Night Lords Army - Question

[valanus]

Hi all.

I'm in the process of putting together a Night Lords force and have found myself... underwhelmed... to say the least by the Chaos Codex... Anyone got any ideas which other marine codex I could use to properly portray my favourite Traitors? I ideally want something that will let me field an effective army that can still match up with the fluff as I am a bit of a fluff lover... Any help would be gratefully appreciated.

 

Thanks

[Brother Nihm]

People around here currently use the following books to represent their Night Lords instead of C:CSM:

 

Codex Blood Angels

Codex Space Marines

Codex Space Wolves

[AoC]

Blood Angels, Space Wolves. Depend which aspect of NL you want to portray.

[Brother Kirus]

There were quite a few topics like this on the forum.

 

In sort, most people prefer to use BA codex for NL. The main justification being – it allows you to take jump-pack marines as troops…. To be honest, I do not think that this is the main characteristics for NL. If anything, BA is better suited for Khornate marines.

 

Personally, I think that SW is a better alternative to current Chaos Codex. You have night vision (one of the main physical traits of NL) it allows you a lot of flexibility in you army composition. Obviously, one should use common sense when trying to build NL army using SW codex. I would suggest to stay away from Thunder Wolf Cavalry, Scouts and other “wolfy” elements.

[valanus]

Thanks guys, to be honest I hadn't really considered using the Space Wolves codex but that could work really well. I will go back over BA and SW and see which works best for me. Although Kirus you have now given me the idea of using the BA codex to field a small Khornate force.... Damn you!!

 

Much appreciated guys

[AoC]

There were quite a few topics like this on the forum.

 

In sort, most people prefer to use BA codex for NL. The main justification being – it allows you to take jump-pack marines as troops…. To be honest, I do not think that this is the main characteristics for NL. If anything, BA is better suited for Khornate marines.

 

Personally, I think that SW is a better alternative to current Chaos Codex. You have night vision (one of the main physical traits of NL) it allows you a lot of flexibility in you army composition. Obviously, one should use common sense when trying to build NL army using SW codex. I would suggest to stay away from Thunder Wolf Cavalry, Scouts and other “wolfy” elements.

Thunderwolves are valid choice for Night Lord army, or rather ANY chaos army who want to play SW codex. Do you know abou 'counts as' ? TWC are just heavy cavalry, it can be represented by daemonic mounts just fine. In fact i ask why OUR CHOSEN don't have the choice to use daemonic mounts that work in similar vein ?!

[techmarine Azuris]

Count asing...wait till ppl see this thread. Its a shame ppl dont even try to feild and NL force with the dex, cos a friend has one thats fluffy and has won some tourneys between us mates and we had a cheese feast tbh so why not give the chaos dex a try first! NL are not about just assault marines tho, but tbh I have also seen some lovely BA armies, SW sorry just no I cant see it at all. The worst I've seen is DG as SW and thats a no no :/ But good luck mate and lets see pics :P

[AoC]

Count asing...wait till ppl see this thread. Its a shame ppl dont even try to feild and NL force with the dex, cos a friend has one thats fluffy and has won some tourneys between us mates and we had a cheese feast tbh so why not give the chaos dex a try first! NL are not about just assault marines tho, but tbh I have also seen some lovely BA armies, SW sorry just no I cant see it at all. The worst I've seen is DG as SW and thats a no no :/ But good luck mate and lets see pics ^_^

Pff, learn2fluff guy. Chaos codex sucks and is is representing NL poorly, and generally need to be boycotted. SW represent NL way better than C:CSM, at least they have ACUTE VISION, unlike chaos marines in chaos marine codex.

[gizur]

I am using the BA dex because, i don´t like to use demonic units in my Army. I prever a A-D-B feeling for my Night Lords.

[Brother Kirus]

Thunderwolves are valid choice for Night Lord army, or rather ANY chaos army who want to play SW codex. Do you know abou 'counts as' ? TWC are just heavy cavalry, it can be represented by daemonic mounts just fine. In fact i ask why OUR CHOSEN don't have the choice to use daemonic mounts that work in similar vein ?!

 

Well, it is all in the eye of the beholder… count as is a good rule but can be abused very easily. According to established background NL predominantly dislike chaos… yes some of them can be effected influenced by it but I really doubt that they will use Demonic cavalry… On the other hand I can totally see Khornate army using Thunderwolf cavalry (modeled using plastic Juggernauts)… Aside of Acute Vision SW codex allows to reflect veteran feel of the army (wolf guard can use variety of different weapons representing 1000 years old NL veterans that got used to certain equipment). But again… to each it’s own.

