The Realm of Chaos

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the release of the Realm of Chaos - Slaves to Darkness Warhammer book which was actually the second Warhammer product I ever purchased (after the Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader book). Besides being full of evocative artwork and loads of rules for both Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k, this book had rules for generating Chaos Champions and covers Khorne and Slaanesh. The second book Realm of Chaos - The Lost and the Damned covers Nurgle and Tzeentch. The system is crazy with random charts and almost comprises a game on it's own and was the source of endless hours of entertainment. The random tables can provide some unbalanced results that many today would balk at, but I find them a source for great inspiration and perfect for a solo project.

I've decided to build four warbands, one for each Chaos power, by rolling on the provided charts and maybe using a little divine intervention to tweak the results. The first warband I rolled was for Nurgle because I already had a handful of appropriate models for champions - the one I picked was dependent on the outcome of the dice.

The roll for the base champion was a Human Hero 10. Characters gain two rolls on the Rewards table, but I decided to make my champions more experienced because they get one roll on the Followers table for every two Rewards and I wanted each band to start with at least two 'units'. My four Reward rolls produced the following results: Mark of Nurgle (+1T), Bestial Face - Goat (+1A and +1 Fear Point), Gift of Nurgle - Hide of Nurgle (opponents have a -1 to hit in melee), and GM's choice. Now since I'm the GM I had a lot of latitude to determine what I wanted. Looking through my models, I decided to pick Enormously Fat (1/2M, +1T, and -1I).

So the stat line for my champion comes out as:

	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld
Human Hero 10	2	5	4	4	6	2	3	4	8

I plan to field him in light armour and arm him with an extra hand weapon (which will give him another attack).He is a plodding beast, but if he ever gets in range to fight he will be fearsome and the Hide of Nurgle and high Toughness will help make up for his lack of armour.

Now I get two rolls on the table for Followers which works out as 6 zombies and 2 beastmen. I also get to roll Rewards for the followers and decide to pile them all on the beastmen. I end up with Technology - Bolt Pistol, +1S and +1T, and Tentacles. The first roll goes to one beastman and I put the others one the second.

So here is the starting warband for my Chaos Champion of Nurgle (I have yet to come up with a suitable name)...

The champion and beastmen were painted using Blanchitsu, using only Abaddon Black, Whitescar, Balor Brown, Gehenna Gold, and Runefang Steel. Highlights are mixed by building up these monotone shades and then GW washes are used to add color. The zombies were from an existing project, but I added more washes to make them better match the others.

Next up... the Chaos Champion of Khorne!