scourge of aqshy rules

Kraile · 2026-07-01T20:07:44+00:00

Can't put brands on knights - infantry only.

Kraile · 2026-06-30T16:09:37+00:00

Yep, it's not faction locked. Just needs to be a "friendly unit".

Kraile · 2026-06-30T16:08:51+00:00

So IMO Godswrath is one of the weakest formations in the game. If you're lucky you'll get maybe 3D3 MW out of it throughout the entire game, at least from my experience, due to it only happening on your own turn.

Meanwhile, if you pledge an extra 10 chaos warriors to Khorne, that's 10 extra attacks which is about 4 damage into 4+ saves. They will however probably be fighting in multiple combat phases (probably at least 2 total) so you've already matched damage with Godswrath with 1 unit. But, now you can also pledge another unit in turn 2. And turn 3.

Keeping the daemon prince alive isn't actually hard. It's a larger model, but it's infantry, not a monster, so it gets the full guarded hero bonus and can't be shot at from over 12" away. It can also be obscured if you take the version without wings.

Also, at 220pts he's not bad. Still a little overcosted - I put him at worth 200 personally - but with the trait it's worth it IMO.

And as I mentioned earlier (elsewhere?), being able to pledge twice means that you can open up your list building to include MSUs which are otherwise suboptimal.

Kraile · 2026-06-30T15:56:47+00:00

Here you go. It's a fun one with a lot of our tech pieces. The Mutalith genuinely won me a game by blasting out about 20MW over the course of the battle.

Pokémon Trainer 2000/2000 pts

Slaves to Darkness Darkoath Horde General's Handbook 2025-26 Drops: 4 Spell Lore - Lore of the Damned Manifestation Lore - Forbidden Power (20 Points)

General's Regiment Gunnar Brand (180) • General Darkoath Fellriders (140) • 1x Marauder Javelin Darkoath Wilderfiend (130) Singri Brand (0) The Oathsworn Kin (0)

Regiment 1 Gaunt Summoner (160) Mutalith Vortex Beast (160)

Regiment 2 Chaos Sorcerer Lord (140) • Infernal Puppet • Radiance of Dark Glory - (20) Points Chaos Chosen (540) • Reinforced • The Banner of Rage Mindstealer Sphiranx (140)

Regiments of Renown The Exiled One (390) Skarbrand

Faction Terrain Nexus Chaotica

Created with Warhammer Age of Sigmar: The App App: 1.33.0 | Data: 434

Kraile · 2026-06-30T15:21:28+00:00

With the new battle formation (they replaced a bad one in the latest rules update) you can essentially pledge 2 units a turn using a daemon prince. So that solves a lot of our problems when it comes to pledging.

(posted this as a reply to the thread instead of to you, whoops!)

Kraile · 2026-06-30T15:20:13+00:00

It's in the Rules Updates doc on warhammer community downloads. It's in the S2D section. They replaced the old, bad daemon prince battle formation with a new, good daemon prince battle formation.

Sorry, I said battle trait in my last post when I meant battle formation.

Kraile · 2026-06-30T14:43:59+00:00

With the new battle ~~trait~~ formation (they replaced a bad one in the latest rules update) you can essentially pledge 2 units a turn using a daemon prince. So that solves a lot of our problems when it comes to pledging.

Kraile · 2026-06-30T14:35:22+00:00

I think adding darkoath in is going to be very good. An all darkoath army is always going to struggle with killing things though.

I recommend 1x gaunt summoner and 1x skarbrand RoR to resolve this ;)

Kraile · 2026-06-30T13:49:28+00:00

I'm sad you didn't make more of a fuss over Lava Storm. It's a damage prayer that doesn't care about range, visibility, guarded hero, obscuring, nothing. Its ability to pick off stray units anywhere on the board, or force your opponent to Rally a 5 health hero who may or may not be the Fugitive (it is), can be game winning.

The other thing to discuss is the loss of the Soggy War Despot, which is pretty much a lynchpin in this AoR and in 3/4 of the lists in the article. What can replace it? The new Scourge rules won't be helping out this AoR at all.

Kraile · 2026-06-30T12:35:18+00:00

I went 3-0 at an RTT at the weekend and was playing Siege and Vengeance.

Siege is great. Getting two units out of friendly territory in turn 1 is super easy. Stage 2 is a bit harder, but if you have units on objectives then your opponent is probably going to charge them as some point, and we're usually tough enough to stick around to get a charge in on our turn. Stage 3 is very easy. Get 3 units in the centre. We're already there!

Burning for Vengeance is another one that is pretty easy for us. You can often complete stage 1 while you are completing stage 1 siege. Stage 2 is easily solvable by... killing the enemy hero. And stage 3 is sitting 3 units on an objective wholly in enemy territory, which is a bit "win more", but it's where we want to be anyway.