 

Count asing...wait till ppl see this thread. Its a shame ppl dont even try to feild and NL force with the dex, cos a friend has one thats fluffy and has won some tourneys between us mates and we had a cheese feast tbh so why not give the chaos dex a try first! NL are not about just assault marines tho, but tbh I have also seen some lovely BA armies, SW sorry just no I cant see it at all. The worst I've seen is DG as SW and thats a no no :/ But good luck mate and lets see pics

 

This was hard to read :D

[AoC]

Thunderwolves are valid choice for Night Lord army, or rather ANY chaos army who want to play SW codex. Do you know abou 'counts as' ? TWC are just heavy cavalry, it can be represented by daemonic mounts just fine. In fact i ask why OUR CHOSEN don't have the choice to use daemonic mounts that work in similar vein ?!

 

Well, it is all in the eye of the beholder… count as is a good rule but can be abused very easily. According to established background NL predominantly dislike chaos… yes some of them can be effected influenced by it but I really doubt that they will use Demonic cavalry… One to the hand I can totally see Khornate army using Thunderwolf cavalry (modeled using plastic Juggernauts)… Aside of Acute Vision SW codex allows to reflect veteran feel of the army (wolf guard can use variety of different weapons representing 1000 years old NL veterans that got used to certain equipment). But again… to each it’s own.

 

Count asing...wait till ppl see this thread. Its a shame ppl dont even try to feild and NL force with the dex, cos a friend has one thats fluffy and has won some tourneys between us mates and we had a cheese feast tbh so why not give the chaos dex a try first! NL are not about just assault marines tho, but tbh I have also seen some lovely BA armies, SW sorry just no I cant see it at all. The worst I've seen is DG as SW and thats a no no :/ But good luck mate and lets see pics

 

This was hard to read :D

 

 

Assuming current fluff, Night Lords have several DAEMON PRINCES. Which means that at least some of them embrace chaos. Also, Night Lords never ever were descibed as legion who not use possessed (they do). Post me one proof that they will not use daemonic cavalry, just one. They might not embrace the big four, but daemonic creatures that are used as steeds are common within chaos undivided realms too (and it's not unheard about night lords who either use others chaos marines service or are followers of big four).

[Brother Ambroz]

I agree that our current dex doesn't suit us fluff wise at all but I still use it. If you use one of the meta lists it doesn't work out too badly, I use khorne beserkers and plague marines as troops to better suit the veteran status. My DP is still a pushover compared to other HQ choices but we can still do fairly well in smaller games.

[Mykra]

Blood Angels, Space Wolves. Depend which aspect of NL you want to portray.

 

I understand the draw of the Blood Angels, but if I was doing Counts As I'd probably go with Space Wolves myself. I (and your mileage may vary, of course) always saw the Night Lords as Codex:Jason Vorhees. They were the guys that would cut your power, and then you'd turn around and they would calmly walk up to you as lasblast and bolter shell skipped off their armor, before tearing you apart. The Wolves with their whole shoot, shoot, shoot...oh they're charging..fine, I'll charge too! Just seemed to mesh well with that thought.

 

I do like the Lord of Night novel though, so I see why people would want to run a Raptormaster with several packs.

 

Thunderwolves..hell, those could just be guys on motorcycles...super-motorcycles? Imagination is the limit, maybe Nostromo had some sort of super predator like those color-shifting cat's in the second Pitch Black movie, and some survived to be mutated or who knows what.

[Hyaenidae]

Cool looking conversions and a gnarly fluffy story will always get a thumbs up from me for 'Counts-as' armies. Having said that, it's generally accepted that if you use such an army, you show respect to the original army whom you kidnapped the awesomeness from. For example, I'm building a Loganwing to act as my Marine Malevolent 1st Company. I intentionally avoid 'space wolf' specific equipment as much as possible though. No Frost blades, no thunderwolves, etc. Just makes sense to me. Take this advice with a grain of salt, of course. It's your army, build and paint as you wish. :huh:

[Dan The Deamon]

After browsing every "how do I make a fluffy Night Lord force in 5th" thread for the past 4 years or so I've come to this conclusion.

