Games Workshop Warhammer AoS - Nighthaunt Bladegheist Revenants

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Lingering Spirits gives you a 4+ ward save against mortal wounds, which is nice but you probably have better things to be doing than probably still failing to keep your general alive against Lumineth Sentinels. Terrifying Entity is the one we’re going to be testing first – with the number of interactions based around terrified , having your general project a 6” Aura of Dread rather than 3” could be quite nasty. It doesn’t give your general any personal bonuses, but Nighthaunt heroes have always been more about buffing their army rather than being blenders themselves. In summary this is just a sample of what you could do, from the Vanguard: Nighthaunt box set. I would prefer to replace the HQs with a Knight of Shrouds on Ethereal Steed and a Guardian of Souls for their warscroll abilities and bringing our Triumph into play (975 of a 1000 points). The biggest advantage of the Guardian is his ability to return models which transforms this list into a very frustrating defensive list with bite.

Hi Kiba ! Those are some good suggestions! With only two casters I think double Endless Spells is a bit excessive, but I could definitely see including the Purple Sun in this list (I'm the Sun King, so I should shouldn't I?). I'm a bit torn on what to take out to include the Purple Sun. I think the Chainrasps are really important for screening so I don't want to lose them. The Spirit Hosts is another option but then my heroes are a bit more in danger. I could also cut a 10 unit of Bladegheists - but then I would have to find something to spend the rest of the points on. Maybe something like: Is it unplayable? No, you can include this in your army and have fun with it in casual settings, but as someone who looks at units through the lens of ‘would I bring this to a tournament?’ the answer is sadly no, because I want to pay points for abilities I know will go off, not abilities that have a 33% chance to do ANYTHING round two, and 50% on round three. Not many battles with Nighthaunt are still undecided by battle round three, so why would I pay 150 points to give me an edge in long games? Craventhrone GuardThe other unit that had mortal wounds on 6s to hit, Spirit Hosts lost it and got given a new bodyguard rule, which allows nearby (3”) Nighthaunt heroes (so no Nagash) to pass wounds off onto this unit on a 3+. Nighthaunt have traditionally always fallen apart as soon as their support heroes die, so having a bodyguard unit that both has the summonable keyword so can be replenished and also doesn’t require a subfaction to use is fantastic. Along with the Cruciator these are almost auto include for at least one unit, if only to help stop enemy shooting from messing with your hero hammer too badly. The easiest way to bring this list to 2000 points is to add Nagash, God of the Unquiet Dead. This takes the list to 1955 but you do lose the one drop Battle Regiment. Ideally you’d remove the Spirit Torment (it’s roll is replaced by Nagash) and either have 2 units of 20 Chaingasts and add some Craventhrone Guard or Hexwraiths. You could reinforce the Spirit Hosts into a unit of 6 then. The downside is that they have no save against -2 Rend or better, realistically a charging Fulminator could remove the unit in one round. Reroll all failed hit rolls for Chainrasps within 15″ of spirit torment or Chainghasts. This would be awesome if Spirit Torments and Chainghasts were just a bit better, as it stands the tax is just too high. Chainguard Spectral tether –Casting Value 6. Heal a friendly Hero within 12″ for D3 wounds. You have access to a better healing spell through the Guardian of Souls, while this spell isn’t atrocious you do have better ways to heal. C+

Morathi-Khaine and the serpentine Melusai Blood Stalkers are coming off the Priority Targets list, so they won’t give up extra victory points on death. And in light of their petrifying revamp, the Nighthaunt will leave the Prime Hunters list. Slitter –Before piling in, nominate a model within 1″ of the bearer and roll a die. If it is higher than the unit’s wound characteristic then it is slain. Good for a guaranteed extra killed model, and might occasionally tap a Hero too. B+ Balefire Blade –Add 1 to the damage characteristic of a bearer’s melee weapon. Solid all around weapon choice. B That’s at least 8 free wounds per game (on average) and potentially many more. The curse could easily clear a battleline unit per game.

One of the broader trends here is to strip out sources of rerolls wherever they were found and replace them with new effects or simply rewrite the scroll entirely. Despite having a whopping 16 leaders out of 27, many of these leaders have been tweaked and written to have a specific niche, resulting in a selection where you can make an argument to include almost everything here. Leaders Spiteful Spirit lets you roll a number of dice equal to your general’s Wounds characteristic on any turn they’re injured, inflicting a mortal wound on each enemy unit within 6” on a 4+. Most Nighthaunt generals that see combat aren’t going to be alive there very long, and while it might be cute as a little bomb it still doesn’t meet the mark for us. The new battletome brings a fresh Wave of Terror to these ethereal apparitions, ensuring they hit even harder.* Every time one of your Nighthaunt units makes a charge, you can compare the unmodified charge roll to the Wave of Terror table, and apply a petrifying penalty to a nearby enemy unit. All enemy units suffer -1 Bravery within 6″ of a Nighthaunt unit. Your units are mostly melee based so you’ll be in melee range most of the time, nice little buff that will help get a few extra models but it wont change the game by itself. Deathless Spirits Anytime the Chainrasps are affected by Spectural Lure or Temporal Translocation, spells that let you return dead models you can return an additional D6 dead models. If you’re bringing 2 large squads of Chainrasps, which is certainly viable, this battalion makes them a huge pain in the ass. Execution Horde

