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