Night Lords Fast Attack Choices

[SyNidus]

Just a random thought...What are your thoughts on fast attack choices oh Midnight Clad?

I know that there's a lot of emphasis in some fluff on the use of Raptors by the Night Lords, but I understand that they had entire armoured companies and definitely must have had bikers as well. 

Would someone be able to create a fluffy Night Lords army without Raptors? Would Bikers serve as a decent alternative?

What are your thoughts on this, both from a fluff-perspective and also from a gaming/competitive perspective?
 

[the jeske]

Well there are spawn and there are bikes. There are no NL rules saying they can't take them, so armies using those are fluffy. Considering how helldrakes changed and how FoC changed in 7th, there is enough slots to run both.

[Iron-Daemon Forge]

Just a random thought...What are your thoughts on fast attack choices oh Midnight Clad?

 

I know that there's a lot of emphasis in some fluff on the use of Raptors by the Night Lords, but I understand that they had entire armoured companies and definitely must have had bikers as well. 

 

Would someone be able to create a fluffy Night Lords army without Raptors? Would Bikers serve as a decent alternative?

 

What are your thoughts on this, both from a fluff-perspective and also from a gaming/competitive perspective?

 

 

Bike would be pretty cool, can get some nice conversion work - see Brother Heinrich Night Lord topic.  Also recent listen to Strike and Fade from the Heresy audio Echoes of Ruin which show a unit of Night Lords Biker & just the way the story describe the unit really cool.

 

I've just started useing Biker in my IW, not had to much experince & usely get a lot of focuse from my oppents as there the only unit not in a tank or have a Inv save like my Oblits that the start of the game, but I am adding more memeber to my current unit.

 

IP

[Kol Saresk]

Fluffwise, the Night Lords can easily exist without Raptors. Way back when in 3rd Edition, the original fluff was that the Raptors were mercenaries organized into cults an they drifted from warband to the next in search of prey. Because the Night Lords an Raptors were birds of a feather, they often flocked together.

 

Then came Lord of the Night and everything changed. Here we see Zso Sahaal introduced and in some of his internal monologue, he brags about how his command company was the named the Raptors and he personally was responsible for the implementation of the Jump Pack Troops throughout the Legions.

 

From there to today, you can't go far without seeing Night lords and Raptors paire together and some believe it should be so to the point that Night Lords should be able to take them as Troops.

 

But essentially, yes you can have Night Lords without Raptors. As you said, Forgeworld made a point of mentioning that they do have armoured companies and the Unit the VIII Legion unloks as Troops is not the Night Raptors, but the Terror Squads which are basically stealth/commando units, giving the Legion a focus on its more cunning nature rather than just its being swift to attack.

 

So go for it. Whatever you think you can pull off, the answer is yes. Just make some awesome background for it. ;)

[Sception]

Raptors and especially warp talons are the most fluffy for night lords (warp talons having essentially replaced raptors as the 'jump pack cult' - much old fluff of night lords raptors better fits with warp talons today), but neither should be considered obligatory.  Likewise, spawn are the least fluffy, but should not be considered barred (the way one might consider plague marines barred in a thousand sons army).  Basically, spawn are the least fluffy, but they aren't unfluffy.  The use of many spawn would simply indicate that your Night Lords warband/fleet/company/whatever is one of the more degenerate ones.  Which, in all honesty, seem to be in the majority from what fluff we've seen, even if that fluff is usually from the perspective of one of the minority warbands or individual warriors who still pretend to themselves that they resist total chaos corruption.

 

Basically, all of our fast attack options are pretty decent choices for night lords forces, thematically, so you should feel free to use what you want.  If I were playing a night lords theme force myself, I'd try to make room for maybe a single small warp talon cult for theme and aesthetics, but the rest of my fast would be whatever seemed most useful for my army.

[incinerator950]

It depends on where your drawing the fluff, ultimately Raptors have had a large amount of synergy with the NL. However, Night Lords very just like everyone else. There is no apocryphal stone for background.

 

That being said, Raptors and even moreso Warptalons struggle in competing against bikers and Spawn. I'd say find a medium between meta and fluff.

