About this deal
Let’s start by running through what’s good and bad about Orks, which we’ll borrow from Start Competing: Orks: Army Strengths
In reality, Thanquol’s spellcasting job is to get out endless spells. In particular, he’s an incredible user of the Lauchon the Soulseeker endless spell, as his base is comically tiny and fits within the Lauchon bubble, letting Thanquol move 18” via Lauchon and then move again in your own hero phase. Contents: 1 Herald of Nurgle / Poxbringer, 10 x Plaguebearers (Battleline), 3 x Nurglings, and 3 x Plague Drones There’s a case to be made for a unit of 3 of these as a troubleshooter in an army going in another direction for pure damage, and in that case the warpfire thrower probably wins out over the windlauncher, but this is unusual. Clans Pestilens Plague Monks Can be made into a massive horde of cheap we This is a really versatile box as many of the units can be build in a different ways and can be slotted in to different Death lists depending on how they’re built. In a Flesh-Eater Courts army the big beast of the box (Terrorgheist/ZD) can be built as a standalone behemoth with a freestanding Ghoul King or as a mounted leader of either the FEC variety or as a Vampire Lord/the named Vampire Lord, Prince Vordrai.You’ve got your hands on some core characters and troops, now where do you go? Necrons have a number of different angles to play and some of them are quite competitive. Let’s discuss a couple possible options among many that are available and how you might branch into them. Shadow Magnet Trinket – Up front, it’s weird to me that the assassin subfaction gets no damage boost artefacts, but here we are. Three quite techy once-per-game options. For once-per-game, these are all OK. The Shadow Magnet Trinket gets activated at the start of any combat phase and gives the bearer the strike-first effect until your next hero phase. As we will see, Deceivers like going first quite a lot. As is tradition, the Stormcast box gives you a couple of janky-sized units, but this time it’s not quite as bad. Palladors are one of the most mobile units in Stormcast and give Hunters are fine, but required in a couple of the best vanguard battalions. Who doesn’t love good doggos? Best looking Stormcast as voted in 2019. All and all – a solid box. In either hero phase you can spend a spark on a hero to reroll casting, dispelling and unbinding for them until the end of the phase. Skaven don’t have quite as many static casting bonuses as they used to, so this can be vital for pushing through spells like More-more-more Warp Power. Undulant Scourge – Nearest enemy unit within 13” again. This is your classic horde clearer, roll a dice for each model in the target unit and do a mortal wound on a 4+. Being a horde clearer makes the nearest unit positioning a bit more difficult, but the 4+ means even tagging medium sized units will do a few mortals.
This is another one of the older boxes and though it predates Nighthaunt as an army, is probably the closest box to a Nighthaunt Start Collecting one. The other big advantage of going this way is that many of the strong board control lists running as custom dynasties make use of many of the same tools, so buying in this direction gives you quite a bit of flexibility. Warbikers and Stormboyz are fast units that can give you other ways to press into combat. Warbikers add a bunch of extra shooting, while Stormboyz can fly and can advance extra far (with some risk involved). Don’t bother with the nob version of warbikers.
The Book
Mek Gunz are incredibly useful. Their only downside is that they cannot benefit from a Klan Kultur. Mek Gunz are very cheap and come in groups so you can run a lot of them (some competitive armies run the maximum number). The big payoff on these is the Smasha gun, which puts out a ton of shots and rolls 2D6 against a target’s toughness to wound it, allowing it to easily hurt most things in the game. Beyond this, Stormfeinds have enough melee power to take care of themselves if charged by anything but the biggest melee threats (and that’s after they get a horrific unleash hell) and a big chunk of wounds that makes them unusually difficult to remove for a Skaven unit. If you’re running a unit of 6, you will have to take 20 damage to remove the first gun from the unit. The Brass Orb – Hilarious, and a classic Skaven artefact. Once per game you can hurl the Brass Orb at an enemy within 6” at the start of your hero phase. On a 3+ you remove the unit, then at the end of the turn set them up again wholly within their own territory and more than 9” from your units. The FAQ has confirmed that if there’s no legal place to play that model, it’s destroyed. An extremely funny and ignoble end to the Shadow Queen if you can pull it off. The range and the timing of this mean that pulling it off is largely within your opponent’s control (or banking on a double to engineer it), willingly entering the threat range of the Orb.
