Of Black Shuck, and other terrors

"They do speak of a dog that walks regular. His eyes are big as saucers and blaze wi' fire. He is fair as big as a pony, and his coat is all skeffy-like, a shaggy coat across. He has a lane, and a place out of which he come, and he vanish when he hev gone far enough." - account of a demonic dog near Garveston in Norfolk, from Enid Porter's Folklore of East Anglia.

"Black Shuck, that dog don't give a fu.." - The Darkness, minstrels of Lowestoft



Yesterday saw another nice little gathering of OGRE, the East Anglian regional oldhammer group, with an exciting 3 way battle between Dwarves, Wood Elves, and Fimir around a polluted river. Pictures and a battle report of that encounter to come, but in the meantime I thought I'd keep ya'll updated with the latest additions to my fimir force.

In trying to create an East Anglian theme for my Fen-dwelling fimir, I'm always on the lookout for inspiration from regional folklore. One of the most widespread stories that spread around East Anglia (and to a certain extent persists to this day) is that of a giant ferocious black dog, with glowing demonic eyes - known locally as "Black Shuck".

On the morning of Sunday, 4 August 1577, the people of Bungay were at prayer in their local parish church. The sky was darkened, and a storm had broken, pounding the windows and doors with heavy rain. It was as though hell had broken loose - and then, from out the gates of hell, a beast as black as the storm smashed through the door and launched itself fast as lightning down the nave. Passing between two of the townsfolk kneeling in prayer, it tore into their neck and killed them in an instant. He then launched into a third man, striking him on the back and causing him to shrivel up like leather scorched in the fire, before bounding out as quickly as he had entered. To this day, the scorchmarks from the hellish hound's claws can be seen on the church door.

Another tale of Black Shuck concerns a small blind boy standing with his sister on Thetford Bridge. the blind boy said to his sister: "Please send the big dog away", to which his sister replied, "What dog? There's no dog here." Suddenly the girl felt her brother being pulled away from her and into the water, and only managed to whisk him away home and to safety in the knick of time. Black Shuck's association with the water comes through in many other stories, including the tale of an old lady in Blickling, who told the village parson, "Don't you know that when Arthur was fishing in the lake, he caught an enormous fish and that, when it was landed, a great black dog came out of its mouth? They could never get rid of that dog, who kept going round and round in circles inside the house, till they send for a wise man from London, who opposed the straight lines of the partitions to the lines of the cricles and so quieted the dog. But if these young people pull down the partitions, they will let the dog loose again".

If my fimir force are a manifestation of East Anglian nightmares - the creatures that emerge from the mist and drag you screaming into the fens - it seems clear that I should do something to represent the nightmare of hellish dogs as black as the night and with red glowing eyes. Luckily for me, I'd just picked up for very little a couple of plastic GW sets that someone leaving the 'Games Workshop hobby' was getting rid of, and one of the boxes he was getting rid of were Fenrisian Wolves for a 40K Space Wolf army - perfect to use as Chaos Hounds on the cheap, and fitting the description of Black Shuck quite well.


Can't quite get the glowing eyes in the picture. Need a better camera! But you get the idea. I can imagine the people of albion huddled behind the barred door of an inn, waiting for the sound of the scratching of claws...

I also made a couple of other additions to the force while I was at it - my first attempt at painting a Nick Bibby fimir - this one can act as my warlord. Also, I decided for the scenario we needed a crude war altar. For that purpose I painted up the top of the heroquest rack model, and put it on the backs of two shearl (thralls from Oakbound miniatures' "The Woods" range of Myeri Marsh Demons)


Again, not a great picture, here's another one, this time from yesterday's battle - unfortunately in this picture you can also see my Warlord legging it! Why has he turned and fled? Well, you'll have to wait for my next post to find out!

Highlanders for the Oldhammer Challenge; or, Albion as a campaign setting

(Arthur Rackham's illustration of the Scots Ballad Twa Corbies)

So I've loads of different projects on the go right now, trying to get things ready for games in the near future. But as I said in my last post, I've been inspired by Whiskey Priest's Oldhammer Challenge. In his words:
"Let's do something to show that it's all about the game and camaraderie rather than the rules and the figures. We each make a warband - a tiny army - a posse, based in the Warhammer world. A maximum of 21 figures. Two units of 10 and a hero or any similar configuration. You are entirely free to do what you want! The figures must be either a) insultingly cheap from ebay or b) easily bought from current manufacturer."

