Question to Night Lords

[AekoldHelbrass]

From time to time I see on this forum that people hate 3.5 Night Lords thingy with Raptors. Finally I really want to know why.

 

Iron Warriors had their thingy, but I don't see them complaining that they can field more Obliterators than others. Because it does not force you to field them, we're a Legion, we can field whatever we want and it will be fine. But why taking away that possibility at all?

 

Here are my arguments, without priority:

 

1. I've started my Night Lords inspired by "Lord of the Night" and all Index Astartes articles, maybe it affected my vision of things. We're the only Legion where Raptor became captain of the first company! It should mean something, it should be somehow represented. Because Raptor represents the spirit of our Legion - attack weakest link of enemy defence with overwhelming force.

 

2. We should learn from Blood Angels. They're separated as well - tournament players are using razor spam, while background fans are saying that for BA it's stupid, they should wear jump packs, most of them. But they're not fighting, not saying that razorspam or jump packs should be taken away from them.

 

3. ForgeWorld Horus Heresy puts assault squads in Troops choice. So Legions had plenty of jump packs to equip full armies with them, even first 4 Legions described in Betrayal. And size of the Legion was up to 100 000 marines. Adding that to previous 2 arguments means that if your warband is only about 400 or 500 marines - you could field full Raptors army with Night Lords, or most other Legions for that matter.

 

4. As assault squads are already troops, and captain of the first company was a Raptor, we should get unit similar to Warp Talons but as Elite choice, instead of cult troops, for example. You're still not forced to use it, we're a Legion!

 

5. If you're one of Raptors haters, consider this: when I started it was because of Night Lords and Raptors. But they took it away from me. Without any hope of getting it back. But they've taken nothing from you, this edition they even provided you with possibility to field cheap rhino-spam. AND YOU'RE STILL COMPLAINING! I hate you!! Even more than I hate those loyalist scum...

 

That's most of my arguments, maybe will remember more later on. I hope this topic will not sink into flaming and trolling, and I will read more arguments than just "well, shut up!".

[RapatoR]

Well in 3,5 you could take 1 squad of raptors, unless being a Night Lord player. That created meme: NL are Legion of raptors. The thing is, NL just were able to take more raptors than everyone else, they still had to take troops and so on. Raptors are independent cult, they really don't care about Legion. If there was way to make whole raptor army, it would be more appropriate to name it Raptor cult army, than Night Lord army.

[Snejk]

I feel your anger brother!

 

Although I'm not a NL player myself i can say i feel your anger and disappointment. Yes, the new codex could have had more options to tailor legion specific armys, but then again if you play larger games (2000 pts and up) you can use two force organization charts and have up to six units of Raptors/Warp talons. And even with smaller games you can field pretty many Raptors. Allthough they will not be scoring units.

 

And I feel that the generall bickering and bitching about both the new and the old codex leaves me little sympathy for CSM players. All i tend to see and read is how awful, broken, bad, horrible etc, etc the new codex is, and all people tend to do is dream back to the 3.5 glory days. Very few players say "Hey! I did this cool and awesome thing with the new codex!" or "Look guys, this is how I built my new and fun [insert warband/Legion] with the new dex!" No, it's all bitching about how it is not the old 3.5 codex.

 

I hope you can build a nice, fun fast terror army with the current dex. Me i'd probably go for a Jump Pack Lord, Huron (For infiltrate), small CSM units with Rhinos, large raptor squads and some terminators and a Vindicator or two. But what do I know?

[AekoldHelbrass]

And I feel that the generall bickering and bitching about both the new and the old codex leaves me little sympathy for CSM players. All i tend to see and read is how awful, broken, bad, horrible etc, etc the new codex is, and all people tend to do is dream back to the 3.5 glory days. Very few players say "Hey! I did this cool and awesome thing with the new codex!" or "Look guys, this is how I built my new and fun [insert warband/Legion] with the new dex!" No, it's all bitching about how it is not the old 3.5 codex.

Well, I'm grown too tired to complain about 3.5 glory, I just used it most of 5th edition, and right now I'm moving my 40k army to Emperor's Children, my Night Lords will collect the dust until the endtimes, and my next army will be Sons of Horus for FW Horus Heresy.

 

So this time it's more background question than yet another complain about our awful codex.

