AoS 3 - Nighthaunt Discussion

[Rors]

I have a meme list with 48 banshees... Can someone summarize what what's changed with them? Oh boy hearing they might be the winners in this book brings warmth to my undead heart

[Kadeton]

56 minutes ago, Rors said:

I have a meme list with 48 banshees... Can someone summarize what what's changed with them? Oh boy hearing they might be the winners in this book brings warmth to my undead heart

Instead of having 1 attack on their Chill Dagger and gaining a bonus attack after successfully unbinding a spell, they have 2 attacks. They also deal 2 damage instead of D3.

Spell Eaters was formerly just an unbind with an 18" range, plus the ability to dispel an Endless Spell and suffer D3 damage. Now, it's very different:

• It happens when a spell is cast and not unbound, so it can be combined with unbind attempts from friendly wizards
• It applies whenever the effects of a spell would be resolved on a unit wholly within 12" of the Banshee unit (regardless of the location of the wizard casting the spell)
• To prevent the spell effect from being resolved, they roll 2d6 (adding +1 if there are three or more Banshees) and have to equal or beat the casting value (not the casting roll)
• It's not limited to just one spell, or just one unit - it's every time a spell effect would be applied
• Because it simply ignores the effects and does not unbind the spell, it doesn't care if a spell can't be unbound
• It still lets them eat Endless Spells and they no longer suffer damage when doing so.

[Neck-Romantic]

Do they get a bonus for eating spells? Totally fine if they dont; as the new mechanic seems more useable in exchange

[Rors]

Okay, doesn't sound like enough for my meme to be in any way viable competitively but it's definitely an improvement!

Still -2 rend?

I think while I still have waaaayy too many, they're going to pop up in most lists now, assuming the points stay about the same. A 24 inch diameter bubble front the unit easily covers a lot of units. By the sound of the wording, units you protect don't need to be wholly within their radius just a toe in.

Against some armies they'll punch crazy amount above their weight simply by denying critical spells and with 2 attacks base their not as pillow fisted.

Oddly, Nagash would probably fear these ladies more than anyone else now..

[Neck-Romantic]

So are Bladegeists just strictly worse than Harridans now?

Edited April 3, 2022 by Neck-Romantic

[Rors]

We don't know the points cost so we don't know if bladegeist or harridans are better, just that one has more power built into the warscroll.

[Neck-Romantic]

The more lackluster warscrolls I see the more I think we might actually see army wide or at least subfaction wide Frightful Touch... tho FT might be turned into additional hits or wounds rather than Mortals, as Banshees doing 2 MWs per hit at 2 attacks per could get out of hand fast.

As it stands, a measly +1 to hit requiring a Torment AND the now-nerfed 5+ save chainghats to be on the table just doesnt compute unless theres something massive to compensate. 

Or its just going to be a bad book. Thats still a possibility.

I figure the leak or reveal of any existing unit that has Frightful Touch will be the telling moment. If they lose it; good chance the entire army is getting it

Edited April 3, 2022 by Neck-Romantic

[Neck-Romantic]

Also have to agree that without an artefact or battalion bonus that allows him additional or boosted judgement rolls, the Scriptor is DOA

The hero bloat is real; and Ide much rather have a KoSES or Krulghast, tho the Torment has slipped down in useability badly

Edited April 3, 2022 by Neck-Romantic

[Neck-Romantic]

Shoulda made the scriptor a wizard so he could DO something other than just sit out of the way somewhere existing... if his bodyguard* ability shrugged the first wound of the round back to whomever dealt it, that would at least be interesting...

 

But 1 wound per round? And literally no ability other than roll 1 die per round? 

 

Hes basically a terrain piece

[Kadeton]

I'm a bit surprised that the Scriptor doesn't do anything else, yeah. I was vaguely expecting he would do something similar to the Scinari Calligrave and interact with objectives somehow.

You think the Torment has gone down in usability? Seems to me his resurrection ability is way better now.

Hero bloat is definitely a problem for Nighthaunt though.

Edited April 3, 2022 by Kadeton

[Rors]

At this point I'm waiting to see what comes with allegiance abilities and the subfactions. The fyreslayers had what should have been a warscroll effect as a book rule with the grimwrath or whatever it's called.

