Age of Sigmar: Nighthaunt Faction Focus 4.0 – It’s Spooky Time
The Nighthaunt are rising up from the grave to strike once more at the living. Here’s a look at them for Age of Sigmar 4.0!
How do you kill something if it’s already dead? That’s a great question, especially when you see the Nighthaunt coming at you. Today we’re getting a closer look at the damage the dead can do on the tabletop in Warhammer: Age of Sigmar 4.0 with their latest faction focus. Will the undead slot machine spin once more? Or will they trade in the RNG for more consistent death?
Nighthaunt – Death Comes For Us All
“The Nighthaunt now fight with discipline and strategy, led by their lieges, or their subordinate Knights of Shrouds. The particular character of a leader lends each host a distinct personality: rage-filled spirits charge recklessly into melee while more patient commanders might prefer devious traps or complex gambits.”
Nighthaunt Battle Traits
Once again the Nighthaunt are back to their Ethereal tricks. They are still ignoring all modifiers (both positive and negative) to save rolls — except for Nagash when he’s included in this army. They also have shifted their ward save a bit. Most units still have at least a 6+ ward (from what we can see). However, they have the option to spend a Command Point to get the Discorporate ability. This grants them a reactive ward save of 5+ for the rest of the phase.
It also looks like their crazy slot machine of charge effects has changed, too. Now it’s based off the Aura of Dread. Shriek, Petrify, and Stun all trigger off this. It also appears that the Nighthaunt player will be able to choose which of these go off when active now as opposed to having to rely on the charge roll. That said, Stun and Petrify both require a specific unit type to trigger, too.
Battle Formation – Death Stalkers
One of the Battle Formations that’s coming with the Nighthaunt is the new Death Stalkers. This allow for some retreat hijinks from the ghostly army.
There really is no escaping them on the charge — even if you’re already in combat with them! And this is just one of their formations.
“Other Battle Formations let you transport entire units of spirits across the battlefield with the Vanishing Phantasms, or enlist the Hunters of the Accursed to sap the souls from enemy Heroes with your own champions. Should you prefer to cluster your gheists around the chilling aura of a Black Coach, the Procession of Death uses malign magic to bolster their durability.”
Lore of the Underworlds
Shademist is back but this is just one of many spells from the deathly hallows of Shyish. I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of these spells as GW already teased Spirit Drain is back, too.
Nighthaunt Unit Teasers
Games Workshop dropped the Warscrolls for four Nighthaunt units. I’ll spare you going over each and every rule here. That said, it’s interesting to see how much has changed — and how much things stayed the same. Most of their profiles and weapon stats got some minor tweaks. They are still close enough to their previous incarnations (for the most part). But it’s interesting to see how GW shifted a lot of their abilities in their warscrolls.
It’s going to take some getting used to all the changes. Even the minor shifts add up as we’re all going to be relearning our armies again. Big things to note are the ward saves are in the Keywords area now. And we’re collectively going to have to get used to the formatting change to the attacks profile as well as the “Crit” effects formatting.
Nighthaunt Spearhead – Slasher Host
The Spearhead force looks reasonable. It’s led by a Knight of Shrouds and has three Spirit Hosts, 10 Grimghast Reapers, and 20 Chainrasps. This is literally the Vanguard Box — so if you want to play this army for the new edition, I HIGHLY recommend you snag this before the price hike hits.
Rules-wise this is basically what you’d expect for a Spearhead force. It’s got a simplified army rule set but still maintains the “flavor” of the overall army. Wave of Terror and Ethereal are still around. And the Warscrolls are simplified and have alternate versions of these units:
“As if two units of 10 Chainrasps weren’t enough to control the board, they also have the REINFORCEMENTS keyword so they can return right back to the battlefield after death. This gives you free rein to throw them into the front lines to cover for your Grimghast Reapers and Spirit Hosts, and if they’re chopping through your spectres a little too quickly, you can always cripple their swordsmanship with the Chorus of Terror Regiment Ability. “
Nighthaunt Return To Terrorville?
I’m leaning cautiously optimistic with this army for now. Having played Nighthaunt since they were launched, I’m familiar with the randomness from previous editions. If your dice were hot, you basically were unstoppable and enemy units would get completely shredded before they could react. This version seems a little less random. However, I do wonder if those Once Per Turn(Army) limits for Shriek, Stun, and Petrify are going to hurt in the long run.
I think cunning generals are going to be able to pick apart the enemy ranks in a rather surgical manner. They could either focus down one unit by slamming them with all the debuffs and really pounce. Or they could go for more wide spread targeted strikes. Pinning down a Nighthaunt army is going to be nigh impossible, too. And the army is probably a lot more durable in some ways with basically static armor saves and everything with a ward, too. We’ll have to see how they end up overall.
Rise up, Deadman…It’s time to get spooky.
