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So still very new to AoS and building an army and just had some question

Whats the best way to run Chaos warriors? In groups of 20? Ill be giving them shield and a weapon because the 5+ for mortal wounds is to nice to pass.

Whats a good demon that complements a slaves to darkness army?

What are some of the quintessential units for a slaves to darkness army, i have heard a war shrine is like a must.

Knights of ruin, best strat for utilizing them, and what to pair them with.


Again very knew to AoS actually got a starter box, and knight of ruin in a secret santa. so know idea about the rules save for a few of them. Mostly play 40k.

This guide from SpikeyBitz for building on the Slaves to Darkness start box is pretty good and should at least get you pointed in the right direction.

Interesting interesting, I have heard a really good strat for them is to take 40 warriors 2 groups of 20.

Group one is all shields and weapons, and you change them in as bait, then your other group is behind them which all have halberds, and your HQ is a bloodsecator. Wait for your shields to get charged then utilize the halberds 2 inch attach range to poke over your shield guys and the HQ buffs them so they get like 60+ attacks with the halberds alone.

Just starting a Slaves To Darkness army as well. Interested in the input on strats and builds as well.

I do not think the shrine is a must...


my 1000 pts looks like this (in a more competitive setting):

2x 200 chaos knights
1 x 180 (Chaos warriors) (or even more knights will work too)
1 x manticore (choose between wizard and lord one is a close combat machine, the other one can do vicious damage if its spell goes off)
1x chaos lord.
Godsworn champions of ruin battalion.
All mark of slaanesh.

Basically, the mark of slaanesh lets one unit+ chaos lord run and charge.
All the knights units have enough power to take out or at least severely damage a monster on the charge.


For 2000 pts
LEADERS
Chaos Lord On Daemonic Mount (140)
- General
Chaos Sorcerer Lord (140)
- Normal
- Steed
Wulfrik The Wanderer (80)
UNITS
Chaos Knights x 10 (400)
- Chaos Glaives
Chaos Knights x 10 (400)
- Chaos Glaives
Chaos Chariots x 1 (80)
- Greatblades
Chaos Marauders x 30 (180)
Chaos Knights x 5 (200)
- Chaos Glaives
Chaos Knights x 5 (200)
- Ensorcelled Weapons
Chaos Chariots x 1 (80)
- Greatblades
BATTALIONS
Ruinbringer Warband (80)

2000 brings out potential to the ruinringer warband. you are maneuverable, hard hitting and can take punch.
Add wulfrik and marauders, to swarm an objective, take out artillery or just disrupt and keep a bunch of anoying units busy for a few turns while the knights can concentrate on the rest. The biggest bonus, you might get to insult your opponent.

If you really want, make room for the manticore, but I would take a bunch of knights instead anytime.

If you want to mix in daemons, go for tzeentch. I often bring a herald on disc and flamers to summon. (The herald triggers a nasty ability on the flamers) The flamers make up for the lack of shooting power in the army.

Lord of change is also fantastic, if you can get his spell of before he gets all to damaged. He has singlehandedly mopped up 50-60% of some armies I encountered.


I am not so much a fan of the build with a lot of chaos warriors, I usually play them in block of 10 if I play them as they are not maneuverable enough for this fast pace game. But for some battleplans and against some enemies, they are really neat. I have had them performing well defending a group of chosen supported by the shrine. But it is a more dangerous game as shooty and really fast pace armies and certainly a combination of both will most likely get the better of you (as you are most likely playing for objectives)

hope this helps you guys

What are the options for the varanguard? and or Archaon.

Form what i can tell they seem like units you want to run together or not at all.

I’m not sure that’s true of Archaon and the varanguard. The Varanguard do benefit from having him there, but together they are very pricey, and not especially useful for taking objectives (which often require 5+ models to secure). They’d tend to lock you into playing a particular way, I imagine.

So far I’ve only played 5 games with slaves to darkness (and rotbringers). These were doubles games where each of us brought 1k. My team mate had skaven. We did win all those 5 games though, so maybe this will be useful.

On the whole, chaos warriors seem like a really great battleline unit. They are very durable for what you pay for them and they attack pretty well, if not spectacularly. Their lack of rend starts to really be a problem against tough enemies, especially if people buff their saves. In one game 10 of my warriors met 10 liberators with a Castellant behind. The goodies were healing more wounds than they took, while the castellant got to use his annoying halberd to chop my guys up from a distance. Even then, I still had people in the fight at the end of the game.

I haven’t used marauders, as I had blightkings as my second battleline unit. Knights are also battleline if you stay slaves to darkness, and I had a unit of them. Most of the time they are just like faster, more expensive chaos warriors. They were good for snatching objectives at the start, or engaging enemies to hold them up, but weren’t so great at actually killing things. That said, objectives are what you need to win the game, so they are pretty useful.

The army is pretty brave, so I think you want to look at characters with powerful command abilities – since you won’t really need to use inspiring presence. At 2k I’m going to use the glottkin, but at 1k I had a lord on manticore. As with everything else, he was tanky but not all that killy (partly because I rolled really badly all the time). That said, he was kind of a star for grabbing objectives and not letting go of them. I’m now looking for other characters who can do that job for a few less points.

