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Seriously.

I'm not asking for the sake of winning GTs here. Just looking for a decently competitive list. I would guess it would involve vanilla CSM and termies.

Personally, I'm not sold on the idea of huge units of Raptors, either.

Chaos Lord. Chosen (<-!!!). Raptors. Mechanized CSM Squads. Mechanized Havoc Squads. Terminators. Bikes.
Pretty much anything that is mobile or ambushing, and unmarked or non-daemonic.
Remember 5 Plasma guns, while expensive, is rather nice in a squad.

It would probably be a better match for them to use Codex (Shrike), Space Wolves (for the heroic ancient feel) or Blood Angels (Jump Troops).

With Codex SM for bikes, or Codex BA for jump troops.

I wish there were better options for a fast attack oriented force. CSM fast attacks are notoriously mediocre.

That said, a fully mechanized force with tons of 10 man squads with icons of Chaos glory isn't awful, it's just vanilla.

Manchu wrote:Seriously.

I'm not asking for the sake of winning GTs here. Just looking for a decently competitive list. I would guess it would involve vanilla CSM and termies.

Personally, I'm not sold on the idea of huge units of Raptors, either.

Codex ba use raptors as assault marines

Since reading Soul Hunter, the idea of using a loyalist codex has not escaped me. Furthermore, that book makes the idea of using loyalist models seem just as viable. Then again, I think Aaron Dembski-Bowden sanitized the Night Lords quite a bit so as to generate sympathetic protagonists. The idea of worshiping Chaos gods may be anathema to these guys but Index Astartes says they love the spikey armor as much as any traitor--and they seem to like skull trophies even more. That's just a modelling rather than army-building perspective, of course. But the two do overlap. I have no intention of buying 5-for-$45 pakc sof metal Raptors at this point. When we have plastic Raptor someday, I'll throw down.

Model wise, Berzerkers + Jump packs + Vampire Counts would give you lightweight conversions.
One of the nice things about the Berzerker models is the running (landing) legs.
I saw some third party pre-heresy style jump packs that looked pretty good, but I can't remember the manufacturer.

I have to say yes use BA rules. Jump pack troops is rare. vanilla marines only get them via IA

I use kharn , berzerkers and noise marines, all modelled as night lords.

I believe those represent them well enough

If you're going to stick with the Chaos Codex, 5 man units of deepstriking raptors with 2x meltas are good, as well as bike squads led by bike mounted characters.

Just don't forget the obligatory marines in Rhinos, which are ubiquitous and bring 2x meltas.

Based on my reading of the Night Lords, I would sum them up as nihlistic, sado-moschistic cowards.

Their nihilism and sado-masichism are the deeply interrelated legacies of Konrad Curze. Thanks to his visions, Curze never bought into the Emperor's goals much less worshiped him in the sense of Lorgar's religion, Dorn's obedience, Sanguinius's affection, etc. Curze's visions instead convinced him of the self-reductive nature of truth. He was a Primarch of the greatest conviction, determined to expose the final meaninglessness of the Emperor at any cost. He was willing to torment and massacre billions in the pursuit of this goal and even considered his own (self-) destruction the crowning vindication of his obsessive efforts.

For Curze and his Night Lords, there are no gods at all. The Chaos powers are no more gods than the Emperor. The only truth is power and power is ultimately rooted in the ability to destroy. Power over oneself is therefore the ability to destroy oneself. Violence destroys the body and fear destroys the mind and spirit. This need to utterly detroy prompted Curze to attack the weak rather than seeking out the strongest and in time the Night Lords as a whole developed a preference for vulnerable prey. For a Night Lord, slaughtering unarmed civillians is in many ways more fulfilling than taking on another Astartes. As the centuries wore on and the Night Lords dwindled, this preference was bound to become reinforced by necessity. The devious scheming formerly used to cultivate fear as a favored delicacy became extremely practical.

From this profile, I deduce three tactical principles for a Night Lords army:

(1) Fear is a weapon: This is the most well-known aspect of the Night Lords but unfortunately there does not seem to be a mechanic to express it. I think the best one can do is learn to play the army well and develop a reputation as a formidable opponent. But I'm open to suggestions regarding crunch. (In this regard, I kind of like the idea of using counts-as Noise Marines and dreadnoughts.)

