Dark Side Unit Analysis Part 6: Humans

Here's where my formatting shifts again, because the races of the Light largely come in Dark versions as well, which are usually largely identical outside of the Dark flipping. There's little point to making a separate post for Of The Dark Humans as opposed to Of The Light Humans, so I won't.


So, Humans.

First of all, their two factional traits have been dropped for...

Fighting Spirit
The unit's Morale is +1 so long as it remains above some percentage of its original stack size.

I'll be listing the value for each unit separately, under their Fighting Spirit entry, because it actually varies, though it's mostly 40-60%.

As a factional Ability goes, Fighting Spirit is okay. It's pretty persistently a real benefit, albeit a small and boring one, and unusually it's a quality that overall favors the player; enemy stacks of Humans will inevitably lose their Fighting Spirit bonus as you work your way to victory, whereas decent play on your part will almost never involve serious enough casualties for your Traitor Humans to end up losing their bonus. I'd rather have had something more interesting and influential, but honestly I think it's better than what came before.

Morale-wise, Humans still have a mono-racial Morale bonus. Note that Light and Dark Humans are considered to be different kinds for this purpose, and in fact as you'll see in a moment trying to put Light and Dark Humans together is a recipe for disaster. (Not that you get much opportunity to do so, mind)

Now, in terms of Morale being influenced by mixing factions, each version of Humans has a different set of opinions. The Light version goes...

-5 Morale from Traitor Human presence in allies.
-1 Morale from Light Elven presence in allies.
-5 Morale from Dark Elven presence in allies.
-1 Morale from Light Dwarven presence in allies.
-5 Morale from Zwergr presence in allies.
-2 Morale from Viking presence in allies.
-5 Morale from Orc presence in allies.
-5 Morale from Demonic presence in allies.
-5 Morale from Undead presence in allies.

... Dark Side Humans (The Light ones) are really racist, even now being offended a little by their fellow Light races who aren't human. Which fits the narrative, but is still an interesting choice regardless.

Note that the in-game graphics don't provide separate icons for Dark versions of Light races, which is a bit surprising to me given how many individual units had custom icons that aren't even used by the game! They'd only need 3 little icons. Were I more of an artist I'd have modified the existing ones myself and leave a note here about how those are custom graphics... but as-is, 'Violetnred' whipped up some and graciously allowed me to use them.

Traitor Humans, meanwhile...

-5 Morale from Light Human presence in allies.
-5 Morale from Light Elven presence in allies.
-1 Morale from Dark Elven presence in allies.
-5 Morale from Light Dwarven presence in allies.
-1 Morale from Zwergr presence in allies.
-2 Morale from Viking presence in allies.

... are the flipped version for the most part, other than being completely unbothered by the 'core' Dark races.

Note that Pyromages haven't returned, like all the other Ice and Fire content. Too bad.

Stranger is that Rune Mages have been cut. This is particularly surprising because they have a Traitor Human graphic!



It's sad, because it's one of the cooler Dark graphics in the game. I particularly like how the green jewel turns black/dark grey. Yet another piece of evidence that Dark Side's ambitions were greater than what it ended up being.

That said, while the Dark Rune Mage looks cool, I'm not terribly bothered at seeing Rune Mages go. They've always been silly, gimmicky, and not that fun to use or interesting to fight. So this is one piece of cut content I don't mind.

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Peasant/Farmer
Level: 1
Hiring Cost: 10
Leadership: 5
Attack/Defense: 1 / 1
Initiative/Speed: 3 / 2
Health: 6
Damage: 1-2 Physical

Damage (Weed Killer): 2-4 Physical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents: None
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Team Spirit (Does nothing), Weed Killer (Calls the Weed Killer attack against Plants), Fighting Spirit (60% or more equals +1)

Team Spirit has been overhauled into accidentally doing nothing. It's coded the same as Dark Side's version of Horde: +50% bonus that goes down as casualties are suffered. Only... Peasants/Farmers have 1 base Attack. So the game sees it should add 0.5 Attack, then rounds it down to 0. Thus: it doesn't actually do anything. Oops!

Otherwise they've switched over to the new Human factional Ability. That's it.

The Farmer isn't a terribly interesting redesign, but they're functional enough. The faded coloration of everything makes it easy to imagine that Farmers don't have as great of lives as Peasants do... which... is actually a little odd, given Dark Side's story. Oh well.