It's the allegiance abilities and subfactions that often make the best factions what they are and even if our two crappy old one get reprinted, I'd expect 2 more with them.

That being said, I'm keep my expectations very low for this. Still, given how out of date the current book is, I'm confident it'll be an improvement. I'd be happy of the faction moves into the 45% win rate area.

[Neck-Romantic]

Well to break down what happened to the Torment, look at it this way.

The heal only affects summonables, no more heroes/mourngul. Thats bad. Our heroes are very very squishy.

The heal triggers more easily, with a wider range and a garaunteed 3... thats good...but our overall unit size has gone down on certain units and combined with the reinforcement mechanic. 4 myrmourn or 5 of the laughable 5+ save 'crossboos' or chainghasts arent going to survive long enough to be ressurected. 

I believe the heal also only effects wounds caused/models slain *this turn* so thats another negative. (Very similar to Reanimation Protocols' recent redo, Ill be shocked if we dont get a Ressurection Orb artefact that allows you once per game to attempt to bring models back to starting strength)

Yes, the heal still triggers on both you and your opponents turn, but again you gotta have a unit alive to heal.

Losing the reroll aura is -extremely- painful. No more fishing for MW's with Hosts, Hexes, Heroes or the mourngul. Huge synergy loss. Even non fishing attacks suffer.

No more interaction with Bladegeists. Another huge synergy loss and a huge hit to our already pricy 'elite' spinny sword bois.

Having to have Chainghasts AND a Torment on the table to register an (completely within) aura is a very weak, easily disrupted combo, more so now that Chainghasts got nerfed to a 5+ ethereal.

The Torment used to be a great all-around choice with an offense boost aura and a defensive heal proc; now its nerfed into one role. Ill bet money something similar happens to the Guardian of Souls.

Edited April 3, 2022 by Neck-Romantic

[Jabbuk]

2 hours ago, Neck-Romantic said:

Also have to agree that without an artefact or battalion bonus that allows him additional or boosted judgement rolls, the Scriptor is DOA

The hero bloat is real; and Ide much rather have a KoSES or Krulghast, tho the Torment has slipped down in useability badly

I was actually thinking that, wouldn't it be pretty good to have many Torments to cover your entire army and always heal models?

[Kadeton]

@Neck-Romantic Yeah, that's all a fair assessment I guess. It doesn't really match my experience, but that doesn't mean it's not right. I'll give my perspective for contrast.

Our heroes already have a bunch of other ways to heal themselves, but healing them rarely seems to matter to be honest. As you say, they're squishy - they tend to go from full health to dead without any healing opportunities in between. I've never used a Mournghul though.

I'm not sure what you mean by unit sizes going down? We do have some ridiculously small units, no question, but I'm not aware of unit sizes changes.

And yeah, we seem to be getting a lot more units with 5+ saves now, which isn't great - I would have preferred that everything (including Chainrasps) was shifted to 4+ just for consistency. Are some of them less ghostly for some reason? Anyway, two things are keeping my hopes up there: one is that it shows a willingness to broaden the range of Nighthaunt saves, which might mean we end up with some 3+ saves as well; the other is that we've just seen the first instance of an ability that modifies a characteristic rather than giving a bonus to die rolls, so there's the option of abilities that modify those poor saves despite Ethereal. It just seems very unlikely that the designers looked at the existing Nighthaunt range and decided they needed to be even more fragile.

Losing the reroll aura was inevitable, and I was never much of a fan of units that relied on fishing for mortal wounds to be useful. I suppose the hope is that the removal of rerolls means there's scope for Frightful Touch to be expanded into a faction ability. And while I totally agree that needing both a Torment and a Chainghast is an annoying faff, it's still worth noting that +1 to hit is a significantly better buff overall than rerolling ones.

The loss of interaction with Bladegheists hurts if they stay the same price, for sure. But even if they're still expensive initially and not very good for a while, points get adjusted over time. I find it hard to worry too much about this one - if they're bad now, they'll get cheaper at some point.

I'll be back with a mountain of salt if they hurt my precious Guardian of Souls, though. 😂

[Neck-Romantic]

Well the core of my army was 2 torments, 2 units of 6 Hosts, and 2 huge units of Bladegesists so the change hits me square in the face 😂.