Preach on, Whiskey Priest! And I've been so inspired by this that I've decided it's time to paint these guys:


I can imagine people clucking their tongues and rolling their eyes. "Are you completely thick? Did you not read what Whiskey Priest wrote? Are you just trying to contradict him and prove that oldhammer IS elitist and exclusionary and about wasting money on ebay? Are you just trying to spit in his face and kick him in the bollocks, &c. &c.?"

Well, ok, hear me out. So yes, these are the clansmen from McDeath. They're oop, and although I didn't pay stupid money for them on ebay, they don't fall into the "insultingly cheap" category. So what relevance does this possibly have to Whiskey Priest's challenge? The thing is, for Christmas I was given a bunch of the Warlord Games Highland Clansmen from their Pike and Shotte range. There are some very characterful minis in this range - especially in their "Highlander Arrant Scum" selection. The obvious thing to do? To use these to supplement the expensive and hard to find Citadel McDeath highlanders and show how you can put together an East of Albion force using minis that out there at the moment, alongside just a small handful of oop masterpieces to satisfy the inner archaeogamer.

So this is the start of my warband: 4 Citadel McDeath highlanders; 7 Warlord Games highlanders; and 1 Black Tree Design "Jamie McCrimmon" from the Doctor Who range, who I've given a sickle from S&D models (a company that makes railway scenery accessories).


And to summarise, my reasons for choosing these for the challenge:
1) I already own them, so this is a chance to paint stuff from the leadpile rather than buy new minis.
2) It demonstrates how one can combine old and new minis to do even something as "old school" as McDeath.
3) It feeds into my current fascination, which is using Albion as a campaign setting. And the rest of this post will be about that.


Albion as a campaign setting

In GW's official material, Albion has shapeshifted a lot. Here's the depiction that oldhammerheads know and love from the 1986 campaign pack "The Tragedy of McDeath":

McDeath deals with just one chunk of Albion - East Albion, which, inspired by Macbeth mixed with a heavy dose of the cultural stereotyping that gives shape to the Warhammer world, is a land inhabited by clan-based kilt-wearing porridge-eating caber-tossing highlanders, living alongside militant trade unionist dwarf miners, mercenary orcs, treemen, and others. This is the Albion that inspires my warband.

Then fastforward to 1991 and the Warhammer novel Storm Warriors by Brian Craig:


Here, the map is a clear approximation of the British Isles, but Albion is divided into 4 separate islands, Great Albion, Albany, Morien, and Aeryn, meaning that England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland each get their own individual island (thus allowing for further stereotyping - just non-comedic in form - by the GW stereotype factory.) From the extracts I've read, the culture described is a predominantly celt-inspired one, and the source of tension in the novel is the arrival of an "alien culture" of sinister immigrant sea elves.

The "Albion as multiple islands" model from Storm Warrior is also used in the following map, which Zhu Bajie has traced back to the (now defunct) Warhammer FRP site "Critical Hit"; bit of Anglo-Saxon thrown in here for good measure:



It's the pre-Roman celtic flavour predominates in the release of the "Giants of Albion", along with druid, as part of the Dogs of War army in the 5th edition era; Albion is the land of ancient Ogham stones and ancient magical forces; mysterious land of myth - at least, until the arrival of the Tilean "Curious Gesar". Then came the 2001 "Dark Shadows" campaign, in which Albion was a single misty, rainy, blighted isle to which Truthsayers (good druids) and Dark Emissaries (naughty druids) summoned great forces; Albion became a battlefield between order and chaos, ripping the land apart.

Here's the map from the start of that campaign:




Now the fact that there's so much variety in the background is a really good thing for the oldhammer gamer, in my opinion, because it leaves Albion open for our own creative imaginations. Let's strip it down to basics.

