Warhammer Renaissance weekend

 Rogue Trader Copenhagen was supposed to arrange an oldhammer weekend the 26:th of March, but due to various reasons it was changed to a Warhammer Renaissance weekend instead. Now I've played a total of 2 games of Warhammer Renaissance before & that was prior to the changes done in 2022 so I was a total noob, but I figured it could still be pretty fun to just have a weekend with games against new opponents & therefore I decided to join anyway.

I hadn't decided on what to play except Chaos, so I made a list for each God. Seeing as Warhammer Renaissance uses the magic system of 4th edition, where players can cast spells in the opponents magic phase, I quickly discarded Khorne, a magic user would literally be twice as good as compared to 5th edition, seeing as at least 2 other players would play Khorne, it was an even easier choice. Each army I did had at least a level 3 spellcaster, while the one I ended up with, Tzeentch, had both a level 4 & a level 1.

Characters:

Slyrax Van Horstmann: Chaos Sorcerer Lord: Mark of Tzeentch, disc, Destiny of Tzeentch, Breathe Fire, Infusion of White, Dispel Scroll. 

Chaos Hero: Mark of Tzeentch, Flail, Chaos Armour, Scaly Skin, Drums of Marching. 

Beastman Shaman: Van Horstmann’s Speculum. 

Regiments:

6 Chaos Knights: Command with Assault Banner. 

12 Chaos Hounds / 3 Beastmasters: 

Auxilary Units:

21 Bestigors:  Command with Banner of Hatred. 

5 Harpies. 

War Machines / Monsters:

2 Heavy Marauder Chariots: Scythes.

1 Chaos Spawn.

My Chaos army

Slyrax Van Horstmann on disc

I got up pretty early, had everything packed since the night before (or so I thought, I had of course forgot to pack movement trays), took the train to Copenhagen, along for the ride was Emil. 

In total 8 players showed up, it might not sound like much, but hey the official Warhammer Renaissance world championship only had 6 players!

3 Chaos armies (2 Khorne, 1 Tzeentch)

2 High Elf players

2 Undead players (Vampire counts Blood Dragons & classic Undead)

1 Chaos Dwarf player

My first game was against a guy named Frederik who had a lovely High elf army painted in a nice 90´s retro style. His army had 2 spellcasters as well, and also a hero with Moon Bow (Bolt thrower), a Bolt Thrower, an eagle & a pair of chariots, while his troops were Spearmen, Archers, Phoenix guard, Silver Helms & Ellyrian reavers. His army was faster & had more ranged threats, but mine was more durable & had bigger units.

We rolled scenario & got capture the middle.

Turn 1

A bit of shuffling in the first turn from both of us & then hell broke loose on the 2nd turn, his eagle charged my wizard, which promptly killed it. Slyrax then continued to wreak havoc with spells & his Breath attack while one of my spawns sprouted extra limbs & doubled its movement to 22" & charged a chariot. 

I wont go into details, but my opponent gave up in turn 4, he had 2 Ellyrian Reavers left while I had only lost my hounds & my Harpies (but had also gained a 2:nd spawn as well as a new unit of Horrors).

MVP was Slyrax, with a kill tally of:

16 Spearmen, 16 Phoenix Guard, 15 Archers, 3 Ellyrian reavers, 1 eagle, the level 2 wizard & the hero as well as a unit champion, add to this a chariot that paniced off the table due to killed spearmen & a Bolt Thrower that got killed by the Horrors he had raised. My regiments didn't do anything the entire game but hold the objective, not a single model killed....

2:nd game was a multiplayer game, I paired up with Jimmi (Khorne) & got to fight Totter (High Elves) & Emil (Blood Dragon vampires).

This time the scenario was hold the village, so we set up a village in the middle.

Due to a magic item the elves were forced to deploy their entire army & give up the first turn before anything else happened.

Emil's undead marched towards the village while the elves stayed back & tried to kill with shooting & spells. The chaos forces surged forwards. 

Turn 2 saw the same trend continue, Slyrax was now behind the enemy lines & would stay there for the rest of the game. The Chaos forces set up a trap for for the Blood Knights while a chariot got wings & charged the elven cavalry, only to be killed by the magical blade of the Elven general (a seriously over powered weapon that allowed its carrier to gain attacks up to a total of 4, each attack would hit & wound on a 2+, while causing D3 wounds without any saves, the downside being that the elven army had to deploy first, cost of the weapon? 0 points....).

In turn 3 the Blood knights happily exposed themselves for the trap, Emil claimed they would still win, 4 charges & a combat later saw the Bloodthirsty knights break all enemies but the marauder horsemen, toughness 5, 1+ armour save & 2 wounds each meant they were tougher than even a dwarf clad in mithril!

Fighting commenced in the village, the chaos forces being victorous in both fights.

Slyrax started his magical bombardment once again, killing Alarielle to make sure to have a superior magic phase. 

2 turns later the elves were all dead, the Vampire counts had their super deathstar of Blood Knights alive & well, but lured far away from the objective.

Slyrax proved his worth once again, this time his tally was: Alarielle, the elven Battle standard bearer, 16 Maiden Guard & an elven chariot.

Elven deployment

Turn 1 about to begin

From left to right: Chaos Lord on Manticore, chaos chariot, hounds & marauder horsemen vs the Blood Dragons...

At least the chaos forces holds the village

Flesh Hounds get demolished by the elven general.

A few extra pics from other games:

This is as 90's as it gets!

Khorne vs Blood Dragons, no magic what so ever!

My thoughts afterwards:

I'm still not a fan of having both support attacks as well as step-up, makes the combats a bit too dependent on the dice & forces you to either go for the tough troops or have some LD boost (I got hatred on my Bestigors with LD 9), it also makes strength enhancing weapons the superior choice.

Magic in both turns is off the charts, spell casters are essential & far superior to close combat characters, the biggest reason for me to play 5th over 4th edition is the magicphase, Warhammer Renaissance goes in the middle, having a set number of winds of magic (2D6), but allows you to cast in your opponents phase as well. Balder, if you´re reading this, this is not balanced, the reason for creating Warhammer Renaissance is supposed to make a 90´s warhammer edition where troops matter, so far after a total of 4 games, my troops never matter more than my characters & those characters are more specifically the spellcasters. Maybe allow non-spellcasters access to dispel scrolls or allow Total power to be dispelled by normal dispel cards (maybe always a roll of 5+ or something), because magic hurts & I'm glad I didn't bring a Khorne army.

Otherwise I'm pretty happy with the changes, I think just like regular warhammer 4th & 5th edition, one needs to talk with the opponent before any game & agree about what type of game both people want, cause it can go out of hand pretty quickly.