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I’ve been thinking about getting into AOS, tell me about Slaves To Darkness.

Well start with the Battletome. Each AoS army is now up to date with the 2.0 rules edition and their Battletomes are fully up to date. Slaves to Darkness actually got the last update with a brand new getting started set which features new knights and warriors (though push fit single option ones - whilst the original sculpts are still on individual sale in plastic for both) and a fantastic new leader on a beast mount.

After that there's the Morathi book coming out later in November which has some Slaves to Darkness updated rules/content, though specifics of it are not yet known so might want to wait and see how that pans out.


Note that Slaves were one of the weakest forces, by virtue of not having a 2.0 tome for a long while so there is some negativity about them which has lingered a bit and some old threads that dislike them purely for that aspect. Corona also reared its head and so Slaves have been like a few others released later in 2019 in that they've somewhat been overlooked in some cases.

Kinda really, really open question there, OP. Whadda want to know?

Slaves to Darkness are a pretty diverse faction with chaff/horde options, elite mortal options and daemon/monster options. And good portion of S2D units are allowed in other Chaos god factions too. There aren't many factions in Age of Sigmar that have the breadth of options that Slaves to Darkness have. Although, the internal balance the battletome isn't great. Slaves to Darkness is also very straight forward compared to most other factions. They pretty much are the re-rolls faction. They don't have a lot healing, summoning, shooting or special mechanics (i.e. fate dice, aether-whatever).

By and large I find Slaves to Darkness has powerful Leaders. Often I want to max out the number of leaders I have because of this (that, and I play the Ravagers subfaction which really rewards more mortal leaders). I do like the Chaos Lord on Karkadrak who hasn't let me down yet, but I have heard others say the unit is/was too expensive for what it does. Chaos Sorcerers are really good if a little fragile and unreliable at times. Chaos Lords on foot are also pretty good but also surprisingly fragile not having many of the defensive buffs innate with much of the elite S2D mortals. Daemon Princes are pretty good even Belakor. The Gaunt Summoner is probably still pretty good even after getting a nerf on the number of horrors it can summon for free. I have also seen a good number of S2D armies field the Warqueen too.

Slaves to Darkness Battleline are mixed. Marauders/Marauder Horsemen are currently pretty good Battleline in Slaves to Darkness due to speed, points efficiency and weight of attacks. Warriors, Knights, Chariots are tough but their low number/large foot print and lack of attacks/easy source of Rend make their damage output less than expected.

The Chaos Warshrine is hard not to include as your Behemoth as it is an excellent support unit. I haven't used any of the other S2D Behemoths, but on paper, they don't impress save maybe the Mutalith Vortex Beast.

Warcry Cultists are generally not worth fielding with some exceptions (Iron Golems, Untamed Beasts) as they aren't Battleline and can't take Chaos Marks. The other Warcry stuff is kinda mixed good/bad, but generally doesn't plug into an army very seamlessly regardless.

The battletome subfactions for Slaves to Darkness are Ravagers, Despoilers, Cabalists and Host of the Everchosen. I use Ravagers the most which allows Warcry Cultists and Marauder-type units to be summoned for a Command Point per Leader that hasn't been General yet. Ravagers is supposed to be the mortals S2D subfaction. Despoilers is supposed to be the Daemon/monster subfaction but often can work a more mortal based army. Cabalists are the wizard subfaction, but I can't say how well it pulls it off. I am less than impressed by it, but I also play against opponents that can shut down magic more readily too. Host of the Everchosen is the Archaon subfaction, which I also haven't played yet as I haven't field Archaon yet.

I find the faction to be Command Point hungry no matter what you decide to field. There just a lot of good stuff to be spending CP on, and S2D don't really have a way to generate more during the game. Making use of marks also requires careful positioning of units to usually be wholly within 12" of Leaders to keep it turned on. Which is a whole lot better than before the battletome where the aura was wholly within the Chaos god's number (as in 6" for Slaanesh). I am sure some Marks are far more viable than others and mixing probably yields good results. I usually just stick with Chaos Undivided (I like the idea of Chaos Undivided in AoS and 40k), but I think all Marks are pretty good. Although, many of the Marks effects can be gained from other abilities and don't have a stacking type mechanic when they do.

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Overall, I think the battletome could use some work. If a player is simply looking to have an optimized army to win games the book certainly has options [cough] Marauders. However, I suspect the vast majority of would be S2D players aren't looking to field a vast rampaging horde of Chaos worshiping barbarians with models that haven't held up very well compared to much of the newer stuff AoS has introduced. I could be wrong though.

The loss of the Malign Artifacts really killed them for me. Such lacklustre options (or none in the Host of Everchosen subfaction)

One thing I wish to know is are all the marks of chaos balanced? I like the idea of Chaos undivided the most, but I have heard the Khorne is better.

Slaves to Darkness. My biggest heartbreak.

 Kaiser_II wrote:
One thing I wish to know is are all the marks of chaos balanced? I like the idea of Chaos undivided the most, but I have heard the Khorne is better.

Marks are kinda balanced against each other. I'm sure if you mathammer it them out one will have a slight advantage over the others, but just eyeballing them I don't really see them being too far apart from each other in a general sense. The big issue is many of the Mark effects can be redundant depending on unit/loadout choices. For example, taking a Mark of Khorne on Chaos Warriors armed with double hand weapons doesn't really get them any where as it is the same thing save the General's effect. Same thing with Mark of Tzeentch on Warriors over 9 models since they get re-rolls Saves innately; not to mention there's a really good chance you're going to have a couple or more Chaos Sorcerers to grant re-roll Saves with Oracular Vision.

I see that as being more of an issue along with Marks don't really do anything without a Hero babysitting a wholly within 12" unit. Powerful shooty armies can fairly easily take that from you if they really want to. Not to mention you have to match Hero to unit Marks limiting play-action calls if you mix Chaos gods.

As for Chaos Undivided, that is the Mark I run 90% of the time as I just like the concept of Chaos Undivided lorewise. In 40k, I have Black Legion army that is almost always entirely Chaos Undivided (Leadership 9-10, yea!). And I will continue to be even if the GW designers seem to want to limit it these days removing all but one Chaos Undivided daemon. Mechanically, Chaos Undivided's battleshock immunity is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's nice to not really have to worry about it. I run big units (15 Warriors, 10 Knights) so it is possible to lose enough models to force a Bravery test if an opponent really wants to. And I don't typically have the CP to waste on preventing it. At the same time, my army is built on durability so I typically don't lose a lot of models to be overly concerned with Bravery either. The Chaos Warshrine is best served as Undivided in my opinion.

I certainly don't think going with one Chaos Mark over another is going to cripple an S2D army. However, I do think depending on what units/loadouts are included in the army can affect the usefulness of Chaos Marks. Ultimately, it can sometimes be a lot of hassle to get Chaos Marks to work for you as well. Which may or may not be worth it as the game progresses.