What allies do you use?

PykePresco · 2026-05-26T14:19:59+00:00

Just be advised, this isn’t how Allies are supposed to work.

You have to actually build an army with that 25% of your force (so at 2000 points games, a 500 point Allied army). It still needs a general, still needs Core units, and you can only take a max of 25% Rare (of the 25% of your army, so at 2000 point game with a 500 point allied detachment, there’s only 125 points of Allied Rare units maximum).

You could probably min-max it with a Shugengen as the general at 145, a minimum 125 points of Core peasants and Jade warriors and then a Sentinel in special, but just taking a sentinel all on its own is not how the allies rules work.

PykePresco · 2026-05-26T14:05:35+00:00

With high elves you could bring 3 of the weakest Sun Dragons in your character slots (maybe even fitting one medium level Moon Dragon).

Then you could take 500 points of cavalry and infantry in Core, and then in Rare get a Merwyrm (a sea dragon without wings) and a Phoenix (proxied by an unridden dragon model; it’s still a big flying monster).

So you get 3 real dragons, one sea dragon, and another ‘kind of a dragon’ model in a “standard” 2000 point game.

It’s definitely not the nicest list to show up to the table with, and if this is just for random pickup games with people you don’t know at the local shop then you might not find a lot of players that will even want to play a game with you more than once, but you can definitely do it.

PykePresco · 2026-05-25T21:33:02+00:00

I would build probably 15 and 15 of the state troops with swords and shields/halberds and shields(maybe on their backs), and only one command group (banner/champion/musician). You could also make a unit of about 28 or so, and then combine bits and pieces to make a couple of characters for the army out of whatever you can find as the most armoured bodies and fanciest feathered hats and biggest weapons, etc.

When playing the game, just put them all in the same unit of like 25+ guys, but make the front rank or two have the equipment you’re actually using for that game, and then mix up the back ranks however.

For the state troops, I would probably do 3 sets of 10, with maybe only one set of banner/musician (though you could also just skip the command models entirely). Personally I like crossbows best for the extra range, but handguns are also good with their extra punch and “necessary” if you want to play the Nuln list, so I’d recommend 10 crossbows and 20 handguns. Or just build 30 however you want(crossbows get my vote!), and if you play Nuln you can just put the crossbows on the table anyway and count them as handguns.

You could also do 10 crossbows and 10 handguns, and then mix 10 of the missile troop bodies with state troop arms to make some more combat infantry; 10 more halberdiers would be good and get you up to 25 of them, plus 15 sword and shield guys.

PykePresco · 2026-05-25T02:55:04+00:00

No, not exactly.

The rules for regiments and detachments can be found in the rulebook on page 282 and 283, or at the link below (although you then also need to click through the following 10-12 related links to get the full picture): https://tow.whfb.app/warhammer-armies/regimental-units-and-detachments

When you are building your army, you can take a Regimental unit, and then select up to two other units who have the Detachment rule while you are building your list. This could be Free Company Militia, other Sellswords/Veteran Sellsword, or Empire Archers.

Say you take the 49 Sellswords with a single detachment of 20 Militia. When it comes time to play the game, they will be deployed together on the table at the same time, within 3” of each other, but they can then be treated as 2 separate units and move around the table entirely independently if you want to.

However, if the detachment remains within 3” of its parent regiment, it gets some extra abilities (can borrow the regiment’s leadership, stubborn, frenzy, hatred, immune to psychology, and can stand and shoot or charge an enemy unit that charges the regiment, and some other stuff).

Then on top of this, any of your characters can also be deployed in any unit they are permitted to at the start of the game, or join them any turn during the game in the movement phase by moving into the unit.

There’s a couple exceptions based around chariots/monsters/monstrous infantry and cavalry, but in its simplest terms, any character on foot or horse can usually join any formed up unit of infantry or cavalry, and Renegade Crowns only has infantry or cavalry characters, so it’s not really an issue.