[Sception]

IMO, when making a theme force, one should go beyond asking only what is 'required' or what is 'absolutely disallowed'.  For night lords, nothing is required by the fluff (there is no unit that every night lords warband uses), and, apart from some of the special characters maybe (and even then not with counts as), nothing is disallowed by the fluff either (again, no unit which would never be seen fighting alongside a night lords force), so that gives you no boundaries and no structure at all.  A pure nurgle force - nurgle bike lord, plague marine troops, nurgle spawn & bikes, nurgle oblits - falls within those bounds, but were one to look at the list alone, one would call it death guard rather than night lords, even if a night lords modelling and painting scheme would still make it recognizable as such on the table.

 

If you want an army that is recognizable as your subfaction even from the list itself, then instead of asking 'what can I get away with and still call say my army is Night Lords with a straight face', you need to go the extra mile and ask 'what can I take that will lead other players to recognize my army as a night lords force without having to look at the models', even if that means sacrificing some power on the table top.  Which I understand is a tall order for chaos marines, because we don't have much tabletop power to spare.

 

So if you're going the extra mile, then you make room for some raptors and/or warp talons.  Not because you have to, but because that's what will help other players to recognize your army as night lords without additional prompting.  Likewise, you take veterans of the long war on all or at least most of your stuff - certainly on your commanders and elite units at least - basically anything that isn't a raw recruit (which Night Lords do have, but in limited supply, and such raw recruits certainly would not be in command or issued limited stocks of valuable wargear like terminator armor, bikes, or jump packs).  You also shy away from cult troops, and use marks sparingly (not eschew them completely, maybe a few marks here and there, but not on the bulk of your force, and especially not all the same mark, or you start looking like a cult legion list).

 

If we're looking to emulate ADB's night lords books, then by about mid way through the second book (which is as far as I am at the moment), we're looking at a warband led by a tzeentch daemon prince (who usually stays on the ship), one unit of terminators who also generally stay on the ship and serve as the prince's bodyguard (but who seem to consist of exactly two dudes?), a couple currently inactive helbrute sarcophagi, one raptor cult (though these books were written back when raptors were more of a cult unto themselves, so they might be better represented by warp talons today), and a handful of marine units or 'claws' at partial strength, some (like first claw) are best represented by chosen, others by basic chaos marines, and maybe one or two havoc squads.  These claws sometimes are issued jump packs (first claw uses them in a short story between the first and second books when hunting an imperial assassin, for instance), so a unit or two of raptors also makes sense (and would further encourage treating the book's "raptor cult" as warp talons to distinguish them).  in addition to astartes, they also have some cultists (though these tend to be pilots and specialits rather than combat troops in the books, a couple cultist units on the table might be the best way to reflect them), and a tech priest (who remains on ship).  In terms of vehicles, they've got rhinos, a land raider, dreadclaws, maybe some predators.  For lords of war, they have thunderhawks and a thunderhawk tank transport.  Talos himself might just be called the unit champ of first claw, but since he's often the field leader you might instead call him a chaos lord, with first claw as his retinue and Xarl as their unit champ.  All are vets of the long war - though at the point I'm at in the book they're trying to arrange some recruitment, and if that effort is successful then those new marines would not be vets.  In terms of marks, several individuals throughout the warband have scattered marks, but they aren't generally organized into coherent units of such.  So you might represent that by eschewing marks altogether (apart from individual character models with canonical alignments, like the exalted who is tzeentch aligned), or you might have one or two differently marked units.

 

In the previous book, they would have been about the same, but with fewer units and no raptor/warp talon cult.  In the next book, well, I'm not that far, yet.

 

Such a list might not be the winningest on the field, but then again the Exalted's warband isn't exactly the winningest in the fiction, either.  IMO theme lists are as much about role play as game play, so fighting uphill battles isn't necessarily as frustrating in that regard as it would be for just a generic army list.

[Forté]

Generally it's agreed that Night Lords vary from warband to warband.

 

Originally they were another Khorne army in Slaves to Darkness. Then in White Dwarf it was more about infiltration, disruption of communication, and terror. This was my favourite style (which mean I can't really do NL in 40k the way I like them).

[SyNidus]

Excellent replies gentlemen! Thank you very much, especially malisteen for that in-depth write up.

 

Definitely given me a lot to consider

[Phantomzero17]

one unit of terminators who also generally stay on the ship and serve as the prince's bodyguard (but who seem to consist of exactly two dudes?)

