Nighthaunt Craventhrone Guard

Sitting Upon The Craven Throne

These spectral snipers (AKA Craventhrone Guard) are the bitter companions of Kurdoss Valentian, and take great pleasure in vanquishing his prey before Kurdoss can claim it. Their aim is sharp, and quickly demonstrated from a range. This determined rivalry shows in their play style and their bow.

One of the newest additions to the Nighthaunt faction, and a long awaited ranged unit. A form of attack that has been missing the faction since the beginning.

Along with ranged attacks they bring an oppressive passive unlike any we’ve seen before. But we’ll get into that later in the review.

Guard Your Treasures Well

For five models, you get a great deal of components to build and customise them with. Inside the box, you’ll find the following:

• 53 individual components that build 5 models
• 5 x 32mm round bases
• 1 instruction booklet

Cracking open the box, you’re greeted with a couple of sprues worth of pieces; including a few customisation pieces. I will point out, though, that there are quite a few spindly parts in this set. So be careful when cutting the sprue as thin pieces have a tendency of snapping.

With all pieces safely extracted from the sprues, building is a ghostly breeze in comparison. There’s no need to part build the model before painting as there are no restricting parts that will get in your way. These models are quite open. Be sure to consider if you’d like to include a standard bearer in your unit as you’ll need to include the additional parts when you build one of the models.

I went for the generic nighthaunt paint style for this unit as I love the aesthetic look it has on the field. For the standard bearer I used the citadel flesh tearer red contrast paint to mimic the flowing material. To get good depth in your models, I really recommend trying the zenithal highlighting technique.

Spectral Hunters

I love the look of this unit, and strongly believe that they belong on top of a hill together with the flag billowing in the wind as they pick off hordes that surround them. Then again, none of my maneuvers ever look that cool in practice.

As this is a combat focused unit, you won’t find any spells here. They have more important things to worry about than magic. If you’re looking to slings spells as a nighthaunt, you’ll want to explore the leader options.

These hunters have a melee option, but it’s evident from the stats that it’s never meant to be used. Their wicked sidearm has 1 attack that wounds on a 4+ and deals one damage. If this unit gets into close combat, their numbers are up. Keep them at the back and well guarded. You’ll see why next.

Here we go! This is where the craven throne guard come into their own; ranged attacks. Each one comes equipped with a Soul Hunters crossbow, a piercing for if I ever saw one. It has a range of 12″ and two attacks that hit and wound on a 4+. The rend of -1 makes it slightly sweeter, but the 1 damage result makes the weapon feel slightly lack luster. Especially when you consider how long we’ve been waiting for a bow.

But never fear, their passive ability is here to make things interesting. Spectral bolts mean that the craventhrone guard can target any enemy units in range; even if the target is hidden behind scenery. That’s insane! Just pop this unit into an alcove out of the way, and pick off anything that runs past.

Final Thoughts

Not only do I think it’s about time we had a ranged unit in the Nighthaunt faction, but I also love how unique they made them. The ability to shoot through terrain is so cool, I just wish it packed a little more punch.

If you’re going to run a unit of craventhrone guards, choose the rest of your roster carefully. Unless this unit receives a few buffs, they won’t pack a great deal of a punch. You may be better off doubling up on other units instead of the guard so that you can hunker down on those objectives.

If you want to create some really cool scenes on the battlefield, run two or three of these units and mow down your opposition from a distance. However, I can’t rate the practicality of it, and there are much better units to pile your points into.

That’s all for this review, and although I love our new ranged friends, they could be a little more exciting. Nonetheless, I’d love to know what you think of this unit, so let us know by using the @zatugames tag on social media.