[Snejk]

And I feel that the generall bickering and bitching about both the new and the old codex leaves me little sympathy for CSM players. All i tend to see and read is how awful, broken, bad, horrible etc, etc the new codex is, and all people tend to do is dream back to the 3.5 glory days. Very few players say "Hey! I did this cool and awesome thing with the new codex!" or "Look guys, this is how I built my new and fun [insert warband/Legion] with the new dex!" No, it's all bitching about how it is not the old 3.5 codex.

Well, I'm grown too tired to complain about 3.5 glory, I just used it most of 5th edition, and right now I'm moving my 40k army to Emperor's Children, my Night Lords will collect the dust until the endtimes, and my next army will be Sons of Horus for FW Horus Heresy.

 

So this time it's more background question than yet another complain about our awful codex.

 

As far as background goes i'm not all that familiar with the NL fluff. All i know is what I read in the Soul Hunter trilogy (Awesome series btw), and what i understand from that is that the NL seems to use all sorts of terror tactics (infiltrat, Jump packs, etc.) to instill fear in their foes. So I don't see why you could not use many, many raptors in your army.

 

Somewhat off topic, but is it just me or did the leader of the Bleeding Eyes raptor cult get infected with some Nurgle bacteria/virus after they ate that Nurgle dude in the second book? After all he gets pretty messed up by that Eldar thingy in the end of the third book but survives.

[Brother Amarel]

That's most of my arguments, maybe will remember more later on. I hope this topic will not sink into flaming and trolling, and I will read more arguments than just "well, shut up!".

If you don't want a topic to descend into flaming and trolling, perhaps not starting a topic designed to flame and troll would be a good starting point?

 

And I feel that the generall bickering and bitching about both the new and the old codex leaves me little sympathy for CSM players. All i tend to see and read is how awful, broken, bad, horrible etc, etc the new codex is, and all people tend to do is dream back to the 3.5 glory days. Very few players say "Hey! I did this cool and awesome thing with the new codex!" or "Look guys, this is how I built my new and fun [insert warband/Legion] with the new dex!" No, it's all bitching about how it is not the old 3.5 codex.

Pet hate here. Most people talking about their disappointment with the new codex are NOT saying that they want 3.5 back. What is actually happening is that the people who don't want hear about how the new Codex isn't brilliant are accusing the players who aren't super happy of wanting 3.5 back. How about we just stop doing that? It's becoming the root cause of a lot of cheap shots and snidey passive-aggressive comments. This isn't aimed at you particularly Snejk, it's a general comment.

[Snejk]

That's most of my arguments, maybe will remember more later on. I hope this topic will not sink into flaming and trolling, and I will read more arguments than just "well, shut up!".

If you don't want a topic to descend into flaming and trolling, perhaps not starting a topic designed to flame and troll would be a good starting point?

 

And I feel that the generall bickering and bitching about both the new and the old codex leaves me little sympathy for CSM players. All i tend to see and read is how awful, broken, bad, horrible etc, etc the new codex is, and all people tend to do is dream back to the 3.5 glory days. Very few players say "Hey! I did this cool and awesome thing with the new codex!" or "Look guys, this is how I built my new and fun [insert warband/Legion] with the new dex!" No, it's all bitching about how it is not the old 3.5 codex.

Pet hate here. Most people talking about their disappointment with the new codex are NOT saying that they want 3.5 back. What is actually happening is that the people who don't want hear about how the new Codex isn't brilliant are accusing the players who aren't super happy of wanting 3.5 back. How about we just stop doing that? It's becoming the root cause of a lot of cheap shots and snidey passive-aggressive comments. This isn't aimed at you particularly Snejk, it's a general comment.

 

Hear, hear! I'm not saying the new codex is brilliant. Nor that it is a broken codex. My observation is that many seem to refer back to the 3.5 codex as some sort of pinnacle in evolution. I never played with it so I can't say if it was a good or bad codex. I can just look back at the last codex and say that I'm more pleased with this one, despite some minor details.

 

What I would like to see are some happy comments about the new codex in general. But that's a diffrent topic I suppose.

[AekoldHelbrass]

Guys, lets PLEASE return to the topic "why full-Raptors are bad thing?" maybe?

