Carnival of Chaos style warbands for other powers

Has anyone come up with balanced rules for Khornate, Slaaneshi or Tzeentchian themed warbands in the style of the Carnival?

I have found some fora and blog references to attempts but nobody seems to have completed the task of defining rules (some neat figure conversions and selections though).

Lukeyg made a start in a thread on this forum... but hasn't updated it in a while, so it might have petered out again.
https://boringmordheimforum.forumieren.com/t9218-possessed-god-dedicated-warbands-alternate-rules

As I say in that thread, I'd tinkered with it, but not finished anything either -- as far as I know, no-one has.

My ideas were:
Tzeentch would be magic-heavy, but have combat weakened, & be themed to scholars, like someone at Mordheim University got their hands on some forbidden books & feel under the sway of the ruinous powers.
Khorne would be a combat heavy warband, themed around a mix of soldiers & pit-fighters -- people who already fight & kill for their living, who have them turned it into a fanatical act of worship. They'd have bloodlust rules that might make them turn on each other -- Khorne cares not from where the blood flows! Something like the Orc Mob rules.
Slaanesh was more difficult to translate to the battlefield. One idea was a 'Sadist' themed character who gained power from inflicting &/or suffering injury. Another was to have all the heroes be specialists, trying to perfect one aspect of war in honour of their god of Beauty -- so one would be an archer who was very weak in combat, another might be a body-builder who used no weapons. But as I never got round to writing up that list (I got distracted by doing a list for every Skaven Clan), I never fixed anything down...

Alteratively, you could go down the Noise Marine route, & make a Slaaneshi warband travelling musicians, with special rules for cacophonous attacks (template, ignore cover, limited strength, possibly Ld save...) & musical weapons & magic.
Or make them more like a human Clan Moulder, with access to mutants, themed around Plastic Surgery, with devotees of Slaanesh having their bodies reshaped...
Pretty much just thinking out loud now.

The short answer is no, as far as I know there are no other lists for specific god chaos warbands.

Traveling minstrels, alla noise marines, is an awesome idea for Slanesh!

That was one of the posts I found when I started looking at this idea, sadly Lukeyg has not been on the site since that post so I assume the idea never progressed.

My thought was about unique Chaos warbands not altering the canon Cult of the Possessed (who I play as one of my choices). I like to think of the Possessed as deluded individuals who are messing with something they can neither control nor understand. I don't see Magisters having sufficient knowledge to dedicate themselves to a specific chaos god from the outset. I randomise the demon that appears if the Demonic Bridge ritual is successfully cast, at least until the Magister has sufficient experience rewards to pick one of the God specific spells. Only then does he get to choose what he is summoning.

This question was prompted by thinking about whether to add the semi-official "Emissary of Chaos" Hired Sword to the Battlescribe files I am working on. Although in the 'Dramatis Personae' category as I think he is way overpowered to be a hired sword.
The Emissary has specified powers depending which god he follows, and given the popularity of the Carnival (and the plethora of untested/imbalanced fan warbands in the early days) I was surprised there was no development of similar Tzeentch, Slaanesh and Khorne warbands.

I have to admit my preference is to leave them out totally so not finding any is actually a good outcome.

owenmatthew wrote:

Traveling minstrels, alla noise marines, is an awesome idea for Slanesh!

I'm a little embarrassed I didn't think of it before, given it's one of the classic elements in GW's Chaos range... So I guess the way to do it would be to make a Slaaneshi warband something like a roving Bacchanalia, with the minstrel-types a part of it, & the reshaped freaks another. Making them just minstrels might be too much like the Carnival of Chaos (new idea for a warband: a slightly different type of entertainer!) but just a mad party should work as something distinctly different. I might now have to work this up into a full list...

Robh: Oh, if you're checking through stuff for Battlescribe then the answer is definitely no. I'd probably leave out anything rated less than 1b (again, Broheim.net lists all the ratings alongside links, very handy website) -- otherwise you're making a lot of work for yourself. The Emissary of Chaos is rated 2, & comes from the later 'Fanatic Online' publications. From what I've seen, FO did not apply too much quality control in what the published...

The Battlescribe files will just be for my own use (and are a practice for working up a set of files for Inq28/ITEN). As I have reverted to the now unsupported v1.5 for ease of building I cannot make them public. There is a set of Mordheim files available for v2 but they are not very good. I have a thread on this in the Resources forum.

I am pretty much limiting my scope to the 1a warbands plus Drow/Dark Elf and Restless Dead (without the stupid exploding zombies).