Deep History
The idea that Albion is home to an older civilisation - as evidenced by the Ogham stones - I think gives a deep rooted mystery to the landscape. I've always found interesting the idea that when the Romans left Britain, they left behind structures that nobody knew how to repair; similarly, I feel that Albion should be full of unsettling reminders that there was something here before, and it's something that we don't understand. Druidic and bardic religious knowledge tries to piece together these mysteries and interpret the landscape.

Topography
The key dynamic of any campaigning land is its landscape and in Albion, we have a land of highlands and lowlands; mountains and marshes, hills and mires. The highland clans of the East of Albion (as per McDeath), then, might be distinct from the more town-minded lowlanders, who trade with the Empire and are therefore far more cosmopolitan in their outlook. Yet the lowlanders are surrounded by the sinister bogs and fens where the Fimir dwell; and attempts to drain the marshes to create fertile farmland and increase the wealth of the kingdoms have led to increasing numbers of Fimir raids.

The sea, the sea
As a land surrounded by sea, Albion would have a history of settlement, trading, and raiding. Norse from the west and Sea Elves from the east would send ships to the shore; their motives sometimes peaceful, oftentimes not.

I'll probably type up more of my thoughts at a a later date, but I'm deliberately keeping this to bare bones, because I think the storytelling should come through gaming. Anyway, I hope it gives you the sense that when I'm painting up this bunch of guys in kilts, it's not just about the figures, the nostalgia, or the ruleset - it's about the story, and thinking about the world they inhabit and the way they link up with the other forces I have is all part of that process of storybuilding.

What do other people think about Albion as a campaign setting? Have I missed any key essentials out? Anyone else want to play a game there?

Reinforcements for Clan Slea

From across the mire, the sound of doom. The moaning that haunted nightmares, nightmares of the mist that came out of the marsh and left devastation. Nightmares of slaughter, of wives and daughters stolen away. The godless wailing.

"They're playing those bloody bagpipes again..."


Finally finished painting up the wonderful Oakbound Games Marsh Demon Clubtails, sculpted by Fimm McCool - as these sculpts come unarmed, weapons are from Hasslefree miniatures (axes) and thebattleforge (clubs). Still working out what to do for basing (the gravel on the bases of the rest of my army was just an interim solution to get them to battle quickly), but other than that, ready to go. The skintone is the same as those I painted up for blog-con - a shade that my missus has described as "the colour of elastoplasts". These one eyed beauties(??) will allow me to bulk out Clan Slea with another unit of Fimm Warriors, and I especially love the command group with bagpiper, who I've given a nice tartan kilt. Alas, can't get the focus on it to give you a picture, so you'll have to take my word for it for now. In the meantime, here's a picture of the whole clan so far:


So what next? Well, I've got a big backlog of painting projects. Chaos warband needs to get done... I've finally got my delivery of daleks from Black Tree miniatures and there's loads of work to be getting on with there... But in addition to all of that I've been inspired by Whiskey Priest's Oldhammer Challenge and I at least want to make a start assembling the warband for that (using unpainted lead that I already own, as I'm on a purchasing moratorium for a little while!). So that'll be the subject of my next post, hopefully not too far in the future...

End of the world

So the cat is among the shit and the pigeon has hit the fans. Apparently a monthly magazine called White Dwarf is being axed and in its place there's going to be a weekly magazine called - er - White Dwarf and a monthly magazine called Warhammer Visions. In some respects this isn't big news. Firstly, it's still just a rumour (albeit one that seems confirmed), and secondly it's more a rejigging of Games Workshop's publication strategy than an outright cull. Most importantly, many would claim that White Dwarf has long been in a state of living death, reduced to the humiliating status of a hard-sell peddler with a below-average command of the English language.

But when an old friend dies (or is at death's door) it often prompts people to reflect upon their own mortality and the increasingly undeniable decrepitude of those who they grew up with. And so the question comes up: if White Dwarf pops its clogs, who will be the next to go?

For Orlygg over at Realm of Chaos 80s the not altogether outlandish conclusion is that Warhammer Fantasy Battle is itself living on borrowed time:
"Just look at the Specialist Range! With that cut, and mostly likely WD next, what is left to go to streamline the company and increase profits for the shareholders? Warhammer Fantasy Battle itself!"