[Kol Saresk]

AekoldHelbrass, I am not a Raptors Haters. I am a Raptors Legion hater. What does that mean? It means this. My introduction to the background, to Warhammer 40k at all, was when I found a random copy of Lord of the Night back in 2005. I had no knowledge of the game and I absolutely loved the book, especially the Raptors and I loved the feel that was given about Krieg Acerbus with him basically being a moving shadow with substance as well as Zso Sahaal's effortless grace. However, while I thought that there had to be a lot of Raptors in the Night Lords, I walked away thinking that they were the Elie of the Elite and were only contained in one Company, the First. Of course, this was back before the Horus Heresy and the Legions(which I don't think were called that yet) were only 10,000 strong and a Company was still only 100 or so soldiers so my belief ended up being shaped that where the other 17 would only have a handful of squads due to the rarity of the Raptors, the Night Lords would just happen to have one whole company. This is actually a belief I still have all though the rise of recent fluff has altered it to being a sub-company of the First Company with no clear number being specified.

 

My "problem" would eventually start with my first attempts to learn about the game. Several times I asked about the Night Lords and trying to make a list for them. All of the fluffy lists(with came with the rather large and justified disclaimers "MAY NOT WORK!") recommended not only Raptors but that all of the FA slots were filled with them. When I asked about this, I was told to look at the 3.5 Codex and the IA articles. Apparently there was something in there that said Night Lord armies had to have Raptors. Took me a while to be able to read those and I can say this: the belief that Night Lords revolve around Raptors is...inaccurate.

 

For one thing, the Raptor Cults are no longer associated with the Legions. Some warbands from the Legions and following Renegade Chapters do retain some number of their assault troops and because there is no other title for them, they are called Raptors. Which was one of the reasons some people, specifically the Renegade players, were excited about the rumors that there would be Raptors and then there would be Assault Troops. But alas, that didn't happen.

 

Now, from the Night Lords angle. The fluff of the First Company combined with the extra Fast Attack slot combined with an obvious "gathering of like minds" between Night Lords and Raptors combined with Night Lords not having a unit restriction on Night Lords in 3.5 was led to the "Raptor Legion" belief. And to explain that properly, the belief that in order for a Night Lords army to be fluffy it not only has to have Raptors, but it has to have a lot of them. Ignoring the part in the Raptors fluff from the IA article that says the Cults are "rare" and "elitist", there is the above problem. Nothing says that Night Lords have to have Raptors or in high numbers, not even the existence of a sub-company filled with them.

 

So my grudge is not against Raptors or even Raptor heavy lists, it is against the belief that Night Lords armies can only be fluffy if they are Raptor heavy lists when there is no fluff supporting that specific belief, only that Night Lords and Raptors are of like minds and that it isn't uncommon to see cooperation between the two groups, although nothing says that it would be uncommon to see a Night Lords warband without Raptors either. And I am not going to force someone who wants to play Night Lords without Raptors to play Raptors either. Especially since Bikers have similar fluff to the Raptors as well but I don't see them being forced upon anyone even though we could take four Biker Squads in 3.5. Does that answer your question Aekold?

 

EDIT: Holy schnapp-ton of spelling errors.

 

EDIT Secundus:

Somewhat off topic, but is it just me or did the leader of the Bleeding Eyes raptor cult get infected with some Nurgle bacteria/virus after they ate that Nurgle dude in the second book? After all he gets pretty messed up by that Eldar thingy in the end of the third book but survives.

Actually this part would go with the Raptors fluff of them possibly serving some unknown Chaos God or warp power that has caused them all to mutate in a rather uniform manner, which was why they all had a rather striking avian appearance in the older metal versions, which isn't portrayed in the newer versions. The mutations were never fully outlined and A D-B simply gave us an idea of what to or not to expect.

[AekoldHelbrass]

Hails Kol Saresk.

 

Yes, that mostly answers my question. With few "but"s though. Our beginning was really similar, so I think you would understand me. Main difference was in details:

- Somewhere around that time I've read that Fulgrim's legion was one of the smallest, and it was about 10 000. So I imagined Night Lords to be somewhere around 30 000 maybe.

- I too thought that Night Lords would have Raptors as elite, but it will be more like Justaerin for Sons of Horus, hyper-elite unit in addition to standard Raptors unit.

- I had never seen any limitations on possible numbers of Raptors in the Legion pre-heresy. That's why I expected that Night Lords had around 10 000 Raptors, more or less.

- And of course reading about other Legions and warbands, we can clearly see that there are warbands, from 6 men and up (Flawless Host and Honsou's warband) and warbands like "shard of the Legion", like some Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, Black Legion, and many others. And now we have FW Horus Heresy, that shows enormous sizes of the Legions. Basically that mean that it is possible for Night Lords to preserve some bigger warband that still has some Legion stuff remaining, perhaps some strong Raptor leader who has melancholia for old times.