 

1.) People are going to tell you that using a non chaos dex, for a chaos army, isn't right.

 

2.) Your decision to make your Night Lord army in whatever format you like, is not up to these people.

 

Finding ideas and motivation for making a counts as leap is very likely, while finding resistance and nonacceptance is guaranteed. Learn to leave it at that and go build and play your army.

[Master Of Malfeasance X]

The most recent posters are, for the most part, correct.

 

The success of your army, whichever codex you wish to use, will be predicated entirely upon how well you pull the army off. If your TWC are made by sticking chaos marine torsos on bretonnian steeds or your sanguinary guard are regular guys in jump packs, your army will be met with scorn, though probably not to your face.

 

You must understand that borrowing a codex means that the appearance, theme and cohesiveness of your army is being held to the very highest of standards. You can use whatever you want, just make sure it fits.

 

For example:

I play NL using the BA codex. I could have done it differently, but I wanted to explore the BA codex and I think that space vampires are stoopid (with two O's for extra stupidity) and I always wanted to paint up the Night Lords scheme. Before I did the arm, I sat down and planned out exactly what I intended, aside from the regular stuff, here is what I came up with:

 

My Sanguinary Priests are usually standard bearers who have the bodies (or body parts) of sacrificed psykers which are chained to the standard so their life essence can be used every time a Night Lord gets injured.

 

My Vanguard Vets are Sanguinary Guard models with CSM arms, zerker heads (sans the silly rabbit ears--Khorne was surely last in line for funny hats) and the angel wings have been replaced with Tyranid Gargoyle Wings. I have re-built nearly all of the HQs and special characters in the book. Took me a long time, and I used many of the bits that I have accumulated over the years to really establish the look of them. To really spice things up, I use a lot of bits from Chaos Knights (WFB range) as well as the odd scavenged loyalist part.

 

My TH/SS terminators all have Chaos Knight shields, as well as huge, heavy-bladed, square siege blades.

 

Just some food for thought. I'm not claiming any originality, I'm sure all of these have been done to death.

 

Now go massacre some innocents!

[Lord_Caerolion]

Personally, I think that SW is a better alternative to current Chaos Codex. You have night vision (one of the main physical traits of NL) it allows you a lot of flexibility in you army composition. Obviously, one should use common sense when trying to build NL army using SW codex. I would suggest to stay away from Thunder Wolf Cavalry, Scouts and other “wolfy” elements.

 

Why shouldn't Night Lords get Marines in carapace armour and using sniper rifles? It fits their background perfectly!

 

Personally, I used to use the Wolf codex, but recently I've chosen to focus more on the background of my Lord (who's trying to build a new empire on the Eastern Fringe, the New Nostromon Empire), so I use the Tyrants Legion list, to have Marines and the army of the empire. After all, what better way to cause terror than rolling bombardments of ordnance?

 

Assuming current fluff, Night Lords have several DAEMON PRINCES. Which means that at least some of them embrace chaos. Also, Night Lords never ever were descibed as legion who not use possessed (they do). Post me one proof that they will not use daemonic cavalry, just one. They might not embrace the big four, but daemonic creatures that are used as steeds are common within chaos undivided realms too (and it's not unheard about night lords who either use others chaos marines service or are followers of big four).

Dude, calm down. It was his personal opinion that most Night Lords probably wouldn't ride around on big daemonic steeds. Sure, you could find a few, but probably not more than one or two per warband, unless the warband as a whole uses Chaos frequently.

Anyways, I'd recommend not using the big shiny new toys like Thunderwolves if you're doing Counts As anyway, to give the haters one less excuse to call you a cheesy power-gamer. There's always at least one, the amounts of hypocrisy they show are amazing, and using the "uber-units" of the codex usually only serve to drive them to new depths of nerd-rage.

[AoC]

Dude, calm down. It was his personal opinion that most Night Lords probably wouldn't ride around on big daemonic steeds. Sure, you could find a few, but probably not more than one or two per warband, unless the warband as a whole uses Chaos frequently.

Anyways, I'd recommend not using the big shiny new toys like Thunderwolves if you're doing Counts As anyway, to give the haters one less excuse to call you a cheesy power-gamer. There's always at least one, the amounts of hypocrisy they show are amazing, and using the "uber-units" of the codex usually only serve to drive them to new depths of nerd-rage.