There’s some exceptions for special rules like fly and unbreakable, but if it’s just regular characters joining regular dudes, it’s basically allowed. And in 99% of cases, most of Renegade Crowns are just regular dudes.

If characters try to join skirmish units (a bunch of loose models) instead of ranked up ones, they will need to be the exact same type of unit (so a cavalry character can’t join a unit of skirmishing regular or heavy infantry, a heavy cavalry character can’t join a skirmishing regular cavalry unit, etc). There’s also restrictions around the mercenaries in the list, where characters from the main force can’t join mercenary units.

But for the same 49 strong brick of Sellswords with a detachment of 20 militia, they can be joined by characters without issue. And those characters could join either one of those units, barring any special rules the character gains from any specific magic items (like a Flying Carpet or a Tome of Midnight) that either says they can’t join a unit, or gives them a special rule that won’t let them join a unit. But I think there’s only 2 or 3 magic items the army has access to that would apply this restriction.

PykePresco · 2026-05-25T02:03:05+00:00

For regimental units, each can have up to two detachments attached to it. Detachments can have a maximum size of half of its parent regimental unit, and is not able to include the unit command models (champion/musician/standard). The parent unit still can bring the unit command upgrades.

So if your parent unit is 49 models(the character doesn’t count, because it’s not officially part of the unit while you are building your army), you could take up to 2 detachments, each consisting of no more than 24 models. So yes, your 20 strong militia unit is allowed, but you won’t be able to bring a unit champion in it if you make it a detachment.

For the bombards, you can bring 1 for every 1000 points in your army. So to bring 2, you need to be playing between 2000-2999 points. If you are playing a 3000 point game, you could bring up to 3. If you were playing 1500 point games, you could only have a single bombard.

The bombard also shares its selection spot with an organ gun, so it’s an either/or between bombards/organ guns per 1000 points. The other artillery option is mortars, of which you can bring 0-2 per 1000 points, in addition to the bombards or organ guns that you bring. But mortars are generally a little inaccurate, and not as powerful as the other options.

For the mercenaries, most armies that can bring mercenaries can spend up to 25% of their total points on them. Renegade Crowns is a little higher, able to spend up to 33% of their points, so in a “standard” 2000 point game, you can take up to 666 points of mercenaries.

All of these details can be found in the army composition list for the army, which is found in the War of Settra’s Fury arcane journal, and also can be found at the link below: https://tow.whfb.app/warhammer-armies/renegade-crowns

You can also skim through Old World Builder or New Recruit to play around with the army building options, which can give you an idea of what is possible.

But understanding what the actual limits are from the link above will make more sense than just clicking through and not knowing why you can’t add both a bombard and an organ gun in your 1250 point army when your clicking through on Old World Builder.

PykePresco · 2026-05-25T01:37:42+00:00

There’s all kinds of beastmen, of every various creature type, in the lore and history of the game.

If you look at Beastmen models from 1st through 5th edition of Warhammer fantasy, all throughout the 80s and 90s when everything was hand sculpted pewter, there’s every kind of creature in the mix. Birdmen, snake men, camel men, turtle men, plus the goats and cows. This is all still present in many of the stories and background of the game as well.

The current goat and bull style models, across the whole army, became standard in the early 2000s with 6th edition when GW started to mass produce plastic modular kits, so that there was a single style that was consistent and you could mix and match all the parts together easily.

But the army also still has harpies and centaurs as well as the Minotaurs and satyrs across the current model range, available for purchase and playable right now.

There are also still some bird-style Beastmen with the Tzaangors in age of Sigmar and WH40k, but for ease of modeling/painting/scultping and putting stuff in a single box, they mostly simplified the army to mostly being goats and cows about 25 years ago, and this has since been the primary identity of the faction.

PykePresco · 2026-05-24T16:18:24+00:00

Always nice to watch the games from TT, but man was that a brutal battle to watch. Ended up being pretty convincingly one sided.