 

Because of the reasons stated above, I always thought that Raptors being Fast Attack choice is just attempt to make rules balanced because moving them to troops slot will be too cheasy. But after BA codex we can see that it's possible. And for both warbands and for legion shards Night Lords is the only ones who could have access to Raptors as Troops choice, AND Warp Talons should have been Elite choice.

 

And to be honest, I've never seen anyone who said that Night Lords can only be fluffy in full-Raptors list. That's quite stupid, is it not? We're freaking Legion! We have lots of stuff, we're not some petty White Scars or something...

[Vesper]

I was told to look at the 3.5 Codex and the IA articles. Apparently there was something in there that said Night Lord armies had to have Raptors. Took me a while to be able to read those and I can say this: the belief that Night Lords revolve around Raptors is...inaccurate.

People who said that to you were wrong.

 

For one thing, the Raptor Cults are no longer associated with the Legions. Some warbands from the Legions and following Renegade Chapters do retain some number of their assault troops and because there is no other title for them, they are called Raptors. Which was one of the reasons some people, specifically the Renegade players, were excited about the rumors that there would be Raptors and then there would be Assault Troops. But alas, that didn't happen.

In fact, if I had a little faith in GW, I would have wanted the possibility to field a Raptor Cult armies. But hey, devteam sucks.

 

Now, from the Night Lords angle. The fluff of the First Company combined with the extra Fast Attack slot combined with an obvious "gathering of like minds" between Night Lords and Raptors combined with Night Lords not having a unit restriction on Night Lords in 3.5 was led to the "Raptor Legion" belief. And to explain that properly, the belief that in order for a Night Lords army to be fluffy it not only has to have Raptors, but it has to have a lot of them. Ignoring the part in the Raptors fluff from the IA article that says the Cults are "rare" and "elitist", there is the above problem. Nothing says that Night Lords have to have Raptors or in high numbers, not even the existence of a sub-company filled with them.

I think you're making that up by yourself. If some people might very well think like that, it's not the case of the majority. It is true that the NL have an affinity to raptors and their cults. So the restriction of 0-1 made little to no sense, so the devteam of 3.5 chose to remove the limitation. In fact, what was a "fluffy NL army" was an army with in-build Night Vision, in-build Stealth Adept, that had the possibility to trade a HS slot for a FA one and was not fond of all the Chaos Gods thingy. NL never had that much love from GW.

 

So my grudge is not against Raptors or even Raptor heavy lists, it is against the belief that Night Lords armies can only be fluffy if they are Raptor heavy lists when there is no fluff supporting that specific belief, only that Night Lords and Raptors are of like minds and that it isn't uncommon to see cooperation between the two groups, although nothing says that it would be uncommon to see a Night Lords warband without Raptors either. And I am not going to force someone who wants to play Night Lords without Raptors to play Raptors either. Especially since Bikers have similar fluff to the Raptors as well but I don't see them being forced upon anyone even though we could take four Biker Squads in 3.5.

The possibility to have a fourth FA slot was explained by : "Night Lords are skilled raiders and make excellent use of both Chaos Space Marines Bikes and Raptors". And that feels pretty fluffy to me.

 

Actually this part would go with the Raptors fluff of them possibly serving some unknown Chaos God or warp power that has caused them all to mutate in a rather uniform manner, which was why they all had a rather striking avian appearance in the older metal versions, which isn't portrayed in the newer versions. The mutations were never fully outlined and A D-B simply gave us an idea of what to or not to expect.

Yep. Yet, I still find avian features in the Warp Talons sculpts. I like the Raptor Cult thingy, would have liked to play such an army.

 

EDIT : typos.

[Kol Saresk]

Hails Kol Saresk.

 

Yes, that mostly answers my question. With few "but"s though. Our beginning was really similar, so I think you would understand me. Main difference was in details:

- Somewhere around that time I've read that Fulgrim's legion was one of the smallest, and it was about 10 000. So I imagined Night Lords to be somewhere around 30 000 maybe.

- I too thought that Night Lords would have Raptors as elite, but it will be more like Justaerin for Sons of Horus, hyper-elite unit in addition to standard Raptors unit.