(2) Detailed plans produce decisive results: The Night Lords love to be one step ahead of the enemy. That's a generally sound tactical principle but Night Lords take it to the nth degree with their complicated plots. Your opponents in the game, however, aren't generally keen to do exactly what you expect and/or want them to do. I think this means that the Night Lords should use reliable units in creative ways.

(3) Engage the vulnerable with overwhelming power: To me, this is just as much a touchstone for the Night Lords as their pyschological warfare (and is in fact part of it). Isolating an enemy unit before decimating it is the ideal tactic to play these guys true to their background. This means doing things like catching Guard vets between Raptors and Termies. The trouble, of course, is that you need some way to get the rest of the Guard army thoroughly distracted. That's a tall order if you've committed a third of your points to taking out a sixth of your enemy's.

So this is a more detailed background for my original question. I'm trying to figure out ways to put these kinds of principles into effect.

Night Lords aren't Chaos Raven Guard or Chaos Blood Angels. Their use of stealth is only as a means to an end regarding their detailed plans. And they certainly won't batter themselves against the enemy like the Blood Angels love to do. I think they are better suited to Codex: CSM than the loyalists books. I just want to work out how it can be achieved.

If you want Night Lord from the 3.5 ed codex, then play them without marks.
This is what addicted NL players at that time did.
Raptors with meltas all the way.

Is the raptor model even carrying a melta gun? Looks like a flamer to me.

The box set contained one flamer and one melta.
There were blisters with meltas.

Those blisters don't appear on the American GW site as far as I can see. But who am I to complain, given my interests: Night Lord Noise Marines cost nearly $11 each before painting!

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440211a&prodId=prod1130406

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/armySubUnitCats.jsp?catId=cat440211a&rootCatGameStyle=

Are you implying with those links that the pictured "assault weapon" is a melta gun? It doesn't seem to have a promethuem bottle (visible in pic) so I guess it could be.

Just because you have the C:BA rules doesn't mean you have to batter yourself against the enemy. That codex is powerful enough that it can play decently standing back as well as in-your-face. And you're really not going to do any better for assault troops.

Anyone stuck using C:CSM is excused for any sort of counts-as thing they want to try. The rest of the 40K playership feels your pain (well, excpet DE and 'Crons, who will usually respond with "You think YOU got problems? _I_ got problems! Lemme tell you...").

I play SoB.

Manchu wrote:Are you implying with those links that the pictured "assault weapon" is a melta gun? It doesn't seem to have a promethuem bottle (visible in pic) so I guess it could be.

Are you kidding me? It is most definetely a melta gun and looks just like any other meltagun in the entire 40k range. I tried to help you out because you said you couldn't find a miniature, and you cop me some attitude? Get real.

@whitedragon: You're reading into my post. I'm seriously not trying to be glib and apolgize for coming off that way.

@Savnock: I don't think C:CSM is that bad of a bad book. The meta has made many of its choices redunant. Of course, others are just poor.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Should it be in a NL army? My thoughts but I would like input. (And I haven't finished listening to Throne of Lies.)

Scale: <----Absolutely Not----Very Unlikely----Unlikely----As Likely As Not----Likely----Very Likely----Absolutely---->

Chaos Lord: Extremely Likely. Zso Sahaal, for example.

Chaos Sorcerer: Very Unlikely. The only NL Sorcerer I know of is a defector to Abaddon despised by other NL.

Daemon Prince: Prior to Lord of Night, I would have said Highly Unlikely. Konrad Curze never was, after all. But Acerbus was a Daemon Prince. Vandred the Exalted seems to be one, as well. So at least Likely.

Chosen CSM: Very Likely, although I can't think of a good example from the fluff. (Can't think of any BL book that mentions Chosen explicitly off the top of my head.)

Terminators: Extremely Likely. The Atramentar, for example.

Possessed CSM: Unlikely. I guess it can happen but it seems to be the sort of thing NL would not desire/look down on.

Dreadnought: Extremely Likely, as in Soul Hunter.

Plague Marines: Highly unlikely.

Noise Marines: Likely. Although I can't think of any examples of NL using sonic blasters, they do sounds to terrify and demoralize enemies.

Khorne Bezerkers: Likely. Uzas was one but the rest of First Claw seemed to look down on him because of it.