Whiskey Priest at the leadpile seems to agree:
"This is really the nub of the problem. You have two product lines. Both require the same amount of capital input, support, shop space, tooling costs, warehouse space, packaging costs, printing costs, R&D costs etc etc. However, one sells a fraction of the other and it's sales are falling all the time. It's gotten to the point where it's financial viability is seriously in doubt. What do you do?"

Now to be honest, I don't have a position on whether or not Warhammer is going to be sent to the knacker's yard. I'm not well enough informed about GW's business strategy, and although I can sometimes come across a bit grumpy about the decisions they've made, in general I wish them well as they are a British business and an employer that would leave a hole if they were to simply disappear, quite aside from what it would do to the hobby.

But this does lead us onto a slightly different question: could the death of Warhammer even be a good thing? Is the game going out of print something we should actually look forward to? This is Warlord Paul's provocation:
"Won't it be a blessing if Warhammer goes though, really? A curse, lifted?"

That's what I'm going to discuss for the rest of this post.

Paul focusses on the fact that, rules-wise, we already have what we need. The early editions give us the tools for fun narrative play. Get yourself 2nd or 3rd ed and away you go. GW's business model relies on our wanting to upgrade, expand, replace - planned obsolescence. Except, really, the old rules were never truly obsolete. They're still there for anyone to pick up and have fun with, and some would argue that GW's subequent attempts to gild the lily have just killed it.

So I think Paul's is a good point. Oldhammer players have, effectively, entered a parallel universe where new rules releases, new army lists, new gimmicks have very little relevance. As long as we have some old books and some toy soldiers, we don't really need any 'upgrading'.

In that sense, Warhammer's demise wouldn't really trouble us that much. But in terms of whether it would be a blessing, I think there's a bigger point. An albatross that would be taken from around our necks. And it's one that's been hanging there a long time.



Take a look at the 3rd edition rulebook (for some, the epitome of the golden age): on page 189 it asks "Why a Warhammer world?" Why indeed. They answer that "Games are always more satisfying when set firmly within the context of a credible society", and assure us that "Suffice to say, we fully intend to expand the concept of Warhammer to include the entire world, and several supplements are already in preparation"

The message is clear: this is Games Workshop's world, and they're going to flesh it out for you. Don't get me wrong, this is a sensible business strategy. Why a Warhammer World? Intellectual property rights of course. But this makes it quite clear that the players are customers, not creators in their own right. Whose Warhammer world? Games Workshop's Warhammer World of course. Not yours.

Warhammer Armies continues this rot. Although the goal was to provide balanced armies for "tournament gaming", what we're left with is a flat-pack version of a fantasy world where you're given the pieces and all that's left for you to do is assemble them. The effect is a narrowing of imagination, a narrowing that continued apace with the army books of 4th edition and beyond.

For me, this would be the biggest and most exciting opportunity that would open up if Warhammer was to become out of print. It would kill off the idea of an "official" Warhammer world. I'm not saying that people won't look to old publications for inspiration; but why should the map of our own imaginations be coloured predominantly by 'official' merchandise? With the Warhammer IP mothballed, the world in which we actually play our games of oop Warhammer is ours to create and recreate. Sure, there's nothing to stop us already thinking up new worlds, new continents, new armies. Some of us do that already. But by and large we're operating within artificial constraints - an accidental fantasy geography that gave GW something of their own to sell. Time for people to draw their own maps, to create their own lands to imagine and explore.

A new world - indeed, many a new world - awaits.

Let's take this further: imagine GW never produced any more fastasy miniatures (it's easy if you try...) Imagine future players of warhammer fantasy battle had to cast their nets around different suppliers. No more would there be a straightforward one-to-one correspondance between an army list and a particular set of miniatures that stand for a particular unit. No, instead you'd have to mix and match, building up a motley collection from different oop and in production lines. And that collection would be unique, full of new stories - not just an indentikit army. And you'd need to think up new unit types, new rules, for the quirky models that you found from different companies.

The long and the short of it is that the Warhammer World has become a straightjacket. To a certain extent, the oldhammer movement has already set itself free from that straightjacket - it looks for inspiration from the past but isn't (too) subservient towards it. And yet still... the idea of what could happen if the stagnating pastiche that is the Warhammer World died tomorrow... well that's somewhat intoxicating.