- I had never seen any limitations on possible numbers of Raptors in the Legion pre-heresy. That's why I expected that Night Lords had around 10 000 Raptors, more or less.

- And of course reading about other Legions and warbands, we can clearly see that there are warbands, from 6 men and up (Flawless Host and Honsou's warband) and warbands like "shard of the Legion", like some Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, Black Legion, and many others. And now we have FW Horus Heresy, that shows enormous sizes of the Legions. Basically that mean that it is possible for Night Lords to preserve some bigger warband that still has some Legion stuff remaining, perhaps some strong Raptor leader who has melancholia for old times.

 

Because of the reasons stated above, I always thought that Raptors being Fast Attack choice is just attempt to make rules balanced because moving them to troops slot will be too cheasy. But after BA codex we can see that it's possible. And for both warbands and for legion shards Night Lords is the only ones who could have access to Raptors as Troops choice, AND Warp Talons should have been Elite choice.

For the most part, that is an entirely logical view. It is your view and I'm not going to tell you that it is a wrong view. And yes I agree that Warp Talons should have been Elites. It makes no sense to have two Jump Pack units in the same FoC slot. But then again, the existence of the Warp Talons are kind of weird since you could just give the Raptors the option that all models can have Dual Lightning Claws at a discounted price, much like Terminators did in the previous edition. As for as the Raptors being Troops, it's not necessarily something I would go for. Most of it because of the background. Ironically, there is very little mention of Raptors in the IA Night Lords background.

 

So, personally, I would say just give the Night Lords an extra FA slot like before even though it would perpetuate the above belief since there would be a large number of players who would fill all four with Raptors. Not saying that all will or even that they have to, just that it happened once so it is more than likely to happen again. To me, the fluffy Night Lords army should be Fast Attack and "Shock and Awe" oriented much like their background says, not necessarily revolving around a specific unit. Unfortunately, much of their tactics like orbital bombardments, hidden ambushes, leader assassinations and disruption of communication as well as others, are hard to put on the tabletop so since GW is putting an emphasis on Fast Attack, maybe that's what we should go with.

 

As far as the number of Raptors in the other Legions, IIRC in Lord of the Night, Zso Sahaal said that he trained the assault squads in the other Legions. Since there was such a distinction when earlier on he had mentioned that his command company was formed of them, that there must have been less of them.

 

As far as the Legions go, IIRC, when I first heard about their numbers, it was the Emperor's Children at 3,000 while the average Legion was at 10,000 and the Ultramarines being the biggest were at 30,000 or so. There is every chance that is incorrect, I don't remember solid facts about that subject because it seemed like the numbers were always changing, I just remember 10,000 being the one that popped up the most until Horus Rising popped up.

 

But for the most part, all of this is simply personal preference.

 

And to be honest, I've never seen anyone who said that Night Lords can only be fluffy in full-Raptors list. That's quite stupid, is it not? We're freaking Legion! We have lots of stuff, we're not some petty White Scars or something...

Unfortunately, I have. And I have seen more than a few others who still carry that belief. If you look carefully whenever you see a "New Night Lords Player" thread pop-up, you sometimes see things like "Well I know a fluffy Night Lords list needs Raptors!" or "I know I have to get Raptors to make this fluffy" and little things like that. It's usually why I make a big JA appearance and say things like "Why does it have to have Raptors in order to be fluffy?"

 

I was told to look at the 3.5 Codex and the IA articles. Apparently there was something in there that said Night Lord armies had to have Raptors. Took me a while to be able to read those and I can say this: the belief that Night Lords revolve around Raptors is...inaccurate.

People who said that to you were wrong.

Yes, I said that. In the exact same paragraph. I was just being polite by using the word "inaccurate." Just because I am normally not polite does not mean that I am incapable of it.

 

For one thing, the Raptor Cults are no longer associated with the Legions. Some warbands from the Legions and following Renegade Chapters do retain some number of their assault troops and because there is no other title for them, they are called Raptors. Which was one of the reasons some people, specifically the Renegade players, were excited about the rumors that there would be Raptors and then there would be Assault Troops. But alas, that didn't happen.

In fact, if I had a little faith in GW, I would have wanted to possibility to field a Raptor Cult army. But hey, devteam sucks.

Raptor Cult armies probably would be awesome. Just not what I am interested in so it's not what I look for. Although it would be cool if it was a possibility.

