Editing Night Lords (section)

== Tactics ==
{{topquote|I am the thing that keeps you up at night. The fear that haunts every dark corner of your mind. I will never rest. And neither will you.|Slade “Deathstroke” Wilson}}

{{topquote|BOO!"|Warcry of the night lords when they sneak up on you}}

Night Lord warbands, for the most part, are somewhat sensible in that they don't just send in their marines to die in droves. So, they generally don't titty-rush the nearest Titan for the lulz unless said Titan is REALLY fucking their mojo up. When they do engage in direct combat, they generally prefer complete overwhelming force to ensure minimal losses, maximum carnage, and enough skulls to stick on their pauldrons. So, they're pretty much a chaos version of [[Reasonable Marines]]. Including the [[Alpha Legion]] too, obviously (maybe?).

Considering what fluff says about them, it seems likely the Night Lords Legion conquered worlds during the Great Crusade by rarely waging actual war. They probably did it the Night Haunter way. Show up, declare Lex Imperialis, and '''punish''' violation of the emperor's law by using stealth and terror. They can get anywhere, be anywhere, and they're always watching ''you''. They don't have to fight you as you are just '''''that horribly outmatched'''''. In cases of legitimate military threats, WMDs, phosphex, rad weapons, and other nasty things can be gleefully used.

Or just take pieces from their leader's little girl. Bit by bit. Without kidnapping her. From her bedroom. Over and over and ruining any attempt to move her (or take bits even after she's in their most secure location). You see, that is ''far'' more terrifying than kidnapping her and sending pieces back. Especially preceding each taking with "We have come for you".

Back when Curze was still somewhat sane, the point of the terror tactics was to basically destroy a foes' morale to thoroughly and so quickly that the casualties, though beyond brutal individually, would actually be significantly fewer than those most other Legions inflicted. Those few would suffer unspeakable horrors, but the many who bore witness would surrender without the need for further bloodshed. [[Just as planned|If all went as planned]], the planet would be delivered to the Imperium with its population, infrastructure, and industrial capabilities almost completely intact, and ''thoroughly'' compliant.

Despite their brutality, the Night Lords as a Legion were actually very tactically minded in their assaults if facing anything worthwhile. This was almost entirely down to the fact that nobody particularly wanted to die rather than anything else; being smart about fighting tends to cause fewer casualties. They ultimately ended up being a sadistic reflection of the Raven Guard in terms of their tactical doctrines, and the two Legions pre-Corax had a ''lot'' in common. They liked to fight indirectly if they were either at a disadvantage or were on-par with their opponents. They would strike at logistics networks, supply lines, weapons depots, etc, all in an attempt to bleed an enemy over time, and would only go for the kill when they knew the battle was winnable. Additionally, nothing in terms of weaponry or strategy was ever off the table, least of all for moral reasons. Chemical weapons, radiation saturation, Phosphex munitions, biological weapons, straight-up Exterminatus; if the Night Lords thought it might help them to win, it was always an option. Concepts like honor were considered to be a fool's prize at best, and contemptibly stupid at worst. If an enemy could be baited into a trap by, say, slaughtering civilians, they would happily do so.

When actually engaging a foe, the Night Lords prefered to make extensive use of infiltration tactics. After all, it's harder to kill what you don't know is there. In fact, the Night Lords were amongst the sneakiest of all the Legions, with only the Raven Guard and Alpha Legion rivaling their understanding of covert operations. However, they were no strangers to open battle; it was just virtually always option B. In such scenarios, they preferred utilizing small, company sized formations, and had a larger than normal number of Breacher Squads in their infantry divisions. They also preferred the use of fast vehicles to heavy armor, typically aircraft like the Storm Eagles if they could help it. Similarly, they liked to deploy jump-pack equipped infantry in the name of speed. Bikes, jetbikes, and fast troop transports like Rhinos were also favored. They did still utilize heavy and super-heavy armor when needed, but their armor pool was not so extensive as a Legion like the Iron Hands or Iron Warriors. Nor, for that matter, was their artillery pool. They did have a surprising amount of armor when compared to Legions outside the Iron Whatevers, as all of the Night Lords various companies were expected to maintain their own vehicle pool for independent operations.