In any event, there's not really any reason to use Farmers. In prior games they were at least one of the better Sacrifice fodder possibilities once you'd dropped them in favor of more combat-useful units, but Priestesses of Blood let you use summons as fuel, so why would you use Farmers as Sacrifice fodder, given that using them costs you actual Gold, not to mention unit stocks? Worsening the issue is that a lot of the Item support that in prior games gave Peasants more of a chance, like the Assassin's Dagger and Pilgrim's Boots, simply doesn't exist. There's some pretty good support in the game for Traitor Humans, but the support in question doesn't do anything to bias you toward Farmers over other Traitor Humans.

Seriously, skip them unless you're trying to challenge yourself or something.


Swordsman/Sword Master
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 70
Leadership: 35
Attack/Defense: 10 / 16
Initiative/Speed: 3 / 3
Health: 35
Damage: 4-5 Physical
Resistances: 20% Physical
Talents: Smashing Blow (Reload: 2. 6-10 Physical damage melee attack)
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Armored (20% Physical resistance), Prudence (Once 30% of the stack has died, the stack has a 30% chance to evade when attacked), Fighting Spirit (50% or more is +1)

Nearly no change. Their factional Abilities have swapped, but that's it.

Prudence's description in-game claims a pretty significant overhaul I like the sound of, where the evasion is innate and rises as casualties are suffered... but the code is still the same as the last two games. So it really is just the factional Ability stuff.

I've never really given them a shot, personally, as there's not much reason to use them given...


Guardsman/Guard
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 120
Leadership: 60
Attack/Defense: 17 / 21
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 3
Health: 58
Damage: 7-10 Physical
Resistances: 20% Physical, 10% Fire
Talents: Smashing Blow (Reload: 1. Melee attacks a single enemy for 10-15 Physical damage per Guardsman)
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Armored (20% Physical resistance and 10% Fire resistance), Commander (+1 Morale for allied Swordsmen and Bowmen/Traitor counterparts), Prudence (Once 30% of the stack has died, the stack has a 30% chance to evade when attacked), Fighting Spirit (40% or more is +1)

... how good Guards have become.

They've picked up minor Fire resistance, their Attack has gone up 2 and their Defense 4, they've gained 8 Health (Bringing them juuuust shy of 1-1 Leadership-to-Health), +1-2 base Damage while Smashing Blow has gained +1-3, but their Leadership has gone up by 10 points. And of course they've swapped to the new Human factional Ability.

Overall this is probably the best they've been in the series.

As with their cousins, Prudence has a new description in-game, but the same ol' mechanics.

Regardless, I don't use them much, personally, but that's in part because...


Knight/Dark Knight
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 1000
Leadership: 160
Attack/Defense: 27 / 27
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 160
Damage (Default): 16-18 Physical

Damage (Dragon Slayer): 21-27 Physical
Resistances: 30% Physical, 30% Fire
Talents: Circle Attack (Reload: 2. A Physical melee attack that also strikes all enemies around the Knight for 15-20 damage. The 'target' unit retaliates, if possible), Second Wind (Reload: 2. Can grant an allied troop that has already moved a second turn that occurs only after all other turns have been resolved, so long as the allied unit is below Level 5, its Leadership total is 320 times the stack's size or less. Using Second Wind doesn't end the Knight's turn or use AP)
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Steel Armor (30% Physical resistance), Valor (+1 Morale), Dragon Slayer (Calls the Dragon Slayer attack against Dragons and 30% Fire resistance), Mastery (Defense increases by 30% of base every time the Paladin takes damage, to a maximum of 90% more than base), Fighting Spirit (40% or more equals +1 Morale)

... Knights have actually become kinda awesome.

They've stolen Second Wind from Paladins, and it's glorious, making Knights finally a distinctive and worthwhile unit in their own right! (It's a smaller number per head, but that's because they have less Leadership than Paladins do. It still works out to "a unit whose Leadership is no more than twice this stack's") And... that's the only change, aside the Human factional stuff. Which is fine, because just giving them Second Wind is actually enough all by itself!

Incidentally, having Fighting Spirit helps offset that the modifications to how Morale works have weakened Valor. +2 Morale in Dark Side is still weaker than +1 Morale in Armored Princess and Warriors of the North, but by a small enough margin it largely doesn't matter. Though it helps that Traitor Humans have fairly serious Morale support...

