40K: Night Lords Chaos Legion Focus
Will the Night Lords bring fear back to the tabletop? Check out this Legion Focus to find out!
We’ve gotten a look a the Emperor’s Children and the Iron Warriors, now the cruel sons of Batman Night Haunter are here for today’s Chaos Legion Focus. Using fear as a weapon the Night Lords are masters of the mind-game and that is represented in their Legion’s unique abilities.
“The Night Lords are famous for two things – their use of fear as a tactic and their distinctive winged headgear. Thanks to their new Legion Trait, the Night Lords are one of the most interesting forces in the new Chaos Space Marines codex, able to maximise casualties in the Morale phase and devastate even the most stalwart of soldiers.”
Legion Trait: Terror Tactics
When the Night Lords gang-up on a unit, the casualties might not be the biggest problem. With a maximum of -3 to the Leadership Characteristic, Morale tests are going to get a lot worse for folks. Terror Tactics is going to cause a lot of damage on the back end of a turn. If a unit with a Leadership of 7 loses 1 model and happens to be near 3 Night Lords units, they have a 50/50 shot of MORE models bolting. What used to be a somewhat trivial threat is now going to be a real problem!
The real kicker is when you combine things like Icons of Despair in with the units. Check out GW’s example:
“Three units of Raptors equipped with Icons of Despair can knock enemy leadership down by 5 whole points – enough to turn even small losses into devastating mass panics in the enemy army.”
Even a single lost models can cause a cascade effect of more models fleeing the battle. And if you happen to take even MORE wounds those Morale check are going to become quite dreadful.
Legion Relic: Claws of the Black Hunt
Claws of the Black Hunt are a pair of lightning claws for your Night Lords Character. They add an additional attack, an extra strength, -3 AP and do D3 damage. Those sound pretty mean in my book! I sure hope they don’t have ways to buff characters to create super powered murder machines. Oh wait – there’s more…
Warlord Trait: Night Huanter’s Curse
Oh hey – look at that a Warlord Trait that allows you to re-roll either a hit roll, wound roll, damage roll, Advance roll, charge roll, OR a saving throw. It’s the swiss-army knife of re-rolls!
Psychic Power Teaser: Diabolic Strength
And there we go! You can see how all three of these would work together to create a pretty deadly character – Perhaps with a Jump Pack to aid with the movement across the board? Games Workshop spells it out quite nicely:
“Take yours with the Claws of the Black Hunt, Night Haunter’s Curse and Diabolic Strength from a nearby Sorcerer and your lord will be dishing out six Strength 7 Attacks, each doing D3 Damage at AP -3 with rerolls to wound.”
Don’t forget Night Haunter’s Curse can be used for that pivotal charge roll as well – it’s extra insurance if you flub that roll. 6 Strength 7 attacks that each do AP -3 and D3 damage is enough to make most transports it the game worried, too. This type of warlord could be considered a can-opener type unit. Think about it – your Raptors move up with him, they charge a rhino full of troopers, surround and leave a gap for the Warlord. They do some wound to the Rhino, sure – then the Lord steps-in to finish the job. The Rhino is surrounded, which means those models are just plain dead.
Stratagem: In Midnight Clad
In Midnight Clad is one of the most devilish stratagems we’ve seen yet. Why? Well, it’s already a -1 to hit rolls which is pretty mean by itself, but, the real kicker is the timing of the stratagem. You activate this AFTER a Night Lords Infantry unit has been targeted by a shooting attack. Talk about mind-games. Now your opponent has to take into account this back-pocket Stratagem every time one of your units gets target. “I should overcharge those Hellblasters into…Oh wait! He can make them all -1 and I’ll fry…maybe I won’t do that.” It’s a fantastic way to make them second guess themselves and I find that very “Night Lordy” in my mind.
You can read the full article from GW and get all the tips on how to use them HERE. The Chaos Space Marine Codex goes up for Pre-Order this weekend!
What do you think of the Night Lords? Terror-ific or just a bunch of jump scares? Let us know in the comments below!
