Well, just like the books before and a certain Kardashian video, the new Nighthaunt book has been leaked all over the internet and nerds have gone wild over this one.

This book has caused quite a change up in the Nighthaunt playstyle and a lot of Nighthaunt players have grabbed their pitchforks and taken to the streets in protest.

Now, is this book bad?

No.

Is it insanely broken?¹

No.

But I would say that it’s somewhere in the middle.

There are definitely some really strong warscrolls in this book, but it’s far from perfect. I play Nighthaunt competitively myself, with some success, so let’s see what we can get out of this book.

Army Rules

Nighthaunt’s Battle Traits got a bit of a change up.
They kept their Ethereal *duh* but they have downgraded the army’s saves to 5+ on Heroes and the Black Coach, and 6+ on the rest. On the plus side it now only prevents negative modifiers, so NH units can still ignore all rend but now they can benefit from All Out Defence to add back that +1 to save. To compensate for this change Gee Dubs have added additional Health to the majority of infantry blobs and given them all a native 5+ ward.²

The old formation Vanishing Phantasms has been renamed to Ethereal Translocation and is now part of the Battle Traits, and it gives the army some decent maneuverability. Nabbing objectives and not having it tied to any hero, spell or rule can make for some clutch late-game scoring and tactics. Since most of Nighthaunt are scouting units, it makes the Scouting Force tactics card trivially easy. It’s really strong to have a teleport on tap that requires no dice rolls, all you have to do is save a CP.

With the new ability Mounting Dread, NH also reduce control scores of enemies by the current battle round which can be a bit fuckey with people’s maths and result in denying control of objectives. Just putting that mental load on people to do some arithmetic during the game has value.

The Battle Formations also got a switch up, some with some really unique abilities. Quicksilver Ghiests or Boo-Lust lets a unit in combat add D6 to their move characteristic and move wherever they want (in combat) with another unit. This can help you block a Redeploy, stop a Covering Fire or get some good repositioning when tied up with one unit. While this is really strong, it also will cost the average Boo-Lust enjoyer 40 Points, which seems very high for a subfaction and it’s a bit out of step with the cost of other tech you can add to an army. It’s good though.

Death Stalkers remains essentially the same except letting you now retreat and shoot. Shreiker Host remains really interesting, now preventing an enemy from retreating from a Nighthaunt Hero. Combining that with the new Lady Olynder Ability (which we’ll be coming to), this unit could be incredibly annoying and potentially pin down an entire army. I really like this one; I can imagine it being extremely annoying for a couple of turns. Pair it with a Kruleghast and the healing from the faction terrain or a Place of Power and your opponent might not be able to do anything for a few rounds, or even the whole game³.

Lastly the Royal Procession gives some units Anti-charge which is kinda okay? But a very different kind of game since Nighthaunt has traditionally been an ABC⁴ army. Quicksilver Ghiests or Shreiker Host will be my shortlist.

As for the Heroic Traits, Ruler of the Spectral Hosts has often been an auto include, and it’s still really strong with that passive recursion to units. Paired with the terrain you have 3 attempts over a battle round to bring a guy back to 3 different units on a 3+. This is probably the one you will see most often, and also be the biggest pain in an opponent’s arse.

Deathly Possessor sounds really fun: on a 3+ you can get an opponent’s Hero to swing at a neighbouring unit with one of their weapons. So having Nagash, Ushoran, Archaon or any other big monstrous hero bonk an adjacent unit can be really strong. Shadowy Aura does let you make the holder -1 to hit when a unit redeploys them nearby. It feels a lot less impactful than the other two but could be alright if you want an extra-tanky Lord Executioner.

The Artefacts are pretty stock standard so let’s move on.

The new Spells are pretty exciting. Wrench Souls can make an infantry unit move or retreat in the hero phase, and with movement 8 across the board this can make your army really fast. If this spell is used for the retreat you can do some neat things (such as Rally) but unless you are running the Death Stalkers formation you won’t be able to charge. That and the frequent Command Point teleports gives you a really strong board presence and can make objectives and tactics a lot easier to score.