When they took a position, they tended to fortify it with automated weapons platforms like the Tarantula Sentry rather than use Astartes to man them. Oftentimes they would use these static defensive areas as kill-zones for herding terrified defenders or civilians into automated gunfire. Their prefered tactics outside of just scaring the bejesus out of foes was simple but effective, and not dissimilar to that which the Imperial Fists utilized. They would locate defensive weaknesses, exploit them with Breacher Squads, APCs or other quick, heavy hitting units, and then attempt to break the foe into smaller groups to destroy them piecemeal. They also liked just driving dozer-prowed tanks over their enemies. Why more Legions didn't think to use such an effective killing method is a bit strange but there we are.

In terms of their elite units, they employed a large number of what were called Terror Squads, which were basically Assault Marines who were particularly good, even amongst the Night Lords, at committing war crimes against their foes. Another was the Night Raptors, who were an even more elite sort of Assault Squad equipped with jump packs who preferred ripping their foes apart in melee. These guys were just as nuts as the Terror Squads, but more specialized as shock troops. There also existed two variants of elite Terminators; the Contekar and the Atramentar (Both of which got their 30k rules screwed over by some biased know-it-all idiot over at Forgeworld). They functioned as essentially the same sort of unit, with the Atramentar as the 1st Company of the Contekar. Under the command of Sevatar, both groups of Terminators were sadistic screwballs of the highest order but could control their impulses, unlike the Terror Squad marines. They were extremely fractious and unruly, obeying orders only from someone they feared/respected enough to do so. Sevatar, and of course Curze, were the only members of the Legion powerful enough to reign them in.

'''ALTERNATIVELY:'''

They make use of their sneakiness and fuck shit up that way. Striking behind enemy lines, ambushes, sabotaging generators and command centers, etc. Knowing this, one considers them being pretty sensible. In one-on-one combat a Night Lord will do his best to make sure he has the upper hand, and thus resort to cheat tactics by breaking every rule possible and use every dirty trick to avoid being 'on equal footing' with the opponent. Just like [[Dark Eldar|certain slimy BDSM pricks]]. Despite considering honor to be a fool's prize, they often excelled in individual combat. In fact, their Heresy-era First Captain, [[Sevatar]], was on-par with Sigismund himself, who was widely considered to be the greatest Astartes melee fighter of all time. On that note, the Legion's character was known to be one of, as you might expect, a sort of nihilistic sadism with a''lot'' of dark humor thrown in for a good measure. Sevatar himself is known both in and out-of-universe as one of the snarkiest motherfuckers in the entire setting, and he was far from alone amongst the Legion in that regard.

They like unconventional shock-and-awe tactics (read: Terror with a capital T). One of them, Talos, disabled a ship's bridge by doing a fifteen-second-long vox-amplified scream, which, thanks to his three lungs and superhumanly strong vocal cords, blew out every unprotected eardrum in the room and put many of the bridge staff in a coma. Another method was to '''kill a planet's population from fright''' when they broadcasted a horrible snuff movie over the comm waves. More methods include impaling innocents in hard-to-reach areas and spamming the local Internet (or whatever passes for it) with video broadcasts made of extremely scary jump-scares, torture footage and sounds, sort of a superhuman Los Zetas/ISIS/Internet Troll hybrid on crack.

If they can't use fear as a tactic, they will always resort to trying to break morale by sabotaging objectives of strategic import or executing leaders and commanders. And if all else fails, well, they're still freaking Space Marines and can just, y'know, kick the absolute shit out of everyone the old-fashioned way.

