Warhammer Darkoath Army Set Units Ranked Worst To Best

The Darkoath Army Set is a new addition to the Warhammer: Age of Sigmar Slaves to Darkness army, which we previously covered in our Slaves to Darkness set review. With this box, which is up for preorder right now and which Games Workshop kindly sent us for coverage consideration, I thought I'd try something different and rank, from worst to best, the four different unit types (and their alt. weapon profiles) included in the Army set.

So follow along as we dive in and rank these, as their battletome supplement describes them, "descendants of those ill-fated humans left behind when Sigmar retreated behind the Gates of Azyr."

#6. Darkoath Marauders With Darkiron Spear

The Darkoath Army Set box comes with twenty Darkoath Marauders, these are the footsore ground troops who will make up the bulk of your Darkoath contingent in the army. They're fairly good at fighting for a run-of-the-mill troop, and can be built with either a Raider Weapon or a Darkiron Spear. Let's talk the base stats (which don't change for either weapon profile) first:

• Move: 6"
• Wounds: 1
• Save: 5+
• Bravery: 6

So why are the Darkoath Marauders with Darkiron Spear ranked last? Because even though they share the same special abilities as their Raider Weapon-wielding counterparts (which I'll get to in the next entry), the spear just isn't doing it for me. The spear has a range of 2", which is nice, but it hits on a 4+ (whereas the other weapon profile, the Raider Weapon, hits on 3+). I just think you want to be rolling more hits with your ground troops, so I'm not a fan of the spear. Now let's get deeper into the unit...

#5. Darkoath Marauders With Raider Weapon

As mentioned above, because this hits on a 3+ instead of a 4+, it's just the better option (even if you lose an inch of range). And here we can talk about the special abilities of the unit (which, again, are same for this or the Darkiron Spear option). First, the Darkoath Marauders have the "Glorious Death" special ability, which says:

While this unit is wholly within 12" of any friendly Darkoath Heroes, each time a model in this unit is slain by an attack made with a melee weapon, pick 1 enemy unit within 3" of this unit and roll a dice. On a 5+, that unit suffers 1 mortal wound.

Add to this its Oath ability, "Oath of the Marauder," which gives a -1 rend to their weapons (as opposed to no rend) if you roll a 7+ on a Charge roll, and you've got a very fight-y little unit here!

#4. Darkoath Cheiftain on Warsteed

This might be the big surprise of my rankings! The Darkoath Chieftain is meant to be the centerpiece of this Army Set, but in my opinion I think he falls pretty short on the list. His base stats are:

• Move: 12"
• Wounds: 7
• Save: 5+
• Bravery: 8

His Cursed Weapon is decent, with 4 Attacks and hitting and wounding on a 3+ with -1 Rend and 2 Damage, but his special abilities aren't really moving the needle for me. 6's deal a mortal wound in addition to any damage they inflict when he hits with his Cursed Weapon, he can do 2 different heroic actions (or Heroic Leadership twice), and if he attacks first in your combat phase, he "fulfills his oath" and you add 1 to melee attack Wound rolls by all friendly Mortal Darkoath units within 12" of him.

That's a fun ability, to be sure -- and there's no doubt that this 12" moving slicer and dicer isn't going to be fun to field on table -- but I think there's some tension in wanting your chieftain to be the first one attacking every turn (and that ability kind of nerfs any benefit to have multiples of him on the field).

#3. Darkoath Fellriders with Broadsword

Again, we're going to split up one of the units by the two different weapon profiles it can take: the Broadsword and the Marauder Javelin. Both share all the same abilities and stats, so I'll lay the stats out here and then speak to the abilities of the better-ranking profile further down the list.

• Move: 12"
• Wounds: 2
• Save: 5+
• Bravery: 6

While the Broadsword looks pretty cool on these miniatures, taking this weapon profile means the unit doesn't have any ranged attacks. If you take the Javelin, you get a 12" ranged attack -- and while with the Marauders I said you don't want that drop in To Hit, here I think it's worth -- especially with this unit's 12" move speed.

#2. Darkoath Fellriders with Marauder Javelin

So now that we've run through why the Javelin is better than the Broadsword, let's talk about all the other reasons this unit is the second best in the box! First, they too have an Oath - the Oath of the Raider, which says that if they finish a charge move within 1/2" of an enemy unit that is more than 3" from any other units in your army, you bump up its Rend characteristic from -1 to -2.

That's going to be easy to pop off, as you don't actually have to successfully do anything other than Charge (which this mounted unit is made for). Along with that, they also have the Swift Attackers ability, making them hard to pin down (you subtract 1 from hit rolls for attacks made with missile weapons that target this unit).

All in all these are fast, fight-y units -- and ones that I would honestly rather take over the Chieftain (the Chieftain is 110 points, a batch of 5 is 125).

#1. Darkoath Wilderfiend

Finally, we have the number one spot going to everyone's favorite transformed, bestial buddy - the Darkoath Wilderfiend! Stats are:

• Move: 8"
• Wounds: 9
• Save: 5+
• Bravery: 8

The Wilderfiend is armed with a Flesh-tearing Maw and Razor-sharp Claws which are decent melee weapons, but where it really shines is in its Feed on Flesh ability, which has a lot to it. Basically each time a model within 12" of this unit is slain, this unit gets a sacrifice point. It can spend those points to bestow one of four different Dark Blessings.

Those Dark Blessings can give strike-first effect, block out the enemy unit's ability to give and receive commands, throw out mortal wounds, or heal. Add to that the fact that this unit is not visible to enemy models more than 12" away, and you can replace slain Darkoath Heroes with a slain Darkoath Wilderfiend (essentially, if your Wilderfiend dies, it can "come back to life" by taking over the dead body of another slain Darkoath Hero).

Powerful, resourceful, absolutely wild-looking - the Wilderfiend is by far my favorite unit in the box! What do you all think of my rankings? Let us know in the comments below!

The products used in the creations of this article were courtesy of Games Workshop. All images courtesy Games Workshop.