As usual, we will cover it next week, in a separate article, as there’s a lot to cover here. What’s in the Book? Spiteful Spirit lets you roll a number of dice equal to your general’s Wounds characteristic on any turn they’re injured, inflicting a mortal wound on each enemy unit within 6” on a 4+. Most Nighthaunt generals that see combat aren’t going to be alive there very long, and while it might be cute as a little bomb it still doesn’t meet the mark for us. Nighthaunt gain four grand strategies and six battle tactics, which can generally be described in the immortal words “not great, not terrible”. Grand Strategies Chainghasts are pretty much as we saw them in Arena of Shades, functioning largely as a +1 to hit aura to Nighthaunt units while a Spirit Torment is on the battlefield. This is… nice, but because it’s dependent on a Spirit Torment floating around, killing that off means the Chainghasts are almost useless. At least you get them for free in the box with your Spirit Torment? Glaivewraith Stalkers Each physical copy of issue 478 comes with a pair of Paint Recipe Cards, and six Kill Team Faction Tac Op cards – three each for Harlequin Void-Dancer Troupes and Thousand Sons Warpcovens.

In an attempt to quell the bestial spirits running rampant across Shyish, Nagash seeks to weaponise the souls of the fallen against them. It initially stung to read that no longer could we deep strike half our army, but when you consider everything in this book now has base 8″ movement it’s not nearly as big a deal as it seems, and getting to decide what goes into reserves after deployment is a really nice touch that can really mess with your opponent’s options turn one. Wave of TerrorThese are much more exciting to us than the Grand Strategies, offering a range of tactical choices. We’re expecting at least one of these to be achievable every turn of the game, so all that’s left now is practice how to get the most out of them! Credit: PierreTheMime Units Fright of Flight is achieved if there are no enemy units within 6” of Nighthaunt units contesting an objective which is… challenging to achieve if you can’t control who has the final action of the game, and you have no meaningful ranged firepower to push the units away.

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. In contention with Craventhrone Guard for the title of ‘worst warscroll in the book’, Glaivewraith Stalkers have at best stayed the same since their previous iteration. Yes, they’ve gained a point of damage and rent, and now you gain +3 to charge a unit chosen at the start of the game, but you’re losing 1” range and reroll failed hits on the turn you charged your victim while also going up to 105 points, from 65. This is a bad unit with great sculpts. Maybe next time, mari lwyd. Myrmourn Banshees A readers’ gallery of beautifully painted miniatures from the Horus Heresy. This section includes Loyalists and Traitors in equal abundance. What in the Mortal Realms is that thing? It’s a Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur! This savage apparition is a manifestation of pure amber magic, created in the wake of Alarielle’s Rite of Life. It’s a new type of unit that’s part spell, part monster, and all danger. Top Op Elliot Hamer joins us to talk about his favourite operatives from the first year of Kill Team.His 3” range allows him to bonk heads over the top of a mass of infantry, and if you charge him directly into a unit, the ram on the prow of his boat comes into play. If this spiky protuberance kills anyone on the charge, Awlrach can then lay about with his oar for some punishing extra damage, thanks to his Scything Ram rule. If you’ve been looking for a box of AoS Terrain the Thondian Strongpoint may be perfect to both fill out your table and to play games with the new supplement… Season of War: Thondia supplement Plus this box has the new Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur that is supposedly a new type of unit altogether!

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. Looks like seasons and new terrain elements are coming to Age of Sigmar, but after they were all just removed from the Warhammer 40k side of GW’s webstore it is hard to say how long these releases will even be available.

Season of War: Thondia supplement

This highly atmospheric new miniature perfectly fits the Nighthaunt range, but Awlrach adds more than just an eerie model to your forces. He has special rules to help your army get wherever it needs to be on the tabletop, offering his allies passage through the underworlds. When he’s not busy rowing, the Drowner is pretty handy in a fight with his oar – and we recommend staying away from the pointy end of his boat!

We may have been a bit harsh on Nagash all of, uh, three paragraphs ago, but we really don’t think he has competitive viability at the top tables. He’s a model that’s very binary with victory almost decided at the list building step; if your army can solve the problem of him existing, you win, and if you can’t, you lose; there’s not a lot of tactical nuance or gameplay here. Bringing Nagash to a friendly game can lead to some real feels-bad moments when your opponent can’t solve him and you take off half their army, or they kill him round two and you’ve flat out just lost the game. We love Nagash at Goonhammer, but we’d happily see him reduced in power to increase in survivability and fun for everyone at the table. Also, entirely arbitrarily, these units only moves 6” a turn, the slowest in the book. Give this one a miss. Scriptor Mortis In the first part of a limited-run series, six Captains of the Legiones Astartes embark on a mission to build and paint armies in preparation for the invasion of the Death Guard's toxic home world. Lingering Spirits gives you a 4+ ward save against mortal wounds, which is nice but you probably have better things to be doing than probably still failing to keep your general alive against Lumineth Sentinels.

Battleline

Let it never be said that we here at Goonhammer are afraid to change our minds or admit mistakes. A unit of contention in our Arena of Shades review, Myrmourn Banshees are looking like some of the real big winners in this book. With all the benefits of running a tonne of small units, a unit or two of these ladies can put out some serious hurt (rend -3 on a good Wave of Terror charge!) while also helping shut down an enemy magic phase that is likely already struggling with the plethora of excellent wizards you’re likely already taking. Spell-eaters lets you roll 2D6 every time an enemy spell is cast, not unbound and targets a unit within 12”, and if you beat the casting value (adding +1 if your banshees have three or more models) the spell is unbound or dispelled. This is superb , as it really doesn’t matter how many bonuses the enemy has. Nagash and Teclis can both cast with some absurdly high numbers, but these ladies don’t care – your casting value six spell stays at six, doesn’t matter if you rolled a 16 to cast it. A unit or two of these is our third near auto-include unit. List building and competitive thoughts The Midnight Tome in Relics of the Underworld lets a wizard once per battle automatically cast a spell to summon an endless spell with an unmodified 12 that cannot be unbound. While our choice would probably be Emerald Lifeswarm, Nighthaunt endless spells have received major upgrades and are all incredible viable, which we’ll get into just below.