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hello every dakka member.
i Zinogre have chosen a theme but as of yet there is no sure codex for my army
.
the army being NIGHT LORDS . i love the night lords they are rich in history andfull of fluffyness
i was thinking what sm army would be the closest to the fluffy night lords.
i think either blood angels because of the jump packs but then there is the new sm codex. with the raven gaurd doctrine thingy that makes them a very aggressive "true" night lords terror force . please show your opinions
thanks in advance Zinogre

The shift key's your friend buddy. Also, your post formatting is really, really odd. Please make it a little more legible for the rest of us!

What's wrong with the Chaos Space Marine codex for Night Lords? You can get Veterans of the Long War, Raptors, and all the things you'd expect to find in a Night Lords army. They don't even need to be worshipping any Chaos gods if you stick to the fluff. A counts-as Huron Blackheart could even be good to give a significant portion of the army infiltrate. While they field lots of Raptors in the fluff, they don't necessarily use armies exclusively of them.

chaos just arent competitive enough and well hurons a red corsair and night lords technically arent chaotic

Night Lords are definitely Chaotic. They simply don't worship one of the Ruinous Powers, but they do venerate Chaos Undivided. They also supported Horus during the 13th Black Crusade.

If you are going to do a fluffy NL army, with lots of jump packs and such, you aren't going to be very competitive anyway regardless of which codex you use.

The Counts-as Huron Blackheart idea is a pretty good one. You can infiltrate dudes, lots of dudes if you pick the right unit. I've been on the receiving end of 20 infiltrating Chaos marines before. Its not meta shatteringly good, but its not horribly bad either.

Just please don't make them all Raptors. If one more newb player tells me about how all the night lords used jump packs I'm gonna scream.

I personally think that a bunch of Slaanesh CSM would work really well. The +1 init and FNP works well. Then you can run a Talos "counts as" Huron. That would be pretty cool.

Please read the ADB novels before making your force. I can't stand fluffy armies when the player doesn't even know the fluff.

If you don't do CSM, if your mates allow it; HH night lords would be just a blast to run. Go that route.

BA don't fit at all (no clue where you're getting that from). Raven guard would be a distant third choice.

i am currently reading void stalker and loving it i am about half way through chapter 5

Well it depends what you mean by a 'fluffy' NL army, if only because 10,000 years means that you will get entirely different answers between a fresh Legionary and those corrupted by the Long War.
If you want a 'present day' army you can pretty much do anything. All the long years of routing and falling back, inter-Legion warfare, conquering other splinters or being assimilated into bigger ones etc. It is unlikely that many Warbands have remained 'pure' and will likely include small splinters of other Legions, while some members may hear the call of Chaos and become tainted.

If you want to focus more on the historic side, there are lots of angles you could look into:
Terror. The obvious thing here is to spam out the USR 'Fear' but you can also get away with a generally aggressive, rapid-assault force. Also look into Telepathy Psykers, weaponry that inflicts Pinning and anything with the capacity for Deep Striking.
Overwhelming assault. Kinda linked to the first point, Night Lords were infamous for deploying *everything* in the important fights and just going for maximum overkill. Look into maxing out your Fast Attack slots if possible, plus massed Deep Strikes and generally playing a shock-and-awe style.
Raptors. This point is controversial because it is seemingly invented for the 3.5 Codex and then made up later fluff to justify it. Even if it started out from nothing, it has become an iconic style now and a selection of Jump-Pack units will always be a nice sight.
Precognition. More of a small-scale thing here, Night Haunter was famous for seeing glimpses of the future. This has apparently been inherited by Talos, Decimus and Ruven, so any psyker that has access to Divination is not only fluffy, but also extremely effective.
Renegades, not Chaos. In the early days of the Heresy, Chaos was a tool to be used rather than anything worthy of worship. While opinions on this have no doubt changed during the Long War, there is still some prejudice against warriors that rely on the Powers instead of their own abilities.
Stealth. The Night Lords are famous for attacking under cover of darkness, infiltration and shutting down communications networks. Consider anything that uses the USRs Stealth, Infiltrate, Scout and/or Outflank in any capacity, along with any options that might be available to encourage Night Fighting.