I used the godsworn champions of ruin battalion, comprising the lord on manticore, warriors, knights and an exalted hero. The blightkings weren’t part of the battalion. I did get to have units pile in and attack in the hero phase a few times thanks to the detachment, which was fun, but would have been better if I’d made my guys a little more dangerous.

In future I’m going to look for more ways to have rend in my army. I’m thinking of getting some chosen to help with this. On the face of it they look like they are just more expensive chaos warriors, but against armoured opponents they will do more wounds/point, and they also buff your other guys.

Again dont have a book on me, since im still that new

But from what i have been able to read and see, the chaos warriors really seem to be the sort of swiss army knife of units. They can do almost anything, but there are units that can do it better, but these guys are by no means bad.

I was thinking about my first army in or at 1k, doing 30 Chaos warriors in groups of 10, and splitting each squad with halberds, then swords and board so i can attack in ranks. Another way of running it would be 2 groups of 15 one all sword and board, the other halbards, giving them Khorne and taking the bloodsecator.

Then taking a group of Chaos knights with halbards, the 30 warriors, puts me at 720

Unfortunately you can't have chaos warrior units with mixed weapons - at least according to the app. It says "some units are armed with...", not "some chaos warriors are armed with...". The FAQ clears up the rules here, to explain that means you have to give everyone the same weapons.

I'm putting together a unit of 28 warriors with greataxes for my plaguetouched warband. With the Glottkin giving them +1 attack, +1 wound and save (hopefully), rerolling saves of 1 and reflecting mortal wounds back on the enemy, they ought to be quite difficult to get rid of.

Glad you mentioned that or I would have missed it. Indeed it does say that on their warscroll. Although I mixed the loadouts on my troops so far for a varied look I'll be sure to "count them as" a single type till I fill out the ranks enough to have full units of each weapon type. Similar to what Backspacehacker mentioned above. That sounds pretty brutal on opponents. I have 2 units of Knights as well so it should all prove to be interesting.

Having units that fight in two rows is interesting but it only works on defence. If anyone charges your front row then your second unit will get to fight.

I plan on wrapping the Glottkin in chaos warriors or marauders against some opponents. They have 2 or even 3" ranges on their attacks so they can smash people up without taking many hits in reply.

It doesn't work in attack, or at least it doesn't work easily, because when charging you have to get within 1/2". You can't do that if there's a chaos warrior with a sword and shield stood there already.

Mandragola wrote:
Having units that fight in two rows is interesting but it only works on defence. If anyone charges your front row then your second unit will get to fight.

I plan on wrapping the Glottkin in chaos warriors or marauders against some opponents. They have 2 or even 3" ranges on their attacks so they can smash people up without taking many hits in reply.

It doesn't work in attack, or at least it doesn't work easily, because when charging you have to get within 1/2". You can't do that if there's a chaos warrior with a sword and shield stood there already.

Well thats the thing, i want them to charege the first row, the second row will be armed with halbards which will have a 2 inch reach, so while they are trying to eat through that first row of chaos warriors the halbards can poke over and hit them.

I can make the first set of warriros with tzeench which get rerollable salves, and then give the halbards khorne so i can reroll to hit.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Mandragola wrote:
Having units that fight in two rows is interesting but it only works on defence. If anyone charges your front row then your second unit will get to fight.

I plan on wrapping the Glottkin in chaos warriors or marauders against some opponents. They have 2 or even 3" ranges on their attacks so they can smash people up without taking many hits in reply.

It doesn't work in attack, or at least it doesn't work easily, because when charging you have to get within 1/2". You can't do that if there's a chaos warrior with a sword and shield stood there already.

Well thats the thing, i want them to charege the first row, the second row will be armed with halbards which will have a 2 inch reach, so while they are trying to eat through that first row of chaos warriors the halbards can poke over and hit them.

I can make the first set of warriros with tzeench which get rerollable salves, and then give the halbards khorne so i can reroll to hit.

Sure. But what I'm saying is that it's no use for attacking people. Lots of people will take one look at you and decide to go elsewhere. If you come up against somebody with lots of shooting, you're a bit stuck.

Also, how come you get rerolls from the different marks? Do you have a character giving them that or something?

Mandragola wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Mandragola wrote:
Having units that fight in two rows is interesting but it only works on defence. If anyone charges your front row then your second unit will get to fight.

I plan on wrapping the Glottkin in chaos warriors or marauders against some opponents. They have 2 or even 3" ranges on their attacks so they can smash people up without taking many hits in reply.

It doesn't work in attack, or at least it doesn't work easily, because when charging you have to get within 1/2". You can't do that if there's a chaos warrior with a sword and shield stood there already.

Well thats the thing, i want them to charege the first row, the second row will be armed with halbards which will have a 2 inch reach, so while they are trying to eat through that first row of chaos warriors the halbards can poke over and hit them.

I can make the first set of warriros with tzeench which get rerollable salves, and then give the halbards khorne so i can reroll to hit.

Sure. But what I'm saying is that it's no use for attacking people. Lots of people will take one look at you and decide to go elsewhere. If you come up against somebody with lots of shooting, you're a bit stuck.

Also, how come you get rerolls from the different marks? Do you have a character giving them that or something?

Warshrine, then depending on what marks i give each unit and which ones i decide to activate that turn.