Thousand Sons: Extremely Unlikely. Well, they could fight as allies. But unlike the other cult troops, Thousand Sons are explicitly from the XV Legion rather than a kind of unit. Otherwise they'd be called "Rubric Marines."

Bikers: As Likely As Not. (Were they in Lord of Night or something? Why do people think they're fluffy for NL?)

Raptors: Extremely Likely. NL invented them.

Havocs: Very Likely. (See Chosen.)

Obliterators: Extremely unlikely, except as allies (i.e., just as likely to have Thousand Sons or Abaddon in the army). These guys are a total mystery. It's worth noting that NL do work with Adepts of the Dark Mechanicum, however.

Predators: Very Likely.

Vindicators: Very Likely.

Defiler: Extremely Unlikely. (See Obliterators.)

Land Raiders: Likely.

Lesser Summoned Daemons: Extremely Unlikely.

Greater Summoned Daemons: Extremely Unlikely.

Manchu wrote:@whitedragon: You're reading into my post. I'm seriously not trying to be glib and apolgize for coming off that way.

Simple misunderstanding then. No worries.

As an aside, whitedragon, will they ever let you change your avatar from those DE greens?

Manchu wrote:As an aside, whitedragon, will they ever let you change your avatar from those DE greens?

Honestly, I can change it any time I want, I just choose not to. Partly because I'm lazy, and partly because it's still funny. Seriously, people were asking daily about Dark Eldar after it had been said repeatedly that there was no news. Reposting the same greens was partly making fun of those that kept asking, and partly just to keep the good times rolling.

I'm glad to hear it. I was in that thread and laugh every time I see your avatar. The joke won't even reach its punchline until they actually are released.

if the wings on the night lords models heads were a wee bit smaller they would be so much cooler

It's true that when you imagine them in true scale they are ridiculous. But the same could be said for most Chaos headgear (looking at you 1kSons). You just have to accept that they look cool in the disproportionate world of Citadel miniatures scale.

Manchu wrote:

Chaos Lord: NL seem to like their old ranking system.

Chaos Sorcerer: a few maybe, but those suffer from their genefathers visions.

Daemon Prince: The defectors of the true way of the NL. Maybe a choice of 'competitive' origin, unneccessary IMo.

Chosen CSM: yes.

Standard CSM: something need to care for objectives...

Terminators: at least a bodyguard of the lord should be there.

Possessed CSM: rather not.

Dreadnought: Bats&coffins? Fits the undead theme....

Plague Marines: No.

Noise Marines: Not impossible but NL seem to prefer to focus at fear and like to control their actions. Excess isn't getting you a hold on your targets morale, rather makes it a blunt weapon of another megasuperoverkill that grants more attention than NL may want with
their depleted ranks.

Khorne Bezerkers: Possible, in a 'corrupted' force of chaos undivided servants ( using DP ). Unlikely in numbers as terror and hunting
demands focus and the ability to wait.

Thousand Sons: Sons aren't NL. Maybe the other way around, NL as mercenaries supporting T'sons.

Bikers: Dark blue bikes and a bit of Batman style should do fine.....

Raptors: Obviously. Would like to see the Index Astartes II pic used, as this gargoyle design is superior to the awful raptor models.

Havocs: Agreed. Controlled destruction.

Obliterators: No.

Predators: Yes.

Vindicators: Rare. Lack of ressources could hinder them.

Defiler: No.

Rhino: yes.

Land Raiders: Yes.

Lesser Summoned Daemons: Gargoyles or giant bats?

Greater Summoned Daemons: No.

Its a nice theme.
Maybe a 'pure' NL force and a cult based 'employer' and his minions as competitive part?
NL tend to value the material gains and could join for a price....

Manchu wrote:
Khorne Bezerkers: Possible, in a 'corrupted' force of chaos undivided servants ( using DP ). Unlikely in numbers as terror and hunting
demands focus and the ability to wait.

Strange that rulewise zerekers dont have rage

Manchu wrote:It's true that when you imagine them in true scale they are ridiculous. But the same could be said for most Chaos headgear (looking at you 1kSons). You just have to accept that they look cool in the disproportionate world of Citadel miniatures scale.

very well said

Landraiders, Vindicators, and Predators all mentioned in the temple siege described in Throne of Lies.