 

Now, from the Night Lords angle. The fluff of the First Company combined with the extra Fast Attack slot combined with an obvious "gathering of like minds" between Night Lords and Raptors combined with Night Lords not having a unit restriction on Night Lords in 3.5 was led to the "Raptor Legion" belief. And to explain that properly, the belief that in order for a Night Lords army to be fluffy it not only has to have Raptors, but it has to have a lot of them. Ignoring the part in the Raptors fluff from the IA article that says the Cults are "rare" and "elitist", there is the above problem. Nothing says that Night Lords have to have Raptors or in high numbers, not even the existence of a sub-company filled with them.

I think you're making that up by yourself. If some people might very well think like that, it's not the case of the majority. It is true that the NL have an affinity to raptors and their cults. So the restriction of 0-1 made little to no sense, so the devteam of 3.5 chose to remove the limitation. In fact, what was a "fluffy NL army" was an army with in-build Night Vision, in-build Stealth Adept, that had the possibility to trade a HS slot for a FA one and was not fond of all the Chaos Gods thingy. NL never had that much love from GW.

No, it's not the case of the majority, it's just the case of a decent amount of the vocal majority. But the line of breadcrumbs that could lead some to "affinity" lead others to "mandatory inclusion."

 

So my grudge is not against Raptors or even Raptor heavy lists, it is against the belief that Night Lords armies can only be fluffy if they are Raptor heavy lists when there is no fluff supporting that specific belief, only that Night Lords and Raptors are of like minds and that it isn't uncommon to see cooperation between the two groups, although nothing says that it would be uncommon to see a Night Lords warband without Raptors either. And I am not going to force someone who wants to play Night Lords without Raptors to play Raptors either. Especially since Bikers have similar fluff to the Raptors as well but I don't see them being forced upon anyone even though we could take four Biker Squads in 3.5.

The possibility to have a fourth FA slot was explained by : "Night Lords are skilled raiders and make excellent use of both Chaos Space Marines Bikes and Raptors". And that feels pretty fluffy to me.

I haven't said the fourth slot was bad. Just that it's existence combined with a want of Raptor spam is what eventually led to the idea of Night Lords being a Raptor Legion. RapatoR said virtually the exact same thing in this regard.

 

Actually this part would go with the Raptors fluff of them possibly serving some unknown Chaos God or warp power that has caused them all to mutate in a rather uniform manner, which was why they all had a rather striking avian appearance in the older metal versions, which isn't portrayed in the newer versions. The mutations were never fully outlined and A D-B simply gave us an idea of what to or not to expect.

Yep. Yet, I still find avian features in the Warp Talons sculpts. I like the Raptor Cult thingy, would have liked to play such an army.

They are not as prominent as they once were. There are the feet claws, the claws and the helmets, but that's really about it. Most of the poses suggest launching off where some of the older ones could be used for landing to show the squad being in perpetual motion with them taking off as soon as everyone touched ground. The new simply shows them constantly going forward. Not necessarily a bad thing, just different.

 

EDIT: Spelling, grammar, and a wicked mess up with the quote tags.

[AekoldHelbrass]

As for as the Raptors being Troops, it's not necessarily something I would go for. Most of it because of the background. Ironically, there is very little mention of Raptors in the IA Night Lords background.

 

I had an impression after reading Horus Heresy books, that almost every second unit used jump packs, so I guessed that Night Lords would have the same quantities, only replacing those jet catapults of other legions with our patented Raptor Jump Packs.

[Kol Saresk]

Would this be Forgeworld's Hersy Book Betrayal? If it is, I can neither confirm nor deny it.

 

As far as I can recall, the only detailed mention of Marines and Jump Packs have been Horus Rising with the Catulan Reaver Squad which was an elite squad of assault Troops within the First Company led by Captain Kalus Ekaddon(although from what I understand Forgeworld has retconned this into a Company but I can neither confirm nor deny that), Skane and his Destroyer Squad from Betrayer and I want to say that there was another mention but I don't exactly recall them making them that big of an appearance as of yet. The two stories I can think of that involve the Night Lords(Savage Weapons and Prince of Crows don't even feature them that much. Of course, the Night Lords have only made a major appearance in only those two stories. But still, like I said at this point it is simply personal preference.

[Vesper]

The HH book "Betrayal" has given us many informations on four legions. And, in that regard, it can be viewed as Index Astartes 2.0, which is awesome.

I don't know at which point we'll get something on the Night Lords, but what I'm sure of is that they'll most likely get some nasty jump-pack stuff.