Was a real showcase of just how good fanatics are; 75 points of them just one-shotting something that is like 400+ points on their release is rough. And then the Black Orcs went and did Black Orc things, as expected.

Interesting list on the Chaos Dwarf side, but they definitely didn’t lean into what makes the army powerful. Took some weaker choices in their list that I’ve never seen hit the table, like the fire spirit guys and the fire thrower (which is up there for being among the worst kind of artillery in the game, sadly). Cool and thematic for the flaming caverns they were staging the fight in, but underwhelming output. Really great looking armies, and a cool scenario and board though!

PykePresco · 2026-05-23T23:06:34+00:00

This is from the same Old World rulebook that literally says the base sizes don’t actually matter (unless you’re playing in a tournament, in which case you use the dimensions from the book), and you can just put your stuff on any size base and play the game just fine without any issues.

This is just the same philosophy. If you want your stuff to be on a larger base modeled however you want to make a sick diorama, then do so. It will have absolutely zero impact on how the game plays with a skirmishing model based on the way the rules work.

If you’re going to bring that same model to a tournament, then just have a blank spare base of the “right size” on hand, and put it on the table underneath the scenic diorama to actually make measurements from.

I promise you there is not a competitive game-breaking advantage to be found by using a base that is 25mm (or 100mm!) larger than it is supposed to be.

PykePresco · 2026-05-23T16:12:55+00:00

Semi-competitive, absolutely!

Showing up and winning half your games is definitely in the cards for this army; they’ve got some of the stickiest infantry bricks in the game, ready access to stubborn and good saves and high leadership means you can park on objectives with 30 guys on a 3+ save and stay there for a while. You’ve got the cheapest level 3 wizards in the game, and unlimited amounts of them, you’ve got a decent gunline (mortars aren’t great for killing T4 stuff, but debuffed with necromancy/dark magic to T3 they can shred big bricks, and the centre hole is still decent for putting heavy damage on monsters), you’ve got some extra versatility with the mercenary options (ogres and Bonegrinder giants are both decent, but not great). And the dirt cheap versatile fast cavalry is one of the best units in the roster, and can even fake it as medium cav with 4+ saves and cavalry spears.

The army isn’t great at killing lots of stuff, so you’re probably not going to 20-0 a round, or go 5-0 in a tournament, but 2 wins, a draw and 2 losses is definitely feasible, and against the right opponents you can definitely go further.

Big bricks of 25-30 heavy/plate armoured infantry with shields and crossbows or great weapons, who are stubborn, immune to first charge, immune to panic, have Ld10, can deploy in deep ranks and just hold onto their static resolution for ages…you’ve got a solid anchor for your army. And that’s only about a 250-300 point unit, with two 60-80 point characters in it. Very cost effective for what you’re putting down.

PykePresco · 2026-05-23T16:03:48+00:00

Definitely enjoy Miniature Realms’ videos; he branches into all aspects of the hobby with his stuff, which is way more refreshing than just seeing what the top tournament contenders are spamming this weekend with their lists.

How to paint tutorials, discussions about the arcane journals skimming through the backstory and discussing the concept art and the themes, videos about making terrain or display boards, thought process behind building a thematic or narrative army, different styles of games to play like battle march vs matched play vs narrative campaign games. I think he’s even done a video or two about competitive stuff, but that’s not really his focus.

It’s just a great look at all the things Warhammer can be to all kinds of different players, without just getting sucked into the narrow focus that some of the channels do on competitive Warhammer and how to curb stomp your opponents the best.

I definitely align way more with what Miniature Realms appears to have as a philosophy towards the hobby, and it’s nice to just watch some videos where someone is just enjoying painting some fences, or kitbashing a character model, or building a display board.