Contents: 1 x Oldblood on Carnosaur (Hero), 12 x Saurus Warriors (Battleline in units of 10) and 8 x Saurus Knights (Battleline in units of 5) I havered on including this because it’s very obviously an outdated unit from another time, but for as long as it’s matched play legal in its current state you are getting a very cheap, very weird Verminlord. There’s no combos with the rest of the army going on here, you’re buying a melee monster at a discount rate. Compared to the damage output you can get at this kind of cost in the rest of the book, and precarity of Forge World AoS in general, I wouldn’t rush out to buy one. Grey Seer Contents: 1 Lord-Aquilor (Hero), 5 x Vanguard Hunters (Batteline if General is Lord-Aquilor), 3 x Vanguard Palladors, 3 x Glyph-Hounds The Gnawshard – Upgrades one of the bearer’s melee weapons, if it does any damage to a unit then that unit takes a mortal wound at the end of each turn. There’s only one Masterclan hero who can take an artefact and wants to be anywhere near melee and this effect is far too marginal to bother spending an artefact on, pass. Contents: 1 Watch Captain Artemis (HQ), 10 Deathwatch Veterans (Troops), 1 Venerable Dreadnought (Elites), 1 Deathwatch upgrade sprueThe Grey Seer on Screaming Bell is less brilliant. Once the centrepiece of the Skaven battleline, the bell now struggles to justify its inflated points cost. You get a two-spell caster and a lot of rules, but none of it quite adds up to a coherent unit. For low cost and an extra drop you can give any non-monster or warmachine in your army the ability to deploy off the board and then set up at the end of one of your movement phases with the usual 9” restriction, and wholly within 13” of the grinder. On top of that, it fights like an un-overcharged flayer. If you need it, it’s there and it’s good at what it does. Warpfire Thrower Unfortunately this box is pretty lousy for pure Nighthaunts. Hexwraiths are underwhelming on the tabletop and Spirit Hosts are usually passed over for the more disposable and flexible Chainrasps. Pure Nighthaunt can’t even take the Mortis Engine either, leaving it a dead weight for the brunt of the box’s cost.
The Battlewagon. The big lumbering behemoth tank for the orks and also a very useful transport with its transport capacity of 20. It is pretty though and has a load of guns and weapons. While overall its shooting in Gunwagon configuration leaves a bit to be desired, Battlewagons work great as mobile open-topped firing platforms or as melee push threats in their Bonebreaka configuration. All three versions can be built from the same box. Forge World nonsense, the Warpgnaw is a Verminlord that hasn’t been properly updated for the new tome. It’s got the previous edition’s 12 wounds and the previous edition’s approach to Verminlord points. The Nurgle box is pretty good value. If you’re collecting Nurgle Daemons you want Plaguebearers and Nurglings en masse, and at least one Poxbringer too. If you’re going to buy those things, you might as well buy this box, and basically get the Plague Drones for free. A very respectable set which gives you pretty much what you want to get going with the faction – perfect. The Verminus Command Traits are not fantastic, certainly not good enough to be worth throwing points at mediocre heroes over. Without wanting to dwell on the past – this used to be an ability that just handed the traits over without having to spend a heroic action, and it used to work on the Verminlord Warbringer, and nobody ever made use of it anyway. It’s worse now, so unless you are very committed to a specific bit, it probably isn’t going to be a mechanic you chase. Clans Skryre Warpstone SparksYou don’t see this massively often but it does perform a useful function, especially now that the Screaming Bell isn’t providing the same benefit. Most players will choose offensive endless spells but if Nighthaunt remains a meta terror and the rules that deny inspiring presence continue to increase then this is a tool in the toolbox, and cheap. Vermintide