My favourite game that nobody plays
For a long time now I have been deeply in love with a game that I very rarely ever get to play. It has the right blend of old-school wargame philosophy, with some new ideas to keep it current, while being open ended and flexible enough that anyone with some toy soldiers can play a game.
That game is Warlords of Erehwon by Rick Priestley.
I found Warlords of Erehwon quite by accident, I’d just suffered a work injury, I had a baby on the way and I was browsing Oldhammer YouTube videos as you do, and then first I found the trailer, then the video demo with Rick Priestley by Wargames Illustrated (my favourite wargaming mag now) and I was interested to say the least.
Warlords of Erehwon is simple to play, if you are accustomed to wargames, and the learning curve isn’t steep if you’re not. For context Rory, my six year old, is managing to play just fine with a little help from me and Dan. It’s miniature agnostic so you can use whatever you’ve got and it is built with the expectation that you will homebrew new units and warbands.
For gamers of a certain type, this is this wargaming sweet spot. As our tale of two gamers has petered out due to work, uni, kids, and car trouble, we’ve recently dusted off the Warlords of Erehwon book for some casual Friday gaming and I just so happened to painting loads of Nurgle stuff so naturally, I am looking at homebrewing a warband list.
The Homebrew Problem in Wargaming and Tabletop Roleying Games…
So homebrew has a bad name in general. It really does. We tend to view it as the refuge of power gamers and poorly balanced fan content. That is, in my opinion very undeserved. Though it’s hard to deny that an element of that exists in homebrew anything.
However, much of the homebrew I have seen and sometimes used is poorly scoped. I encountered this before when I wanted to use my Chaos army from Warhammer Fantasy Battle in Warlords of Erehwon and there were a plethora of homebrew lists on the Warlords of Erehwon facebook group. However the few that I read had tried to replicate every single unit, rule and equivalent statline with the Warlords of Erehwon game engine.
This simply doesn’t work, as it doesn’t factor in the way that the game balances army lists against each other, or how a warband with so much packed into it interacts with the rest of the game at large. To that end I created the Dread Reavers warband list which was my attempt at creating something that approximated the idea of chaos within the Warlords of Erehwon context. There are some things that I would change were I going to remake it today ( hint hint ) but on the whole I think it stands in line with the rest of the warbands without standing out too much. This is a good thing and I will cover the reason for that later on.
My homebrew philosophy I guess…
So I guess I need to put my money where my mouth is!
To that end I will get to the point of this post. As we’re playing Warlords of Erehwon at the moment and I have been building a little Realm of Chaos Nurgle Warband, I figure I will document my homebrew process for anyone that is interested.
WARNING!: Contains middle-aged-man-rambling
Step 1: Find a theme
Firstly, you don’t need to recreate an entire Warhammer army in Warlords of Erehwon rules. In fact it’s much better if you don’t even try. Warlords of Erehwon in some ways is a much more streamlined game and that is one of it’s strengths. What is better then, is to think about a theme that you are trying to capture. For me I’ve always been mad for Nurgle, ever since 1994 when I started playing it was the old 5th ed plaguebearers and the 2nd(?) iteration of the great unclean that did it for me. I was hooked (Maybe, I’m 41 in a couple of months my memory of the hobby timeline is probably off).
But there was something else to it as well if I’m honest, a few years later in 1997 Dan and I had more or less started playing Warhammer properly at this point and I at 11 years old was in the proud possession of pocket money which I would spend at our home away from home, KC’s Games. One of those early, formative pocket money purchases was White Dwarf 209 which featured a battle report between Steve Anastasoff and Warwick Kinrade. A Nurgle themed coalition of Skaven and Chaos making a desperate bid for escape from a massive Lizardman army. I still have that white dwarf (and Dan has loads of lizardmen from that era…) and still read it from time to time, for me that battle report had everything I ever wanted from a wargame, awesome models, an exquisite table set up, an entertaining narrative scenario. It is for me, wargaming perfection. It also had a really good terrain article by Robin Dews and a section by Nigel Stillman. This is, in my opinion the perfect white dwarf, I am willing to fight people over it, but I digress…
I realised the theme I wanted to capture with this Warlords of Erehwon warband was not Chaos in all of it’s dark splendour, nor was it a traditionally Nurgle experience, with great big chaos warriors bulging out of their armour. I wanted to theme this warband around that disparate group of pestilent zealots, and maybe expand on it a little bit to fit more of my collection in there.
I most certainly did not want to make this Dread Reavers but stinky.
