6 Months and 16 Games - Part 1

Do you like Rocky? Then this post is for you, it’s my training montage spanning 6 months where I got to play 16 games. I lost a lot and I will continue to do so. Learning is hard, but my god, this game is also fun!

But it’s not the whole montage in one go, it will cover my 4 first games with my friendly ghosts.

BEHOLD! MY ARMY IS PAINTED

You have to learn to crawl, before you can run

The first game didn’t scare me away, it fueled me. Ready to rumble and I was sure, victory was around the corner!

6 games in my career so far and 1 victory. I WON A GAME WUHU! Granted 1 of the games was a 2 vs 2, but that was also super fun to play.

The Art of War

Did I learn not to charge head first into the enemy screen?

So honestly the games are quite a while back and I can’t recall all the details. I have taken loads of pictures (good job!) to document and hopefully learn from them and that is what we are trying to do now.

In game #1 I did the same as in my debut, charged my whole army forward and lost the game pretty quickly.¹

In game #2 I stood back and my comrade the Khorne player moved up to the middle. The Stormcast rushed to meet him and they had a glorious battle in the center. Whilst I took objectives and the Chaos dwarfs shot us to pieces.

In game #3 I tried the opposite strategy. Stand my ground. Send one unit. Needless to say, that didn’t work either. In hindsight I can see there is no benefit to send one unit to the death without a goal. Strategic thought is clearly missing from that play. Needless to say I got devoured by 80 clan rats or something ridiculous like that haha

In game #4 came my very first victory. AT LAST.

This game I wasn’t so focused on fighting but more on holding objectives. My units’ abilities also worked great against him. My Harridans’ anti healing prevented a lot of his recursion with his horrors and my Bladegheist’s anti charge ability worked more than it should, really helping me keep the center. Attrition was something this army does well.²

In game #5 I played against Gitz and unfortunately I didn’t get to capture the points. But I am preeeeetty sure I lost.

Lessons learned

I was fortunate to play a lot of different armies with my Nighthaunt. I didn’t change my list through the games. I wanted to play the same list consistently before I started to change it.

The Friendly Ghosts

Nighthaunt
Quicksilver Gheists (40)
Drops: 3
Spell Lore - Lore of the Underworlds
Manifestation Lore - Infernal Sorceries

General's Regiment
Lady Olynder, Mortarch of Grief 
• General
Myrmourn Banshees 
• Reinforced
Bladegheist Revenants 
Bladegheist Revenants 

Regiment 1
Krulghast Cruciator 
• Ruler of the Spectral Hosts 
Dreadscythe Harridans 
Dreadscythe Harridans 
Grimghast Reapers 

Regiment 2
Guardian of Souls
Chainghasts 

Faction Terrain
Nexus of Grief

Something like this - with a few variations along the way. I feel like this gives me a better reviewing data, since it was the same army I played and cannot blame luck or dice or anything like that.

The two main things I learned:

LESSON #1 : Don’t charge headless into shooting armies with screens

LESSON #2 : You win by scoring points, not by fighting

So no ugabuga, got it. Stand on circles, got it.

What I liked about my army:

• Quite resilient, 6+5++ ethereal is quite good + Krulghast’s aura made it pretty hard to just wipe me off the board (It happened a lot, but it wasn’t easy mind you)
• Mobility 8" fly army wide is pretty good
• Model recursing. If my opponent finally got a good chunk down of a unit. Then the Ruler of the Spectral Host and the Ghost Houses gave them back.

What I didn’t quite like:

• As destructive as a pillow. Killing things was super hard and to be honest. That is kinda one of the fun parts of this game.
• “On a 3+ you..” a lot of my abilities are slot machines.

Nighthaunt til we die?

I love these models, but I need to try something that actually can kill things. Which is what we will explore in part 2.