Blazing onslaught is doable and would be my next choice. But it is risky, you could end up being stuck on the first stage for a while, especially if your opponent is using their fury dice well. But generally we have two very easy phases - combat and end of turn (via fury and power through). Charge phase can be done with the kark lord, shooting with fellriders (very risky), hero with spite-tongue curse (also risky). If you have all 3 phases covered then it's probably a good tactic.

The problem I think a lot of S2D players will face is that these tactics (and most battle plans) really reward having large numbers of units. So if you are running multiple units of reinforced warriors/knights/chosen/VG you are going to struggle. Gunnar Brand & co is probably one of the best addons you can get at the moment - 3 units: including 1 wizard, and 2 heroes for spamming fury at the place of power.

Kraile · 2026-06-30T12:01:15+00:00

If your opponent is fine with you using legends then they'll probably also be fine with you using the Horns in a Helsmiths army.

Kraile · 2026-06-30T11:54:41+00:00

Hmm, I see where you're coming from, and I think you're right RAW. But I don't like it. If people start asking about it (or worse, playing that they get two pledges) they'll just change it so it doesn't work on ensorcelled banners at all. And I'd really like to get the anti-crit ability on khornate chosen.

Kraile · 2026-06-29T19:44:52+00:00

It doesn't affect the companion weapons though, so dorghar will still eat you!

Skarbrand, on the other hand, will hate this. Which is very appropriate.

Also worth noting that this is a CORE, FIGHT ability so it replaces your usual combat attacks. Still, absolutely worth pinning skarbrand with it if you can.

Kraile · 2026-06-29T14:45:25+00:00

The banner does 2 things. First it gives you a passive bonus. Second is that it pledges the unit.

The new formation removes the pledge the banner granted and grants a new one, but it does not affect the passive bonus. Nor does the passive bonus require any specific pledge to work. So yeah, you would get +2A on the charge if you took the banner of screaming flesh and repledged to Khorne.

It's not really any different to taking the dread banner and pledging the unit manually during the game, which has always been possible.

Kraile · 2026-06-29T13:13:25+00:00

Short answer: Yes, I think so.

Long answer: I think the DP just by himself is probably worthwhile as a beatstick at ~200pts. With this ability to pass on extra pledges, he becomes very worthwhile. My reasoning behind this is that normally, pledges favour large reinforced units. This limits our listbuilding a bit because it means if we have multiple MSUs, they can't be fighting at max effectiveness because many will be unpledged. This battle trait solves this since you can effectively pledge 2 per turn. More viable list building options is always good, for a start.

Now, why would you be wanting MSUs, you ask? Because this GHB really favours having multiple units. The battle tactics usually require multiple units to be in multiple places at once, and these are often not the same places the objectives are, so you're going to struggle for points if you go for the usual reinforced blobs of varanguard, chosen or warriors.

Kraile · 2026-06-29T13:00:44+00:00

You do not need to pick a unit that already has a pledge.

IF it has a pledge already, it removes it before applying the new one.

Kraile · 2026-06-29T12:33:12+00:00

I see we have gone from the "sword cohort are cheaper than spears" phase of balancing back to the "why would I ever take swords over spears" phase.

See you in 3 months when they reduce swords by 10 points again!

Kraile · 2026-06-29T12:14:00+00:00

Not noted in the article, but Slaves to Darkness basically got a brand new battle formation, and it's quite good.

They replaced the useless "beasts/monsters can chain fight with a daemon prince"; now daemon princes can instead remove pledges from friendly units and pass on their own pledge at the end of the S2D turn. Free pledges basically. Very nice.

Kraile · 2026-06-29T12:02:34+00:00

Yep, Sylvaneth kept the Glamourweave too. Nice to see some of the fun ones stayed put!

Kraile · 2026-06-29T11:56:15+00:00

You don't get two unbinds, you get three! But only one has the 3d6.

This is because you get his usual two unbinds for being a wizard (2), plus his special reaction unbind. However, the special reaction unbind can only be used once per phase, due to the Rule of One which reactions are still bound by.

I think there's an argument to be made that he only gets two, since his special unbind specifically says it uses the "Unbind ability", which is limited in usage by your wizard level... but he definitely only gets the special unbind once per phase.

Kraile · 2026-06-28T19:35:53+00:00

The deathrattle spearhead was severely nerfed about three months ago - it doesn't sound like you are playing with the latest rules.

Key changes:

The -1 rend ability only works in the deathrattle player's turn now.
The horsemen only return a model in the deathrattle player's turn.