'''BUT:'''

This isn't to say that their tactics make them unstoppable. Terror-tactics only work well on people who can be scared, meaning that their preferred operations tend not to work well on other [[Space Marines]], [[Eldar]], [[Necrons]], [[Tyranids]], [[Orks]], or any sort of [[Ecclesiarchy|fanatical]] [[Chaos Cults|religious]] [[Genestealer Cult|zealots]], meaning that [[Imperial Guard]] are one of their favorite targets. There are individually stellar warriors at various aspects of warfare among their ranks--close-combat champions who'd acquit themselves well against any Astarte's, strategists and tacticians who pull off some incredible victories, but there aren't enough of these standouts, and they don't have a legion-wide focus on anything except terror. If anything, their big saving grace is they're competent enough to leg it when a fight isn't winnable. However, they were still competent enough outside of their terror tactics as a Legion that they fought the Dark Angels to a stalemate for around 3 years, and were ultimately only defeated due to the Lion acquiring a [[Tuchulcha|plot device]] which broke all the rules of Warp travel. Also, Curze confronted the Lion at one point during this series of battles and gave the game away by telling the Lion that he was basically just stalling him. Bit stupid that, but sadly Curze was always a bit of a spaz.

Especially noteworthy is that the last time they really had to fight face-to-face, mano-a-mano, was right after the Heresy, when the [[Ultramarines|Toilet Marines]] came looking for them on their fortress world of Tsagualsa. The Night Lords got slaughtered. Now, to be fair, by that time it was a while since they replenished their numbers after the Heresy. Additionally, in their stupidity, they chose to "bunker down" instead of using their typical hit-and-run tactics. Not to mention the fact that many warbands were not present, the Legion having started to split up after the death of Konrad and Sevatar. Also, the character recounting this, when challenged by another about "losing to the Ultramarines", points out that it wasn't JUST the Ultramarines chapter, but every successor chapter as well. He comments on [[Howling Griffons]] working side-by-side by [[Novamarines]], while being supported by [[Genesis Chapter]] flanking maneuvers. He comments on how every single chapter involved was running by the same playbook (The [[Codex Astartes]]), in perfect unison, and pretty much without any dissension or rebellion (unlike the Night Lords). The result was that the Night Lords were pinned down, outflanked, bombarded, assaulted (or counter-assaulted), besieged and simply fucked over in every way in a textbook fashion. The Night Lords lost so badly that they fragmented and were never united as a whole force ever again (although there were signs of a semi-reunification in the period leading up to the [[13th Black Crusade]]). And before you cry some "Wardian bullshit", this was in the Night Lords own book, written by [[Aaron Dembski-Bowden|a pretty cool guy]] (actually it was Games-Workshop's fluff that limited the Night Lords.). Besides, against a legion fighting in co-ordination, it was a given who would win, not bullshit. Notice the Codex Astartes clearly works well...when working with at least a thousand Marines or multiple Chapters together (as opposed to individual companies...something Astartes are largely too stupid to realize, apparently).

On that note, Night Lords aren't terribly big on helping each other out. Oh they won't usually just outright shoot each other in the back (usually being the operative word) but they operate far more like a group of space pirates than professional soldiers. As such, while they may be formidable individually, they tend to not work very well in large groups. This holds doubly true for large groups that lack a commander strong enough to hold them together. Both Curze and Sevatar were powerful enough to do this while they commanded, but after Curze died and Sevatar probably died, nobody else quite managed it.

Bear in mind that upon returning to this fortress planet, the Night Lords proceeded to get revenge on the Ultramarine Genesis Chapter, defeating them with the time-honored strategy of [[Skaven|blowing up the fucking moon]]. Why fight fair when you have nukes?

[[Huron Blackheart]] worked out the best way to use the Night Lords: as an advance force for performing a crippling first strike on the enemy. When he assaulted the [[Marines Errant|Marines-Errant]] in their home base, he asked for a detachment of Night Lords to find a way to let his main force into the Marines-Errant fortress. So, a squad of Night Lords scaled into the [[fortress-monastery]] and drew off the Marines-Errant and their serfs while a squad of Night Lords Raptors went higher up the fortress and destroyed the actual shield generators. So you offer them something they want, tell them what to fuck up, let them work out the details on their own and do their thing and, as Huron found out, don't expect them to help much in the actual fighting afterward (which to be fair Huron neither expected nor wanted) nor should you [[Blood Ravens|leave any shiny toys for them to elope with]] while you're busy (now that dit piss Huron off! [[butthurt|Royally!]]). They employ Tohruk ogryns as well.