Nighthaunt are top dog in Age of Sigmar at the moment. But let’s not get too spooked just yet….

Battle Formation

Almost everyone apart from a few outliers play Death Stalkers. Once per turn in the Nighthaunt players movement phase they can pick one Nighthaunt unit to be able to use the charge ability even if it used a run or retreat ability in the same turn. As well as this, for the rest of the turn, no mortal damage is inflicted on that unit by retreat abilities.

Artefacts

Lightshard of the Harvest Moon, is the go to artefact of choice. It can only be used once per battle, and it allows the the player to add 1 to the attacks characteristic of melee weapons used by friendly Nighthaunt units wholly within 12″ of the bearer for the rest of the turn.

Heroic Traits

We can see the internal balance for Nighthaunt is off kilter, as there are stand out choices in Battle Formation, Artefacts and now Heroic Traits. This happens when either one choice is too powerful or multiple choices are just complete pants.

In this case, everyone is choosing Ruler of the Spectral Hosts, which again, is a once per battle ability carried out in the Nighthaunt players movement phase. They may pick a friendly Nighthaunt unit that started the battle with 3 or more models and that has been destroyed. The player can then set up a replacement unit with half the number of models from the target unit (rounded up), wholly within 12″ of the bearer and more than 9″ from enemy units.

Now compare that to their other offerings:

Cloaked in Shadow – If the unmodified hit roll for an attack that targets this unit is 1-3, the attack fails and the attack sequence end.

Can’t hit the bearer, or one new unit? New unit please!

Terrifying Entity – This unit can use any of the Aura of Dread abilities, even if it doesn’t have the required keywords for that ability. These are abilities like subtracting 1 from enemy hit rolls against a unit, using charge in the combat phase, subtracting 1 from enemy save rolls, or giving out strike-last.

That, or a new unit? New unit please!

Manifestations

Morbid Conjuration.

Warscrolls

That’s just a sea of red. Popular choices being Hexwraiths, Reikenor, Awlrach and Bladgheist Revenants.

Performance v Other Factions

The only take away here, is perhaps that Stormcast, Bonereapers and Tzeentch have a fairly decent chance against the ghosties.

Close

As always, you’ll probably (and quite rightly) disagree with me on a lot of these points. Why not let us know I’m the comments below what you think to the Nighthaunt.