Chaos Warbands - the Quickening

Random charts galore

Optimus Prime and I managed to get another game of Chaos Warbands in. We started with lots of rolling on a table to work out what daemon weapon my autobot foes wizard had been rewarded with after smashing me in the first game. This, like many things in chaos warbands, took way too long. The daemon weapon charts favours you rolling up a daemon prince that in turn makes generating what the weapon is capable of an exercise in perpetual dice rolling. It’s too much effort for too little result. We called it a chaos sword instead and one roll on the chaos sword chart later we were ready to play.

Menaron and thugs

Warble Guts brave band

The enemy

About a month back we generated some random missions using charts in the Realm of Chaos books. Optimus had printed out some tunnels and caves we could use for the kidnap mission we had planned. We came up with a few ideas we thought would add to the scenario like visibility, the composition of the kidnap victim’s warband and the imminent arrival of a band of d4+2 ogres. These are things that a referee would normally come up with when they create the scenario. Having no-one willing to act as referee we had to come up with our own scenario twists. As it turns out a chaos marauder (whom I shall call Menaron) and his six thug minions had taken refuge in ogre-infested tunnels in the chaos wastes. Both Warble Gut and his rival had been cursed into seeking Menaron out and capturing him. Warble Gut is the name of my chaos dwarf leader, I have no idea what Optimus Prime's warband leader is called but for the purposes of this write up I shall call him Nemesis.

The Ogre caves deep in the Chaos Wastes.

The warbands entered from opposite ends of the caves. Warble Guts beastmen charged forth bellowing and were met by Menaron’s men who began rolling back the bestial tide despite being heavily outnumbered. Warble Gut and his hobgoblin troops were trapped behind their beastmen allies and couldn’t assist. Seeking to do something productive Warble Gut invoked his chaos powers of levitation to find some way of joining the scrap.

Warble Gut down and the band in disarray

In the meantime nemesis had been busy cowering outside of Menaron’s thugs field of vision casually sniping them with magic. Eventually he summoned the courage to engage in hand to hand where his suckers and claws made short work of his thuggish foe. Finally the cowardly wizards saw an opportunity to snipe Warble Gut like they were playing some kind of online shooter instead of the tough and gritty Warhammer. You know the game where ranges are purposefully reduced to encourage people to mix it toe to toe. The game that encourages smashing skulls with your hefty Warhammer or the razor sharp poisonous claws the chaos gods in their infinite wisdom granted you. Nemesis threw magic pebbles at Warble Gut who was then astounded as his mighty chaos armour failed him miserably. His leg snapped like a twig and he fell. Two games in and the mighty champion of Khorne had twice been taken out like a chump before seeing combat. The injury chart would indicate that Warble Gut had sustained a leg wound that would reduce his future movement to a miserable two inches making the likely hood of him ever frenzying slim, you need to charge to do that and with a move of two there is fat chance of that. Even getting into melee in future seemed exceedingly remote.

Ogres come home and begin smashing

Run away

Menaron finally falls

Hobgoblin final stand

Menaron continued to roll through the beastmen, his thug companions were gradually whittled away thanks to some mediocre rolling. Menaron seemed blissfully unaware that he was meant to be kidnapped as he gleefully set about single handedly destroying the remnants of Warble Guts warband. Finally he fell but by this stage six ogres had arrived. The sole remaining injured beastman began dragging the unconscious Menaron out of the tunnels with the assistance of a sensible hobgoblin while the remaining hobgoblins held a rear guard action. Warble Guts nemesis fled the field like a coward avoiding the ogres completely. The hobgoblins lasted a good while before the ogres finally put them down. Wounding an ogre let alone killing them is an all but impossible feat for hobgoblins. 5,6’s to hit and 6’s to wound – Yikes!

So a pyrrhic victory as Menaron was eventually subdued and escorted from the board. The cost was too steep for Warble Gut as he and several of his band now have crippled movement rates making the warband almost untenable. A hobgoblin ended up dead but no one else died. Other injuries sustained were minor in nature. Another victory like this will surely see the group disband in crippled disarray.