Also; myrmourns went from 6 base to 4 base didnt they? So yes, unit sizes shrinking. And since you have limited number of reinforcements, smaller unit sizes overall so more prone to being wholly wiped out b4 healing can take place

Edited April 3, 2022 by Neck-Romantic

[Jabbuk]

12 minutes ago, Neck-Romantic said:

Well the core of my army was 2 torments, 2 units of 6 Hosts, and 2 huge units of Bladegesists so the change hits me square in the face 😂.

Also; myrmourns went from 6 base to 4 base didnt they? So yes, unit sizes shrinking. And since you have limited number of reinforcements, smaller unit sizes overall so more prone to being wholly wiped out b4 healing can take place

Myrmourn have always been sold in units of 4s. That's how they're boxed too. To my knowledge, the unit sizes aren't shrinking. If anything, they are growing. Bladegheists used to be in units of 5s before and are now in 10s. 2 units of 8 Banshees covering the entire army suddenly feels like a compelling idea.

Edited April 3, 2022 by Jabbuk

[Lupercal]

11 minutes ago, Jabbuk said:

Myrmourn have always been sold in units of 4s. That's how they're boxed too. To my knowledge, the unit sizes aren't shrinking. If anything, they are growing. Bladegheists used to be in units of 5s before and are now in 10s. 2 units of 8 Banshees covering the entire army suddenly feels like a compelling idea.

Bladegheists have been units of 10 for the entirety of AoS3.

Edited April 3, 2022 by Lupercal

[Jabbuk]

12 minutes ago, Lupercal said:

Bladegheists have been units of 10 for the entirety of AoS3.

Yes yes, that's what I'm saying. It recently changed with the new edition. In 2.0, they were in units of 5s and were worth 95pts for 5. You had to reinforce them to put them at 10.

Edited April 3, 2022 by Jabbuk

[Lupercal]

4 minutes ago, Jabbuk said:

Yes yes, that's what I'm saying. It recently changed with the new edition. In 2.0, they were in units of 5s and were worth 95pts for 5. You had to reinforce them to put them at 10.

Then that’s not an increase generated by this box, as you stated. It’s the way it’s been for almost two years.

Similarly, “reinforcements” weren’t a thing in AoS2. It’s not a like for like comparison.

Edited April 3, 2022 by Lupercal

[Kadeton]

I think what they were saying was more along the lines of "No unit sizes have changed with this box. The last time unit sizes changed (at the edition change) they went up, not down."

Edited April 3, 2022 by Kadeton

[Lupercal]

2 hours ago, Jabbuk said:

the unit sizes aren't shrinking. If anything, they are growing.

Except that’s not what they said.

[Jabbuk]

56 minutes ago, Kadeton said:

I think what they were saying was more along the lines of "No unit sizes have changed with this box. The last time unit sizes changed (at the edition change) they went up, not down."

That's exactly what *I* said to the response of Neck, that units seemed to be shrinking.

@Lupercal this argument is kinda pointless if you ask me. I'm just gonna drop it. It doesn't matter

Edited April 3, 2022 by Jabbuk

[Lupercal]

25 minutes ago, Jabbuk said:

 

@Lupercal this argument is kinda pointless if you ask me. I'm just gonna drop it. It doesn't matter

You specifically said “if anything, they are growing”. They aren’t. They are staying the same. You’ve channeled unbridled hopium the last couple pages, and that’s your prerogative, but words have meaning.

[Rachmani]

7 hours ago, Neck-Romantic said:

Shoulda made the scriptor a wizard so he could DO something other than just sit out of the way somewhere existing... if his bodyguard* ability shrugged the first wound of the round back to whomever dealt it, that would at least be interesting...

 

But 1 wound per round? And literally no ability other than roll 1 die per round? 

 

Hes basically a terrain piece

Wasn’t it per phase?

[relic456]

12 hours ago, Neck-Romantic said:

Well the core of my army was 2 torments, 2 units of 6 Hosts, and 2 huge units of Bladegesists so the change hits me square in the face 😂.

 I feel you! My collection is primarily grimghast reapers, bladegheists, spirit torment, and chainrasps. Least favourite units are banshee and harridans 😔 Everything we've seen so far hasn't been inspiring but I've got a shred of hope left for some super op allegiance abilities to bring us back to being at least relevant.