AoS: Nighthaunt Battletome Rules Preview
What makes the Nighthaunts tick and what makes them so different from other armies in Age of Sigmar? Let’s hit some of the highlights and chat.
The Nighthaunts were introduced to the Age of Sigmar late in the previous edition. They were really a small sub-faction and while they had some interesting ideas, you can tell that Games Workshop was saving the bulk of “the good stuff” for their own Battletome.
So what can you expect in this Battletome? Here are some numbers for you:
- 21 Unit Warscrolls
- 8 Warscroll Battalions
- 3 Endless Spells
- Path To Glory (Warband) Rules
- 15 Artifacts of Power over 3 different charts
- 6 New Spells from the Lore of the Underworlds
- 6 Command Traits
- Army Battle Traits
- Rules for returning slain models (summoning)
Because this is the Age of Sigmar, you can find the Warscrolls for all the units on Games Workshop’s Webpage. In fact, they’ve already shown off a majority of them:
We’re not going to talk about the individual units in this article – right now I want to focus on want to focus on what makes this army really unique and interesting. We previewed their Allegiance Abilities earlier but here’s the list:
Deathless Spirits may not sound like a lot, but it’s a 6+ “Feel No Pain” save that applies to everything in range of your general or a hero. When you combine that with your Ethereal ability to ignore save modifiers and most of your army has a 4+ save, suddenly these ghosts are a LOT tougher than they appear. On top of that, they are deceptively fast – that’s due to the entire army having Fly.
The ability to Fly is nice, but they can also teleport around the board. That makes them capable of pulling off some pretty shocking assaults and if you roll a 10+ to make the charge, you get some bonus damage too! A lot of the abilities in the book also allow their heroes to regain wounds or let units around them get wounds (model) back thanks to their Summonable keyword.
Nighthaunts do have some limitations and weaknesses you can exploit. They don’t have a ton of ranged attacks and their melee skills are slightly above average. Most of the units have some combination of hitting on 3s or 4s and wounding on 3s or 4s. They don’t do a TON of damage per attack on average either and most units have a -1 rend or no rend at all. While they do have some heavier hitters, they aren’t that intimidating. Where they make-up for this is in their synergies to get more attacks, re-rolls or maybe even bypassing everything with mortal wounds. Many of the “spirit” units have Frightful Touch which turns 6s to hit into Mortal Wounds.
Bypassing terrain and other units, ignoring save modifiers, and sticking around way longer than they have any right to… sounds like a Ghost to me! Looking at the units, how they work together and how the built-in abilities they have work, I can’t really point to another army that plays like the Nighthaunt either. I think that’s a really good thing for the game. I also really like the models – I might be biased because I have wanted an entire Ghost Army for a LONG time now, but the aesthetic speaks to me.
The book is out for pre-order this weekend and will be in stores soon enough – take a look at judge for yourselves! The Nighthaunt Army is here…
Battletome Nighthaunts
An indomitable new malevolence has stirred an ancient terror. No longer content to hunt civilisation’s edges, phantasmal forces gather into spectral armies. This is no mere haunting, but a shock assault that seeks nothing less than to destroy life itself. From the darkest pits of Shyish, the Realm of Death, comes a storm of ethereal figures. These wraiths fight to send fresh souls screaming down into the darkened realms from whence the dead emerged, taking cruel pleasure in knowing the torments that await their victims below…
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