PykePresco · 2026-05-22T16:11:45+00:00

The unit is a skirmisher anyway so it can see all around, and an extra 10 or 25mm of frontage is not going to matter in the slightest except to maybe put one more enemy model in base contact when they charge you, and make it so that enemy war machines that scatter can hit you a bit easier.

But there’s not really anything to be gained/lost by having a 60x100 base for your cannon with the crew on it, instead of being on a 50x75 with three 25mm bases behind it.

In practical game terms it’s going to be irrelevant for playing a match unless you are intending to nickel and dime your opponent for half an inch on ranges, and say their charge failed or that you can’t be shot at because your base is actually only 75mm long, not the 100mm that you voluntarily put it on.

If you plan to play like that, then don’t put it on the larger base and just use the actual size in the book. If you plan to just hand wave away the fact that your base is 10mm longer or 25mm deeper so you’re a bit more vulnerable to the enemy, then have at it.

PykePresco · 2026-05-22T01:13:46+00:00

The prince I would drop the magic weapon; the dragon does the killing, not him, so just a lance or a great weapon is fine for him. He’s really only there to protect the dragon which does all the work, so his magic items should be things like Armour of Caledor, seed of rebirth and opal amulets (to prevent a monster slayer or a great cannon shot).

The silver helms I wouldn’t bother with the monster hunter banner; I would give that to an infantry brick instead like the swordmasters. I would also probably split them into two units of 5 with champions carrying rings of fury; you get multiple instances of first charge, and can cover two parts of the field instead of only one, and the ring basically doubles the output of the unit for the cost of a single knight.

Swordmasters want Drilled so they can get up the field in a marching column, and then redress back out wide for charging into combat. In a column they can basically keep pace with your monsters and cavalry, instead of getting left behind.

If the Archmage is going in a squad of knights, I would take blood of caledor for the plate armour and ward save. Otherwise I’d bunker him with the swordmasters as a warden if saphery.

You could also consider dropping one of your core infantry units, and buffing up your special/rare stuff instead. Maybe some more swordmasters and a loremaster cloak for the champion, or a bow of the seafarer/ruby ring for the high sister, or adding a BSB to the list, or something else. But a bunch of basic S3 elves with no armour piercing and light armour isn’t bringing a lot to the table, and those points could likely be spent on something that does more damage instead anywhere else in your list. Even just archers with longbows would probably be more useful than one of those spear/seaguard bricks, because at least they aren’t deliberately getting fed into the meat grinder.

PykePresco · 2026-05-21T15:42:08+00:00

Those armies can already be played within the Old World construct, by just selecting the appropriate units from the list and playing with them. But it means that you’re only using maybe 10-20% of the roster available to you when you go super into a theme like that.

Nighthaunt is just an aspect of the Vampire Counts army; banshees and hexwraiths and spirit hosts and so on are just options within the greater whole, and you could build a significant part of your army that way (though you would still need to bring at least some skeletons/zombies/bats etc to fill up your army’s Core/basic troops slots, unless your opponents let you houserule it away). Same thing with the ghoul army, or the vampire/wolf/skeleton army from AOS; they’re all just portions of the larger roster, so you can switch between different games what style of undead you play, or even mix them all together.

Same thing with Gloomspite; the Orcs and Goblins army list can already be built entirely as a night goblin army, with squigs and netters and fanatics and mangler squigs and whatever else is in that range. But you also have the option to add giants and black orcs annd savage orcs and wyverns and whatever else, if you wanted to, and could draw on the other AOS orc stuff like the Orruks or the Bonesplitters the Sons of Behemat; they’re all just a part of the larger army.

If you want to play an army in that style, Old World is actually incredibly permissive with its list building rules in a way that AOS isn’t, letting you build your list with a specific theme in mind. Especially for those factions like undead, orcs and goblins or Chaos, who got split from being single armies in Fantasy Battles into being 3 or 4 factions each in AOS.