It's sort of weird that Dark Knights keep the cross on the chest. It's really too bad a lot of the Dark graphics are fairly minimalist reskins, if understandable, as it leads to oddities like this. I actually do like the Dark Knight's color scheme, though. The light blue bits look surprisingly nice with the dark silver.

Anyway, running the Nightmare Title with the Order of Twilight medallion and the Traitor Human newspaper to massively slash Traitor Human Leadership costs (And max out their Morale!) while playing Neoline to get insane Leadership and so on lets you use Dark Knights as a shockingly effective nuke. Just Teleport them in, maybe have a Wizard Telekinesis something for better placement, and then Circle Attack to hit 4-5 units for incredible damage. You can even use Orc Shield to make it nearly impossible for them to take real damage. It's a lot of fun, and it's finally the case that Circle Attack makes (Dark) Knights uniquely useful, as Dark Side gives so much more ability to manipulate enemy composition: Black Hole can pull together a standard formation into a clustered bunch of five, and then a Wizard uses Telekinesis to pull the middle unit out of the way, and there you go your Knights can hit five units at once and 'target' whichever one is going to die/do the least damage when it does retaliate.

It's a lot of fun!

Daert finds Dark Knights basically useless, and Bagyr has trouble justifying them as you advance into the mid-game, which in turn means there's an element of luck to how long they're actually worth using (To wit: did you find a Teleport scroll before your Rage turned godly, or after?), exacerbated by the fact that natural stocks of Dark Knights tend to be frustratingly limited, forcing you to lean heavily on Sacrifice if you want them to keep up, particularly if you actually accept casualties, but seriously Neoline using them is great.


Horseman/Horseman
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 1100
Leadership: 180
Attack/Defense: 29 / 25
Initiative/Speed: 7 / 5
Health: 150
Damage: 14-18 Physical
Resistances: 20% Physical, 20% Fire
Talents: Ram (Charge: 1. Charges in a straight line to inflict 16-20 Physical damage on a target with no chance of retaliation. Demands at least 3 tiles between user and target to initiate, but also provides 1 extra AP for every 2 tiles between the user and the target for calculating distance), Battle Cry (Reload: 3. All adjacent allies, as well as the user, gain +1 to Initiative for 2 turns. Does not end the turn)
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Armor (20% Physical resistance), Horseman (+10% of base damage per tile traveled in a straight line when initiating an attack), Fire Resistance (20% Fire resistance), Fighting Spirit (40% or more equals +1 Morale)

They've picked up two Talents!

Ram's 'bonus AP' description is a bit confusing, but it basically means that it's not cheatastically infinite like classic charging Talents were but is still fairly generous if you're using it 'properly'. A target 7 tiles out is in Ramming range if you're at 4-5 AP left, for example, and 7 tiles covers the majority of a battlefield all by itself on most battlefields. It also claims there needs to be 4 tiles between the user and the target, and this is incorrect: the target needs to be 4 or more tiles distant, which means 3 tiles between the Horseman and the target.

Also note that while Ram has higher base damage than their regular attack, the Horseman Ability will effortlessly push ahead of it in any situation you can actually use Ram, and the Ability doesn't actually benefit Ram. As such, Ram is not actually a 'super attack', but rather is a way to cover hilarious distances at once and a way to get in an attack without worrying about retaliation. If all you care about is damage output, you're better off using a straight attack. (So to speak)

The Horseman is also the first of a portion of the Dark units where the Dark name is... the Light name. End line. Not even a Dark before it. Ouch.

Unfortunately, Horsemen's accessibility situation is a pain. In most of my runs I've only seen them in one particular castle in Monteville, with said castle only stocking them after I've conquered Galenrim. If you've conquered Galenrim, you're already near the end of the game, leaving little room to actually take advantage of Horsemen! Worse, they're not even guaranteed at that castle. I'd love to give Horsemen a real try in Dark Side, but the game undermines that scenario. Admittedly one run got them in Portand, so it's at least possible to get them early...

