The_Dudemeister

*takes 6 Tomb Banshees and deepstrikes them all to deal 12d6 mortal wounds for an average of 42 mw in the shooting phase* That would only kill 2/3rds of a full Grot-unit. I am 100% on board with this idea 😁

Slaves to Darkness, Cities of Signar and several other factions have working bravery bombs that far surpass everything any Death faction can do when stacking all our different effects. And now the Mindstealer Sphiranx comes out for StD that also randomly gives -2 bravery. Instead of directly dealing more damage, how about Glaivewraith Stalkers brings bravery debuffs to another level. For every wiped unit (same as Khorne's Blood Tithe mechanic), our Aura of Dread gets an additional -1 bravery. That would help out Tomb Banshees too, yet another unit noone even talks about.

Great write-up again. Only thing I'd change is the wording for shademist as it's not really an aura effect. Oh and you could mention the initial extra boost to spell-range when you cast Balewind Vortex. You cast it 1" away from you and add the huge base of that thing because it is now treated as your casting model. That's an additional 5" you can sneak out of it on top of the innate 6". Also when it gets dispelled, you set up a whooping 6" away from it. Because it's a set-up and not a move, you do not count as retreated. A great way to get your caster out of a fight they can't win and move to prepare a charge to where they can. Bonus points if you let your Myrmourn Banshees do the dispelling. I just love everything about the Balewind Vortex 🙂

16 Banshees would need the +1 attack buff to become a little stronger than the Harridans, which is extremely unreliable or costly to do all the time. Harridans are unconditionally strong and have 4 more bodies for the same price. You already have dispelling covered with Arkhan, which would've been the main reason to prefer the Banshees. Well that and if your local meta has a lot of units that reroll saves where the extra rend becomes exponentially more useful. Anyway, here I compared the damage-output of some units you can get for 280 points. Keep in mind that this is just mathhammer. The jump from Chainrasps to Bladegheists for example is much bigger damage-wise, because when do you ever get all 40 Chainrasps in attack range?

What do you mean by that? Also, unlike the self-healing, returning models with Nimbus of Power happens at the start of the hero phase oddly enough

I can't wait for Archaon's Forgeworld upgradekit once Slaanesh has been freed

- Core book, page 236 If you play without a battleplan, that's the victory condition. However every battleplan has its own victory conditions from holding two objectives to immediately win, to getting the most points untill the end of the fifth turn. In these cases every single round has to be played out even if you have literally nothing to do and you can absolutely still win long after being tabled. Just check what your battleplan says for major victory, because that's what overrides the blank rule.

I like the list. Keep us updated It's very rare not to see Ruler of the Spirit Hosts for the general

Here's what a conditional ability would've been phrased like from the example of the Magister's spell "Bolt of Change"

Idoneth Deepkin: - Kraken that lets you roll 8 dice against any enemy unit within 9". MW on a 5+. You can freely distribute the dice, so for example 3 dice for an enemy hero with only one wound left and 5 dice for the bodyguards screening him. -Ethersea tidal waves that, at the end of the hero phase, move every friendly unit on the board 4" in any direction as long as they end their movement more than 3" away from an enemy unit. Moved units do not count as retreated and can therefore charge and shoot. - Lurelight, a model of a giant Anglerfish whose light absorbs souls to invigorate Namarti. Roll a dice for every enemy model that dies within 12". On a 6, return 1 slain Namarti model from a unit within 18"

I do not think we can. Every single model GW produces undergoes a costly process of design and production and needs to get approved at several stages of the process. They would not do it for a model they thought was bad and damages the brand reputation (not that Teclis would do that for me, just speaking generally here). We can safely assume that the people in charge think of every single model that gets approved as "winners", some more some less. My personal biggest gripe with GW models are the faces... the ****** faces. From Constipated Grandpa Teclis to Regurgitated Duke Nukem Reject Space Marines... This is what the designers prefer, so this is what we will get untill a whole new generation of designers emerge. Recently, I've heard of several 40k players telling me they didn't like the AoS design influence creeping in... one of my favorite changes in recent years. Everyone not in touch with 40k in general, check out Mortarion, he was the first model I know of that was very AoS inspired and fits better between Nagash and Archaon than to any other of the big guys in 40k before him. That's also something that will absolutely not change, because it's so tied to the designers currently working at GW and the people needing to approve all new stuff. I very much agree with the premise that rules sell models and those that are notably unusable in-game will sell worse than very similar looking units that are good. But the overall design philosophy will stick. More AoSy models for 40k and more punchable faces for me etc.

