Mengil Manhide's Manflayers

Mengil Manhide is the sadistic, cannibalistic leader of a vicious group of Dark Elf mercenaries known throughout the Old World as The Manflayers. They travel unseen across the lands under the cover of darkness, selling their skills to the highest bidder and adorning themselves with the flayed flesh of those they slaughter in battle.

Throughout the lands of the Old World, Mengil has plied his trade, and the band of Dark Elf warriors who follow him, known as the Manflayers, are rightly feared. They are employed as assassins and murderers, and are often used to eliminate rivals. He is often used by those who wish to make an example of the target, for Mengil takes savage pleasure in skinning his foes, often leaving the skinless bodies of his victims hanging from the trees or impaled on spikes in the ground. On occasion, Mengil's Manflayers will take to the battlefield, employed to infiltrate deep into enemy territory to spread terror and confusion.

For Hire: Any army except Bretonnia, High Elves, Wood Elves & Dwarfs may hire Mengil and his Manflayers using the rules for hiring Dogs of War units.

Points: Mengil and 5 Manflayers (including a standard bearer as well as a musician) cost a total of  250 points. This is the minimum sized regiment you can hire, the size of the unit can be increased by adding additional Manflayers at + 17 points per model to a maximum of 20 models in total.

Mengil Manhide    M5 WS5 BS6 S4 T3 W2 I7 A2 LD9

Manflayer              M5 WS4 BS5 S3 T3 W1 I6 A1 LD8

Equipment: Mengil and the Manflayers are armed with a handweapon, a repeating crossbow, light armour and carry a shield. 

Save: 5+

Options: The unit may exchange their shields for 2-handed Greatswords at a cost of +1 point per model.

Magic Items: 

The Banner of Kalad: The Banner of Kalad is enchanted, creating a nimbus of shadow around Mengil and his warriors, making them even more difficult to spot and allow them to approach their prey even more closely before they strike from the shadows. 

Any unit attempting to hit Mengil or his Manflayers with a shooting or close combat attack suffers a -1 to hit penalty, combined with the skirmish rule, this means the Manflayers are very hard to hit with missile weapons.

Special Rules:

Scouts: The Manflayers are Dark Elf scouts and therefore suffer no movement penalty in rocky terrain, they may skirmish and use special deployment rules.

Manflayers: Mengil and his Manflayers are cannibalistic killers that skin their foes and wear their flayed hide as cloaks. 

The regiment may never pursue, however each enemy unit that they break or wipe out in close combat gives them 1 additional victory point (even if a unit rallies later).

Hate High Elves: The Manflayers follow the normal Dark Elf rules and therefore hate any High Elves they fight in battle.

Playing Warhammer scenarios without preparation.

I thought of this idea after I had a talk with a friend of mine about warhammer scenarios. We both agreed that it was a lot more fun to play different scenarios rather than just Pitched Battle all the time, but also came to the conclusion that several scenarios rarely get played because they need more preparation. As an example, if someone wants to play a game with me, we usually agree on point-values & maybe some extra restrictions. But unless we have specified a specific scenario, then we will both show up with the same amount of points & scenarios such as Last Stand won't be viable to play.

So the idea I had was, what if you both (or all if more than 2 people) agree to make one army of 1000 points, one of 1500 points & finally a 2000 point army.

Before you begin, both players roll a D3 & use the army you roll:

1: 1000 points

2: 1500 points

3: 2000 points

A warband of Chaos ambush the Lizardmen

Then depending on which armies both players rolled, consult the chart below:

If both armies are of the same value, play Meeting Engagement (Battle Book, page 26)

If one army is twice as big as the other, play Last Stand (Battle Book, page 30)

If one army is 500 points bigger than the other, play Ambush (Battle Book, page 29)

When playing the Last Stand scenario, make sure the defending army gets at least 1 piece of terrain they can defend, otherwise it will be a very 1 sided battle.

The forces of Tzeentch make a last stand vs the followers of Slaanesh

Not only will you play different scenarios, but it will also be a tactical challenge as you can't prepare for many of the scenarios (your armybuilding will have to be more allround), nor do you even know beforehand how many points you will have!

We tried it out with 4 players, each one playing each other, for a total of 3 games each, it worked remarkably well, this is something I will be doing more & I encourage you to try it, this could work with just about any edition of warhammer, not just 5th!.

Nastasya Roskolnikov

Straight from the pages of the Citadel Journal, here's a new special character for you to try in your games. 

She's not a particularly strong character, but that Globe of Malice could be a nasty surprise!

Kholtrag the Vile, Bray shaman

Bray-Shamans, known also as the Speakers of the Dark Council, are powerful, if primitive, sorcerers who occupy a unique and privileged position within the brutal and bitter world of the beastmen. They have no need to defend themselves from other members of their tribe, for none would dare assault them, the priests of the beastmen. Not even the mightiest Beastlord would harm a Bray-Shaman, for they speak the will of the Dark Gods, and those that defy the gods pay the highest price of all.

I originally painted this model for the Crown of Command fanzine painting competition, but when I was asked to be one of the judges I had to withdraw my entry. I painted the model in colourful robes & with lots of red details to get a nice 90's GW feel. 

Kholthrag made his debut on the Warhammer Renaissance weekend, used as a lowly level 1 shaman with Van Horstmann's Speculum. While not doing as great as my discrider, he did kill a few Phoenix guard in the first game & managed to kill a Vampire Count in a challenge, pretty good start!

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.

Undead Mummy

Mummies, also known as the Preserved Dead, are made from the corpses of ancient warriors that were wrapped in funeral linens and embalmed to prevent decay. Mummies are protected by powerful magics to preserve them and cheat death itself. Because of this they are of great interest to Necromancers. They are held in thrall by the magician who brought them back to life until destroyed.

The 4th edition mummies can be taken either as troops or be used as a Mummy Tomb King, with 4 wounds & toughness 5 they´re very tough, however a mere movement 3 makes them so slow you have to buy the Staff of Damnation to make sure you get those Van Hel's off.

This particular model I think was meant to represent Settra as he clearly carries the Flail of Skulls & wears a big Crown.