Haters gonna hate. Besides, those don't have to even be daemonic, it's just usage of heavy mounts (hell, even horses) that is more than likely given high number of NL.

 

Receiving gifts like the mounts is not uncommon, chosen have long lives and by using chaos as a tool means that they ride daemonic mounts as they are useful tools (and they scare the :cuss out of people, too!).

 

Using any and every advantage of c:sw is fine, after all your opponent is not carebear and don't downgrade his list to meet you, and winning is important part of fun.

 

Also, the dude have no idea about NL fluff, so i point it out.

[Bewlay]

For example:

I play NL using the BA codex. I could have done it differently, but I wanted to explore the BA codex and I think that space vampires are stoopid (with two O's for extra stupidity) and I always wanted to paint up the Night Lords scheme. Before I did the arm, I sat down and planned out exactly what I intended, aside from the regular stuff, here is what I came up with:

 

My Sanguinary Priests are usually standard bearers who have the bodies (or body parts) of sacrificed psykers which are chained to the standard so their life essence can be used every time a Night Lord gets injured.

 

My Vanguard Vets are Sanguinary Guard models with CSM arms, zerker heads (sans the silly rabbit ears--Khorne was surely last in line for funny hats) and the angel wings have been replaced with Tyranid Gargoyle Wings. I have re-built nearly all of the HQs and special characters in the book. Took me a long time, and I used many of the bits that I have accumulated over the years to really establish the look of them. To really spice things up, I use a lot of bits from Chaos Knights (WFB range) as well as the odd scavenged loyalist part.

 

My TH/SS terminators all have Chaos Knight shields, as well as huge, heavy-bladed, square siege blades.

 

Just some food for thought. I'm not claiming any originality, I'm sure all of these have been done to death.

 

Now go massacre some innocents!

 

This is the same with my army, every unit in the BA book, I've acounted for. Does that mean I'll use them, no, but at least if I felt like it I could back it up with a subtible explanation.

 

For my example, I use Raptors for my Vanguards, Jetbikes for Assault Bikes, and each of their Special characters is a home made character of mine.

I've gone to alot of effort building my force, and I plan to expand it even further (I've now bought some DKoK to represent their fighting miltia). So no, people don't complain about my army, beacause I've gone to the length to fully represent my it. So if you want to use another Codex then I warn you, without some heart being put into them, people won't like it.

 

Good luck :)

[techmarine Azuris]

Count asing...wait till ppl see this thread. Its a shame ppl dont even try to feild and NL force with the dex, cos a friend has one thats fluffy and has won some tourneys between us mates and we had a cheese feast tbh so why not give the chaos dex a try first! NL are not about just assault marines tho, but tbh I have also seen some lovely BA armies, SW sorry just no I cant see it at all. The worst I've seen is DG as SW and thats a no no :/ But good luck mate and lets see pics :angry:

Pff, learn2fluff guy. Chaos codex sucks and is is representing NL poorly, and generally need to be boycotted. SW represent NL way better than C:CSM, at least they have ACUTE VISION, unlike chaos marines in chaos marine codex.

 

Sorry for the confusing text. The army I saw was very fluffily accurate and used the C:CSM very well so with effort it is possible! Secondly I dont mind count-asing as long as people try and put effort into it, like many people say. I also wonder how many people will still count as when we get a new shiny dex.

[AoC]

Count asing...wait till ppl see this thread. Its a shame ppl dont even try to feild and NL force with the dex, cos a friend has one thats fluffy and has won some tourneys between us mates and we had a cheese feast tbh so why not give the chaos dex a try first! NL are not about just assault marines tho, but tbh I have also seen some lovely BA armies, SW sorry just no I cant see it at all. The worst I've seen is DG as SW and thats a no no :/ But good luck mate and lets see pics :)

Pff, learn2fluff guy. Chaos codex sucks and is is representing NL poorly, and generally need to be boycotted. SW represent NL way better than C:CSM, at least they have ACUTE VISION, unlike chaos marines in chaos marine codex.

 

Sorry for the confusing text. The army I saw was very fluffily accurate and used the C:CSM very well so with effort it is possible! Secondly I dont mind count-asing as long as people try and put effort into it, like many people say. I also wonder how many people will still count as when we get a new shiny dex.

Depends.

 

If codex will be written by mad ward and filled with pure nonsense (as every his codex so far), i'll use codex:grey knights with both of my chaos space marines armies.