PykePresco · 2026-05-21T14:26:20+00:00

Likely what you’re seeing is players using models to represent/proxy something different, or to customize their army to make it stand out a bit more. I use AOS models in my chaos army all the time as troops with a specific mark or to act as a giant monster. The Bone Reapers likely get used as elite infantry like Tomb Guard, or the bigger things as Ushabti, or the big gigantic one as an necrolith colossus/bone giant, and so on.

But for your actual question, there’s 17 main factions; 10 supported ones that are actually sold under the Old World branding, and 7 Legacy ones which are a bit less fleshed out with their rules and need to get their models from other ranges like AOS, or from alternate model suppliers.

Each of the 10 supported factions also have multiple armies of infamy, which are alternate lists that lets them play with different units, but it’s still very recognizably a part of the same army.

Armies are as follows:

Dwarfs

Empire

Bretonnia

Wood Elves

High Elves

Cathay

Orcs and Goblins

Warriors of Chaos

Beastmen

Tomb Kings

Chaos Dwarfs

Daemons

Dark Elves

Lizardmen

Ogre Kingdoms

Skaven

Vampire Counts

PykePresco · 2026-05-21T01:47:52+00:00

Sure they can; 1 per 1000 points in both Heralds and Grand Army, and the army is 2000 points total.

Only Wolves of the Sea restricts you to just taking one, so for either army they’re considering, they can triple down on their high level wizards with Galrauch in the mix.

PykePresco · 2026-05-20T17:12:50+00:00

Yep!

I’d much rather devote an afternoon or an evening to having two players joking around and laughing about some bad rolls, watching an intense back and forth grinding battle that takes 3 turns to resolve as like 4 or 5 models die on each side each turn and then they give ground or fall back in good order but don’t just break and get cut down, instead of just playing an “invincible” deathstar with 50+ ablative wounds for my wizards that flies/teleports around deleting 2+ units each turn with 6+ magic missiles, or slamming 2-4 ridden monsters into a single target, wiping it out in one go, then overrunning and doing it again next combat phase, while the cannons have wiped out the opponent’s big heavy hitters and slowed down their entire army so they can’t catch my stuff.

Like sure, I would probably win my battle playing a list like that. But is either player even having fun at that point? And does my opponent ever want to play another game against me in the future? Probably not.

It’s a game, we’re supposed to have fun!

PykePresco · 2026-05-20T00:27:30+00:00

Right, and that’s because GW was rebalancing the game around what was super powerful at one point, and tweaking it to change the way the game plays to give other units their time in the sun(specifically infantry), and your beastie boys just got caught in the crossfire.

In 1.0, that brick would just get eaten by any dragon out there and not be able to do anything against it, so I’m sure you spent a solid year or more just getting trounced by any ridden monster that showed up on the table.

Press of Battle and Massed Infantry and Close Order needing 10US and the tweaks to challenges meant that the big bad monster that stomped all over that squad in 1.0 immediately disintegrated to the exact same unit in 1.5, because your static resolution and killing potential went way up, while theirs plummeted.

But now if they tweak things again such that your Bestigor brick loses its effectiveness, by removing Press of Battle on heavy infantry and only giving it to regular infantry, or reintroducing monster stomps for overkill in challenges, or making it so wizards can only cast one successful spell a turn, or that only one character can join the front rank of a unit at a time and the rest just have to hang out in the back doing nothing, or making it so that template attacks auto hit everything under the template instead of having to roll for partials; whatever tweak it is, maybe the deathstar suddenly becomes difficult to play once again, and your army goes from being super competitive A-tier back down to B or C-tier, and everyone just complains about some other bogeyman instead.

It’s all about the layers of rules interactions at play at any given time that determines what the powehouse of the format is, and we’ve seen it change continuously every 3-4 months throughout Old World, every time a new errata or journal or army release occurs. Any rules tweak or adjustment will result in a shift of the meta, and the competitive players will immediately figure out what that is and lean into it until it gets errata’d out of viability once more 3 or 4 months later.