New Year, New Year

2013 was a good year for getting into the Oldhammer scene, dusting off some old minis, painting some new (old) ones, etc. So in the first full year since I've come out of a wargaming coma, what can I hope to achieve? Seeing a flurry of posts about people's new years gaming resolutions, I thought I'd get in the party spirit while ambitions still run high:

1) Collect and paint a chaos warband for the next OGRE meeting

The plan for the next OGRE regional meetup is to have some Realms of Chaos games. I rolled up my warband a few weeks ago, and have been rummaging around for suitable minis, and ordering some off ebay to plug any gaps. I now have most of the minis I need (about 10 of the 14 there'll be in my warband) and work has started on the painting so I should be ready by the end of the month.


2) Paint all of the Heroes for Dungeonquest

I already have one painted (Serellia of Zimendell), and I'm working on another at the moment; so slowly but surely I'd like to paint all 12 of the Heroes for Dungeonquest.


3) Collect a force for Doctor Who: Invasion Earth, and take on Thantsants and his wonderful Doctor Who collection

Thantsants has a wonderful collection of Doctor Who minis - go on, take a look, it's a fantastic horde! After some drunken discussioning in Nottingham, I decided to collect some Doctor Who minis myself to take him on in a couple of games, maybe even a linked mini-campaign. In some ways this should have been a 2013 goal, as it really relates to the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, but I suppose the 50th anniversary having taken place in November, the 50th anniversary year really runs 23 November 2013-22 November 2014? Well, regardless, Black Tree miniatures weren't super efficient in getting the minis to the right place at the right time, so this'll probably be something I work on heading towards the Easter vacation. More news to come when the lead arrives...


4) Make Clan Slea a force to be reckoned with

The recent battle reports from Blog-Con (here and here) showed off the verybeginnings of my Fimir clan - but there's a long way to go before it can really be called an army. So I have various plans for expansion. Without spoiling the surprise by going into too much detail, I'm thinking definitely 2 more units of rank and file on 25mm bases - and possibly a further unit mounted on 40mm bases which can include the larger scale Nick Bibby sculpts (if I can find and afford more of them) and forgeworld sculpts. I'm also thinking about various bells and whistles that would really round out this army, but I'll leave the revelation of plans for another time...

5) Fight Warlord Paul in a sequel to "Trouble at Nobridge"

This wonderful scenario at Blog-Con (in which the civilians of Nobridge defeated the Fimir menace) ended with a number of loose threads; a dirach in the body of a warlord; a unit of diseased wardancers, doomed never to return home; and worst of all, a Elven elementalist captured and left to the devices of the vile Clan Slea. So will there be a blockbuster all special effects sequel? You bet there will, just as soon as I've built up a bit more of the fimir force. As this will probably be an ambush of the Fimir settlement, I'll also want to think a bit more about what the settlement should look like and get some terrain pieces ready.

6) Collect more McDeath miniatures

I have been slowly but surely piecing together a set of McDeath miniatures. Sometimes original citadel; but I'm also interested in stand-ins both for reasons of keeping down the cost, as well as injecting a bit of interest to the collection. I hope to be a lot closer to completing this collection by the end of the year. I don't plan on starting work painting this collection, unless for some reason part of it would become a useful element in other plans - after all, you never know when you might need warriors in kilts.

7) Attend the Oldhammer weekend

My understanding is that this year's Oldhammer weekend will be at the Foundry in Nottingham on the 9th and 10th of August. Greatly enjoyed last years tomfoolery, so just need to hop on a train and get there again. Sounds simple, right? Well, in essence it is, as long as I'm in the country at the time! But as this is many months away, I don't yet have any clear plan as to what I'm going to play there (my initial plan of "whatever Padre is GMing" probably won't work as Padre is saying he can't make it that weekend... boooooo hisssssssss), so who knows what new plans and projects this will commit me to, throwing everything else into disarray!


Such are my plans. New let's see how the year goes... All the best to you and yours!

Book Review: Scenarios for Wargames by Charles Stewart Grant

Scenarios for Wargames, by Charles Stewart Grant. Wargames Research Group, 1981.