You can potentially get around this if you're strongly invested in giving them a real try; if you can arrange to Flames of Passion a large stack of Horsemen (Such as can be found in Atrixus or Helvedia) and then end the battle before they time out while having at least one rank in Puppeteer and at least one open Reserves slot, that'll give you a seed population that can then be Sacrificed up into a real fighting force. This is... a pretty tall order, given how hard it is to delay killing a Horsemen stack thanks to their tremendous speed and access to Ram, but it is possible, particularly if you luck into one of the Spells capable of stalling them without hurting them, like Ice Spikes.

It's a little disappointing that Charge and occasionally Battle Cry make them tremendous pains to deal with -they'll frequently hit something of yours before you have a chance to do anything, and having key units gain Initiative can also mess up your plans- while you have so little opportunity to really leverage them yourself, given they've always been a unit that was more hazardous in AI hands than it was useful in player hands, but if Dark Side's scenario design was more polished this would be clearly their best-handled entry in the series.


Bowman/Bow Master
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 100
Leadership: 40
Attack/Defense: 16 / 10
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2
Health: 34
Damage (Ranged): 3-4 Physical

Damage (Melee): 2-3 Physical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents: Ice Arrow (Charge: 1. 3-4 Physical damage against a single enemy at range, and Freezes the target), Flaming Arrow (Reload: 3. 3-4 Physical damage against a single enemy at range, and Burns the target)
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Archer (Range: 6), Fighting Spirit (50% or more equals +1)

-10 Leadership, Flaming Arrow is weaker (Identical in strength to their base attack, specifically) but now reloads, Ice Arrow has inexplicably reverted to Physical damage with Flaming Arrow joining it, and of course they've swapped out Human factional Abilities. The overall result is that Bowmen are more a fairly generic ranged attacker that happens to inflict damage over time effects, one of which also slows the enemy, where they used to be able to outright pick on weaknesses/work around enemy Physical resistances. It's a strange decision.

I actually think the Bow Master looks snazzier than the Bowman, aside the unhealthy pallor of their skin. The dull teal is a surprisingly nice color!

In real terms, I tend to struggle to justify using Bow Masters. Skeleton Archers are still better as glass cannons than them, with the issue exacerbated by the fact that Bow Masters can't work around enemy resistances anymore (While Skeleton Archers still can), while Imps and Scoffer Imps are usually better at spreading Burns. The one thing they have going in their favor is that Freezing a key target at will is something they have little competition on, and Dark Side gives you such great non-unit tools for immobilizing or delaying units that I don't tend to miss Ice Arrow. They're serviceable when backed by the full might of Traitor Human support, but no further than 'serviceable', and they tend to be underwhelming without it.

Which is a bit surprising, given that they were a very solid unit in Armored Princess (And a decent, if frail, unit in The Legend), and the reduction in Leadership means that their base damage output is around 20% higher, before you use Traitor Human support to slash their Leadership further. Then again, in The Legend you had a Skill that could cut archer Leadership by 20%, and Quick Draw in Armored Princess and Warriors of the North was its own great support, and Warriors of the North could further justify them via a Dragon Arrows-providing Item if you lucked into it. Dark Side doesn't have anything to encourage you to use archers in particular, not relative to prior games.


Priest of Light/Novice/Heretic
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 100
Leadership: 50
Attack/Defense: 10 / 10
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2
Health: 32
Damage: 2-4 Magic
Resistances: 10% Magic
Talents: Healing (Charges: 2. Heals a single alignment-matching ally for 10 Health. Alternatively can be used to do 5 Magic damage to an alignment-opposing enemy), Bless (Reload: 1. For two turns, a single target ally whose alignment is not opposed does maximum damage on their basic attacks. Alternatively a single enemy whose alignment is opposed can be afflicted with Divine Shackles, subtracting 30% Attack and Defense for 2 turns)
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Divine Strike (Range: 6. +50% damage against opposed alignment enemies), No Melee Penalty, Divine Defense (Cannot be raised by necromancy or converted by Werewolves), Magic Protection (10% Magic resistance), Fighting Spirit (50% or more equals +1)

The big change here is Healing, with it now functioning as a nuke option. The in-game description additionally claims Healing reduces the duration of Bleeding and Plague, but alas, no such functionality is present. Divine Strike being overhauled does makes them noticeably more general, which is actually another factor in why Bow Masters tend to be difficult to justify using; in prior games, Priests tended to outperform Bowmen when fighting Undead (And Demons, after The Legend), but in Dark Side that's switched to 'Priests tend to outperform Bowmen if you're not fighting Neutral units', as the vast majority of enemies you fight are Light enemies, followed by Neutral enemies, with only a small fraction of combats including Dark or Viking enemies.