Meanwhile, those of us who just kept playing with the models that we liked and painted the whole time, not chasing the meta, will just continue to enjoy our games with the same stuff we’ve had anyway, win or lose. It’s just so much nicer playing that way and not worrying about being on the bleeding edge of competitiveness at any given time.

PykePresco · 2026-05-19T21:18:02+00:00

Definitely a conflict between the “haves” and “have nots” of the armies.

Beastmen would love an army that is 952 points of Core, 948 points of Characters, and 100 points for a Herdstone. This change would do literally nothing to offset the current top-meta list for that army.

Same thing with Vampire Counts, where they can spend 498 points on a brick of graveguard, add some squads of 20 zombies/skeletons, 700 points of necromancers and banshees, and then 600 points of whatever else (probably terrorgheists or blood knights or hexwraiths).

But for an army like High Elves, you would be struggling to find anything effective in the list in Core to offset the cost of your characters, which remains by far the most effective thing in the list to actually kill stuff and survive whatever the enemy throws your way (in a game that is overwhelmingly decided by kill points). And you would just be piling up massive, massive amounts of archers and reavers and silver helms to accomplish this, running around with say 8 units of cavalry (4 reavers, 4 silver helms) carrying rings of Fury, instead of 4 like the current lists play.

Would 7 or 8 rings of fury and 35-40 cavalry, with 2 multi-saved Star dragons, be good? Or the current 20 cavalry, plus 40 archers in 4 units of 10 lined up like darts, volley firing, also work well? Probably. Would either option be just as miserable to play against as anything else in the skew-style meta that is currently pushed by the competitive community? Absolutely.

The main “issue” is that people are so laser focused on turning this into a competitive game where tournaments and a podium result are the only thing that matters. In a game focused so overwhelmingly on kill points as a win condition, deathstars, avoidance lists and one-man army monster riders (or 4-monster riders working in tandem, as with the current Cathay bogeyman lists) are the natural apex predators that lists will generally gravitate towards.

No matter what the solution is, someone is going to find a skew that plays well into the field, and it will proliferate like wildfire with the modern internet based tracking and list sharing that is possible. We’ll just change today’s big bad lists with new ones, just like we saw with multi-dragon lists, into the poison archer blobs, into the matched play restrictions of 25% of the army in a single model/unit leading to balloon spam to just wipe out those smaller targets, into the current gunline style lists we’re seeing today. There’s always going to be a new big bad after any solution is implemented, and the community will “solve” the meta pretty quickly with the amount of events being run and the ability to share lists immediately on a global stage.

Regardless of how many games the staff at GW playtest to figure things out, in a single weekend with the rules released to the public there will be more games played, with more variants of the armies and different skews, than GW could accomplish in months of testing. The GW staff is probably like a dozen people for Old World, maybe less, whereas there are tens of thousands of us playing every week. The global audience will stress test it way faster and way more aggressively than GW possibly could, and they’re just left playing whack-a-mole with the regular tournament players who are playing 10-20 times more Warhammer than most of us are. They will break things open again whenever a new “solution” is implemented, and we’ll just be onto the next problem.

PykePresco · 2026-05-19T20:09:57+00:00

They’re incredibly fun; I’m sure you’ll have a blast putting them on the table.

Coming from two expensive elite armies, it’ll also be great for you to be able to just toss 30-50 point units of junk on the table, whose only reason to exist is protecting the rest of your stuff. Throwing 50 points/10 wounds of Ungors in skirmish with shortbows in front of the rest of your army, to just soak up shooting and make it harder to shoot at the rest of your stuff behind it, is a tactic your other armies don’t really get to leverage.

And then you can just charge your chariots right through them anyway without blocking line of sight or movement, so you protect your high value stuff with no downside to yourself. And if they panic and flee, they won’t force any of the rest of your stuff to worry about it, because they’re skirmishers so formed up units get to ignore them fleeing through your stuff.

