The Battle of Wurtbad - The Fetid Alliance

Having decided that our battle would be between the Empire and a Nurgle Chaos army we had to iron out the specifics of the army lists. For our Chaos army, two elements had already been decided on, namely the warbands of Rolf Hurtziger, my Nurgle Champion and Owesteen, MLB's Nurgle champion.

Under the rules outlined in Realms of Chaos - the Lost and the Damned, Chaos warbands can be included in Chaos armies as unusual mixed units of different creatures. This could get frustratingly complicated with large armies, but with only 1,000 points to play with seemed reasonably manageable. Under the rules, the points value of a warband is based entirely on the number of rewards received by its champion. This lead to the slightly crazy situation in which my Warband, lead by a level 5 human hero and consisting of three Beastmen, four Orcs, a Dragon-Ogre and a Beast of Nurgle cost exactly the same points as MLB's warband of a level 5 Dark Elf Hero, a level 5 human Wizard and four ghouls, 200 points each. Still, between the two they probably represented 400 points and balanced each other out. It does, emphasise the extent to which Realms of Chaos was based on creating weird and wacky Chaos armies, champions and creatures, rather than competitiveness and fairness.

This left us with 600 points still to spend. With both our warbands lead by only level 5 heroes (the lowest level hero in Warhammer 3rd edition, equivalent to a unit champion) neither seemed up to the job of acting as general. Independent Champions can be included in a Realms of Chaos army, but they must be randomly generated, either from a big list of pre-generated champions or from scratch. But, in our case we already had a model we wanted to use.

For a while I had felt my existing Chaos army lacked a decent centre piece model and when the opportunity came up to grab the Epidemius model cheaply from a convention, I snapped him up before Games Workshop finecast him. I had no intention of using Epidemius himself, I just wanted to get my hands on his Palanquin. Using a combination of old champions bits, Nurglings, bits box fodder and green stuff I fashioned together my Nurgle Champion Balios the Corpulent. Balios would make the ideal general for the Fetid Alliance. The only problem was that he already had a distinctive look of his own. So, rather than randomly generate him we decided to fudge things. Balios was not randomly generated, but he could have been, we simply picked the results that best reflected his look. A Palanquins could already be purchased for champions for fifty points it didn't feel like we had created anything overpowered or under-costed and got a chance to use the Balios model in third edition.

With Balios on board we had 550 points left to spend on troops. I was keen to use some of the more exotic, and thematic elements of the Nurgle army, and we were constrained by the models we had available. With that in mind, we added a unit of Plague Zombies and unit of diseased Flagellants.

The Plague Zombies are really just regular Zombies, but Nurgle is the only Chaos power able to use them and I rather liked the idea of the victims of his various diseases being compelled to follow the army around. It would certainly be intimidating for the defenders of Wurtbad.

The diseased Flagellants are also a uniquely Nurgle unit. Possibly even more demented than standard Flaggelents what they lack in fighting prowess they make up for in Fanaticism, that and the huge cloud of flies that follows them around. I had already started putting a unit of these together to use as Nurgle Marauders in Warhammer 8th edition. Given that I had been inspired by the Realms of Chaos unit in the first place it seemed appropriate to add them to our third edition army list.

Units in Realms of Chaos armies must contain a number of models divisible by the Chaos gods sacred number. In Nurgle's case this is seven so we included 14 Flaggelants and 28 plague Zombies.

This left us with just enough points to buy a Nurgle war altar. This would give a considerable Leadership and close combat bonus to any unit within 12" and, again, I had a model I wanted to use. I assigned the Flaggelants to act as Honour guards. This would cost them their usual Frenzy bonus, but would make them immune to psychology and break tests as long as the altar was still in one piece.

And so, our Chaos army was complete.

The Fetid Alliance

Balios the Corpulent

Level 15 Hero

	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Int	Cl	WP
Balios	2	5	4	4	6	3	4	4	9+2	7	8+1	8+1
Palanquin	6			3	5	3		D6

Chaos Rewards: Immensity (+1 A, -1 I), Face of Nurgle (Cause Fear), Chaos Armour (4+ Save)

Chaos Attributes: Tentacles (1 arm) (+1 FP), Limb loss (1 leg) (½ M), Horns (+1 A, +1 FP)

Palanquin

Total 150 pts

The Warband of Rolf Hurtziger

(Level 5 Human Hero, 3 Beastmen, 4 Orcs, Dragon Ogre, Beast of Nurgle)
200 points

The Warband of Owestine

(Level 5 Dark Elf Hero, 4 Ghouls, Level 5 Human Wizard)
200 points

War Altar of Nurgle

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Int	Cl	WP
4	0	0	0	10	5	0	0	-	-	-	-

+2 Leadership Bonus to units within 12”. +1 Combat Resolution bonus to units with 12”. Cannot reserve move. If destroyed, every unit must make a panic test.

120 Points

The Wretched Brethren – 14 Diseased Flagellants

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Int	Cl	WP
4	2	3	4	4	1	3	1	7	7	7	7

Includes Standard carrying the disease banner (Every time the units suffers a wound in close combat the enemy suffers a wound on a 4+) and Musician

Hand Weapons and Flails

Altar Guards – Immune to Psychology and Break tests while within 6” of the Altar. Otherwise subject to Frenzy and hate all enemies.