I can see a role for a band of Chaos thugs, but they need a strong individual
theme rather than just being an alt Possessed warband. The Maurader list from Bordertown Burning is a pretty good basis and touches on the Chaos Power specific approach but IMHO it needs a fair bit of work (although in its raw form making it a dedicated Khornate band would be easy).

For a Slaanesh Warband the "roving Bacchanalia" is the perfect idea, I imagined it themed as a corrupted 1001 nights, lots of silks, potions and seductive demonic maidens. Would be great to see daemonettes, succubi and Arabian style warriors as a core force. Although trying to justify quite why they would want to go grubbing around an abandoned, ruined city would be a challenge.

Working up the strong theme & translating it into gameplay is the great challenge with a lot of sub-faction type warband lists. Like with the Khorne warband idea: the obvious choice is just to play a Cultist or Marauder warband & make it all aggressive & combat focused. To create a distinct list, it needs something extra both in theme & gameplay mechanics.

Carnival of Chaos does this really well for Nurgle, playing up the jollity of Nurgle, introducing the plague as a playable element, & fitting them into Empire society (travelling entertainers, with some heroes matched to that theme). & now I'm quite excited to work up equivalent lists for the other gods -- another active project, hurrah!

As for why a Slaaneshi "roving Bacchanalia" (I'll tighten that name up at some point) would be in Mordheim -- they might be degenerate nobles, who sealed themselves into a sturdy palace or wine-cellar during the city-wide street party that broke out in the final days before the comet struck, & emerged to take their pleasure of the remaining wretches. Or they might just have been drawn in by the lure of Wyrdstone. If you're wondering what Slaaneshi cultists want with Wyrdstone, just ask what Gwyneth Paltrow does with Jade, the answer may be equally horrifying.

An idea that works for the basics is, make a “Proxy” Warband. Meaning, take a warband set of rules you like and change the fluff.  If you like the COC Band but want a different theme; change the fluff, rename the Characters, and use any minis you like. Just make sure you put in your notes which band rules you based your new one on.

I have done this before. I like the Sisters of Sigmar rules but didn’t have female minis at the time. I had rewritten the Fluff and behold, “The Sigmar Brotherhood” was born.  I did again when I rewrote the SoS for an evil band, “The Shadow Brotherhood”, using mostly the hooded minis from the Possessed Band. There was a mini Manufacture that made humanoid big Cat figures; the Skaven Warband was perfect for this rewrite. I never followed through with the Wild Cat Band, but it was an idea.

The main part about Warbands is that they each of a bonus and penalty. The bigger the bonus the bigger the penalty. The hard part writing that and maintaining the game balance. This is why I suggest proxy bands. The current bands have already been play tested.

As Shadowphx suggests, I do the same with my Hochlanders I just use the Averlander warband rules and changed some of the names to make them fit the theme more properly. For example, Averlanders have Bergjaegers and I changed that into Waldjaegers, as Hochland is known for it's many forests! It's a small change, but it makes alot of a difference for the fluff and that way you're still able to use a playtested warband! So really agree with Shadowphx!

I agree totally, any warband needs to be based on something that is proven to work. The critical thing is identifying what is going to be the unique aspect of the band and how that can be identified in the existing bands.
I can see the Slaaneshi warband working as a variant of the CoC without any problem. The style of model used is enough to create a unique feel.
A Tzeentchian warband is essentially the core Possessed warband. It only lacks low ability acolyte heroes as well as the Magister to emphasise the extra magical awareness of the theme.
The original concept behind a Khornate band (The Brotherhood of the Red Redemption) is also reflected in the Possessed Warband (Leader, ranking Acolytes and fodder Cultists) and would again be an easy thematic reworking.
The more recent concept of Khornate forces as a band of violent thugs is essentially the Marauder list (but I am not convinced the BtB bands are sufficiently levelled against the Core game ones). Finding a proxy in the Core bands for a new Khorne force is a bit harder, I am leaning towards making them Skaven.

Proxy warbands go a long way, & I'm often happy making use of them myself -- but when you can come up with a distinct play style or device for a new faction, it's still worth doing. But yes, balancing is hard (let's be honest, GW have only sometimes managed to balance factions properly), & you should always be careful using unofficial or experimental warbands only with the agreement of other players in your circle. But I would say two of the great advantages of Mordheim these days is that there's a wealth of fan-created content to try out, & that GW don't bother us with their talk of 'official rules' & 'updates', leaving the players free to do as they please.

To which end, I should be able to post the first version of the Slaaneshi warband in a few days, with big 'Experimental' notices all over it...