[Watch Commander Danek]

In fact, what was a "fluffy NL army" was an army with in-build Night Vision, in-build Stealth Adept, that had the possibility to trade a HS slot for a FA one and was not fond of all the Chaos Gods thingy. NL never had that much love from GW.

 

 

This. This a thousand times over.

 

The earliest fluff for Night Lords had nothing to do with blitz techniques. It had to do with creeping death. They were much more Michael Myers from 'Halloween' then the Infected from '28 Days Later'. It was a different psychology. For me as an old fuddy duddy Night Lord, i was very content with my Infiltrate guys and Stealth Adept across the board. The Fast Attack thing was fine, but didn't feel needed. When they linked the Raptors and Night Lords in fluff and removed the 0-1 limit on them, it felt (again, this is just my opinion as a NL from WAAAAAaaaAy back) like a poorly thought out and ham fisted attempt to just give the Night Lords something, anything. in doing so however it created this misconception that Night Lords = Raptors and ZOOM ZOOM SCREECH!

 

Night Lords became power armored Dark Eldar. THAT is my contention.

 

The HH book "Betrayal" has given us many informations on four legions. And, in that regard, it can be viewed as Index Astartes 2.0, which is awesome.

I don't know at which point we'll get something on the Night Lords, but what I'm sure of is that they'll most likely get some nasty jump-pack stuff.

 

Probably. Sadly. ironic because when I saw the Destroyer Squads my first thought was they are so Night lords it's not even funny.

[Vesper]

In fact, what was a "fluffy NL army" was an army with in-build Night Vision, in-build Stealth Adept, that had the possibility to trade a HS slot for a FA one and was not fond of all the Chaos Gods thingy. NL never had that much love from GW.

 

 

This. This a thousand times over.

 

The earliest fluff for Night Lords had nothing to do with blitz techniques. It had to do with creeping death. They were much more Michael Myers from 'Halloween' then the Infected from '28 Days Later'. It was a different psychology. For me as an old fuddy duddy Night Lord, i was very content with my Infiltrate guys and Stealth Adept across the board. The Fast Attack thing was fine, but didn't feel needed. When they linked the Raptors and Night Lords in fluff and removed the 0-1 limit on them, it felt (again, this is just my opinion as a NL from WAAAAAaaaAy back) like a poorly thought out and ham fisted attempt to just give the Night Lords something, anything. in doing so however it created this misconception that Night Lords = Raptors and ZOOM ZOOM SCREECH!

 

Night Lords became power armored Dark Eldar. THAT is my contention.

I can understand that, yet what I see in 3.5 is that they left the possibility to go all FA raptors and all that stuff. It wasn't mandatory, and that's precisely why I like it. In my eyes, it added another layer to the Night Lords. Everybody can see why the dev choose Raptors, they are likely to be used as terror troops. So it felt like an embodiment of the terror tactics favoured by the Night Lords on the tabletop.

In the end, it made perfect sense. And they had the intelligence to let that remain an option (you felt it wasn't really needed and I fully respect that, and it appears Haines and Chambers did too).

 

The HH book "Betrayal" has given us many informations on four legions. And, in that regard, it can be viewed as Index Astartes 2.0, which is awesome.

I don't know at which point we'll get something on the Night Lords, but what I'm sure of is that they'll most likely get some nasty jump-pack stuff.

 

Probably. Sadly. ironic because when I saw the Destroyer Squads my first thought was they are so Night lords it's not even funny.

I think you understood that I think GW sucks hard these days. But Forgeworld is another thing.

I believe we'll be pleased.

[Watch Commander Danek]

Right. To be honest i think I'm more miffed at not just Night Lords being rarely thought out and becoming power armored DE but the playerbase reading a small thing and painting in such large strokes. noone played Night lords when I started. I think here on the B&C it was Nihm and I representing first and showing terror markings instead of batheads and how cool they could be. In my stores i frequented people were floored to see them and didn't think twice about structure of my force. Now years later we have different interpretations and books galore and I mention Night Lords and I get 'how many Raptors?'

 

I mean if I wanted power armored DE I'd play them. If I wanted jump pack marines I'd play Raven Guard (and how much better do they fit this archtype btw?? it should be much more their forte)

 

i agree about FW btw. I just adore everything they do from sculpt to army lists to fluff. At times it is shocking they are actually a part of GW :D

Betrayal made me realize what i always strived for and fell short of the mark on is a Night Lord Legion army. Not a chaos warband. i'm already fiddling with things for my themed force. will be great fun to tackle Knightmare before he was Knightmare and other characters before they were his chosen.

