Game Workshop just announced the pre-order for their latest edition to the Age of Sigmar Slaves to Darkness faction – a full on Darkoath Army Set.
After their recent announcement that they were rethinking the STD line, cutting out many of the tertiary factions under it (such as most of the Warcry range) and doubling down on the Darkoath, the only real surprise is how quickly they were to announce it.
Based on the GW website, it looks like the new army box will start getting shipped out during the first week of May and it retails for $240 CAD (not the cheapest entry point, but certainly indicative of the general price creep we’ve been seeing the past few years).
So, let’s take a look at what’s in the box and speculate wildly how it could be used in Warcry.
What we do we get in the new Darkoath Army Set from AoS?
Overall, it’s a fairly standard Army set for Age of Sigmar with the usual range of skirmishers, mounted units, a beast, and a hero. It’s perhaps just a little low on models for the price point based on what we’ve seen in the past, but that seems to be the direction we’re all headed in these days.
The army itself is described as being a “throng of heavily armed hooligans”, not unlike your average football / soccer fan club without a ball to kick around.
Apart from the usual Battle Scroll and AoS bells and whistles, models-wise it comes with:
- 20 Marauders with what look like kits for various weapon loadouts (from shields to spears, to axes)
- 5 Fellriders
- 1 Wilderfiend
- 1 Chieftain on Warsteed
The Darkoath Marauders
The latest range of these folks are definitely fitting with the Darkoath vibe. They could all pass for models that came from the Darkoath Savagers warband that shipped the other year, with heavy Hyperborian / Conan-inspired getups.
In general, they look pretty awesome, and are certainly a step-up from the current line of Marauders who are much more generically beefy hooligans.
Looking at their loadouts, it’s entirely conceivable that they won’t be too different stats-wise from the current Marauder units in Warcry.
That said, seeing as a lot of pieces in the latest Warbands are priced in the 75-110 points range, maybe these folks will be buffed accordingly too – closer to what the Darkoath Savagers models are like.
For instance, from the pictures of the kit, it looks also like we’ll have options for the standard axe and shield variety, but perhaps also some sword and spear variants that might be closer to the Gloryseeker with Spear from the Darkoath Savagers set (albeit with some added toughness from the shield would be my guess).
What seems conspicuously missing are any flails.
For that fact alone, I wouldn’t be surprised if these folks get the axe in the upcoming update, though range 3 chaff are currently very powerful and things might be moving in a different direction for their utility too. Anything is possible, really.
Darkoath Fellriders
The Fellriders appear to be a new cavalry type of unit, and I would guess are here to replace the older Marauder Horsemen.
While Slaves to Darkness had some good cavalry units for Warcry (Varanguards), their regular horsemen never really caught my attention.
They have decent move and okay survivability, but at over 120 points some of them have weapon profiles that are on par with the weakest chaff out there.
My hope would be that these Fellriders are actually worth taking in your warband. Even if their movement and survivability ends up being on part with the old Horsemen, having better weapons – maybe even a Fellspear, perhaps – would make them pretty exciting as mid-priced mounted units.
Of course, I’d put the odds of them having the same profile as our Varanguard above at being pretty low, a 2″ range weapon with 3-4 attacks, 4 strength and a modest output of at least 2/5 like some other mid-range spear units would be a treat.
And, lest I speculate too wildly, it’s worth noting that none of the units in the image are armed with spears – and seem to be more of the usual sword and shield / axe and shield garden variety of riders.
Fingers crossed that they don’t end up with 1″ range, 3 attacks, 3 strength, 1/3 damage profiles.
Darkoath Wilderfiend
The big boy bruiser of the army set certainly looks the part.
Unfortunately, if I had to bet, I would put down that this fellow doesn’t immediately get released in Warcry (if at all).
Games Workshop has a habit of taking forever to release big, pretty pieces – or leaving them entirely in Age of Sigmar and not porting them to Warcry.
However, our Wilderfiend isn’t as outlandish as some of the pieces that never made it into Warcy, so there is hope.
If he does show up, and as cool as he is, I wouldn’t expect him to be kitted out like an utter god – like our Fomoroid Crusher is.
A more realistic profile might be something closer to (but possibly leaner and faster than) a Rockgut Troggoth but at 200+ points.
The Wilderfiend certainly looks spry for his size, but like we’ve seen recently with with the Gorger Mawpack, big 200+ point units with 30+ HP might also come with a frighteningly low toughness of 3.
Seeing our Wilderfiend with 5″ move and 3 toughness and 30+ HP wouldn’t surprise me (or at least not surprise me as much as getting any stats for him at all).
Darkoath Chieftain on Warsteed
Last, and hopefully not least, is our chieftain.
While GW doesn’t have the best track record with big units in general, the leaders on cavalry are much more likely to appear in Warcry – regardless of their sometimes ridiculous size, like the Killaboss on Great Ghashtoof who is basically unplayable on the Catacombs board).
Within Slaves to Darkness, we have also have a mega cavalry boss, but I highly doubt we’ll have anything near this dude’s survivability levels.
Seeing the axe with our mounted Darkoath Chieftain and the fact that he’s going to be a leader, I would expect his damage profile to be similar to one of our two friends below (and maybe even general stats – save for mobility):
I wouldn’t expect to see him in the 300+ tier of points, but probably more a more modest mid 200s. At the moment, movement is still over-costed, so even if his stats are fairly mid-level leader, I’d expect him to pay a hefty fine for his mobility.
When can we expect Warcry rules for the new Darkoath Army Set?
While we don’t have any firm dates to go by, GW has generally been lagging months behind when it comes to updating the rules and rolling out the rosters for pieces who migrate from other game sets (such as our Thricefold Discord from Underworlds…).
In the case of these new Darkoath pieces, my bet at the moment is that they’re going to be rolled out whenever we see Warcry 3.0 – expected to be later this year.
There wouldn’t be much point in revealing stats for them if there was the possibility of them changing – unless, of course, these pieces would be a sort of early look at how the points per models are adapting.
One speculation on my part, is that whenever they do get released, we could expect to see some big changes on how units are costed.
In particular, I’m leaning towards seeing lower value chaff being costed more. At present, the low price point of chaff is definitely a top topic in the meta and one of the essential strategies for listbuilding.
Having “chaff” come in at min 65 would make sense, but I have a sneaking suspicious we’ll see them more in the range of 75-95 points in an effort to make more all-rounded lists over 2-3 champs and fluff that is currently all the rage.
Also, seeing some cavalry units that are not, in my humble opinion, utter crap, would be a pleasant twist too. Right now, they are over-costed for their movement, often weak when it comes to damage dealing, and utterly gimped in any objective that involved high ground.
In the last Warcry tournament I was at, I recall seeing only 1 list that even had any mounted units.
But who knows. Like I said, this is just some wild speculations on my part – and maybe some wishful thinking. We’ll only really know more when GW either suddenly drops the rules in an errata or White Dwarf, or officially announces 3.0.
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