Step 2: Look at what’s already there
The next step, which is probably the most important from a playability standpoint. Look at what’s already there and how it could fit your theme. There is rarely a point in generating new units and rules wholesale. Why bother generating Chaos Marauders from scratch when there is already a barbarian list you can nab units from? Do you really need to create rules for Nurgle’s Rot when you can give a unit the choking or venomous rule?
As creatives and gamers we have a tendency to go too granular when we’re creating something homebrew and we just don’t need to.
Going back to White Dwarf 209 I can see that most of what I need is already there, a human wizard of some kind, a Skaven Plague Priest is now just a Ratter Warlock (with venomous and choking to match the Plague Ratters), Plague priests are just plague ratters, Warlords of Erehwon has a beastman list, Skaven slaves are literally Rat Slaves from the latter list. The only thing that Warlords of Erehwon doesn’t really represent is Daemons. I made an attempt at a demonic unit in Dread Reavers but I was never really happy with it.
But just by mapping the units I want to field to an already existing unit type I can build 90% of the units I want. This also means that I don’t have to think too hard about balancing anything, and while Rick Priestley has provided a guideline on points values for stats and special rules (available here), I prefer to use it as a last resort rather than the first port of call. It makes my life quicker and easier that way.
For the Great unclean one, I don’t believe it strictly needs to be a level 4 wizard spewing the lore of Nurgle and dark magic everywhere to be appropriate to the warband list. So for that I am choosing to use the Cyclops statblock as a template, and instead of throwing a rock I am going to give it beastly breath, choking and venomous.
For the plaguebearers, I am simply going to take the elemental spirits statblock from the Barbarian Shaman’s body guard (but that doesn’t quite work due to the spirit rule see below)
Which brings us to
Step 3: Theming what’s already there.
If you look at the warband lists, I’m using the barbarian list here. You can see that many warbands have one or two special rules that encapsulate their ethos. Most barbarian units can choose between Savage or Berserk, or start with one and can buy the other. This is a really good clue as to how we go about theming our warbands while keeping them within the Warlords of Erehwon framework, and the inclusion of the Plague Ratters in our list, possessing as they do both Choking and Venomous, shows us how we theme this warband.
Obviously I will tweak this a bit more as we flesh out the warband, but with very little work we now have, I believe, a coherent foundation upon which to base the rest.
The Warband so far…
For our units we have
a barbarian shaman
A Ratter Warlock
A Cyclops
Plague Ratters
Rat Slaves
Beastman Warriors
Elemental Sprits
That’s not a bad start but I think probably needs tweaking a little bit.
The thing that stands out for me, is that both the Ratter Warlock and the Barbarian Shaman are warrior units, rather than Warlord units. What follows next could be my misinterpretation of the rules, so please email me if I’ve gotten it wrong, but I think you can only have one warlord, and we run the risk of not being able to take some of our thematic warband list.
The first instinct is just to recreate entries a Warlord variant and Warriors variant but that is quite clunky.
I think we can use the cyclops as the warlord. We’re going to take it at its 190 allied cost + an arbitrary 25pts for the privilege of being warlord and access to the extra special rules. We won’t bother giving it options for a bodyguard as it doesn’t really need it.
This means we are free to take both the shaman and the warlock in the same list. Though I do realise that wizards are usually a one per army affair, this list is quite weak in other ways so having two spellcasters running around might help offset that. It also might not!
We probably need to expand it a bit, I’ve always been a big fan of Realm of Chaos era Nurgle champions and I would like to include one or two here and there so I’m going to steal the knightly champion from the knight’s list.
I also really like the diseased flagellants from the realm of chaos warband, and have already built and painted some for the previously mentioned Realm of Chaos project I talked about so we I am going to steal the flagellants from the knights list too. At this point, we are lacking cavalry, and ranged weapons. I don’t think this is the biggest deal in the world, the idea is to create a warband with a theme.
Step 4: The Creative Bit
Okay so game mechanics-wise we’ve covered everything from White Dwarf 209, and expanded it a little bit, but I believe in a way that is credible within the warband’s context and in a way that doesn’t break the overall game. Cyclops not-withstanding, I prefer to err on the side of weak with homebrew content.
We now have to think about the narrative we are trying to tell. The Nurgle army in White Dwarf 209, while featuring Lord Skrolk, was not a story about the epic unmaking of the world. It was a bunch of High Fantasy reprobates running for their lives after causing some trouble. The army, such as it was, was ragtag with beastmen here, skaven there and a sorcerer conjuring up some daemons. I really like that because I think that mirrored how I started collecting my army all those years ago, I would flit from army to army, picking up a £5 box of plastic orcs and a £5 box of plastic chaos warriors. Nothing was designed, it was all just circumstances lumped together on the table and it was glorious.