The way his model is only supported by a small piece of cloth on the wing with the center of mass in front of that construction. We'll be calling him Wigglis the Wiggler of the Wiggletower. Mark my words! The moment people first hold this model in their hands and move it, he'll be called Wigglis the Wiggler of the Wiggletower!

Icons are extremely important. If you roll a 1 in the battleshock phase, you get d6 previously slain Horrors back, which can be more Pinks. However, Tzeentch can use one of their 9 Destiny Dice that they roll at the beginning of the game to replace the battleshock roll... so if they have a 1 in the pool, they automatically get d6 back. Either way, as someone who started playing Tzeentch myself, I absolutely acknowledge the Codex Creep that happened with the new Tzeentch book. However, oddly enoudh, Nighthaunt are one of the armies that deal with the new Tzeentch stuff the best... and that's definitely a first. Some of strongest things to look out for with Tzeentch: * Horrors just multiplying. 10 Pink Horrors split into 20 Blues, which split into 10 Brimstones, so 50 in total. With Reikenor and the artefact Slitter we have two ways to at least snipe the Iconbearers. This ability is extremely rare in the game and we have access to two ways to snipe them. Also the splitting mechanic was revised in an important way and different to 40k. You have to place a split model within 1" of the slain model. So if you surround some parts of the Horror unit, the chance for the Tzeentch player to place the new models get smaller and smaller. To counter this a little, instead of splitting, a Pink Horror can deal a mortal wound on 5+... the worst possible thing you can do with Horrors. There exists a spell to get slain models back even if the iconbearer is dead, Fold Reality. But if you roll a 1 there, the whole unit gets destroyed. Expect that once the unit has been whittled down to only Brimstone Horrors to get Pinks again to restart the cycle. * Eternal Conflagration will be THE subfaction in competitive. It gives the shooting of different Flamers and Horrors -1 to rend. So while we don't care about that at all, it makes shooting ridiculously powerful. 9 Flamers for 360 points deal more damage than 30 Reapers. They have a threat range of 27" by themselves. However you play Changehost, which is a battalion that makes your whole army a single drop and it lets you teleport 2 units... so Tzeentch starts the game basically every single time and they always start off with teleporting dozens of Flamers and Pink Horrors in shooting range. Every single army will have to deal with that, but we at leas won't notice the extra rend * We have a solid way to get +1 and more to hit. Tzeentch Daemons have a natural -1 to hit and can stack that potentially. However, most everything in the army is extremely wounds-inefficient and only saves on 5+ and 6+. Let's mathhammer this a little: 30 Reapers hitting on 6+ kill only 10 Pink Horrors on average (Pinks have a 6+FnP). However if they hit on 5+, they kill 18, on 4+ its 25 already. So the Knight of Shrouds is your friend... Olynder in theory too but don't expect to actually get the spell off. * I can't stress enough just how squishy this army is. except for the Lord of Change, Kairos and the Exalted Greater Daemon, there are only 2 other heroes with 4+ saves. The other 11 heroes are 5+ and 6+ just like the rest of the army. And nothing gets more wounds to make up for the bad saves. * If they don't use Eternal Conflagration, they'll use the subfaction The Hosts Duplicitous which doesn't let you retreat. We're also one of the few armies in the game that has a reliable and spammable answer for that with our teleporting. So yeah, while Tzeentch definitely is one of the new "That faction..." in the game with Bonereapers and the likes, at least Nighthaunt don't suffer as hard as everyone else.

Also I found a use for the teeny weeny Cairn Wraith. I like to use the Sword of Judgement every once in a while so I'm drawn to the realm of Ulgu anyway. It has another neat little artefact: I just park him behind my Chainrasp screen against armies with good alpha strikes. When the combat phase starts, before the opponent even attacks, he deals 1/3rd of the unit size as mortal wounds and later in the actual fight, he also has 2" reach anyway so can also still fight. He only costs 60 points, so with the damage he potentially does to other horde units plus the damage mitigated from the slain models that can't attack anymore, he makes his points back every time and then some. I also use him in suicide charges just for that so I can choose my targets when it's my turn.