My game went really well. I faced a list with 140 Clanrats, Plague Furnace, Verminlord Warbringer, Grey Seer, Clawlord, 3 units of rat swarms and a Plague Priest. Chainghasts are pretty much as we saw them in Arena of Shades, functioning largely as a +1 to hit aura to Nighthaunt units while a Spirit Torment is on the battlefield. This is… nice, but because it’s dependent on a Spirit Torment floating around, killing that off means the Chainghasts are almost useless. At least you get them for free in the box with your Spirit Torment? Glaivewraith Stalkers Reaping Scythe –Casting Value 4. Supercharge the caster, letting them reroll all hits and wounds with melee weapons. Use this on a Knight of Shrouds with the Midnight Tome or Reikenor. B The Nighthaunt book is pretty dry on Command traits. There aren’t a few different tables for each type of commander, it’s just one with 6. They’re pretty mediocre, so many will choose to run Lady Olynder as a General due to her special ability rather than getting a command trait, we’ll discuss what that does in her unit entry but it is pretty competitive. With this army, we are going to bring out three different battalions, the first being Command Entourage which will have most of your heroes and let you get your bonus artifact. Then you’re going to take Expert Conquerors and place your battleline units in there to get the additional points towards objectives. Finally, you will take Bounty Hunters and put the Banshees in there to do additional damage to your opponent’s Galatian units.Lightshard of the Harvest Moon –Pop this once per game. Once you do every unit within 12″ can reroll failed hits. Crazy good with the right timing, but you need to manage the aura around the Guardian of Souls. B+ Much more diversity in artefacts here, 3 tables with 6 weapons, 6 relics and 3 lanterns which are exclusively used by Guardian of Souls. Weapons of the Damned Finally, Arcane Tome from the core rules is not a bad option, giving you another wizard on a hero you’re likely already taking. Nighthaunt have a fair few nasty spells, and even with Olynder, Reikenor and a Guardian of Souls in the same list (probably unlikely), you’re still probably wanting to cast another spell. Look outside the box that is this excellent battletome, and you might just find some still very useful basic enhancements in the core rules. Let it never be said that we here at Goonhammer are afraid to change our minds or admit mistakes. A unit of contention in our Arena of Shades review, Myrmourn Banshees are looking like some of the real big winners in this book. With all the benefits of running a tonne of small units, a unit or two of these ladies can put out some serious hurt (rend -3 on a good Wave of Terror charge!) while also helping shut down an enemy magic phase that is likely already struggling with the plethora of excellent wizards you’re likely already taking. Spell-eaters lets you roll 2D6 every time an enemy spell is cast, not unbound and targets a unit within 12”, and if you beat the casting value (adding +1 if your banshees have three or more models) the spell is unbound or dispelled. This is superb , as it really doesn’t matter how many bonuses the enemy has. Nagash and Teclis can both cast with some absurdly high numbers, but these ladies don’t care – your casting value six spell stays at six, doesn’t matter if you rolled a 16 to cast it. A unit or two of these is our third near auto-include unit. List building and competitive thoughts

Shyish Reaper –Casting Value 7. A predatory spell that moves 8″ (12″ in Shyish), the controlling player can pivot it before moving it and for every model it passes over, roll a die, if the die rolls higher than their save characteristic, deal 1 mortal wound. Like Aethervoid pendulum but with more control, which kind of goes against why you’d take that spell (To keep an opponent from using it on you). Don’t bother. No Subfactions – In a rather baffling decision, Nighthaunts don’t have subfactions like other books. It was a launch battletome so it’s likely they did not know at the time those would be so important. The retreat and charge is an entirely unexpected icing on the cake. Combined with a general increase in movement to 8” on average, your ghosts are going to be where you want them to be, and none of these pesky screening shenanigans will matter. DiscorporateAs usual, we will cover it next week, in a separate article, as there’s a lot to cover here. What’s in the Book? These are much more exciting to us than the Grand Strategies, offering a range of tactical choices. We’re expecting at least one of these to be achievable every turn of the game, so all that’s left now is practice how to get the most out of them! Credit: PierreTheMime Units In contention with Craventhrone Guard for the title of ‘worst warscroll in the book’, Glaivewraith Stalkers have at best stayed the same since their previous iteration. Yes, they’ve gained a point of damage and rent, and now you gain +3 to charge a unit chosen at the start of the game, but you’re losing 1” range and reroll failed hits on the turn you charged your victim while also going up to 105 points, from 65. This is a bad unit with great sculpts. Maybe next time, mari lwyd. Myrmourn Banshees Hard to recommend as their role in your army isn’t terribly clear. They don’t get the size of Chainrasp Hordes, the rend of Grimghast Reapers or the speed of Hexwraiths. They get to reroll all hits if they charge or were charge but have a mediocre (For Nighthaunts) 6″ movement. You can likely substitute anything with a more specialized role and do better. Bladegheist Revenants It initially stung to read that no longer could we deep strike half our army, but when you consider everything in this book now has base 8″ movement it’s not nearly as big a deal as it seems, and getting to decide what goes into reserves after deployment is a really nice touch that can really mess with your opponent’s options turn one. Wave of Terror