De Förlorade och De Fördömdas

This is how my brain works when my daughter wakes me up at five in the morning.

"I wish I'd been at the Woffboot the other weekend. Oh look, my old Realms of Chaos books. That gives me an idea."

In the absence of actual battlefields to deploy them on, I felt a deep-rooted, possibly even unhealthy need to partake of some non-video gaming for a change. Neither of the Krakenettes were remotely interested, of course, and despite my evangelical tendencies for gaming, I'm yet to really find any Swedes up for Warhammer. Actually, that's not true, I did find one but he was a fucking loon pot who I'm not particularly desperate to invite into my home.

Yet.

I am therefore playing with myself. Feel free to avert your eyes as I give you, gentlemen, the two-part saga of an unholy yet classic struggle writ large. Behold, four champions of the Dark Gods, locked in battle to become the most potent and powerful of servants - the Demon Prince!


A Window for Rulebooks

I'm using the Realms of Chaos books, so everything contradicts everything else, has no attempts at balancing and uses the Oldhammer rules. Except I don't actually have an Oldhammer rulebook to hand, so I'm sort of playing 8th Ed and adapting on the fly.

First things first - I shall need four warbands, one for each of the Ruinous Powers. To the random dice tables!



The Generation Game

I opt for the later versions of the generation tables, the ones in Lost and the Damned, which have been at least slightly play-tested. You get a random starting profile, random points for equipment, a random attribute from my favourite d1000 table of all time and some random followers. You at least reliably get your god's Mark, and I'll go with the old flavour on these - +1 T for Nurgle, +1 Ld for Slaanesh (I'm using 8th ed brain stats), Chaos Armour for Khorne and a free random magic item for Tzeentch.

The very first roll I make demonstrates perfectly everything that is hilariously broken with all this randomising. Meet Slaanesh's champion, Fashut, a level 15 chaos dwarf wizard with a silly voice. Despite sounding like Noel Edmunds on helium, his stats and abilities will probably sweep the board. Can't have that, I don't like Slaanesh.

So I decide to cheat. Fashut is immediately relegated to spawndom, before being replaced by Eirich Zaan, a lowly human cultist 'blessed' with the face of a platypus. That's an extra attack, at least, and his equipment points roll is decent, so he's well armed and armoured as well as owning a longbow.

With him are his four loyal chaos dwarves, Silli, Billi, Willi and Chilli, for whom I of course have exquisitely appropriate models.

That's the wonderful thing about having a huge and eclectic miniature collection.
You always have something appropriate.
Eirich is in the middle, if you're unclear for any reason.

Balance of the Bands

After that first nefarious bit of fiddling, everything else comes out with a surprising amount of balance. The other three warbands, although you couldn't exactly call them balanced or equal, are at least led by characters of similarly threat level.

Vorti Gorefaust is Khorne's own chaos dwarf, a heavily-armoured psycho with a raven's face. The table doesn't specify which raven, sadly, so we'll never know. With crossbow, chaos armour and a halberd, as well as sword and shield, he's the most tooled for battle. His retinue is small (one Chaos Thug) but similarly well armed.

Hexagonal bases! Truly, much has been lost. 

Urge the Gaunt, human cultist, represents Nurgle. This is clearly indicated by the fact he has the face of a beast of Nurgle, for a game-breaking +d6 attacks with paralysing goo in close combat. His retinue is a sporulous four Pestigors, slow but extremely tough. A two-handed weapon is his only gear, he gets a duff equipment roll. But a good model to make up for it.

The Beast face is under the hood. 

Neumann von Triest will be backed by Tzeentch for the tourney - another standard human, apart from his unnaturally big ears. This gives him acute hearing in WFRP, which is lucky. His magic item comes out as Seeking Arrows. I don't know what they are, so I decide they give him +1 to hit with his longbow. Which is actually going to be a wizard-looking staff that shoots some kind of magic bolts for the purposes of miniature selection; his vast ears will be played by a tiny dragon. Flanking him are a pair of bow-armed beastmen, making this the most ranged of the four warbands.

This is my longbow! Pew pew pew!

Into the Chaos Wastes (of Time)

Rather than fully simulate every encounter, I play a stripped down version mostly using paper and my cerebrum as a battlefield. This minimizes the actual time at the tabletop being ruthlessly mocked by my wife.

Place your bets, chaps, and tune in later this week for a harrowing account of the perpetual battle done by these wonky misfits mighty champions. Who will triumph to become a raging demon?

[spoiler alert - despite my use of the dining room table, the only surface in our flat bereft of baby spew, it's not Veronica]