As always, my advice is to envision the army you want, and then find the Codex variant that pulls off your vision as closely as possible with as much power as you can get from it. If your vision includes Heldrakes and Daemon Princes, you'd obviously struggle to recreate that with anything other than the CSM book. However if you fancy the more traditional Legionary route, with Drop Pods, Bikes, Jump Packs and vehicles, odds are good that one of the Loyalist books will recreate an identical army that just happens to be better.

 zinogre wrote:
chaos just arent competitive enough and well hurons a red corsair and night lords technically arent chaotic

Yes, because using a non-Night Lords character is so much more of a stretch than using the loyalist Space Marine codex. And Chaos are fine as far as competitive goes. They're just not the new hotness so people aren't fawning over them. And as has been said, Night Lords are Chaotic, but they don't worship the Chaos gods. There's still mutation and weirdness going on. Come on, you're reading the third of the Night Lords books and you haven't noticed that one of the major characters is halfway to being a daemon prince, another is a frothing Khorne devotee, and the Raptors are insanely mutated? You've got some very, very selective reading skills if that's what you're seeing.

Also, please use better grammar and punctuation. The shift, apostrophe, and period keys are your friends.

First of all:


Secondly, Night Lords are super-Chaotic. What do you mean they're not? Like, by what stretch of cognitive dissonance can you arrive at, "The Night Lords, the ones specifically mentioned in Codex: Chaos Space Marines, not Codex: Space Marines or Codex: Blood Angels, aren't Chaotic." All you need from the Chaos Marines 'dex is: a squad of Raptors (MAYBE EVEN 2!), a squad of bikes, Chaos Marines in Rhinos and probably a Chaos Lord or Sorcerer (with telepathy powers) to roll with either the Raptors or the bikers. Bam, fluffy Night Lords using the codex they were meant to be played with.

That wasn't terribly hard to figure out, now was it?

 Extreaminatus wrote:
First of all:

Spoiler:

Secondly, Night Lords are super-Chaotic. What do you mean they're not? Like, by what stretch of cognitive dissonance can you arrive at, "The Night Lords, the ones specifically mentioned in Codex: Chaos Space Marines, not Codex: Space Marines or Codex: Blood Angels, aren't Chaotic." All you need from the Chaos Marines 'dex is: a squad of Raptors (MAYBE EVEN 2!), a squad of bikes, Chaos Marines in Rhinos and probably a Chaos Lord or Sorcerer (with telepathy powers) to roll with either the Raptors or the bikers. Bam, fluffy Night Lords using the codex they were meant to be played with.

That wasn't terribly hard to figure out, now was it?

It's a nice gesture, but compare that exact same list with one created by C:SM and see just how 'chaotic' it actually is.
If you were set on creating that list as your 'fluffy', 'Chaotic' or 'proper' Night Lords army, your decision has basically amounted to Champion of Chaos and the 'Fear' USR being important enough to forsake all other options. You might also notice that this is *a really really bad deal*. By rolling with this army, you have made a concious decision that the picture of a Night Lord and a single paragraph of text being in the wrong book, has commanded your £300+ investment to be played with an inferior ruleset. It sounds gamey, and to be honest it is. But at the same time it is a very significant upgrade in terms of power for the absolutely massive investment already required of you, whereas sticking to your guns is noble in some eyes but at the same time, completely unrewarded.

ATSKNF is not fluffy for such craven cowards, well neither is Champion of Chaos. 'Fear' on a limited palette of models is certainly fluffy, but is it any *more* fluffy than those Raptors gaining hunting-speed on their Jump Packs while your ground troops get Stealth on turn 1? Is anyone going to argue that a Drop Pod army is not a better representation of the sudden, devastating strike than having your dudes drive up to the target in Rhinos?

