Warhammer Age of Sigmar Warcry Darkoath Savagers Guide

We had a chance to get a look at Warcry: Red Harvest and with it, we were introduced to the new Warbands. One of these is the Darkoath Savagers, a group of marauding warriors, making pledges to the gods and trying to fight their way to glory. The other group is the Tarantulos Brood, we go into more depth about them in another guide.

Darkoath Savagers Fighter Types

Their fighter options are:

• Slaughterborn with Greatblade - The Savagers have two leader options, both with move four and twenty wounds and the double ability to make a bonus move or attack after taking out an enemy. The Greatblade option has five attack dice with four strength over the fewer dice and higher strength over the greataxe. Dice are king in Warcry, so this is a great option.
• Slaughterborn with Greataxe - The Savagers have two leader options, both with move four and twenty wounds and the double ability to make a bonus move or attack after taking out an enemy. The Greataxe option has four attack dice with six strength, and the greatblade option rolls more dice with less strength. Dice are king in Warcry, so unless you're taking on high toughness monsters, the greatblade wins out.
• Proven with Greatblade - There are four Proven options, all with a variety of attack dice, range, and strength. The greatblade is one of the cheapest and has a range one three dice strength four. They're not the greatest champions, but out of the four this is a solid pick.
• Proven with Greatflail - The greatflail has a range three, two dice strength five attack. The range is nice, but it's five more points than the greatblade and loses a dice.
• Proven with Greatspear - The greatspear is a ranged two, two-dice attack. It's the same cost as the greatblade, and the extra range is as the cost of an extra dice, which is rarely worth it.
• Proven with Greataxe - The greataxe is a range one, two dice attack with a higher standard damage than the other options. It's five more points than the greatblade, and more damage means nothing if you don't hit and a two-dice attack isn't great.
• God-speaker - The Godspeaker is a move three, very fragile ranged fighter. They can reduce enemies' toughness on a triple, which is handy, but there are better uses for a triple. They do have a range three to seven two dice attack that does six damage on a crit, so just spam that if you can get them close enough to use it.
• Wrathtouched - For one-hundred and twenty points, the Wrathtouched is pretty awful. A move of four, and a four dice attack that does one damage, five crit. They do have a triple that damage all fighters within three inches, but the thirty-five-point Tarantulos Brood spiders are better than this fighter.
• Gloryseeker with Spear and Axe - The cheapest of the Gloryseekers, has a ranged two, two dice attack and a ranged one, three dice attack, all with one damage.
• Gloryseeker with Shield- The shield option has a range one, two dice attack with a slightly higher toughness than the others, also one of the most expensive.
• Gloryseeker with Paired Weapons - The paired weapons Gloryseeker has a range one, four dice attack. They're expensive, but probably the best option for the Savagers.
• Gloryseeker with Greataxe - The greataxe has a range one, two dice attack. Does the highest base damage out of the four options, but with only two dice, can be hard to hit. 

How to build out of the box

The Darkoath Savagers are only currently available in the Warcry: Red Harvest boxed set, like most of these sets though they'll likely come as a standalone purchase at a later time.

The Darkoath Savagers have five fighters types, with armament options for three of them. Some choices will have to be made when building.

The sprues let you build.

Set miniatures

• 1x Godspeaker
• 1x Wrathtouched

Optional Armaments

• 1x Slaughterborn with Greatblade or 1x Slaughterborn with Greataxe
• 1x Proven with Greatspear or 1x Proven with Greataxe
• 1x Proven with Greatblade or 1x Proven with Greatflail
• 2x Gloryseeker with Shield or 2x Gloryseeker with Paired Weapons
• 1x Gloryseeker with Spear and Axe or 1x Gloryseeeker with Paired Weapons
• 1x Gloryseeker with Spear and Axe or 1x Gloryseeker with Shield
• 1x Gloryseeker with Greataxe or 1x Gloryseeker with Paired Weapons

If building out of the box, the points values for the set miniatures are 405 (with the leader costing 170 regardless of weapon choice). This gives you a lot of options. Taking the four Gloryseekers with Paired Weapons (which you should) and a Gloryseeker with Shield and Axe, gives you enough remaining points to take any weapon choice for the Proven. but you should build the Greataxe and Greatblade options, which take you to 995 points.

Darkoath Savagers General Tactics

The Darkoath Savagers are like playing on hard mode. They're not fast, they have average attacks that don't deal great damage. After taking out enemies, they can spend doubles to increase attributes, but that can be difficult with their starting stats. You have to save doubles to start with and aim for weak fighters early to boost the attacks of as many fighters as possible. Taking on enemies directly, early in the game can be difficult.

Darkoath Savgers Deployment Tactics

For this section, we're only looking at the balanced options for each of the decks in Warcry: Red Harvest. Using all the cards is harder to predict and plan for, but great for open friendly games.

Hammer, Dagger, and Shield all appear on the table three out of six times and come on in round two in the other three out of six. So spreading your Warband between them is essential. The Savagers aren't fast, but you do get a few of them. Group them together in equal groups, as your going to need to aim for weaker enemies to start with.

Darkoath Savagers Mission Tactics

Out of the six balanced missions, five are objective capturing and one is fighter removal.

The Savagers have some numbers, but objective play can be difficult. Enemies will be coming to you, but you need to pick which enemies to fight, so early game, if they're leading with strong fighters, you will struggle one on one, For each mission, try to work out the minimum objectives you can hold over the game to win, and max out your number of fighters between them. If trying to remove enemies, split your fighters into a couple of packs, and run down the weaker fighters, building up to their champions.

The copy of the Warcry: Red Harvest used to produce this article was provided by Warhammer Community.