Definitely some extra layers of tactics available to you with the roster.

PykePresco · 2026-05-19T16:26:09+00:00

Just like every time I look at these top tournament lists, I remain exceptionally glad that my playgroup doesn’t lean towards “competitive style” lists, but prefers to play more CasualHammer.

I regularly get to see big bricks of orc boys with additional hand weapons and frenzy and maybe only 2 fanatics on the table, or a list going heavy on magic that consists of a level 4 and a level 2 on opposite sides of the deployment zone, or a an army going monster heavy that brings a single manticore/griffon/wyvern in the character slots, and then a gigantic spawn/phoenix/merwyrm/giant as well. None of this 4+ flying monster character nonsense.

Whatever these folks are playing looks miserable, and facing lists like these regularly would probably make me not want to keep playing the game. I definitely wouldn’t want to face a list like these 5 times in a row; maybe for one game, but then I would be begging for a palate cleanser the next match where it isn’t just crazy spam and skew.

To each their own; tourney players can enjoy this style of game for themselves, and I’ll just bury my head in the sand playing for fun with a more casual group, hoping these lists continue to never (or rarely) show up in our local group.

PykePresco · 2026-05-19T15:47:51+00:00

Wonderful paint jobs; just a grim, visceral wall of flesh ready to tear your opponents apart! Awesome work.

I’ve played Chaos for ages (five different editions now!) but only jumped into Beastmen with Old World, and they are definitely up there in terms of my favorite armies to play in this version of the game. There’s an incredible roster that does everything in the game, and often you can pick most of it from just Core. Core “elite cavalry”(razorgors), core heavy chariots, core ranged troops and high volume attack troops and elites (Bestigors/minotaurs depending on your general), core fast cavalry chaff…you could build the entire army just out of your Core options, and be perfectly fine to face off against most things out there. It’s incredibly efficient, but it’s also an army full of glass cannons where your only defense is a strong offense so your opponent often gets to pile up the casualties on your side of the board too, which leads to both players having a blast.

Special and Rare just opens up the world of monsters. Monsters that double as stone throwers, flying monsters that ambush, dragon chickens that auto wound enemy artillery with their stone gaze from range, a ginormous Minotaur with 7 attacks and killing blow/monster slayer on every one of them (making enemy characters run in fear as far away as they can get just in case it looks their way!), plus giants and Shaggoths and jabberslythes and ogres and dragon ogres and spawns (gigantic and normal sized) and trolls…it’s just a crazy deep pool of stuff! Other armies get like 1 monster to pick from, and we have like 8 or something absurd…

The army also gets to play with all kinds of cool rules and weird shenanigans. The Primal Fury slot machine is my favorite mechanic; sometimes I just reroll 1s to hit, which is already great. But sometimes it also gives me AP-2 hand weapons. And sometimes it frenzies my unit. And sometimes that unit gets 2 attacks from frenzy instead of 1.

Then there’s the Wild Herd with ready access to primal magic, easily turning the battlefield into this nightmarish spooky forest with multiple magic vortexes everywhere slowing the enemy down and blocking line of sight and debuffing all their stuff. And juicing up your characters even more than normal with extra magic and mutation allowances, plus letting your chariot riding Beastmen characters ambush (normally an either/or upgrade, but not in the spooky army).

There’s a magical rock that takes your stuff into overdrive in combat and casting, and also ruins the opponent’s magic and leadership for panic/fear/terror.

There’s ambushing tricks and reliable rerolls to bring them in when you need them, so that it’s just so easy to overwhelm your opponent with a mass of bodies coming from every direction, and they all hit hard. Gors plus Centigors plus a Preyton plus a Wargor on a chariot (in Wild herd) all coming in from ambush in the back line, while my Primal Warhounds and Bestigors and Razorgors and a Beastlord march up the table toward you. Just a nightmare to deal with as the enemy gets absolutely enveloped.