 

In the book Soul Hunter Talos states that the Atramentar number 8 warriors.  It becomes 7 after Vraal dies.  Although, besides Vraal, only Malek and Garadon are ever named.

[Kilofix]

Generally it's agreed that Night Lords vary from warband to warband.

 

Originally they were another Khorne army in Slaves to Darkness. Then in White Dwarf it was more about infiltration, disruption of communication, and terror. This was my favourite style (which mean I can't really do NL in 40k the way I like them).

 

Proxy Cypher Dataslate as Nightlords?

 

Can't take Marks but can Infiltrate 3 Chosen squads plus 1 more that Cypher joins and has ATSKNF.

[Kol Saresk]

ATSKNF would be rather not thematic for the Night Lords since even in 3rd Edition they weren't exactly the most stalwart lot.

[SyNidus]

Well, i've got an ancillary question arising from all of this:

If we don't need Raptors to make a Night Lords army, what are key features that can be added to give a Night Lords flavour (other than the colour scheme)?



Also, as a side note, i've started working on a Night Lords force, oddly enough because there was a bunch of loyalist vehicles and bikes which i got for a bargain. Keeping with the theme of not very spiky Night Lords, what infantry models should i get to go along with the loyalist vehicles? Would the CSM box set be too different from the loyalist vehicles such that it would make the army feel disjointed?

I really do like the idea of puritan NLs and i'd like to keep the terror markings and all to a mostly paint job thing.

[Kol Saresk]

Therein lies the problem. GW tried shoehorning the Night Lords into Fast Attack with no Marks/Icons, no Daemons, army wide fear and optional stealth.

 

With CS Supplement, you can get Army wide fear, but no VotLW.

 

So in reality, all you can do to keep with the thematic tabletop image as GW has presented it is to have a focus on Fast attack, in this case bikes since we're not looking at Raptors.

 

Maybe Rhinos for your Infantry to help keep pace.

 

The good news is that the CSM boxed set has enough not spiky bits that they shouldn't clash with the vehicles too much.

[incinerator950]

Unfortunately, Night Lords were subsequently the least looked for third edition Legion. Yes, everyone turned out to be exceptional killers, but Night Lords got roped as the fast hitting pirates/terrorists who never fought anyone unless they were weaker. The downside not having favor is no special units, even less of an identifying trait to everyone to fancy toys, cultists, Cult Troops and all round demons.

 

Now it's just paint jobs, but if we had fast dedicated transports (BA), drop pods, or spammable air cav, I'd wager that would fit Night Lords better.

[Sception]

Well, i've got an ancillary question arising from all of this:

 

If we don't need Raptors to make a Night Lords army, what are key features that can be added to give a Night Lords flavour (other than the colour scheme)?

You don't need raptors/talons, but if you want to add Night Lords flavor, that's what you add.  Yes, talons are bad, and raptors are just worse bikes, but that's part of why they help indicate a 'night lords' theme to your opponent - there's very little reason apart from that to be fielding them.

 

Again, Night Lords doesn't equal raptors/talons, and vice versa.  Just like Alpha Legion doesn't equal cultists, and Iron Warriors doesn't equal oblits and vindicators, and so on.  The only Legions/units with that kind of equivalence are the cult legions and cult troops - you can field a Night Lords army without raptors or talons and be fine, but you can't field a death guard army without plague marines.

 

But that said, if you want your opponent to recognize your army as night lords by the units you select, and not just the models themselves, then you take raptors & warp talons.  Our current book is just too inflexible, it doesn't really offer other ways to show a night lords leaning.

 

 

And let's be honest here - judging from the Black Legion and Crimson Slaughter book, if we ever get a night lords supplement we all know what it will be.  A couple unique artifacts, the same vet tax as the black legion, and troop raptors.  Maybe if the designers go all out you'll get stealth & night vision instead of the usual vet skill benefits, but I wouldn't even count on that much.  So even if they get their own supplement, "more raptors" is still likely to be the best the current rules have to offer for trying to convey a night lords theme.

[derpasaurus]

My NL list is a big wad of raptors screening for an elite core of bikes with a lord on a bike, backed up by 3x las pred, forge fiend, las/fist dred and double plas troops in rhinos. Sprinkle marks to taste and add VotLW for some extra zest.

Anything hard hitting and mobile is ideal for my idea of NL. Overwhelming firepower from range while your elites close and wreck face is what I like.