I've been looking at the nighthaunt army, they are fun to paint and seem like fun to play. But I've noticed that none of em seem to have the deathly invocation ability like the other undead do. Am I missing something? Or do I have to bring allies to get them to become an endless tide of respawning ghosts?
There are command traits and spells that let you bring them back. Lady Olynder has: No Rest for the Wicked. Guardian of Souls has: Spectral Lure. There is the Command Trait, Ruler of the Spirit Hosts: At start of hero phase, return d3 models to a friendly SUMMONABLE NIGHTHAUNT models within 9" of the general. I am sure there are more than those three options, but they are the ones that come to mind.
I feel like the Spirit of Torment does something with returning models in the battleshock phase, but I don't feel like searching out his warscroll. The Black Coach also does something with returning Summonable Nighthaunt if it has reached a certain lvl. You should definitely ally in at least one Necromancer. He can also replenish your Summonable units.
From what I've found the spirit of torment can return some if 3 enemies died which is a tad unreliable. I mean it's decent enough against say skaven or goblin armies with loads of easy to kill stuff. But basicly pointles against more elite armies. Then there's the guardian of souls, but that's only 1 spell given the rule of 1 so that ain't going to get that far either. The black coach returns D3 from lvl 1 empowerment onward, but that's our most expensive model so having it every single list I make just seems odd.. And there's lady olyander, but Always playing with a mortarch seems just as odd as having the black coach in every list. I'm mostly surprised there's so few reliably decent variants. Thought deaths whole deal was the whole endless replenishing horde thing with the occasional big scary monster. Which of the allies are decent for this? I'd prefer it if they do bring more than simply just the healing, either by having additional synergy or by just being that good. Also, do any of the allies have the option of taking nighthaunt artifacts and such? Similar to how a Tzeentch army can use slaves to darkness to plug certain gaps but the added keyword allows em to still take those things and such?
All things with the Nighthaunt Key word are in the codex. So the only allies they can take are not able to take their keyword and/or the Nighthaunt artifacts. However, Necromancers are freaking awesome.
meh.. that's dissapointing.. had hoped death would now have the same advantage chaos has now that it's one big faction. Especially considering that stuff like necromancers and vampires could fiarly easily slot into any other major death army.
Death has the Book Grandhost of Nagash. They don't have keyword assigning like S2D, but most Host can take any keyworded units. Nighthaunt, like any Devoted Chaos faction, is better on its own than most Host though. Being able to deep strike is super awesome. You could run a Malignant heavy Grandhost though. However, I think NH is able to return more total wounds than any of the host are. Most NH say return D3 models intead of D3 wounds. So on something like Spirithost of Hexwraiths you can really bog down and entrench a particular portion of the battlefield, even if you don't get gravesites. Death is the best faction atm. So I have a hard time feeling sympathy for any of their rules
meh, I'm mostly just dissapointed cuz I don't get to do what I wanted to try. I'm sure they're a good army regardless. It's just that the NH healing is limited to 1 target & can't really be spammed. I would've liked to bring 2-3 out of various necromancer and vampire heroes so you get 7-8 deathly invocations to keep healing various units, instead of just healing the 1 unit. Plus, I really like the idea behind how Chaos can plug in any slaves of darkness into their army to fill gaps while those slaves of darkness units can still benefit from artifacts, spells etc. thanks to the ability to get the right keyword. I wish the other major factions could do that as well. And it'd make sense for death to have this ability as well. The normal necromancer & vampires should be able to plug into any host.