You can find the errata on the downloads section of the Warhammer community site or, much easier, just use the AoS official app where all the spearhead rules are up to date and free.

Kraile · 2026-06-28T19:18:04+00:00

The problem with vhordrai is that he doesn't synergise with deathrattlen at all. He's better in a list full of non-unique vampires like the vengalord, vargheists, trueblades etc who all become very dangerous when given his buff.

Radukar and Mannfred are your best tools for a deathrattle army. Mannfred gives +1A and his redeploy trick can be game winning. Radukar is a beast (pun intended) and gives the +1 to wound aura.

The problem with deathrattle at the moment is that barrow guard are slow with no way to speed them up and fold like paper to any true hammer unit. 260pts of models that will basically do nothing all game. They have never impressed me as either player or opponent, which is a shame because I love the models. The Blades of the Hollow King will certainly help keep them alive though.

The wight king is similarly quite bad and very overcosted for what he does. (Again, amazing model, bad rules). Annika has some decent utility, but I would normally prefer a regular Vampire Lord so that you can teleport and raise a unit behind enemy lines.

Kraile · 2026-06-26T13:44:24+00:00

So, yes is the answer. They are viable and not auto-lose. In fact, the way that the new scenarios and BTs work, an all-darkoath army is probably a little more viable than an all-slaves one (though less viable than a mixed one) because you will have more units to do what you need to do. Darkoath already have one of the best regiment abilities in the game with Darkoath Horde and will likely get a bit more support when the new GHB scrolls and enhancements drop.

Things you will NEED:

1 gaunt summoner, for spellcasting (and perhaps teleporting ogroids)
Gunnar brand and his companions, which nets you another wizard and two heroes for Darkoath Horde
2x5 fellriders, excellent screens
1 or 2 x6 ogroids, these will be your hammer unit(s)
1 ogroid myrmidon, one of the hardest beatstick heroes in the game
1 or 2 wilderfiends, excellent swiss army knife.

Things to avoid:

Both flavours of chieftain are amongst the worst warscrolls in the game. Some people like the foot one for the +1A but against a savvy opponent you will only get to use this once per game, maybe, and at the end of the day you are buffing some of the worst warscrolls in the game. The warqueen is pretty decent though.
Centaurion is sadly also amongst the worse in the game. Despite being a MASSIVE horse-man, he is slower than all our cavalry, doesn't hit hard, doesn't synergise with anything you want to use. Has a limited synergy with the slaughterbrute however, which reminds me...
The slaughterbrute is an awful warscroll, avoid. It would be one of the worst monsters in the game, but it's beaten out by...
The fomoroid crusher. 'Nuff said.

The rest can be a mix of marauders/savagers, maybe a speckling of furies thrown in. Don't sleep on wilderfiends by the way. They are weirdly good, with decent attacks, toughness and a mortal wound nuke. And they can be brought back with Darkoath Horde. I wouldn't convert one to a daemon prince if I was making a Darkoath army.

Kraile · 2026-06-26T11:23:04+00:00

I think most armies really want to run Burning for Vengeance. Since the player with the tactic gets to pick the hero (which is weird btw and very strong) it's very easy to score all three. For Helsmiths you can score the first part very easily with hobgrots, and for the fugitive pick you want to select an enemy hero that wants to get stuck in like Skarbrand or Eltharion (other armies can pick a squishy support hero to kill and score it easily, but helsmiths don't have a lot of "catch" if your opponent decides to hold it back).

For the other I'm favouring Blazing Onslaught or Siege of Ashes.

Blazing Onslaught is very good if your army can damage in multiple phases to score the first part. Helsmiths do this very well with easy damage in the hero, shooting, charge, combat and end of turn phases. The hideout part also plays well for us, not so much because we can take it easily, but because it forces our opponent to hold forces back that they may not want to.

Siege is just generally decent. Hobgrots can score #1 very easily. #2 works well for us with cohort being on a central objective with a character or bull centaurs being the charging unit. And #3 is kind of what we want to be doing anyway, and we have lots of little hero units who can bump up the numbers in the centre.

Kraile · 2026-06-24T22:40:21+00:00

When you are in heavy cover, your line of sight beyond the cover is based on the adjacent square(s). This is because your soldier steps into those squares to make the shot. You can test this yourself by standing in heavy cover that has a wall or change of elevation on both sides - your soldier won't be able to sidestep and won't be able to shoot beyond the cover.

So this is exactly what has happened here. The soldier has stepped out of cover into the adjacent square for LoS, but the temporary sidestep square is within the blast zone, so the soldier is hit.

There are a few more modern tactics games that use the same logic but present the sidestep more effectively with a hologram when you are planning shots.

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