Realm of Chaos - Chaos Warbands

Chaos, where five guys in armour counts as an army

I've never been the biggest chaos fan probably because of the way they are presented in Warhammer as the inevitable conclusion. The Empire ends in chaos and flames as the corruption within, blah, blah everything was for nought. It's all too bleak and depressing which is probably why GW can't bite the bullet and let one of those Chaos incursions achieve something of note. I do like skirmish games and Chaos Warbands was the first I ever gave a go. Others have said this but it needs repeating; the books as written are almost unplayable and terribly difficult to find anything in. My friend and I have talked about writing up a quick reference sheet for the warband part of the books because it is that darned hard to find anything in these books. The warband rules fight for space alongside rules for 40k, WFB and WFRP. A reference sheet would be worth doing if you were to run an ongoing campaign. Another grumble is that sadly the WFB3 rules don't work well with the skirmish idea behind warbands. The temptation is to scavenge parts out of Mordheim though we would like to keep the game as faithful to the original vision as possible.

We played a game on the weekend. My warband of an ex-chaos dwarf sorcerer and disciple of Khorne verse the twined magicians of Chaos undivided. Things got off to a good start and then went down hill. I mentioned wargaming kharma in my last miniatures post. It was out in force this game.

Look we have terrain now.

The scenario was a race to a bridge. The river was flooded and the ground around the bridge was dangerously muddy. If you crossed the bridge you could cut the rope and leave the other warband stranded and at the mercy of a band of Knights Panthers.

Warble Guts warband

Warble Gut's mighty warband boasted 6 beastmen and 5 hobgoblins. For some reason the hobgoblins had bows though there really was little point in firing with their terrible ballistic skill.

The leaders of the opposition

The opposition were two wizards devoted to the nebulous concept of chaos undivided. Being undivided was a bit of a power down as you missed out on deity specific chaos rewards. WFB3 spell casting rules are a bit weird. Because both wizards had less than 12 magic points they had to pass an intelligence check each round to cast a spell.

One Khorne Stomping coming right up

Things started well enough. I quickly learned that hobgoblins with bows are a stupid idea. My beastmen rush forward ready to engage. The tentacled messy model, based on an old inquisition model if I'm not mistaken, whipped out a scroll and ruined a perfectly good Khorne stomping.

Things go wrong for Warble Gut.

The scroll summons a greater demon. My opponent had nabbed a random roll on the magic item table for the bargain price of 6 points. This turned out to be a scroll, it could of been something crazily powered like a frost blade so I guess there's that. The scroll was a random one and it just so happened to summon a greater demon. Remember earlier when I said I liked random tables?

Demons are tough

The demon goes on to destroy everything. There was some real confusion about how the demons fear radius works. I'm still not sure but was arguing for a generous interpretation to my warband (old habits die hard). I couldn't hurt the demon without a magic weapon and after two rounds of free hacks Warble Gut and his hobgoblins were paste and the beastmen had panicked and buggered off.

Warble Gut was only knocked out.

Gaming Kharma eh? One of these days I will have finished paying for my powergaming childhood and the dice gods will let me win a game or two. The warbands rules are generous and so none of my team were killed though a hobgoblin did suffer brain damage.