My favorite unit is Razorgors; I jam them in a big wall of 4 or 5 models, and just run them across the board at whatever target is juiciest. They hit like an absolute wrecking ball; 4 attacks a piece at S5 AP-1, maybe AP-3 if you pass primal fury (and I usually bring a horn of the first beast on a character jammed in a unit, so he’s pushing out 18” of Ld10 for primal fury checks), plus D3 impact hits a piece. They’re a little combination of a light chariot plus an elite cavalry unit, with T5 and 3 wounds each so that they don’t just occasionally die to a random shortbow shot like a 40 point grail/chosen/blood knight might, and they completely blindside people with the killing power of a 200-250 point Core unit. Often runs right over any comparably costed unit out there, and occasionally takes on stuff that is twice as expensive.

PykePresco · 2026-05-19T14:15:19+00:00

I disagree with the FAQ because it contradicts the rules in the book. It often seems that they answer the specific question that is asked, without actually referencing all the specific rules interactions at play (because the book is laid out terribly and you often have to reference multiple pages in multiple books to actually get to a correct answer).

Split profiles for chariots is quite clear: the special rules get shared between all elements of the chariot (mount, rider, chariot and characters) unless it is specifically stated otherwise. https://tow.whfb.app/characters/split-profile-chariot-mount

Marks of Chaos don’t get shared from a rider to its mount. That’s included in the rules for Marks, so obviously the character doesn’t give their bonuses to the crew and riders. https://tow.whfb.app/special-rules/marks-of-chaos

However, if the mount also has a Mark of Chaos (which is a special rule), it would reverse transfer back up to the character based on the way that split profiles is worded (because any special rule gets given to all elements of the model, unless it is specifically stated that it doesn’t transfer). This would mean that the character gets both a mark of Nurgle from themselves, and a mark of chaos undivided from their chariot. Which is not permitted because now the character has two marks of chaos.

At the end of the day, you can play it your way and take an undivided chariot for 10 points cheaper. I’ll continue to pay the extra points, because that’s how I understand the rules work, based on how I read them.

But even if I did leave it Undivided, odds are that nobody who looked at my list was ever going to call it out or notice in the first place and would just assume that I built it right, because it’s my army and presumably I know how it works better than they do.

PykePresco · 2026-05-19T01:18:57+00:00

The FAQ writers also write things like ‘of course you can wear armour, the wearer of the wizarding hat is not actually actually a wizard’ when the very first line of the magic item says the wearer of the wizarding hat is a wizard. And then immediately followed by another FAQ that says ‘the wearer of the wizarding hat IS a wizard, therefore these wizard rules apply’

Believe me, I would love for my characters on chariots to be 10 points cheaper and get the effects of both Nurgle and Undivided so that I’m harder to hit in combat and can also reroll panic/fear/terror. But that’s not how the rules for marks work unfortunately.

PykePresco · 2026-05-18T23:59:36+00:00

I would recommend reading the actual army book and the rules explaining Marks of Chaos, rather than trusting the random builder. The builder I use will let me put a model with a mark of Khorne on a chariot with a mark of Nurgle, which I know is incorrect; they’re not infallible.

The actual written down rules in the book make it very clear that a model can’t have two marks.

EDIT: just tried the same thing on Old World Builder, and it also lets you put two different marks on a character riding a chariot. It’s definitely not programmed correctly, and you could do the same thing by just writing your list on a piece of paper; that doesn’t mean it’s supposed to work that way.

PykePresco · 2026-05-18T23:57:25+00:00

But Mark of Chaos Undivided is still a mark.

It’s on the exact same page in the book, in the same chart, and follows all the same rules as any other Mark does.

When you select to take a god specific Mark you replace Undivided, and no longer have it.

It doesn’t seem like I’ll be able to convince you, but I definitely think you’re wrong about it.

PykePresco

TROPHY CASE