Chaos Attributes: Plague Bearer (the shakes -1 WS, -1 A)

165 points

The Devotees of Balios – 28 Plague Zombies

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Int	Cl	WP
4	2	0	3	3	1	1	1	5	5	5	5

Hand Weapons

120 points

The Battle of Wurtbad - Preamble

So it has been a while since I last wrote anything on the subject of my and MLB's Realms of Chaos campaign. That doesn't mean the campaign has been completely inactive. Just mostly inactive.

With two warbands a piece we had played out three of the four possible battle combinations (ignoring the two possible combinations where our own warbands fight each other). The last combination presented something of a dilemma. For a start both of our remaining warbands were  Nurgle warbands. This didn't rule out a conflict, champions of the same God often fight each other to gain the favour of their god, but it felt less natural than the previous battles we had fought. More troubling was the relative strength of the warbands. Thanks to a couple of lucky rolls, Rolf Hurtziger's warband had added a Beast of Nurgle and a Dragon-Ogre to the four Orcs and three Beastmen in already contained. MLB's warband, however, only contained four ghouls and a level five wizard. So far things were looking a little one sided.

Initially, we looked at a scenario in which the warbands ambush a Dwarven caravan. This would allow us to focus our attention on the dwarves if we wanted and allow both sides to grab some victory points. We the considered it would be more natural if the two warbands teamed up to carry out the ambush, instead of coincidentally attacking the same caravan at the same time. It was then that we hit on a more ambitious idea.

The Realms of Chaos books don't just contain the rules for Chaos Warbands, but also the rules for full sized Warhammer Armies in the 3rd edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle. In addition to the usual mix of units, characters and monsters, these armies can also contain randomly generated warbands. These can be generated specifically for the army or part of an existing campaign. What is more, these warbands can gain rewards and followers from fighting in battles as part of the army. We had our solution. Our warbands would combine and, bulked up with additional troops from my Chaos collection, we would play out a full 1000 point 3rd edition Warhammer campaign.

The next question was who to use as an opponent. The Dwarves were an obvious choice. Having been a dwarf player for around fifteen years now I have plenty of models and the dwarf army list hasn't changed dramatically since third edition. However, MLB has been slowly buying up Perry miniatures War of the Roses infantry with the intention of building a cheaper Empire army and this looked like an ideal opportunity to give them a test run. Plus, Empire vs Chaos felt like a more natural and classic lineup for our first full scale 3rd edition battle.

So with the forces decided, it was time to draw up some army lists.

Does everyone have to have a Kickstarter now?

The news is out that Wyrd games is planning a Malifaux RPG Kickstarter. This following Kickstarters from McVey studios, Soda Pops miniatures, Reaper, Mongoose and Mantic who are now on their second. It's starting to feel like Kickstarter is the thing all the cool miniature companies just have to have.

For anyone not in the know, Kickstarter is a website that allows companies (not necessarily miniature companies) to gather donations to put towards a specified project. In return for these pledges they offer contributors a reward. In most cases this will be a copy of one or more of the funded projects, though all kinds of rewards are on offer.

Given that I contributed a not insubstantial sum to the Mantic Kings of War Kickstarter (enough to get my name in the rulebook) I can't oppose the concept in principal. At it's best its a smart way for a company to crowd source its funding and to gauge whether a project is worth pursuing before committing any money. It can also be good for the customer, though its worth be careful. Its all to easy to get carried away in the momentum and fail to realise that the rewards aren't much more than exactly what the company will be selling in a few months time.

What I do wonder, however, is whether Kickstarter is strictly a good idea for every company. Most of the established companies have declared their Kickstarter goal to grow their gaming system and release models earlier than they would otherwise be able. This sounds great in principle, but I question whether it is always a good idea for the company.

I have written before about the difficulties faced by established miniature companies, like Games Workshop and Privateer Press, before. Essentially the dilemma is whether to keep growing the game in order to maintain the interest of the existing fan base at the risk of losing new players, or move in the other direction and endlessly re-release in order and rely on high player turnover. A more rapid release schedule could simply exacerbate the problem. The more you release  the harder it is for a new player to find a way into the system, Warmachine and Hordes are all but impenetrable to new players, and the more you risk losing casual players who can't keep up.

As the game grows only the truly dedicated can keep up, and these are exactly the sort of people likely to contribute to a Kickstarter campaign. This could fuel a kind of positive feedback in which the most dedicated, even fanatical, fans drive the development of the game. This could  lead to a distorted picture of the popularity of the project. What happens when the audience for a Kickstarter is the same size as the contributors?

At least Wyrd are focusing their Kickstarter on a new game, the Malifaux RPG. But I do wonder just how much Malifaux do people want? There are already three main rulebooks for the miniature game with a forth on route and a handful of new releases every month. With this rate of growth it becomes harder and harder to find an entry point. Ultimately, will Kickstarter provide a boost for these companies or just allow them to grow faster than is wise?