My new Nighthaunt army saw its first game yesterday.
This force is straight-up the stuff from the boxed set with no add-ons.
We did the subterranean attack scenario from the 4th Realmgate Wars book. The Orcs were my opponents. They had a unit of Ardboyz, a unit of Gore Gruntas, a unit of boyz, a warboss on a boar, a warboss with banna pole* and a chariot.
The undead are different from most other forces I've played. Their characters do a pretty good job of supporting the main line troops, as do many characters in many armies. Their line troops aren't bad. The basic chainrasps had two attacks each, re-rolls if they number more than 10 models (which mine deliberately did not) and are able to be buffed by the Lord of Shrouds, the chain guy and the wizard guy.
The scenario didn't allow me to very effectively use my characters in conjunction with the troops as you start with four units and have to defend four towers on four corners of the board. Still you get reinforcements and those came in with some characters so I did get to see some benefit of them on the troops. The chainrasps got 31 attacks one turn.
They are a weird army in that they are more resilient to tougher attackers than normal but don't have any particular benefit from the rank and file.
They have the ethereal special rule which allows them to ignore the rend characteristic when making their save.
So you could be a Stormcast Paladin or a skavenslave and your chances of the chainrasp failing its save are the same.
I got the book for them when I was at the store yesterday and have started reading it. Lots of pretty pictures and the painting guide section is very well done.
I haven't delved too much into the lore or the descriptions of the troop types yet but what I've read is interesting.
The one thing that the army does not do, which I expected and which the lore in the book is focused on, is detract from enemy morale.
I would expect some rule where your bravery drops by one against line nighthaunt troops and by two for commanders or some such thing or let the Nighthaunt player force their opponent to do re-rolls for bravery tests in close combat or something.
The army I played had no shooting. Close combat ability was decent but not overwhelming. It seems like the strength here, if you wanted to use it, would be in hordes of the little guys with a few characters near each.
Some are better at close combat than others.
I won't be doing that in favour of having one of each of the various units that I like and probably just keep the chain rasps limited to one big unit of the 20 I have.
Overall it is pretty neat force, real easy to paint and fairly fun to play. I don't know that it has anywhere near the interest to me as the various chaos factions or even the Stormcast forces but it is a nice change and didn't cost much.
I'll probably add at least a unit of banshees and one of the special characters at some point as well as a couple of other units, probably some spirit hosts and some of the sword armed reaper guys. I bought a unit of the hexwraith cavalry while I was there and I'll hopefully have them painted up in early August.
There are all the pictures I took from the game here:
imgur.com/a/Z2rFHNc
* I don't know if it is spelled like that but it looks orcky.
adds maiden swords to his 15mm Amazons.
