[Hexgorger Skulls]

Short answer: No

There's a similar situation in the Legions of Nagash FAQ

Quote

Q: Nagash and Arkhan know the spells that other Wizards know. Can Hexgorger Skulls make them forget the spells?

A: Only if there are no other Wizards in range for them to ‘relearn’ the spell from.

When Hexgorger Skulls wipe Endless Spells from a Wizard's memory, they relearn them because they're still there. Rules-wise Endless Spells aren't known by a Wizard in the first place but by your army. For the same reason this ability wouldn't work on spells of the realms if you're using the Realm of Battle rules.

[AoS 2 - Legion of Grief discussion]

2 hours ago, EnixLHQ said:

-1 to be hit by enemy units within 3" if their bravery characteristic is 5 or lower. This combines with NH's natural -1 to bravery aura. So, unless your enemy can buff their bravery or ignore your debuff, if they bring a 6 bravery unit to a fight they will suffer a -1 to hit the DHs.

It's 6 or more. So even units that come with a bravery characteristic of 7 will get the -1 to hit treatment. 👌

That's important because 7 bravery is usually the highest you get for regular units apart from Death, Daemons and Seraphon. All those Stormcast, Witch Aelves, Iron Guts and what have you are Bravery 7 and still get the penalty without a buff.

Also something I played wrong for the longest time... I thought the opponent gets -1 to hit THEM. But nope, that's a general debuff which makes it so much stronger.

[AoS 2 - Nighthaunt Discussion]

8 hours ago, relic456 said:

My turn, I start casting spells and rolled unmodified 8's on two spells in the first four I cast. 2d6 MWs to all three of my wizards took out Reikenor and the Guardian of Souls, nuking my chances of winning. We decided to just call it there since there was no way I could contest any objective with what I had left.

Yikes. Rolling two 8s in four casts has less than an 8% chance to happen.

Now also take into account that all those wizards need to be within 12" of BOTH Skulls while you have Arkhan to extend everyone's casting range by 6"... so even if you deployed really bad, the chances of that repeating are extremely low. So this game doesn't give you any insight of how good or bad it is against your buddy.

But honestly, magic is what Khorne hardcounters anyway. So while you've been just unlucky, going all out on magic is not a good idea in the first place. So instead of optimizing this list, completely change things up.

That being said, Khorne gets their summoning juice everytime a unit gets wiped out. This means you need to exclusively take (close to) max-sized units. 2x min-sized Chainrasp Hordes and a 5-man unit of Revenants is just begging for him to summon a Can of whoopass. Notice how he exclusively uses min-sized units himself because they give him blood tithe points too when you easily wipe them out. And together with the bloodtithe points you serve him on a silver platter, he just resummons even better units.

 

With what you have, here's my suggestion:

Dreadblade Harrow

Guardian of Souls

Spirit Torment

40 Chainrasps

30 Reapers

10 Reapers (objective holders and bodyguards for your heroes only!)

15 Revenants

You have huge units that can easily be healed again and again by all three heroes because his min-sized units won't ever wipe them out in one go. Also your wound count rises up from 78 to 110. Now also skip the Aetherquartz Brooch, because this list isn't CP-dependant at all. Give your Dreadblade something funky instead like Talisman of the Watcher - if he's not in combat (and he never wants to be), pick your Chainrasps, Reapers or whatever within 9" to reroll save rolls of 1. It triggers every single combat phase just like "All-Out Defence" which costs you 2CP per round if you want to keep it up the same way as this artefact. So you might even accumulate unused CP for your Dreadblade Harrow to teleport depleted units out of melee into the backlines to be healed in the next turns.

The Chainrasps are too big in the beginning to benefit much from GoS' +1 to wound, but that doesn't matter. In the first round you spread them out nicely so he cannot charge your heroes. Your Reapers will stand right behind the Chainrasps. So when he crashes into the Chainrasps, the Reapers are automatically in combat too and can go to town with their 2" weapons. Melee armies like Khorne have a hard time in general against this setup. Meanwhile the Revenants go character hunting as soon as he leaves an opening.

 

PS: Treat yourself to Spirit Hosts or Hexwraiths in the future. "Ruler of the Spirit Host" works so well on them and both units have very distinct purposes that you lack so far. Spirit Hosts spam mortal wounds and Hexwraiths are fast af. In this specific case I would've used any of those two instead of the 10 Reapers

[AoS 2 - Nighthaunt Discussion]

Ok, it talks about Ghosts and Flesh Tearers.