One of my ambitions getting back into wargaming was to leave behind the memories of grinding scissor/paper/stone type pitched battles and to really embrace scenario-driven play. I accept there's a place for pitched battles - I just think that when they are the rule rather than the exception, they end up squeezing any sense of meaning or fun out of your wargaming; it's just line 'em up and knock 'em down. Well, I ended up bored with that approach to play anyway, hence my drifting away from the hobby (that and the complete lack of money to buy minis). So when I got into the oldhammer scene, I was eager to banish the memory of monotony with some really exciting objective-driven play. (The battle reports I've put up here, I think, demonstrate that I have indeed found what I seek!)

For this reason, I'm always fishing for inspiration for future scenarios. Enter this fine volume, recently dug out from my dad's collection. What Charles Stewart Grant sets out to provide are 52 different scenarios - one for each week of the year, should you feel so inclined. Given such an aim, I think the exciting variety in his ideas is commendable; you don't get any sense of his inspiration running dry, and even though some are "variations on a theme" (e.g. different kinds of ambush, different coastal raids), each seems to provide a distinct challenge.



Each scenario is clearly presented in the following format: first you get a map of the battlefield with deployment zones indicated. After a brief introduction, the ground of the battle is described, there's a bit of context as to where the armies fit in and what they're trying to do, and then there is a suggestion for the composition of the forces of both sides. There's a section on how to play the scenario, describing how to start, and any special rules involved. Finally, there's a section entitled "winning the game", which explains the victory conditions for both sides (and often, each side has very distinct victory conditions).

The intended audience for the book is clearly the historical wargamer. With some exceptions (e.g. "helicopter attack") the author aims to be as general as possible, so that the scenario can be translated to any historical period. For this reason, the book is easily usable by the fantasy wargamer; and even those scenarios that seem to imply a certain historical specificity (e.g. the hijacking of a train on a railway) could easily be adapted (in this case, just shifting it to the hijacking of a wagon train). Most scenarios involve 2 armies ('red' and 'blue') although some involve a 3rd force ('green') - angry locals, for example, or mercenaries of questionable loyalty.

While the book talks in terms of stand alone games, I could see it being very useful for anybody running a narrative campaign; say you've just finished one battle with a particular outcome. What comes next? A rear guard action? Well, the book has several examples of how to proceed. Also many of the scenarios focus on the challenge presented by the terrain of particular battlefields; so let's say you're running a map based campaign and two armies meet in marshland - well, there's a scenario here for that.



One thing that may be of interest to oldhammer gamers is that the book absolutely envisages the need for a GM. Often the battlefield the players see before them on the table is not what it seems; or one player is given different knowledge of the field of play than the other. For this reason, many (if not all) of the scenarios simply wouldn't work without a GM, and all the others would certainly run much more smoothly with someone to think through how the rules apply to the particular circumstances of the challenges the armies face. In fact, I think it's a wonderful demonstration of just how much value a GM adds to gaming, because it shows you the exciting things that can happen if players are not presented with the same information about the battlefield, or if the GM can institute special and unexpected rules in the heart of the battle. There's something about elements of the game being unknown to the players that makes for good fun.

All in all, an absolute treasure trove of great ideas. Exactly what the oldhammer gamer needs. The only problem is that it's long out of print, and it only seems to come up on amazon and ebay for very silly prices. That being said, if you do see a second hand copy going cheap, grab it!

Chaos just got less boring

So the next OGRE (Oldhammer Gamers, Region: East Anglia) meeting is being planned for the end of January and looks like it'll involve some Realm of Chaos warband action. Ok, confession time: not only have I never collected Chaos, I've never actually had much of a desire to collect a Chaos army. Why is that? Well, ironically, I think that a lot of Chaos armies are just too orderly. During the 90s, when I started playing, Chaos basically involved a very predictable lineup of pretty homogenous and boring looking chaos warriors, or if the player was being really exotic, some demons painted red. They just lacked soul - which, I suppose, is befitting for an army of the damned. But still, didn't excite me. Blood for the blood god? Not today, thank you.

