Moving like a ghostly cyclone, the creatures known as Bladegheist Revenants spin in a frenetic fashion. They are souls taken from those who met particularly tormenting ends – those sealed in spike-riddled encasements, choked beneath water or buried alive. Their last living thoughts were a frenzy of desperation, a last flurry of defiance in an attempt to break free. Thanks to Nagash’s terrible curse, that horrible ending moment has been preserved forever in the Bladegheist Revenants. In summary this is just a sample of what you could do, from the Vanguard: Nighthaunt box set. I would prefer to replace the HQs with a Knight of Shrouds on Ethereal Steed and a Guardian of Souls for their warscroll abilities and bringing our Triumph into play (975 of a 1000 points). The biggest advantage of the Guardian is his ability to return models which transforms this list into a very frustrating defensive list with bite. Beacon of Nagashizzar – The Guardian of Souls comes with a spell, spectral Lure which normally heals D6 wounds (or restores models with that many wounds). This makes it a D6+3. Spectral Lure is pretty much why you even have it so this is worth considering. B+ This list is meant to be straightforward and adaptable. Everything is in a battle regiment to give control of priority, however there is an option to place 3 of the battle line infantry into Expert Conquerors and the remainder into a Battle Regiment. Expert Conquerors makes the infantry count as 3 models on objectives – the Chainrasp would count as 60 models. Our Preference is to go second to make your opponent come to you (keep out of line of sight if they have shooting) and hopefully get the double turn. You can also redeploy up to 3 units via Vanishing Phantasms into reserve before the start of combat and then set them up in ambush (9” from the enemy).

The retreat and charge is an entirely unexpected icing on the cake. Combined with a general increase in movement to 8” on average, your ghosts are going to be where you want them to be, and none of these pesky screening shenanigans will matter. DiscorporateI took the Midnight Tome, for the bonus artifact on the guardian of souls allowing me to get off the Purple Sun or Cogs whichever is needed more for free once per game. All enemy units suffer -1 Bravery within 6″ of a Nighthaunt unit. Your units are mostly melee based so you’ll be in melee range most of the time, nice little buff that will help get a few extra models but it wont change the game by itself. Deathless Spirits The easiest way to bring this list to 2000 points is to add Nagash, God of the Unquiet Dead. This takes the list to 1955 but you do lose the one drop Battle Regiment. Ideally you’d remove the Spirit Torment (it’s roll is replaced by Nagash) and either have 2 units of 20 Chaingasts and add some Craventhrone Guard or Hexwraiths. You could reinforce the Spirit Hosts into a unit of 6 then. Best of all, you can combine multiple effects by making multiple charges. When your spectral hosts really gang up, they form a terrifying tidal wave that can overwhelm even the hardest targets with a dread combo of Shriek, Stun and Petrify, leaving them utterly helpless to retaliate – and with the updated Ethereal ability, you can retreat and charge again and again and again… There’s a couple of key things to note here. Firstly, there’s no cap on how low you can reduce a unit’s save. With enough rend and Wave of Terror results, you can absolutely strip a unit down to no save whatsoever.

Reroll all failed hit rolls for Chainrasps within 15″ of spirit torment or Chainghasts. This would be awesome if Spirit Torments and Chainghasts were just a bit better, as it stands the tax is just too high. Chainguard Grieving Legion: Enemy units cannot retreat while they are within 3” of any Grieving Legion units with 10 or more models. This ties in well with the many rules that tie in to the terrified function of Aura of Dread, but given this army’s fragility we can’t see this being taken as a mainstay – it would have been amazing as a command trait or unit ability, but the other Processions seem much nastier on face value. The Nighthaunt book is pretty dry on Command traits. There aren’t a few different tables for each type of commander, it’s just one with 6. They’re pretty mediocre, so many will choose to run Lady Olynder as a General due to her special ability rather than getting a command trait, we’ll discuss what that does in her unit entry but it is pretty competitive. But let’s talk positives – if you play Reikenor’s Condemned between now and the new book, you get to benefit from both hit rerolls for Chainrasps as well as the +1 to hit from the new warscroll which is pretty nice if you want a brief period of supercharged Chainrasps. Oh and Myrmourn Banshees have an interesting defined role now, which is nice. Spectral tether –Casting Value 6. Heal a friendly Hero within 12″ for D3 wounds. You have access to a better healing spell through the Guardian of Souls, while this spell isn’t atrocious you do have better ways to heal. C+The best case scenario is you deep strike this unit 12” away to pepper something and hold an area of the board. The problem is, why wouldn’t I use Chainrasps for that role? The Craventhrone aren’t going to kill a damn thing anyway, so I’d rather have double the wounds for the same cost. 12” range means you can’t keep them safe from any melee units, and they’re an inefficient screen, an inefficient ranged unit and an absolutely amazing sculpt. Seriously guys, these models are great. End on a high note, right? Wrapping things up There are three blood-curdling debuffs on offer – if you roll a 4 or more, your Shriek will send chills down your victims’ spines, causing their aim to falter and subtracting 1 from hit rolls. On a 8 or higher, your gruesome visage will Stun even heavily-armoured foes, leaving them slow to raise their shields or dodge as they subtract 1 from save rolls. The new battletome brings a fresh Wave of Terror to these ethereal apparitions, ensuring they hit even harder.* Every time one of your Nighthaunt units makes a charge, you can compare the unmodified charge roll to the Wave of Terror table, and apply a petrifying penalty to a nearby enemy unit. Ellarr: If I wanted to include a ranged unit in my army, I’d rather bring Chainghasts – they have longer range, one more pip of rend and wound on 3’s. You know what’s better than ignoring cover? More rend.

This does however mean the Knight of Shrouds is even more pointless than it was before, as these guys do what he does for free. We expect a rewrite for the KoS on foot when it comes time for the battletome on that basis. While before Nighthaunt could ‘deep strike’ using From the Underworld They Come , now at the end of deployment but before determining control of objectives you can choose up to three units and remove them from the battlefield to return to play at the end of any movement phase 9” away from enemy units. This is incredible, because your opponent has presumably deployed in response to how your army has been, but then you completely rewrite the battlefield. It also doesn’t limit how many units can leave the table – if you’re playing a small game with four units, you can hide one and put the other three into reserves before the game begins.

Buy today and get 20% off RRP and free shipping over £75.00 within the UK!

One of the broader trends here is to strip out sources of rerolls wherever they were found and replace them with new effects or simply rewrite the scroll entirely. Despite having a whopping 16 leaders out of 27, many of these leaders have been tweaked and written to have a specific niche, resulting in a selection where you can make an argument to include almost everything here. Leaders Warhammer Underworlds Warband. As can be expected the same story is true here, due to requiring they come with the warband, the point cost is inflated to a point that makes the Hero themselves worthless. If you can even get one at this point, as they were in the second edition of Warhammer Underworlds which has since gone out of print. Battleline These are enormous benefits and will really change how the army plays. In the old rules your ghosts only got the 6+ ward save while within 12+ of a Nighthaunt Hero, limiting their ability to spread out over the battlefield. Now it’s just innate; you can use your various movement shenanigans to put your models exactly where they need to be without risking them losing their save.