Fell Blades is a replacement for their old Wave of Terror debuff to inflict -1 to save on an enemy unit. Also as it’s unlimited you can spread the save reduction around and have better access in both player’s turns. Finally the Chains of Death is the replacement for their other charge phase debuff to inflict Strike Last, but is now locked only to enemy heroes.

Key Heroes

Some of the units that look really good in this book are…

Lady Olynder

Lady O has gotten a massive glow-up, and now she feels like an absolute auto-include in every single NH list.

Her Passive the Mortarch of Grief makes it so that all Hit and Wound rolls fail on a 1-4 against her, making units effectively (at best) 5s and 5s.

Give her a Kruleghast and an All-out Defence for an Ethereal 4+ 5++ and ignoring one damage point a phase, and she can take on the world.

10 Chaos Knights Marked with Khorne, and on the charge, don’t even kill her.

This lets her play significantly more aggressively, and such an absolute tank on the front lines can prevent your opponent pushing in. She’ll be throwing out spells like her warscroll Grief Stricken turning off all positive modifiers to save, hit and wound for a unit. The new lore spell Chains of Death (making an enemy hero strike last) or the Vault of Souls manifestation doing some solid AoE Damage.

She has also kept her once per game recursion ability No Rest for the Wicked, ideally bringing back 2-3 Models to each of the new 2-wound Infantry.

Awlrach The Drowner

Also looks interesting and likely to see a lot of play. Now they made his taxi ride (Passage through the Underworlds) once per game, but honestly you would generally only use it once previously to get a solid charge off into something juicy, so I don’t think this is the biggest loss. His new Ability Drifting on Spectral Tides lets him retreat or do a normal move at the end of any turn on a 3+. This gives him some great movement shenanigans, allowing him to grab objectives off your opponent and be extremely annoying to your opponent for the entire game.

Also noteworthy: his paddle went from being Rend 2 to being 0 Rend. People love to complain about this one – but can you please explain to me why a paddle ever had such strong armour piercing?

Scriptor Mortis

The Scriptor also got a bit of love and I believe this is the first time he has actually been decent enough to consider for a competitive list. Now being able to give out Crit Mortals for the entire army against one enemy unit basically sentences that unit to death⁵.

Key Units

Let’s focus on three main units: Bladeghiest Revenants, Dreadscythe Harradins and Grimghast Reapers.

Dreadscythe Harradins

Their rule has changed to prevent all enemy units healing while in combat with them. This is pretty situational but can be a big help when going into armies with lots of healing, and could be big into (the now heavily-nerfed) Gorechosen Army of Renown denying their 5+ comeback to life. Other significant plays include turning off the healing from the Soggy Screaming Bell and Soggy Brood Terrors.

Grimghast Reapers

Reapers have a combat phase horde clear, which is pretty strong when your opponent has decided to break their back for the game. Most on-meta armies are quiet elite at the moment so unfortunately I can see these guys not getting their money’s worth in a lot of competitive games right now. Maybe park them until the meta moves.

Bladegheist Revenants

Our beloved Revs got a weird change. It’s a bit different and new to the game:

It can be expected to come in clutch pretty regularly, and Pete’s written a piece on how to counter it here.

Pyregheists

These Gheists also got some love. They now hit on 2s compared to 4s which is an insane jump – these lads will be hitting with all the accuracy of Whitefang’s rumour confirmations. They’ve gained a wound and the same 6+ ethereal and 5++ ward that the rest of this category of ghost, and gone up a staggering⁶ 10 points. I would not be surprised to see people spamming this unit as it is just so points efficient.

The streets will never forget.

Now as is becoming tradition in these new battletomes, we need an In Memoriam section, so please join me in pouring one out for the following.