Ghosts is relevant to us, as it is definitely Nighthaunt. But Flesh Tearers are a 40k Space Marine faction.

[AoS 2 - Nighthaunt Discussion]

What does WD stand for? I wanna go all excited too 😄

There is a possibility for a new battalion and even a new mini?

[AoS 2 - Nighthaunt Discussion]

How is Azyr not up-to-date? I see every single new unit, ability and points change being updated regularly. Can you please give me any examples?

It's the Warscroll builder that has hardly any support at all.

This is an honest question because as of now Azyr has never given me any reason to not rely on it and apparently that might be wrong.

Meanwhile one of THE biggest complains people have with GW is how any of their books is just good for 2 weeks before already being outdated.

[AoS 2 - Nighthaunt Discussion]

Azyr is the most up to date for points values and ability changes and it shows 150. Also when it showed up as 180 points, it was missing the diamond symbol to signalize a change.

We need a FAQ errata, because right now there is no officially correct answer

[AoS 2 - Nighthaunt Discussion]

43 minutes ago, Thamalys said:

What about the Orb of Enchantment?

Once per battle, at the start of the combat phase, you can pick an enemy hero within 3" of the bearer.  In that combat phase, that hero may not pile in, attack or use abilities.

The cheesy bit with this one is that - as far as I understand - all Gotrek uber-nasty abilities, including the preposterous 3+ shrug and the max 1 damage suffered, go down the sink when the Orb is activated. At that point, you have a model with 8 wounds and a 4+ rendable save that cannot retaliate against you. 

Can we confirm this is how it works? I'd love that, especially because it will come out of the blue and is so horribly, wonderfully cheesy 😂

[AoS 2 - Nighthaunt Discussion]

Those Endless Spells work in a way but there are two problems I see.

First is that they have a chance of being unbound from 30" away or best case dispelled in the next turn on a mere 6. So the opponent doesn't even have to invest in actively sending forces his way. 

Second, it doesn't slow him as much as I'd like. Shackles for example halves the movement characteristic. 

So from 4" to 2". Doesn't do anything against advancing which again can spike him up to 8". Guaranteed if they use a CP. At some point, without engaging him sooner in combat on our terms, he'll be too close to all the units we shifted to not make the charge. There's only so much board space.

Palisades might actually be decent though for a turn. The more tools we have the merrier. I'll try that out once I encounter him again 🤔

[AoS 2 - Nighthaunt Discussion]

5 hours ago, Thamalys said:

30 reapers spending 3 CPs for +2 attacks each (Vampire Lord and mounted KoS) and +1 to hit (KoS on foot) and a GoS nearby may have a chance? Fighting in two ranks, 10 in would mean 40 attacks, hitting on 3+ wounding on 2-... still not enough, probably.

I did the math with 12 Reapers. I think that's doable even when charging from one side, though still not easy because we want to be rather far away before. So positioning in a neat circle around him beforehand is completely out of the question. But anyway,

12 Reapers with +2 attacks each, +1 to hit and +1 to wound would do 7 damage on average. He has 8 hit points and even with an average damage of 8, it would just mean a 50% chance to kill him. So seeing how this strategy has 4 of our best heroes in spitting range of him and he'd be alive, it's safe to say we need another tactic. Stupid sexy Gotrek 😱

Also with 20 Reapers and the 4 heroes, we'd have 820 points and 3CP invested. Sure we could hope for a Nighthaunt charge but we'd only get the +1 wound buff for that and we'd still not comfortably get much over a 50% chance to kill him.

[AoS 2 - Nighthaunt Discussion]

23 minutes ago, States said:

How do we deal with gotrek?

In the manliest way imaginable. We throw trash at him.

With 4" movement he's super slow. And by himself he doesn't have any movement shennanigans like deepstriking, running and charging, teleportation etc.

So engage him in combat with trash like 4 Glaivewraiths. That stops him right there. After killing stuff  he can fight again if he's within 3" of something else after that. So have yet another 4 Glaivewraith Stalkers waiting for him 3" away but in the other direction from your army.

That gives him the sucky choice of either going 3" back to kill them (a huge chunk of his movement) and be further away from your juicy targets. Or not fight twice and then have the second Glaivewraiths engage him next turn to stop him yet again.

Remember that he's 520 points. Him slipping on 60 point trash like a cartoon character, leaves you with an insane points advantage on the rest of the board. Made even worse if your opponent uses another unit to help him out with his literal Stalker problem.

