping every finesse (no battalions, no castles, no synergies) and spamming a metric ton of MSUs. It sort of works, but it’s much less effective than LoN. Another way that - in all honesty - I still have to try is a filthy “stacking minuses” list with several units of Spirit Hosts, Lady Olynder, Neferata as an ally, a Mounrgul, Geminids, Palisade and Shards. With a -3/-4 to hit on average, it’s really hard to grind away Spirit Hosts (particularly if you have Ruler of the Spirit Hosts). Now this list offers one of the worst playing experiences to your opponents - fact. But, in the case of Fyreslayers, I feel everything is game - even this stacking minuses filth...

No, not necessarily. The “Lord of Gheist” Command Ability of Malkor is exactly equivalent to that of any other Knight of Shroud on Ethereal Steed - he just gets to use it for free (I.e. without needing to spend a Command Point) once per battle round. No. You can have Lady Olynder as your general and protect her via the Dolorous Guard while granting a Knight of Shrouds on Etheral Steed (Malkor) the once-per-turn no-cost usage of Lord of Gheists via the Forgotten Scions.

Oh yeah... that's how we roll, Big T. !

Well, some relatively weak factions (where by "weak" I mean weaker than your average Tzeench, Fyreslayers or even - dare i say it - Lumineth...) rely on artefacts such as the Ethereal Amulet to mereley get a fighting chance. An example would be Soulblight and/or Legion of Blood (which I both play): without the "staple" Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon with th Etheral Amulet, those factions are going to suffer massively...there aren't so many "competitive" builds out there for those factions to start with, and now we risk to lose the few of them that are actually viable. Precisely. On the other hand, I do agree with @Dankboss that some artefacts are currenlt making strong factions even stronger... it's a tough one, granted, and we still don't know what the pool of "new" ones looks like... That one's just plainly broken on some characters mate . And yes, same here - I don't wan't to let go my Etheral Amulet at all!!!

(The obvious) question is, which artefacts are there in “the following pages”? A selection of the Malign Sorcery ones or new artefacts entirely? Darn, can’t wait to see the whole thing...

It’s a well-balanced list, I like it. The Balewind Vortex is a nice touch, having the Necromancer to cast Danse Macabre AND Overwhelming Dread (because that’s what you’ve picked, right?) is really good stuff. Vhordrai has a place when, as in your case, you have a “regular” VLoZD as well in the list. Let us not forget his Command Ability... I suggest Amethistine Pinions as the spell for Vhordrai, nothing freaks out your opponents more than Our Talented Prince being able to move up to 24’’. Obligatory Vile Transference for the VLoZD instead (Aura of Dark Majesty as Command Trait recommended as well). Two things you might want to consider: - Split the Blood Knights into two units of 5. Easier to manoeuvre, easier to get in cover, immune to morale, easier to get at least one charge with them off. Yes, they are less effective buffs wise and they struggle to clear tough hordes in one go as units of 5, but this is an objective game after all. You’ll be outdropped in any case by most competitive lists, no pint in trying to keep the number of drops low... - The Vargheists, sadly, are useless. It pains me to say this, as I LOVE the models and I am the proud owner of a unit of 9 which I do field in Soulblight... but in Legion of Bloods they make no sense. Let go of them and take 10 (excellent) Grimghast Reapers instead, or better still a VL (flying horror needed) to babysit your second unit of Blood Knights. You already have the (fantastic) dire wolves to grab objectives quickly. Hope this helps!

Amazing conversions - such a terrific, job, well done! Now, onto some Blood Knights, please... with this sort of talent...

And that's the understatement of the year... new warscroll, that's the only way to make them useful. I am sure there's an endless stashes of unsold boxes somewhere in Britain...

Quite hard. As our damage output pales against that of basically every other faction, we have to rely on mobility and board control, while trying to avoid being tabled (too soon - when we snatch a win, more often than not we get tabled nonetheless!). It's all about movement, which is tricky because of the many "wholly within" constraints we have on command abilities and the like. As everything ignores rend, our units are costly, and our healing capabilities are awful if compared to Legion of Nagash. Playing Nighthaunt require a lot of patience to get familiar with the flimsy nature of our army and lot of finesse to master movement and screening. You pay dearly for your mistakes, and the meta has evolved to a point where the damage output is so incredible that we find ourselves in a rather tough spot. Legion of Grief is much more forgiving, as you get gravesites and the ability to bring back entire units, much like in any Legion of Nagash. I personally don't like Legion of Grief because I enjoy the tactical challenges pure Nighthaunt pose, but I appreciate it must be very frustrating for new players, particularly if rather new to the hobby, to be wiped out more often than not. Final note: if you enjoy the modelling part of the hobby, go for it, 100%. In my opinion, we have some of the coolest-looking models in the entire game.

This, sir, is a solid Nighthaunt list IMHO - best of luck!