So we’re calling the Warband List Pestilent Miscreants. It’s not epic, nor should it be. It’s a warband of bedraggled weirdos, probably running for their lives if my dice rolls are anything to go by!
The Cyclops now becomes a Pestilent Incarnation, it represents a metal Great Unclean for me, but could be a daemon prince or something weirder. A mutated giant or ogre maybe. It has lost it’s rocks to hurl but has Choking and Venomous baked in as well as beastly breath.
The Ratter Warlock is now a Plague Warlock and has Choking and Venomous to match the Plague Ratters.
The barbarian shaman is now a Pestilent Sorcerer, has choking baked in and may or may not be able to upgrade to venomous.
the Knight Champion is now a Pestilent Knight and has choking with an optional Venomous upgrade.
Plague Ratters are unchanged.
Rat Slaves are going to be condensed into one profile.
Beastman warriors will have choking baked in with an optional venomous upgrade and are now Pestilent Beasts.
Flagellants are now Diseased Flagellants and have Choking along with Zealous.
Elemental Spirits are now Pestilent Spirits with choking and venomous baked in.
Unit options will be tweaked at the end but so far so easy.
I am not happy about the lack of cavalry options though. I like something that’s at least little bit quick. I also think that perhaps slapping choking AND venomous around so much is doing the theme to death. That’s the problem with easy wins, they can be over done but first lets tackle the cavalry issue.
I’m going to steal the centaurs unit entry and call them Pestilent Centaurs. I am a creative genius…
This leaves the door open to create more arcane things like my much beloved plague toads and plague toad riders as general monsters.
Begorra that was long winded Paddy…
You can download the finished warband list below. But for a couple of hours work on Sunday avo I now have a new thematically aligned warband list for the sorts of warbands I feel like playing right now. I still need to work out points, but that is easy enough, as I’ve started with existed unit entries and removed rules and added rules I can just refer to Rick Priestley’s points value guide.
But I believe, once I’ve figured out whether Choking or Venomous is the rule that encapsulates the army’s theme, and moved the other to an optional upgrade for more special units, this army wouldn’t stand out in power particularly from other lists. Cyclops excepted. An alternative would be to have a chaos lord or similar leading the army and treat the Cyclops as an allied monster, which is probably best from a general gameplay point of view, but is not the warband I am building.
Also please excuse the AI art, while I can do the tech stuff I am not an artist and the funds aren’t there to employ one.
Perhaps I might make a Pestilent Reavers warband next and get that up.
Conclusion… We got there in the end!
If there is anything to take away from my inane rambling, then it should be primarily that Warlords of Erehwon is awesome and your life will just be so much better if you play it. Really. I’ve also heard it whispered that chicks dig dudes that play Warlords of Erehwon so there’s that too, and y’know… vice versa for all of those… chicks? In the audience…
Also I think, for those of us who are tired of meta-gaming and tournaments and 3 year release cycles and the increasing Enshittification of the hobby space, games like Warlords of Erehwon allow us to go back to a “purer” form of wargaming, when it was just us and our mates telling stories around a gaming table. Especially as wargame-as-creative-exercise is incredibly rewarding and touches on many different disciplines when you go down the rabbit hole with it.
Anyway if you fancy a chat, feel free to email us at [email protected], now go away, touch grass and make stuff.
P.S. Pestilent Miscreant Update 01.06.2026
Okay so the warband has been tested a bit. The Spirit rule really borks the Spirits of Contagion as a standalone unit (which in the end I lifted straight from the Ratter Warlock’s bodyguard) they just don’t work without a wizard, especially with the lower stats. The unit entry is clearly more like a wizard’s familiar than a man-sized demonic monster. If I remember correctly I think I solved this problem in the Dread Reavers by making the unit as a whole a wizard. Which is an option but to me it stinks of shoe-horning game mechanics from one game into another and is a big reason why I was never particularly satisfied with the Dread Reavers list.
I think ultimately I will have to homebrew a solution, but that really depends on what battlefield role they are to fill exactly. I think, given that the great unclean one equivalent is now just a big monster instead of a wizard, we can lean into that and make our Pestilent Spirits some kind of heavy infantry, this appropriate for the theme, and if we make them a bit overtly Nurglesque it doesn’t matter too much really, I can’t see Kevin Rountree knocking on my door with a baseball bat. But he might you never know.
Really though my favourite chaos army lists throughout the years were not the genetically altered super soldiers or the super human black knights, it was the bedraggled cultists and mutants desperately trying to summon up some magic or daemons before the authorities kicked their heads in, so potentially in V2 I will be dialling back some of the units with the Spirits of Pestilence forming a core of heavy hitters perhaps.
In any case, there is a coherent list to play this army for now, and that’s all good for me!