Tl;dr Just paint your Glaivewraiths yellow with dark spots so they look like banana peels and play some slapstick music

[AoS 2 - Nighthaunt Discussion]

7 hours ago, Aaranis said:

 I deal 9 MWs on average when all conditions are met.  These being: Having a Spirit Host within 6" of the target (easy), casting Olynder's spell on the target (already more unsure), then burning 2 CPs to give +2 with the KoS. In total I get 3 Attacks which deals 1d6 MWs on a 2+, and I reroll 1s to Hit if I managed to sneak my Spirit Torment into the mix.

So I did the maffs and it turns out you don't need the Executioner Horde battalion for this wombo combo. A Knight of Shrouds with LadyO, 1s to reroll and 2CP for itself has the same MW-output. 4 attacks, triggering MW on 3+, rerolling ones gives you 3.11x the golden shot, compared to 2.92x for the same thing but the Executioner triggering it on 2+.

So in case you prefer the Shroudguard battalion to Execution Horde, that would be an alternative route. And in case you really want to spend 3CP on one attack and have the KoS trigger it on 2+ himself, you'd get 3.9 times the golden shot for 13.6 mortal wounds on average. YIKES

[AoS 2 - Nighthaunt Discussion]

1 hour ago, Platypus said:

There's a Mortis Engine in the back.

Maybe they'll announce that all models with the Malignant keyword can be part of a Nighthaunt army. That would be amazing

[AoS 2 - Nighthaunt Discussion]

6 hours ago, Aaranis said:

Thanks for the advice, but I have to correct you about the Sword of Judgement: it deals 1d66 mortal wounds on a 6+

There's a lot of "ifs" I agree, and I love it, feels like having a successful plan thought ages ago and there's few things in the game that give me more joy than a plan unfolding  

Oh yeah, you're right. Damn I missed out on damage last time I played it with just 1MW!

Ps: The last paragraph shows that Tzeentch is getting to you! Beware the Changer of Ways! 😱😁

[AoS 2 - Nighthaunt Discussion]

Personally I'd rather let the KoS hang out with the Bladegheists. But granted you keep him close enough to the Executioner, we're talking 1.5 mortal wounds per turn. And all those hits on 4+ will end the attack sequence so you can only fish for his 3-damage attack on a 3 to hit and 6 to wound. That makes it even worse. 6 immediate MW against hordes that you have a weakness against seems much better to me.

Myrmourn Banshees are always good. You're right that they're best used with KoSoES or VampLord. Though you only have so many CP and therefore can't use all the good stuff there is at the same time anyway. You can use them defensively instead of using them as a hammer. First for their crazy strong unbinding, you want them to stick around for long anyway. Preferably at max size. Secondly, they have a huge bull's eye on them. 12 wounds in total is enough to kill every of our heroes, sometimes twice over. So you'd rather want them to be targeted than our heroes. Meanwhile it's easy to bring several of them back. An opponent who relies on magic and really really wants them gone can spend upwards of 15 successful damage to wipe them out. That's two to three heroes they could've killed instead. It's a no-win scenario for the opponent wether they target them or not.

[AoS 2 - Nighthaunt Discussion]

9 hours ago, Aaranis said:

Lord Executioner (80)

 

- Artefact: Sword of Judgement

The Bladegheists are here for those guys which won't care about my MWs: cheap hordes. They're fantastic and I can't see myself playing without them as I didn't try the Steroid Harridans yet.

 

Sword of Judgement isn't a good artefact for the Lord Executioner. 1 Mortal Wound on a hit roll of 6+. 5+ with the battalion. Theoretically 4+ with the KoS, but I can't see any situation where it's worth to pump a CP into a 16% higher chance to do a single MW instead of using that on any other unit. Either way, he only has 3 attacks so we're talking really slim chances.

With your high MW output you don't need more stuff that can only be used against heroes and monsters anyway. As you said, you need something against hordes. So try out the same realm's "Betrayer's Crown". Once per battle only, it deals a MW on a 5+ per model. So a 30-man blob comes crashing into you and you immediately deal 6 mortal wounds on average. This happens at the start of the combat phase! Not only are you doing 6 Spirit Hosts worth of MW, but also prevent incoming damage as they die before attacking you.

[Vitrolic Spray and Ethereal]

Tough one as I haven't seen any clarification anywhere and nothing in the FAQ.

As a Nighthaunt player myself I'd consider it to work though.
Ethereal just blocks any kind of modifiers, not a change to the save characteristic itself. So theoretically Nighthaunt could get a spell in the future that says "change the save characteristic of this unit  to 3+" which than Ethereal would make unchangeable through modifiers and cover.