[7] In the standard Age of Sigmar miniature wargame, Archaon is a very powerful unit whose army-level abilities, when supported by his followers known as the Slaves to Darkness, focus mostly on further empowering him.
[10][13] In the skirmish edition of the game Warcry, both the Untamed Beasts and Corvus Cabal war parties fight for the sake of gaining his favor.
Archaon was the product of pregnancy from rape, his mother suffered maternal death thereafter, his father rejected and abandoned him on the steps of a church, and he attempted suicide in order to prevent the prophecy that he'd become a world-ending villain.
[30] In 2015, Archaon's model for the Warhammer miniatures series was given an updated visual aesthetic for the Age of Sigmar, including a new mount, a mutated dragon named Dorghar, with three heads representing three of the four Chaos gods.
James Whitbrook of Gizmodo referred to Archaon as the third "most ridiculous badass" of the original Warhammer Fantasy tabletop miniature game, noting that he became the most powerful and evil character not once, but twice.
[33] Matthew Pedersen of Gamers Decide ranked Archaon as the top legendary lord playable in Total War: Wahammer and noted him as the clear antagonist of the game's narrative,[34] and Sid Natividad of The Gamer ranked Archaon in the number one spot for playable lords in the second iteration of the game, Total War: Warhammer II, noting him as "too angry to die.
"[26] Tyler M. of Mengel Miniatures regarded Archaon's backstory, as portrayed in the Black Library novelizations, as tragic due to the circumstances which led the character to become evil.
[20][35] University of Jena staff member Franz Klug compared Archaon to the second of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, War, as well as the Antichrist as described in the First Epistle of John.