Age of Sigmar/Tactics/Edition 1.1/Nighthaunt

Warscrolls

The common keywords of these warscrolls are: DEATH, MALIGNANT and NIGHTHAUNT.

Leaders

• Cairn Wraith: A hero with only four wounds, that's unusual, but understandable since the Ethereal rule already makes him annoyingly hard to kill, as it makes his 4+ save unaffected by Rend and 4 Wounds is enough to survive a perfect Arcane Bolt. What he does is swing a big honking scythe that's basically a Stormcast's Grandhammer with three swings and rerolls To Hit if the target unit has 5 or more models, so he's pretty blendy, too.

• Tomb Banshee: For all intents and purposes, a Banshee is more or less a Cairn Wraith with much weaker attacks (though at -2 Rend, that's pretty decent) and a scream attack that causes damage off of Bravery. If you're annoyed that almost all your Heroes can't shoot, have them summon one of these ladies to do the shooting for them. Also, just because they are less fighty than the Wraith doesn't mean they're less tanky. They have the same unrendable save and just enough Wounds to survive a perfect Arcane Bolt.

• Black Coach: Theoretically, the Black Coach is pretty good, especially if you keep buffing it with Wizards. The problem with this is that in order to get all those buffs, you pretty much need to spam Wizards, which equals summon spam, which equals not needing the Black Coach in the first place.
  • It is fast with a 10" move, but lacks flying (gaining it later at the Fourth Level of Evocation of Death.) and is missing the Nighthaunts penchant to ignore rend. He has the same weapon as the Cairn Wraith and the reroll hits if a unit has 5+, with the addition of 4 more attacks with his horses. So in a Nighthaunt Allegiance army he will not level up reliably and costs the same as two Cairn Wraiths...the Wraiths will have 1 more wound, collectively, and double the good attacks on top of ignoring rends, oh and they fly.

Troops

Battleline

• Spirit Hosts: Compared to other swarms, Spirit Hosts have less Wounds, but way better attacks and a 4+ unrendable save, which makes them pretty tough against anything but Mortal Wounds. Effectively, they have a rather low damage output, but the vast majority of their damage is in Mortal Wounds, which makes them great, especially against stuff with big saves and high rend. Be'lakor in particular hates these things with a passion. In a purely wound-based balancing system, Spirit Hosts are just flat amazing and summoning more of them is almost never a waste either.

Others

• Hexwraiths: A bunch of okay attacks, the ability to damage units they move over/through and a high flying movement. They're also Ethereal, so their saves are damn good, too. In fact, there's very little reason other than keyword synergy to ever use Black Knights instead.

Behemoths

• Mourngul (Forgeworld): Broken. Like most Death units, they can be summoned, but do not ever do this, as playing a Mourngul is already a dick move, but summoning one will result in your opponent flipping the table. Why is the thing so dangerous? Well, like all the other Ethereal stuff, its Save is unaffected by Rend. Problem is, it has a 3+ and like the Bastiladon also a 4+ against Mortal Wounds. As if this was not enough, it has 10 Wounds and regenerates in every turn it killed stuff, which will happen. A lot. It only has one weapon profile, but that one is a doozy, with lots of high Rend, high damage attacks that have a chance to generate extra attacks (that have a chance to generate extra attacks). It also lowers the to-hit rolls of nearby units by one (awesome), or by two if they have 6 or less Bravery, so if you can lower their Bravery with something (a Screaming Skull Catapult, some banners, etc) it becomes almost immortal. In other words, most enemies cannot hurt it reliably and if they don't kill it fast enough, it'll charge them, eat their sorry asses and fully recover.

Battalions

The Spirits of Fellblood

Found in the Start Collecting - Malignants box

A Mortis Engine, a unit of Hexwraiths and a unit of Spirit Hosts

This sweet little Battalion allows you to pick either the Hexwraiths or the Spirit Hosts up off the table and redeploy them close to the Mortis Engine so long as you stay 3" away from enemies. For Hexwraiths with their 12" Move this is not too terribly useful, but the 6" Move Spirit Hosts very much like being pulled after the rapid 14" Mortis Engine. This does become significantly better if your Spirit Host unit is a bit bigger than just three models, though.

Note: If you want to run a Nighthaunt Alligence army, then the mortis engine cannot be used as it does not have that keyword.

Army Building

A few quick tips on army building:

• The Sword of Unholy Power: This beauty can be given to any one of your Heroes and automatically, successfully casts any one summoning spell for Death models once. This can of course be used to summon a Mourngul in a more favorable position, but it can also be used to summon a unit that does not fit your allegiance, like a Terrorgheist or a unit of Morghasts. Picking a unit of Morghast Harbingers as quick chargers with a massive damage output for example is quite a good use of your Artifact.

• Black Coach: If you like it, then don't play a Nighthaunt allegiance. It needs Wizards to be good and aside from the Command Trait that makes your general a Wizard, you don't have any.

• Hero/Unit balance: Your Heroes are very meh and Inspiring Presence doesn't help your army, so you might be tempted to only use one tax Banshee and leave the other Heroes out. Do not. Your Heroes are damn cheap and can spread Deathless Minions around. And between Deathless Minions and your Ethereal saves, your models are ridiculously tough (even more so than usual). Also, you don't want that single Banshee to be your General AND your Artifact carrier.

2000 pt.

Don't. This army is way too limiting to expand to that point range. Stay at 1500 or less or don't play pure Nighthaunt. Sure you could gather some wins with a bunch of Mournguls, but do you want to be the guy playing a bunch of Mournguls?

2500 pt.

This one is right out.

Allied Armies

If you want to deploy a MALIGNANT army, you should definitely consider the Mortis Engine, if only because it's part of Start Collecting - Malignants.

The Nighthaunts have the ambiguous honor of being one of the most Hero-saturated armies in the game while simultaneously having no support from their heroes.

The obvious remedy is to take some Death Heroes that do buff your units, such as Vampire Lords. The foot-slogging/flying/Nightmare-riding Vampire Lord has a great buff to toss at your Hexwraiths and the one on Zombie Dragon helps Spirit Hosts out a ton. Mannfred von Carstein is also useful because his Dread Abyssal is surrounded by spirits so he fits the theme,because he's very powerful and his buff aura is amazing and because he can summon more Nighthaunts for you every turn. Keep in mind if you do this you will need hard battleline units from the Death Grand Alliance.

External links

Rules are here