Basically, you have 5 codices to represent Space Marines in Power Armour with Bolters. One of those has your name on it, but your vision of the army might not actually include anything special about the book and stick to the basics. In this case, your loyalty to the book translates into a very real loss of function on the tabletop without seizing any of the perks to replace them.

I agree with mozzamanx. thank you. the night lords favor terror and stealth tactics. utilizing the usr stealth and fear would be ideal. That is why i suggested raven guard. They all get stealth for a turn and everything in the army gains the scout special rule.
And as for fear, shrike fills the role there. Also he and his squad can infiltrate. even scarier
And correct me if i am wrong but if you can scout you can outflank? correct?
thanks Zinogre

Correct, Scout provides the ability to Outflank.

I just want to make myself absolutely clear here, I am not saying that C:SM is a perfect fit. My point is that *neither* is a perfect fit, and so you may as well take the lesser of two evils and go with the army that offers more options*, more viable units and just generally a more enjoyable gaming experience.
Night Lords are no more 'required' to use C:CSM than the Dark Angels book is strictly 100% for the Unforgiven, and yet things like a 1st Company army are completely acceptable. Ultimately it is a book based on Power Armour and your models will reflect that. It is no different in my mind to using Green models but Ultramarine characters/Tactics. It is simply Raven Guard with a different paint scheme.

Finally, it's Raven Guard. Generally considered to be the bottom rung of Chapter Tactics. Do not tar players with the powergamer brush, because if that were true you would be seeing justification for White Scar tactics or trying to shoehorn Plague Marines and Heldrakes into your Night Lords. If a player wants to play as a high-speed, high-aggression Power Armour force, what does it matter if he uses the 'wrong' book when it provides a better experience for him? Is your experience really ruined because those Raven Guard are painted blue and have some spikes?


* Meaning options that you actually want to take. Yes I know Chaos Space Marines can take Marks, Heldrakes, Mutations etc but the point is that not only are many of questionable value, the ones that remain are often just as unfluffy as anything from C:SM.

See this is where i am struggling to think. how could they be fluffy. which army best represents their ways of fighting . This is what am struggling to understand. i thought maybe raven guard but i have no real ideas on how to create them. i love trying to create fluffy armies but this one is the hardest i have ever attempted.

I agree that Raven Guard is the best, it upgrades any Jump Packs to super speed and thus represents the hunter-preference of Raptors. In addition the army-wide Stealth goes a long way towards the Night Fighting style. Finally, nobody can accuse you of powergaming or being unfluffy.

Actual playstyle, take what works for you. Just try and make it aggressive or using tools to catch people off guard.
Tacticals will probably be your mainline, and either Scout, Rhino/Razorback or use Drop Pods to get the first hits in. Assault Marines make good use of your Chapter Tactics as well as being a very iconic unit so look into those.
Bikes are always relevant, either as Fast or as Troops. However if you are playing really fluffy you probably want to avoid Grav weaponry and so Bikes may be weaker than usual. Perhaps some Fliers might be a neat idea, or a pair of Dreadnoughts. In fact just taking lots of Drop Pods combined with heavy use of ground transports might be a good plan.

Ultimately just take the units you think look cool.

i really appreciate your help . thank you. Now i need to think of how to create the army itself. like you said tactical squads should be my main unit, then i was thinking for elites if i take a Land raider with 5 lightening claw termies, outflank them or scout them, depending on the situation.
A sqaud of vangaurd vets. for shrike ( who i may play as talos)
any thought and advice are very much appreciated

Just so you guys know, the preference for raptors was brought in for 3.5 as they had a rule that -1 to your ld for break tests, -2 if only fighting them, deamonic visage it was called, so it gave a good indication of how terrifying fighting night lords was.

thanks for pointig that out. i wasnt going to include alot of jet packs anyway