Sons of Behemat: Army Analysis

Who are the Sons of Behemat?

The Sons of Behemat are the children of a dead Godbeast, and the most extreme army in Warhammer Age of Sigmar. Where most forces field dozens of models, a gargant army fields a handful — each one a monster that shrugs off fire other armies would fold to, and hits with the subtlety of a collapsing building. It is the purest low-model-count army in the game, and it plays like nothing else. Their lore is covered properly in our Sons of Behemat Faction File.

The Core Fantasy

This is the fantasy of being the biggest thing on the board. Not the cleverest, not the fastest — the biggest. Your army does not out-manoeuvre anybody. It walks at the problem, and the problem stops being a problem.

Expect:

• An army you can carry to the shop in one hand and set up in ninety seconds
• Monsters as your battleline, not as your centrepiece
• Charges that decide games rather than open them
• Every model on the table being one you actually enjoyed painting

How They Play on the Tabletop

The plan is short. Advance, reach the enemy, remove whatever you land on, and stand on the objective daring them to shift you. There is no clever second phase. The skill in this army is not in the combat, it is in choosing which fight to have and getting there in one piece.

What you will love:

• Durability: individually enormous profiles that most units simply cannot chew through
• Damage: a gargant that connects tends to end the conversation entirely
• Presence: your opponent spends the whole game reacting to where your models are pointed
• Speed of setup: no movement trays, no re-basing forty spearmen, no two-hour deployment

What can bite you:

• Activations: the fewest units in the game means the fewest things you can do each turn. You cannot cover the board
• Chaff: a cheap throwaway unit dumped in front of your Mega-Gargant wastes your best charge for pennies
• Focused fire: lose one model and you have lost a meaningful share of your army
• Objective maths: models on points win games, and you have very few models

Bigness Is a Rule, Not a Boast

The faction's signature has always been that its models are treated as genuinely enormous — gargants stride over things smaller armies must walk around, and enemy units that get underfoot suffer for it. That is the mechanical heart of the army: the board is a smaller place for you than it is for your opponent.

The 2026 battletome refresh leans into that further with new army rules, battle formations and the Lore of Behemat used by Ma Maegran, plus a set of realm-shaking Rampages for when a gargant decides to do something spectacular rather than merely violent. Ma Maegran herself is the faction's first proper buff caster — a support piece that makes the giants you already brought better, rather than adding another set of legs. Rules land with the battletome on release day; until then, treat any specific numbers you read online as rumour.

Key Unit Roles (What You'll Commonly Need)

Forget memorising warscrolls. Think in jobs — and with this army, most models do two of them at once:

1) The Anvil-and-Hammer (Mega-Gargants)

Warstompers, Gatebreakers and Kraken-eaters are your army. Each is durable enough to hold ground and violent enough to take it. Which flavour you pick shapes how you play: Warstompers want the fight, Gatebreakers want the thing you are hiding behind, Kraken-eaters want your objective and your possessions.

2) The Bodies (Mancrusher Gargants)

Your cheapest way to hold a second objective and your answer to being outnumbered everywhere. Mancrushers are what stop a gargant list from being three models and a prayer.

3) The Middleweights (Boss-stompers and Rock-hurlers)

The new tier between Mancrusher and Mega-Gargant. Boss-stompers go after enemy elites and characters; the same box builds Rock-hurlers if you would rather have a ranged threat, and those Rock-hurlers form the faction's Spearhead.

4) The Support (Ma Maegran)

Magic, buffs and a pair of Ancient Ghyrochs that make her considerably harder to pick off than the usual support model. New to the army and genuinely new in kind.

5) The Boss (King Brodd)

The faction's named centrepiece and its most characterful kit. Expensive, obvious, and a lovely thing to build a list around.

Getting Started the Smart Way

This is the cheapest army in Age of Sigmar to finish and one of the more expensive to start, because there is no cheap filler. Buy deliberately.

Step 1: One Mega-Gargant

• Build it, paint it, decide whether you actually enjoy painting something that size before you commit to four more.

Step 2: The Spearhead

• The cleanest playable entry point, and the fastest route from box to a real game.

Step 3: Mancrusher Gargants

• Bodies to hold what your big models cannot. This is the step new gargant generals skip and then regret.

Step 4: A support piece

• Ma Maegran to make the rest better, or King Brodd if you would rather your fifth model also be your best one.

Cover those jobs and you have a legal, characterful army in a handful of boxes. Brand new to painting? Start with our beginner painting guide — big flat areas of hide and iron are the ideal place to learn washes and drybrushing.

Common Beginner Mistakes (Avoid These)

• Buying only the big stuff. Four Mega-Gargants looks glorious and loses to anyone who reads the objectives.
• Charging the shiniest target. The enemy centrepiece is rarely the thing winning them the game. The unit standing on the point usually is.
• Walking into chaff. If a cheap screen can eat your charge, kill it or go round it — do not spend your best turn on it.
• Splitting up. With this few activations, two gargants doing separate jobs badly is worse than two doing one job properly.
• Forgetting you are a target. Everything your opponent owns is pointed at you from turn one. Use terrain, even if it feels absurd at your size.

Who the Sons of Behemat are For

"Choose the Sons of Behemat if you want the smallest, largest army in the game — a force of five-ish monsters you can genuinely finish painting, with a game plan you can explain in one sentence. Give them a miss if you like board control, ranged firepower, or having options every turn; this is a sledgehammer, and sledgehammers do not do finesse. Gargants reward picking the right fight and committing to it. Pick well, and nothing on the table can stop you."

Shop Sons of Behemat

Further reading: get the lore in our Faction Files: Sons of Behemat, compare the rest of the Grand Alliance in Ogor Mawtribes: Army Analysis and Orruk Warclans: Army Analysis, or browse the whole Age of Sigmar range.