And yes I'm throwing in the Novice here. The only mechanical differences are that they're a female unit for the purpose of Connoisseur of Beauty (They otherwise are classed as a male humanoid: yes, the nuns can be distracted by the beauty of your Demonesses, not to mention tempted to fight on the wrong side), they have a maximum effective range of 7, and, rather bizarrely, that resurrecting them as friendly undead does work, where Priests of Light will arise as their living self, still hostile. Their actual statline is otherwise identical to a Priest of Light. It's weird. Though honestly I'm glad to have no incentive to use Novices; for some reason they actually have a unique attack sound effect, and the sound tuning is poor enough they're fairly grating to listen to, unlike Priests, and I'd be irritated by gameplay encouraging inflicting that on myself.

Curiously, the Novice's medallion has the same symbol as the Heretic's medallion, rather than the Priest of Light's medallion. I'm honestly not sure what to make of that. Were there plans to have Novices join your forces as-is, instead of being a Light unit with no proper Dark counterpart, or something? It's a strange detail for an already-odd unit.

I like the Heretic's design overall. The greenish shade actually looks really nice, and in general it's a distinct palette without just being 'DARKNESS'. Also a minor touch in linguistic terms is that Holy Shackles has been renamed to Divine Shackles -after all, you're the bad guys now, right?

As always, Inquisitors tend to push aside Priests in real terms, but this is one of the better games for considering using Priests. (Well, Heretics) Heresiarchs can't imitate the damage potential of using Healing as a nuke, and Holy Anger has been replaced with an effect that doesn't Bless the target, making Heretics genuinely distinct from Heresiarchs. If you've got a unit you want Blessed in every battle? Heretics. If you want infinite-range decent damage that doesn't care about having an enemy in your face? Heretic. Both? HERETIC.

But Heresiarchs have better damage and resurrection is amazing so yeah you'll still tend to lean more toward Heresiarchs.

On the flipside, enemy Priests are way more annoying than they've been in prior games, since it's so difficult to prevent them from nuking one of your units from across the field with Healing. I tend to try to Jealousy them if possible -not a unit next to them, as that often provokes a Healing nuke- as it's one of the only reliable ways of preventing that aside outright killing them. In the extreme early game, where your unit options are limited, it's not even possible to swap out your Dark units for Neutral units to stop them. Even once that is an option, Dark units includes a number of powerful units and you get fairly good support for them, so it tends to be difficult to justify just fielding an entire army of Neutrals.


Inquisitor of Light/Heresiarch
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 300
Leadership: 100
Attack/Defense: 16 / 16
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 70
Damage: 5-7 Magic
Resistances: 10% Magic
Talents: Resurrection (Charges: 2. Heals a single target ally for 5 HP per member of the casting stack, resurrecting fallen units if 'overhealing'. Doesn't work on opposing alignment units), Anger (Reload: 2. Grants a single ally the Anger buff for 2 turns, causing the unit to do +50% damage against the opposing alignment type and generate doubled Rage when attacking the opposing alignment type. Alternatively can be used on an opposing alignment unit to inflict Divine Shackles, lowering Attack and Defense by 40% for 2 turns)
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Divine Strike (Range: 7. +50% damage against opposing alignment units), No Melee Penalty, Divine Defense (Cannot be raised by necromancy or converted by Werewolves), Magic Resistance (10% Magic resistance), Fighting Spirit (50% or more equals +1)

Resurrection has lost a noticeable chunk of its healing power but gained a second charge, Divine Strike has been made more general, and Holy Anger has been renamed and switched back to reloading but its mechanics have been massively overhauled, no longer Blessing the target and now only boosting Rage generated on strikes instead of providing an immediate injection of Rage. They play largely the same outside that, but that stuff is pretty significant.

Do note that the 'doubled Rage' generation is... misleading. The beneficiary does generate twice as much Rage as they would without it, but that's not 'boosts damage by 50%, which boosts Rage by 50%, then doubles that'. It's 'the final result is twice what it would be if the target didn't have Anger at all'. So it's really more like a 33% boost to Rage generation, in terms of what you'd intuitively expect of the mechanics.

