Night Lords?

So, question: How do I run a Night Lords army in 40k? And I'm talking more about the traditionalist Night Lords, who mostly shun Chaos, not the faggots under Kreig "litteraly who" fagbus. With how gimped the CSM codex is, and its skew towards big buffed up Chaos units, it seems that the Night Lords dont really fit in. So should I just use the regular SM codex, and claim that they stole a bunch of shit from a loyalist chapter/forgeworld?

>can I have my nightlords as counts as space marines

Yeah fuck it why not?

You dont, you join the big boys and play 30k, join us! We got primarchs!.

Yeah, but I wanna kill xenos and stuff.

I mean, I have about 120+ Tactical marines at this point, but the problem is that most of them are Mk.7's or Mk.5's, so I'm afraid that people will not play me for that. There's also not that many people who play 30k where I'm at.

You don't got The Guard! Maybe if you did you wouldn't have failed the Emperor!

No reason you can't play 40k armies vs 30k marines.
Elder and orks have been around forever. You can just say that a necron tomb world woke up a bit early. Tyrands are a but harder to justify but you could argue that it's a scouting hive fleet.
Tau are the only ones that can't be justified.
Alternatively you could hand wave it all as warp time travel shenanigans. Or just not care and play the game for fun.

Maybe take a look at the Crusade formation from Traitor's Hate. You can really load up on Fast Attack and still take an auxillary of 2-4 heldrakes. Get small squads of marines and a bunch of bikes and raptors. Strike fast and hard.

Would it be too mary sue to have a Traitor warband of Night Lords who dropped out of the warp in the 41st century, and allied with a renegade forgeworld?

That is pretty Sue. However there is precedent of that happening with The Fallen

Unfortunately, I dont have that many bikes, and I dont have any Heldrakes. I've never been a big fan of flyers in 40k for the most part, to be honest.

It's a little bit, but it's actually happened before. They might be used to start a new chapter but their origin would be kept a secret.

Oh ho ho just wait a year and 40k will be flooded with primarchs

Well then what about more Raptors? Those are pretty much the iconic Night Lords unit. You can load up on those and they aren't much more costly than the stock chaos marines. In the formation, everything gets Objective Secured.

Oh, I was just talking about straight up Night Lords, not a new chapter or anything. But, with Night Lords being so pragmatic, I could see a secret deal with the Imperium being cut: Drop the name and iose their symbols, and we'll give you guys a new job as Space Marines, and all the goodies. Although I always liked the idea of Mercenary space Marines though

Eh, the Warp is weird.

Be a man and play them properly, with the right codex and the right units. So what if they suck. Did you want to play NIGHT LORDS or some shitty genetic competitive list?

Jump Pack LC lord, 20 blue and lightning CSM troops in Rhinos, 30 jump pack FA units. Use FW models as needed.

Raptors are something I have a lot of, as per Night Lords; my only problem with them, is that outside of Bikes, Heldrakes and Raptors, CSM dont have a lot of speedy or fast and deadly options.

But is that Night Lords? Or just a bunch of Stereo-typical jump pack CSM? Where's the shrouding the world in darkness, or the sudden crashing of Drop pods? I feel like the CSM codex does a terrible job at emulating the whole terrorfyingly fast and brutal assault that the Night Lords are known for. That set up just feels so sloooow.

I'm running notHuron as my warlord for that infiltrate d3 infantry

If you use the Crusade formation, you can have an addition 3-5 units of Raptors or Warp Talons for a total max of 80.

There's a Traitor's Hate Formation that is exactly what you're looking for. Jump pack lord, tons of Raptors and warp talons assaulting out of deep strike with a leadership debuff, coupled with the Terminator formation which lets them shoot immediatly out of deep strike and then once more in the shooting phase. It's not quite a drop pod list, but it's something I've wanted to try myself.

And if you want to spread fear, they can charge(although disorganized) on the turn they deep strike and enemies Ld is reduced by 2 if they are charged by 2 or more units from the formation.

Source? I'm actually pretty interested in that.

That sounds pretty good, to be honest. I run a lot of Terminators in my list, along with a lot of Raptors and Tacticals. As of right now, its mainly just a Jump Pack lord, a Terminator lord, and a whole bunch of Terminators and Raptors backing them up. I try to steer clear of Marks of Chaos or more of the overtly daemonic things, but I still occasionally dole them out.

That actually sounds like a pretty fun formation.