Correction: That's the allegiance ability so every Nighthaunt Hero benefits from the healing when an enemy unit fails battleshock. Spirit Torment has the most versatile healing mechanic of any Death hero and functions fundamentally different to any other. - While every other hero can only resurrect when there's no wound allocated anymore, ST can absolutely try to bring back a Hexwraith or Spirit Host when there's a model with only one wound left. Even Arkhan's all new healing kept the old either-or mechanic. - He doesn't just heal SUMMONABLE units like all the others but any Nighthaunt unit. So he heals heroes too. - He heals at the start of the battleshock phase. As it happens before the battleshock roll is made, every guy you bring back with him doesn't count towards slain models so makes your roll easier to pass. (Enemy units failing battleshock count as slain but he heals before they make and potentially fail battleshock so never count for his healing.) - The condition that 3 models had to be slain this turn is pretty weird and kinda unnecessary. But at least it's fluffy as he reaps the souls straight from the battlefield. And it shows how much Games Workshop overvalued healing as this mechanic is there to keep us from spamming him (A second Spirit Torment would need yet another 3 slain models to activate the healing). Oh well, at least this mechanic has no range.

I only noticed now that you have the Dolorous Guard but still the traditional playstyle of having a teleporting Dreadblade as general. Those two styles definitely clash. You either keep your Dreadblade safe in the back or you pay the Battalion price for a super beefy general. On the other hand, it means you could make the Knight of Shrouds your general and disregard what I said about him not getting the Balefire Blade.

If you plan on using those really often, you could swap the Aetherquartz Brooch with Ulgu's Talisman of the Watcher. That gives you re-roll save of 1 for a unit every combat phase. Saves you 2 CP per round. Also you only have 1 single-cast-unbind wizard in there which might be problematic. You could either get a wizard or swap out yet another artefact for the Midnight Tome. The extra unbind and possibility to cast Mystic Shield (another 2CP saved for rerolls) will benefit your defenses. The Knight of Shrouds' command ability in a list with tons of CP is too valuable to put him on the front line, so his Balefire Sword is an easy choice for swapping. Even with the extra attack from Forgotten Scions, he shouldn't be a damage dealer in this list without a Spirit Torment or Spectral Tether spell to heal him. I wish he had 2" range 😅 With this setup, you'd free up a lot of CP for rerolls that could go into the Knight of Shrouds instead. The extra damage buffed units do far outweigh what he does with the Balefire Blade anyway and you can keep him safe.

This amazing tool was created by one of our forum members. 👌

Doesn't really matter. Here you can see the average damage of all three weapon options + Staff of Tzeentch. So even for the Rod we'd be in close combat, otherwise by itself it only does 2 damage on 4+ and 5+ save targets. In comparison 3 Flamers (also including melee) in the Eternal Conflagration on the worst profile. So no hit bonus from Exalteds or for unit size.

True, the good old RAW (rules as written) vs. RAI (Rules as intended). I think I'll wait untill the first FAQ update untill I play it that way. It's quite powerful and would also heavily devalue the Brimstone Familiar artefact that a Guild of summoners hero must take. But not gonna lie, I hope it's intended. 😋

I never thought about that rule in terms of battle shock. But rules as written, it should be indeed so. For reference here are the wordings: Destiny Dice: Battleshock: So while your Bravery can still be modified, for example -1 from spooky Skellingtons or whatever, a 4 from your Destiny Dice will be your final result of the battleshock roll, no matter how many models you lost. And with Bravery 10 as Daemons, even against bravery bombs, basically any Destiny Dice will suffice to pass the test. Interesting

They are still incredibly fragile for their points cost. The trick is to not let them get hit in the first place and there are ways for that. Personally I don't mind at all because they're exceptionally killy for a ranged unit. They compare quite well to many melee units when mathhammering. Except that for a fast ranged unit, every model is basically always dealing damage. All those 20/30-man melee blobs where a huge chunk isn't in range and to mitigate that, taking weaker 2" weapons just to squeeze in more attacks... Flamers don't have that problem at all. And 18" range is also far enough to stay beyond the threat range for many melee units even when they roll really well for charges. So even without a screen their sheer range is their main advantage for survival. Have a hero with the additional -1 to hit for ranged weapons artefact babysit them and you outshoot most other good shooty units. Send a Chaos Spawn from spells like Bolt of Change into close combat that they have to shoot and I'm really not sure anymore how to defend against Flamers. With careful positioning and these tricks, melee and shooting won't get to Flamers easily. So only magic is left... against your Tzeentch army 😂👌

You have to add the unit and then check the box for Pink Horrors. That automatically puts them to battleline. Flamers and Screamers likewise only show up as battleline if you chose the appropriate coven.

They changed that about the Mortis Engine but not that it can be taken with the brand new and totally unrotten Nighthaunt? Even though they put it in the closest thing NH has for a Start Collecting? REEE, I'm salty 😂

I fear we'll be getting just one model... of the twins... Kairos Fateweaver-style. 😱