Glaivewraith Stalkers

Cairnwraiths

Tomb Banshee

Now we do have a year left to play with these guys and for the first time in my Warhammer career, Glaivewraith Stalkers might actually be viable. At only 80 points for four, these guys are at 10 points per wound and also have a decent combat profile⁷ of 2 attacks each at 4s / 3s / -2 / 2 damage on the charge. This is VERY similar to the Banshees that have been a pretty common hammer in Nighthaunt lists (see for example this Patreon article), but they are way cheaper than the Banshees from the index. Paired with a 6″inch pile in they are perfect at sniping heroes or squishy buff pieces.

Now these are the ingredients, how do I bake the cake?

NH damage has dropped off pretty significantly, but their tankiness has increased and they have a fair few tricks to offer.

The Lust for the Boo 2000/2000 pts
—–
Grand Alliance Death | Nighthaunt | Quicksilver Gheists
General’s Handbook 2025-26
Drops: 4
Spell Lore – Lore of the Underworlds
Manifestation Lore – Infernal Sorceries
Battle Tactics Cards: Master The Paths and Scouting Force
—–
General’s Regiment
Lady Olynder, Mortarch of Grief (300)
• General
Bladegheist Revenants (210)
Bladegheist Revenants (210)
Pyregheists (130)
Pyregheists (130)
—
Regiment 1
Knight of Shrouds (120)
• Lightshard of the Harvest Moon
Glaivewraith Stalkers (160)
• Reinforced
Glaivewraith Stalkers (160)
• Reinforced
Lord Vitriolic (120)
—
Regiment 2
Krulghast Cruciator (160)
• Ruler of the Spectral Hosts
Chainghasts (90)
—
Regiment 3
Awlrach the Drowner (170)

So this list gives a fair bit of everything.

Lady O is in the list for the reasons above. The Bladegheists provide two tanky screens⁸ and their denial of all charges below 7″ can make them moderately annoying for your opponent to deal with. The passive recursion, Kruleghast and a cheeky All Out Defence requires your opponent to contribute significant resources to remove the entire squad, or else they can return to full strength over a couple turns. Backed up by some Pyregheists and their end-of-turn mortal damage it can be a tricky objective to lose, and then you still have the counterpunch of the flaming shots from the Pyregheist⁹ to remove anything small, or go for a bigger punch with the Glaivewraiths covering the rear.

The new shiny Lord Vitriolic can assist with his ward turn off to get those damage points through. The Knight of Shrouds provides the Chain fight to get the value out of the Fell Blades‘ spell¹⁰, and a +1 to hit doesn’t hurt when you inevitably fail the 3+ from the Chainghasts, which you definitely don’t want to happen on the “Go Turn”¹¹.

Now I have already played a couple games with this and found that Awlrach is at his best when off by himself and moving around the board with his end of turn ability. He is so good at stealing enemy objectives and being all-round genuinely annoying.

The list mainly shines from strong use of “Boo Lust”: it’s an incredibly strong ability and when used with finesse, can lead to some FILTHY plays that can catch your opponent off guard. Also shoutout to GW for messing up the name of the download.

---

So to summarise – this Nighthaunt book is not the out-of-the-gates powerhouse we always hope for with one of our favourite armies, but there’s still a pulse. It’s less reliant on being the Oonga Boonga army that just endlessly charges again and again. There are tricks and unique play patterns that will reward repeat play so if you’re willing to stick the course, as a competitive Nighthaunt player myself: I do think there’s something to work with here.

Credit for cover image to Games Workshop

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1. Like the KO book. ↩︎
2. Ward turns just became even more useful! ↩︎
3. Spooky Gorechosen? Boochosen? Potentially another completely toxic HeroHammer build is on its way. ↩︎
4. ABC – Always Be Charging. ↩︎
5. Given you roll the 3+. ↩︎
6. /s. ↩︎
7. Shoutout to our Senor Supremo Enthusiast – knowing GW they will let Glaivewraiths go out in a blaze of glory. ↩︎
8. Feels so wrong to screen with BGR, but what you going to do? ↩︎
9. That HIT on 2s!!! ↩︎
10. Boats have a 2+ save – you are going to need it. ↩︎
11. Well you’ve fucking jinxed that for everyone who ever plays this list, haven’t you? ~Pete ↩︎