N1SB

Hi guys, I meant to post earlier, but I'm usually on Bolter & Chainsword as I'm mostly a 40k player. I just wanted to say thanks for saving the Warhammer Reveal at Adepticon. You guys made it fun. The Warhammer Reveal, with its pre-recorded late night show segments, was NOT bad, just awkward. It was a change, I realise people are just resistant to change, but it was a change like seeing your high school friend reinventing himself, trying to join the Cool Kids's Table at lunch or something, acting all different around you. He's still your friend, but I'm like, why are you doing this? I was still watching, but I mentally checked out, started reading the chat...and the Skaven Ratvolution was starting. You guys were singing songs, "I'm the giant rat that makes all the rules, let's see what trouble we can get into! Rats, rats, we're the rats..." Then it was, "RATS OR RI~OT, RATS OR RI~OT!" Even a 40k player like me was about to join your riot if there were no Skaven previews. Suddenly, ASCII text art in the chat of a rat. Someone shouted, "THERE'S A RAT IN THE CHAT!" But there was more than a rat in the chat. There were many rats. And we were all better off for it. Thanks, guys, that was a blast.

Hi, I've been away from AoS since the completion of the Season of War campaign, but I had been playing Warcry with a warband inspired by that official event. With the announcement of the upcoming edition's Path to Glory rules, this White Dwarf's custom undead character creation rules and Neil'r'thur'hotep's posts, it was exactly the nudge I needed to return to AoS. Taking that queue to spend the leftover points for whatever, I'm just taking the next step to make Lord Vampiragorn Who Won't Release the Army of the Dead (name inspired by that scene in Return of the King, I gotta think of a better name): Martial Vampire Lord w/ My Legion, I Summon Thee: 5 DP Ancient Greatsword*: 2 DP 3+ Save: 2+2 DP Curse of Midnight: 4 DP Descent from Upon High**: 2 DP Blood Retinue: 3 DP Total: 20 DP The only real addition is the Blood Retinue Ability. It allows the character to get Look Out Sir from a unit of Graveguard, which we were teleporting in anyway, now they serve doubly as ablative Wounds. This is actually pretty thematic, where Graveguards actually acting as a bodyguard for their Vampire Lord. * I wanted to keep a Shield, but Rules-As-Written has to pay for at least 1 weapon to go with it. I was hitting the cap with my preferred setup of Cursed Rapier + Crypt Shield that would have put me 1 DP over the Champion limit of 20 DP. ** I think you're right, I think it's supposed to be Up On High.

My Nighthaunt Warband. Too many Spirit Hosts, I know. One of them is a weird conversion of a Cairn Wraith with a Khorne Berserker's helmet & axe, an homage to one of my closest Warhammer friend's Chaos Warlord. He's my Warband Leader and his backstory directly ties to the official Season of War campaign years ago. My-then Death army, lead by a Vampire Countess, faced off against my friend's Chaos army, lead by a Khorne Warlord. Each week's battle in this official campaign had its own special scenario which was secret until we showed up to play. Ours involved a sacred duel. That dueling scenario involved the opposing armies each choosing a champion to face off in one-on-one mortal combat in the centre of the battlefield as the rest of the armies waged war around them; this duel cannot be disturbed according to the ancient forgotten gods that had once consecrated this land. Whichever side's champion wins provides a huge buff to the rest of his army. The Khorne Warlord, the Chosen of the Blood God, obviously nominated himself. The Vampire Countess stepped forward...and declared an unwitting Tomb Banshee represent her, for she was not about to sully her own hands. Game mechanics-wise, the duel required Heroes, my friend only had the one as he's a tourney 40k player that preferred minimal Characters for maximum Troops, whereas I had like 4 cheap Heroes at my disposal...and I chose to sacrifice my Banshee. The Khorne Warlord and the poor Tomb Banshee dueled, the unstoppable force against the immovable object. Meanwhile, the Vampire Countess directed the rest of the army to swarm around the battlefield and wipe out the preoccupied Chaos Leader's forces, who were bereft of his leadership and quickly cut down. Over time, the Khorne Warlord slew the Tomb Banshee, demanding the forgotten gods of the place to bless his army as the special scenario decreed, only to realise there was no one left alive to receive that boon. Instead, that Khorne Warlord was beset by all sides by the Vampire Countess's legion; he fought defiantly, but could not escape Death, for it was all around him. As with all those worship Chaos, his soul was now forfeit to his god, Khorne, who cares not from where the blood flows. However, the Vampire Countess was so impressed by the duel that, using her necromantic magic, bound his spirit to her will instead, rescuing him from that fate. In undeath, as in life, this champion serves one who thirsts for blood, though a different mistress than his original master. And centuries later, he still doesn't know if he was truly saved, or had just exchanged one damnation for another. Now she has dispatched him with a warband to what is considered a foreign land for the armies of Shyish, the Eightpoints, but this former warrior of Chaos knows it by another name: home. (It's a very minor conversion, but something I really wanted to do out of remembrance for that very narrative-driven battle. I made it out of a Cairn Wraith, an easy-to-build Khorne Bloodreaver, and sheer respect for my friend. But to this day every time he sees it he gets very bitter about it...which just makes the experience all the sweeter for me.)