The Heresiarch is one of the niftier reskins, and another one that clearly had a little effort put into it. If you look closely, you can see the Heresiarch's medallion has a different symbol from the starburst on the Inquisitor of Light's medallion, most notably, but even just the more uniform purple color is a shift, in the sense that Inquisitors of Light have those red sleeves on their white robes while Heresiarchs rock the purple the whole way.

Heresiarchs benefit a fair amount from Divine Strike and to a lesser extent from Anger's modifications. Since the vast majority of enemies you face are Light enemies, in most fights Heresiarchs aren't 'a Resurrection and Rage source that burns turns attacking things when it isn't doing one of those', but rather are a reasonably solid ranged attacker who also does those things, instead of only being okay combatants in intermittent Undead combats. The Traitor Human support also helps, of course, in particular making it easier to shrug off surprisingly large casualties, assuming you've got the stocks. I pretty consistently use Heresiarchs in the early-midgame just because their Resurrection lets me save Gold and push forward on Grand Strategy ranks, and I'm always pleasantly surprised at how good they are at actually killing things.


Archmage/Wizard
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 900
Leadership: 200
Attack/Defense: 20 / 24
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 2
Health: 140
Damage (Ranged): 5-8 Magic

Damage (Melee): 6 Physical
Resistances: 50% Magic
Talents: Magic Shield (Reload: 1. A single ally takes halved damage for 3 turns), Fighting Trance (Reload: 2. For two turns, doubles ranged damage and adds +50% to ranged Shock chance, but halves Defense. In addition, ranged attacks will bounce to two targets, doing 1/3rd the damage and having 1/3rd the Shock chance on the second target and 1/3rd of that on the third target. Each target has to be within 4 tiles of the last target. In exchange, disables access to the Archmage's Talents for the two-turn duration), Telekinesis (Charge: 1. Moves a single unit, friend or foe, into an unoccupied tile adjacent to their current position. Doesn't work on objects such as Gremlins)
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Lightning (Range: Infinite. 25% chance to Shock, both at range and in melee), Magic Protection (50% Magic resistance), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects), Aura of Antimagic (Adjacent allies who lack this Ability get +10% Magic resistance), Fighting Spirit (+50% or more equals +1)

Bouncing shots! They also now have an innate Shock chance in melee but don't have Fighting Trance affect melee Shock chance, and Fighting Trance no longer boosts their crit chance. Note that the English description for Fighting Trance has been overhauled, but aside mentioning the bouncing shots it's more accurate to how Fighting Trance worked in prior games. One game too late on overhauling the description...

And of course they've swapped over to the new Human factional mechanic.

Note that the game still claims Fighting Trance disables Aura of Antimagic, and is still wrong. Thankfully.

Wizards look more neat in their UI graphic than they do in-game, alas. In-game it's actually fairly hard to tell they look different from Archmages at all.

Wizards are notable for being one of the units that benefits especially strongly from the Berserker Skill, as the bounce shots can trigger its 'halve the enemy stack' effect at full effectiveness, rendering the weak base damage of the bounces potentially irrelevant.

That said, while Archmages have never been damage power-houses, tending to justify themselves more from the utility of Shock, Telekinesis, and Magic Shield, Dark Side is particularly unfriendly to them in this regard, as Heretics and Heresiarchs tend to outperform them in raw damage if you're not fighting Neutrals. The bouncing shots makes Wizards even more effective as a support piece, but if you're looking for a ranged Magic attacker you should be looking at Heretics and Heresiarchs. The Heresiarch's 7 range is usually enough to avoid range penalties, in particular.

Though keep in mind it's possible to stack Archmage's Staves, at which point Archmages pull ahead very strongly. Bagyr can do this fairly early in a run, reliably, so amusingly he's arguably the best leader for Archmages.

Annoyingly, Dark Side has introduced a bug where Magic Shield's damage reduction is not accounted for by damage preview. The King's Bounty games are normally extremely good about the damage preview reliably being a fully accurate predictor of damage (Crits not being included in predicted damage is the primary exception... and Dark Side placing crits at 100% of max damage makes this distinction untrue for it), so it's easy to overlook this is happening even when it's right in front of you, but can be very aggravating in the early game, when you're trying to get Rage and/or Spell kills and whoops the prediction lied to you!