Ok, fast forward to the present day, we get to oldhammer, which means rewinding further into the past (err, yes, I think that makes sense...) - and suddenly chaos starts looking actually chaotic. First off, you've got a real selection of characterful and exciting toy soldiers to play with. Beastmen that aren't just the same wildebeast-goatmen-type things, but actually every creature under the sun rising up against humanity like a kind of twisted episode of Animals of Farthing Wood. Thugs just beginning their descent into chaos. Chaos marauders and warriors each with their own particular deformities. All shapes and sizes. (Ok, mostly big and chunky sizes, but still, not a regimented and homogenous army of orderly boredom. Actually a force of chaos.)

Secondly, and even more excitingly, the way the books "Slaves to Darkness" and "The Lost and the Damned" are structured really puts chaos - or at least, chance - at the centre of proceedings. Unlike "Warhammer Armies" books, these are not just boring rosters, by which I mean they are not a place for the omniscient and omnipotent general to compose the bestest all conquering army list. Rather, they do something far more exciting, which is they make the composition of warbands subject to the whim of a roll of the dice. The end result: a raggle-taggle group of chancers on a road to near certain death, to the amusement of their god. Now that's an image of chaos that I can believe in.

So lets give this a go. I'm following the guidelines Orlygg gave for setting up warbands prior to the Oldhammer weekend. I'm really starting from scratch in putting this warband together, I don't have a particular set of models I'm trying to work around. Thus I don't really mind what I end up with, so I might as well do this properly and put everything in the hands of random generation. Out come the dice. Yes, the rest of this blog post really is going to be me rolling dice, so you might want to scroll down to the bottom to see the conclusion!

Step 1: Species Ok, first, I roll a D100 to find out the species of the champion: 35 = Chaos Dwarf Hmm, never painted dwarves before. Ah well, there's a first time for everything.

Step 2: Starting attribute Now I roll another D100 to establish his level for the starting profile: 80 = Dwarf Level 10 Wizard

Step 3: First chaos attribute
Now I find out what weird deformity my valiant champion... er I mean bitter and twisted little bugger of a wizard has. Apparently for this I need a D1000. Wow, that's a hell of a big dice. I get out another D10. 904 = Tentacles

So a dwarf wizard with tentacles. Slight panic as I think what a major piece of conversion work that's going to be. Luckily, a quick google search makes me aware that chaos dwarf with tentacles is a model that was actually made. Hmm, quite a cool model too. Warming to this now.

Step 4: Generate your retinue
Right, now's the time to find out what bunch of unlikely lads have somehow been drawn in by the charisma of an angry dwarf with tentacles. I follow Orlygg's guideline: "If your character is level 10 roll 3 times". Let's see what this comes up with.

First roll of the D100:
40 = 1 Chaos Warrior
Ok, now I roll a D6 to see what level the warrior is; Thug, Marauder or true Warrior. It's a 6: yup, he's a fully paid up Chaos Warrior. Next member of the retinue...

34 = 2D4 Chaos Dwarves
Well yeah, makes sense, a chaos dwarf would meet some other chaos dwarves in a pub, they'd get pissed and they'd go out looking for a punch-up. I roll the 2D4 to see how many, and get 6.

54 = 2D6 Humans I roll the 2D6 and once again get 6. Apparently these can be chaos cultists... I have to look into that to see whether I want to go down that line. Apparently it would involve rolling for more chaos attributes (each chaos cultist has D6-4 attributes). Wait, more dice rolling?!? Why didn't you say so!
The dice come out 6, 5, 6, 1, 1, 3. Which means that two of the cultists have 2 attributes and one has 1 attribute. The rest have none.
Back to the personal attributes table. I get the following:
040: Beaked; 519: Irrational Fear; 490: Hunchback; 199: Blood Rage; 731: Prehensile Tail.


Phew. All done. Sooooo, to sum up, my warband will consist of
- A Chaos Dwarf Level 10 Wizard with tentacles
- A Chaos Warrior
- 6 Chaos Dwarves
- 6 Human chaos cultists, one of whom is beaked and has an irrational fear, one of whom is a hunchback, and one of whom possesses blood rage and a monkey's tail.

Time to collect some models and start thinking about some background! Watch this space for all that. Oh yes, and before I forget, the image at the top of this post is from at the Basilica of St Mary Major in Rome. Liked it a lot.