Thanks for pointing out the thing with Flight because it might have been a genuine misreading or an opponent deliberately misinterpreting it for advantage. That would have impacted both games. I'm going to have a talk with the guys, this is something the whole local meta's been getting wrong...perhaps deliberately. Edit - I had followed up and understood the nature of the confusion in the meta. It was an honest misinterpretation, thanks for correcting us.

This suggestion came up in my Warhammer Store as well, and I saw you guys mentioning a 3 Gryphhounds, 2 Hunters, 1 Prime combo in the previous page. They're such great models with the added benefit that I might use the Farstriders in an actual game of Shadespire as well.

Thanks for pointing that out because I should've mentioned it because it's easily misread, but it's having to grind through basically 50+ Wounds (30 for the Spirit Host, 20 for the Extoller, then a few more when you rez) at Toughness 5 that's a huge burden for an opponent. I also happened to have spaced those 2 fighters spaced apart, and that's how I ended up winning, by forcing the opponent to split his warband (I actually fulfilled my victory conditions with a Spirit Host who only had 2 Wounds left). It's one of those cases my opponent noticed his problem (or my true power) before I did, as he's trying to fight against it. It was pretty cool. I happen to be using an Extoller with a few Spirit Hosts and a Glaivewraith Stalker, but I'm also wondering about a box of Easy-to-Build Chainrasps with (a) Dreadwarden(s) to have a similar thing, except as a horde. I don't know, just something I'm thinking about.

Thank you all for your advice. I'm still new to the game (in fact I'm mostly a 40k player) and I've won my 2 games thanks to your experience sharing. I'm writing now just to add data points on what was said. +++ what's been working exactly as you guys said +++ Survivability of Spirit Hosts (to play the Objective) - yes, they're Toughness 5 but I find it's mostly due to them being 30 Wounds. I'm noticing a lot of the missions where the Objective is a fighter of your choice, and his job is to Survive. Spirit Hosts does that well. But that is considerably enhanced by... Spectral Summoning with the Extoller of Shyish (who's also very survivable) - in case the Spirit Host Objective dies...you can summon him back (edit - with limited Wounds back based on your Triples). Resurrecting fallen units is already awesome, but (to our understanding/reading of rules-as-written) doing so with a fighter who's an Objective is like a force multiplier. Putting this together - some missions just require your opponent to kill a fighter who's an Objective. If you make it a Spirit Host, that's a lot o' killin' that needs be doin'. Then you have the Extoller who can bring them back, which effectively means he has to now kill BOTH to guarantee a win. +++ what worked better than I expected (though still not great) +++ Spirit Hosts were better at killing than expected - because they crit for 4 dmg. Yes, like everything we got they're only Strength 3, so you're going to need a 5 or a 6 roll to wound...that turns out to be a lot of crits since they do have 6 attacks. I was fighting the Unmade and I killed about half their warband (their stilt-wearing leader and all their Toughness 3 guys), and I was trying to play defense...but perhaps that's what Nighthaunt is meant to be good at. +++ what worked not quite as well as I expected, but it might be my list +++ Flying - to my understanding you can only fly with your 1st action (edit - I've been deceived), so I can't disengage and fly away. And it turns out a lot of other factions have some flying ability. It's still useful! It's just not quite as good as I imagined at 1st (and perhaps my expectations were wrong), not quite the competitive advantage I expected. +++ TL;DR +++ As said by others, play the Objective, especially when you're the Objective. Then, you might not think you're good at killing, but I found Warcry to be a high casualty game where nothing EXCEPT US are that great at surviving anyway; we can punish people going after us aggressively even if we're not the best hunters, but we're certainly not good prey either. I share this in the spirit of being helpful because I'm enjoying my 1st warband of ghosts...but I'm having so much fun I'm reading these threads for a 2nd one.

Hi all, my 1st post here. Painted this up last weekend, played a few games already, altered my deck. The technique I used will be familiar to those that experimented with Japanese paints and Warmachine players, it's a speed paint job with metallic spray and then washed in Tamiya Smoke. Then Vallejo paints and GW inks for the matt portions, like the scrolls and leathers, etc.