Archmages are also surprisingly aggravating as enemies, as Dark Side has finally overhauled the Shock status so it can set Initiative to 1 in later turns of its duration. As Archmages have bouncing shots, you can easily end up with all your high-Initiative units acting last in a turn -or even your entire army if a couple Archmages get particularly lucky on Shock inflictions. Admittedly this boost to Shock can sometimes benefit you... but Initiative tends to favor the player, especially as you level up and get Skills to boost Initiative. So mostly it makes them more aggravating of enemies.

It's worth noting that Wizards are no longer particularly amazing or important for building Medal progress. Magic Shield no longer advances a Medal, and while Trapper still exists, Dark Side has made it much easier to get it maxed quickly, and much less important to do so. They're still worthwhile for combat, but if you used them for Medal progress in the past couple games, don't mindlessly grab Wizards to repeat that.


Paladin/Dark Paladin
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 1500
Leadership: 220
Attack/Defense: 36 / 36
Initiative/Speed: 3 / 2
Health: 200
Damage (Default): 16-20 Physical

Damage (Holy/Dark Warrior): 24-30 Physical
Resistances: 30% Physical, 30% Magic, 10% Fire
Talents: Prayer (Charge: 1. Heals the stack and adjacent organic allies who are below Level 5 and not of the opposing alignment for 24 HP per member of the stack, resurrecting the dead where applicable. Units of the opposing alignment -even allied ones- instead take 14-16 Magic damage, and spontaneously flee 1 tile away)
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Armored (30% Physical resistance), Divine Defense (Cannot be raised by necromancy or converted by Werewolves), Holy/Dark Warrior (30% Magic resistance and calls the Dark/Holy Warrior attack against enemies of the opposing alignment), Fighting Spirit (40% or more equals +1)

+6 Attack, they've lost Mastery and Second Wind, Prayer does more healing but the same damage. It's also been made waaaay more general in its healing/offensive utility. I quite like this shift.

Note that the game claims Prayer can gain a charge by killing opposing-alignment enemies, but no such mechanic exists at all. Alas.

It's interesting to me that the Dark Paladin's chest piece remains the same yellow-gold shade as the Paladin's version. Unlike the Knight, it looks to me like it was a deliberate choice to keep the cross in, and in general I actually like the Dark Paladin's color scheme.

Prayer being more general of an offensive talent might seem to reinforce the prior dynamic of Paladins tending to push aside Knights, but not exactly. First of all, a Paladin stack is ideally taking some damage and then Praying, which means you'll generally be using them in a way that reduces the damage they deal relative to what you'd do with a Knight. More importantly, since Knights have stolen Second Wind and Paladins have lost Mastery, Knights are waaaaay better at damage output (A unit getting a second turn is more opportunity for damage output, after all) and at absorbing punishment. Thirdly, you reliably get access to some Knights from Portland, but you have to conquer Inselburg before you get access to Paladins, which is to say there's a fairly lengthy portion of the game where Knights don't even have to worry about potential competition from Paladins.

To be honest, with how significantly Dark Side has hurt Paladins, I tend to find it difficult to justify using them. They're better at pure resurrection than Heresiarchs (The Heresiarch's Resurrection value is 5% of their Leadership twice, while Dark Paladins heal a little over 10% of their own Leadership value per target and can affect multiple units), but Heresiarchs can contribute to a fight from turn 1 with no support and no danger to themselves, which may well prevent the need for resurrection in the first place, so I tend to find Dark Paladins redundant with Heresiarchs. The mass damage/flee thing is interesting, but requires support to arrange in the first place and tends to be less useful than letting a Knight get mobbed while backed by Orc Shield etc.

If Dark Warrior's Prayer-recharge were a real mechanic I'd probably be more fond of Dark Paladins, but it isn't, and honestly with how much Traitor Human Leadership reduction you can get and how powerful Rage is it would be pretty tricky to meet the requirements if it did exist. 50% of your Dark Paladin stack's Leadership in kills would be a tall order if you were running 180% of your Leadership in Dark Paladins.

Dark Paladins are serviceable, mind, but they stand out less than you might expect, and you've got only so many slots to commit to units.