[Iron Warrior w/ Servo Arm]

Actually back in 3.5 a "fluffy" NL list had tons of Daemonic Visage. Night Lords are know for their cruelty and terror. The 3.5 dex did a pretty good job of allowing a player to make a NL list. It's just a lot of people think "OMG no more limitation means we have to take tons of it!!!" I think that is the origin of the hate.

 

It's the same as IW. I never was a giant fan of Obliterators. I loved hammer dreads and tons of tanks. Even in 3.5 I only took 4 max in my 2k army. People wondered why I never added more. Then everyone began hating us IW players for Obliterator spam.

[Brother Nihm]

I had two lists back in 3.5 a Raptor Cult (40 Raptors hooo!) and a Night Lord one, taking Daemonic Visage on everything.

I've never subscribed to the NL = Raptor spam angle, though I can understand why it was birthed in the first place given that there was no clear alternative.

[AekoldHelbrass]

Would this be Forgeworld's Hersy Book Betrayal? If it is, I can neither confirm nor deny it.

 

No it's from Black Library Horus Heresy. More than one squad from Fulgrim were assault specialists, cant remember their names but one in the beginning and one slaughtered by Lucius when they guarded some entrance. In Horus Heresy itself they basically described only 3-4 squads. So yes, I really had impression that about 1/3 of all mentioned squads are on jump packs.

 

ForgeWorld Horus Heresy only mentions that Raven Guard and Night Lords had most of assault squads because of their doctrine, but any legion, including Death Guard and Iron Warriors, could field a force of them whenever needed.

 

PS: FW Horus Heresy is really awesome, try it!

[Sanctimonius]

I love the debate this has started. Night Lords ftw.

 

Anyways, I think a lot of the hate for the Raptor-spam comes from the nature of the Night Lords themselves. Ask a Night Lords player what their legion should be and you will get a different answer depending on when they started playing. The Night Lords have come a long way from an interesting colour scheme to a great little story about the Haunter to a fully fledged and evolving backstory being detailed in the novels. The raptor legion came from stories and fluff from a very specific time, and it's something that many now think represents the entire Night Lord legion. A lot of people resent that - why should the Night Lords have to take raptors simply to be considered fluffy? Problem is to properly represent Night Lords on the tabletop it's difficult to come up with rules to represent them. Maybe one day GW will get it, hopefully Forgeworld will get it sooner.

 

Course you don't have to take raptors to make them fluffy, but by no means should people feel bad for cramming as many into a list as possible. It's just the flavour of how you want to play.

[Iron Warrior w/ Servo Arm]

I always say, don't read the novels. Read the IA articles if you want to get to know your legion.

[Sanctimonius]

I would disagree with that. The novels have done a great job of fleshing out minor details and expanding on others, and tend not to limit things too much for the legions. The Night Lords in particular have a number of different sources they can call upon to help them craft a legion-fluffy list, which is one of the reasons why people tend not to like the most recent codex - as codices stand, it's a good one. It's just not very good for crafting legion lists, except maybe IW and Black Legion lists.

[Kol Saresk]

I always say, don't read the novels. Read the IA articles if you want to get to know your legion.

In the case of the Night Lords, that's a shoot and miss. It gives us a very good idea and for the longest time(Printing of IA article to Lord of the Night) it was really the only source of fluff for the current Night Lords. As it is, they don't have that much publication when compared to other Legions, although it is much more than what they used to have thanks to the contributions of A D-B. As it is, there's the IA article which built the foundation, the excerpt in 3.5 which regurgitated a rather brief and non-specific summary of the IA article, an appearance of some Night Lords in a Ragnar novel(don't recall which one but it could be seen as a rather controversial appearance as they had a brazier which breathed a rather Nurgle-esque fog and the attempted summoning of daemons), Lord of the Night, then the Night Lords series by A D-B, then an appearance in Savage Weapons, a cameo in The Lion and a finale in Prince of Crows. Most of the fluff, or rather most of the fleshing out on the myriad of personalities that exist within the Legion actually comes from the books. The IA can give you an idea an the basis of what it is to be a Night Lord. But to learn who they are, well the books aren't required but I wouldn't say that they are not suggested either.