[BTB] Mark of Tchar

I just had to try out a Tchar warband, which worked out greatly. My leader smacked some Dwarfs, and got his Mark - yay!
... But then I noticed, that it doesn't look like he can keep his armour, unless of course he has Warrior Wizard, which he cannot get due to him only being able to use Combat, Strength, Speed & Special. Is this correct, or did I miss some 'can cast spells while wearing armour' in the Tchar rules?

I picked it anyway, and ended up with Foresight - I presume I can cast this and still go into battle wearing my armour, right? That's atleast how we interpretate the 'pre-battle spells' here.

Cianty (tagging linked with Facebook would be awesome here), you told me earlier, that you play a lot of Tchar - got an answer for this?

Hi Aipha,

yes, you are right: a Tchar Chieftain has to play by the same rules as all models and therefore cannot cast spells while wearing armour. So if you had bought him some light armour or fancy heavy armour, maybe a shield - all of this has to go if you want him to be able to cast spells.

If you want your Tchar Chieftain to use the (rather powerful) "Foresight" spell then you may not use any armour in that following battle. The "pre-game" sequence where you use Foresight and the "main game" battle are all part of the same "game". So saying that you cast your spell and then quickly put on some heavy armour would be... erm.. cheating. Even though I will admit that the attempt is surely worthy of a true follower of Tchar.

Of course, any self-respecting Tchar Chieftain should make sure to get himself a suit of Chaos Armour (BTB, page 31) as quickly as possible in order to not having to worry about this spellcasting<>armour conflict.

Thanks for the response! ^_^

Well, I did indeed buy him some armour, and here's the problem; we play in the Mordheim/EiF setting, meaning we don't have access to Chaos Armour - or atleast not at the moment. Playing in the Border Town Burning setting would of course solve this, but we have yet to try it out, except for the warbands :-P

Would it be completely unfair to get access to the Academic skill list, when gaining the mark then? Thus being able to buy 'Warrior Wizard'. I've just started to like Tchar, so going away from it would be a bit sad! But you're right about the 'take armour off'-thing of course, since the pre-battle sequence indeed is locking the equipment on the characters. However, it's been accepted by my group as it is now, not that I suggested it though, which prevents problems at the moment, but if I should get another spell, I'd have to throw my Gromril suit to my Seer instead - that seems a bit odd!

Chaos Armour was released in Border Town Burning but there is no reason not to use it in Empire in Flames especially since you are playing Marauders (or Beastmen with marks?) which pull rules from the BTB setting. Obviously it has to be approved by your gaming group.

Yes, what RL said.

The reason that Chaos Armour is not part of the warband rules themselves is that the warband is meant to be part of the BTB setting, so it made sense to pull the Chaos Armour out of the warband and put it into the overall section. An independent stand-alone version of the Marauders would surely come with Chaos Armour as warband-specific equipment.

I see, thanks a lot to the both of you!

Chaos Armour is now a part of the Marauder's rare equipment list, although they cannot start with it (right? That would make sense atleast)
However, I do have a question concerning the covering of the armour. I know it's not mentioned, since in WHFB, a Chaos Armour is usually including a helmet. In Mordheim though, a Chaos Armour only counts for an armour save, even though it might include a helmet. It says that you cannot combine it with a shield or a buckler, which is probably only mentioned pedagogically, since they're both armour, and spellcasters cannot use spells while wearing armour, but the question is - could it include a helmet (save)?

I would agree if it was too much, rulewise, but I'd like to hear your take on it

Making it available like you have makes sense.

No it does not include a helmet save.

RL is of course right once more.

If Chaos Armour included anything helmet-related then it would say so in the rules since Mordheim deals with helmest specifically.
By the way, the same is true for Chaos Dragon Scale Armour as otherwise you could not achieve a fully equipped Champion of Chaos wearing Ghartok's Skull.