Witch Hunter/Mage Killer
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 150
Leadership: 55
Attack/Defense: 14 / 12
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 55
Damage: 4-6 Physical

Damage (Mage Slayer): 6-9 Physical
Resistances: 50% Magic
Talents: Dispel (Reload: 2. Purges 2 randomly chosen effects on a target unit), Magic Box (Charge: 1. Targets a single enemy stack of units. For three turns, the affected stack will take 6-8 Magic damage anytime they use a Talent. This number scales to the Witch Hunter stack's size)
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Mage Slayer (Calls the Mage Slayer attack against mages), Magic Protection (+50% Magic resistance), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects), Restoration (Purges all negative effects at the beginning of the unit's turn), Fighting Spirit (50% or more equals +1)

No longer Neutral! They've lost a Level, had their Leadership more than halved, had a lot of stats reworked appropriately (eg their Health is half previous games), and they've lost their random self-buffing plus Magic Lock, and in exchange have acquired a Dispel effect. Their damaging Talent is also much less obnoxious. The overall result is that they're a supporting unit more than anything else, and are much less frustrating to face.

Note that the in-game description for Dispel claims it won't purge eg Poisoning, Bleeding, etc, but this is slightly misleading as Poison is not exempt from being Dispelled. Bleeding, Freeze, and Burn, yeah, those are immune to Dispels now, but not Poison. For some reason.

This is probably one of the most unfortunate Dark version reskins in the game. They look waaay too similar. I really think this is one case where they should've used the old graphic as the Traitor Human one and made a new graphic for the Light Human version, instead of using the old skin for the Light version and then making an even darker version for the Traitor Human version. The Mage Killer's graphic looks more like a washed-out version of the Witch Hunter's graphic than an actually distinct skin.

As a bonus issue, Mage Killers are actually internally tagged as Of The Light. They don't enrage your Dark forces, thankfully, but it's clearly not intended, and has some odd edge cases it matters to.

Personally, I've never been able to really justify using them. I've tried, but they just aren't that great. Notably, Dark Side has a fairly low presence of enemy mages; once you're past the Human forces, which doesn't take that long, all that's really left is that Elven battlegroups can have Druids. Mage Slayer is thus even more niche than it already was, and while the Dispel Talent is fairly useful -as is their innate Restoration Ability, as the AI doesn't 'see' it and so will target them with negative effects that won't do anything- ultimately they tend to underperform.

Minor point when fighting Witch Hunters; it's easy to think of Restoration as meaning that you shouldn't eg use the Priestesses of Blood's Old Wound's Talent on Witch Hunters, or that Plague is a waste of time (If eg playing Neoline and trying to grind up her Demon-boosting Medal), but while Bleeding won't hurt them with percentile damage, any attacks that hit them before their turn rolls around will still benefit from their max Health being lowered. This has always been true, of course, but it's a lot more relevant in Dark Side than in prior entries.

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Traitor Humans tend to see at least some use in any run simply because you get access to them so early -before your Shelter stocks of core Dark units have a chance to take off, for one- and also because Traitor Humans get such massive support. You can consistently get them to -35% or -45% Leadership just from one Item plus the Nightmare Title (For -35%) plus optionally another Item. (For -45%) These Items are guaranteed, and while I've had the Nightmare Title be glitchy (One run it was given to me before I'd ever left the Shelter) I've never had a run fail to offer it, so there's no luck component to this. That's huge, and Nightmare and the -20% Leadership Item both also add +2 to Traitor Human Morale, which in conjunction with Fighting Spirit means they get the full massive benefits of +5 Morale! Which for one thing means lots of crits.

The main issue with Traitor Human usage is that their stocks are heavily slanted toward the early game, and tend to be appropriately sized, so if you're not willing to keep Sacrificing up more copies -or rely on Neoline's Recruiter effect- at some point you're going to drop them. By a similar token, enemy Humans are all over the place in the beginning of the game, but once you've conquered Portland, Insulberg, and Monteville you're almost entirely done fighting Humans. This leads to some kind of odd things, like that you'll have barely any opportunity to try using Zwerg or Dark Elves against Human forces.

Regardless, Humans and Traitor Humans are actually handled surprisingly well by Dark Side, and indeed in a lot of ways I think Dark Side has my favorite Human factional handling. If they're representative of what the devs of Dark Side would've done if they hadn't been forced to rush the game, it's a real shame that it was rushed, because the Human design strongly suggests actually quite solid a grasp of game design principles, and one sufficiently different from the prior three entries it would've made for a refreshing change of pace.

Next time, we check out Dwarves and Zwerg,