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I think that in a 'squad' or 'horde' of 20+ you should have to roll 2D6 to see if disease breaks out. If you get 1-4 it does. 5-12 it doesn't. If your troops are effected by disease they can only move half. However if in close combat that Squad should count as having poison weapons. What do you think?

I think stuff like that works okay for campaigns. But some battles are impromptu fast things.

And it doesn't affect all armies the same. TK can't march anyway. So it's not a penalty. A gunline army won't care since they won't be marching. Likewise with a pure caster force.

...Why?

I assume the idea here is that, when enough bodies gather in a small space, they get each other sick.

Except this doesn't happen on the battlefield, it happens in camp. A massive unit could pour out of a city, form ranks, and be in perfect health while they march to battle in the next hour. If they travel across the nation-state for three months, however, it might be a problem.

Of course, that's assuming that the soldiers can even get sick (undead, Daemons, Nurgle-stuff, etc.).

This level of detail...it just doesn't work in the game. If you implemented this rule, I'd want my Skaven to have a free unit of 50 Skavenslaves for every 1000pts, since they breed so fast. But then I'd lose d3 guys from each unit, because they're short-lived.
Armies would need to roll to see if some guys died from bandit raids on the way to the field, or if rations went bad, or if the soldiers lost some of their weapons or armour, or if they just plain got lost. So...yeah.

Also, being sick would not give you Poisoned Attacks.

^like I said, this stuff is best for campaigns where you can have long-standing rules taking effect like this.

Running out of food.

Running out of pay for your men.

Fatigue.

Being recalled to the Realm of Chaos


LOTS of stuff affects armies in the long-term. It's just they don't affect them remotely the same. If you know what armies you'll have ahead of time, you can agree on some potential penalties to spice it up.

Disease is a logistical concern, it's about how much skill you have in building and maintaining a camp, and how long you're willing to keep your army out in the field.

It could make for a really interesting rule for a campaign, as it could be used to represent generals with more skill in logistical issues, and work as another risk/reward mechanic (do you dare keep your army in the field another month knowing disease could break out), and also as a play balance measure (successful armies would be kept in check and their defeated opponents allowed time to rebuild their forces, as they'd have to return home to rebuild).

But it really doesn't work for one-off games. It's just a dice roll that might gimp some units. Really, as it is we assume that whatever forces have been lost to disease have been lost, and the army that's present is the sum of all fit soldiers.

I would acctuailly like to do this in my christmas campagin. Thanks for the idea I'll probily think of some more stuff to like refine it.

Just to put it out there,

if you are sick enough that you can coat your weapon in some secretion your body is giving off that is viriliant enough to take effect in the space of a few seconds, you are either very VERY dead OR belong to Nurgle. No disease that allows its carrier to still fight is going to take effect within the time a battle takes place.

Mabye it could go towards your victory point. For example if a army of skaven fought agaist a empire army. The skaven would get 100 vp's to represent the empire army bringing the disease back to the city.

Not really as they are not all crammed together but spread out

Now if you included such a rule in a campaign scenario as said before something like a warbands type game based around the horned rat games? campaign, start small, get bigger the more you progress through the map etc.

You could include sickness and all factors regarding stuff like this and it would be a pretty fun campaign, but as for it actually effecting a battle the best you could do would be to say that for units afflicted with w/e there problem is suffers xxx for the next battle until its cleaned up etc. As well as basically having to write entirely unique afflictions, conditions and solutions for each problem of every army involved.

Would be very complicated the least though it would make for a fun interesting more realistic campaign for those that care to.

My only question is, why only for units of 20+, or well in this sake im guessing your accounting for horde armies. Granted the element of catching a disease from the persons around you are higher. Theres nothing to say that an ogre might get a cut on his league, go gangreen and die from it, and the handful of ogres in the group could catch something from that one creature dying.

Also you would have to account for the ability to deal with such a disease as well as balance it.


Decent idea for a campaign if you really wanted to get that complex. Sort of like a Total war - warhammer fantasy deal. But not for games and not for a global rule for games outside of 'said campaign' I think.

This rule just seems to punish one style of play because the OP doesn't like it.

It doesn't make any sense logically, it would be interesting in a campaign setting, but that would be army-wide.

It doesn't make sense fluff-wise, as there are lots of races that (as folks mentioned) are immune to disease.

In terms of constructive criticism, if you really want a disease rule, it would work best in a campaign or siege setting. You need a long span of time to really make any sense of a disease rule-set. Right now, all I see in a rule like this is an outright punishment for someone's playstyle. That's not a good place to start 'proposed' rules, as it just reeks of someone wanting to win against something that have trouble against.

Haha, no I don't think so. I think that would be bad.

1. Fluff doesn't make sense because of the chance of disease breaking out is far less then that considering every turn is less then a minute in fluff time. This is the conflict with the enemy. So when they saw the enemy we can assume that everyone that was sick is dead, or left behind by now. Plus why would they get poisoned attacks? Is this disease so lethal that it kills right when the blade strikes the enemy? No, because the group it breaks out in doesn't have even a chance of death. If the diseases in the Warhammer world were this crazy, it would no doubt also affect the smaller groups. Plus, I assume you mean to say the disease lasts forever, because if it didn't... the magical funky disease that only lasts like a minute then goes away would be to much for little ol' me to handle.

2. Why punish hordes? Some teams need hordes. Think how much this punishes hordes that already have poisoned attacks.

Maybe for a scenario where the magical virus that only affects large groups of people, gets deadly when it contacts weapons yet only slows down the group that contracted it, speads like wildfire, and can somehow affect even the Tomb King's skeleton army (some sort of deadly powerful osteoporosis? lol.) is spreading across the land that these two rivaling factions must now fight over some sort of antidote, then it might work.

P.S. I have no idea why everyone, save Grey Templar, keep bringing up that some factions are immune, yet don't bring up ALL OF THIS OTHER STUFF!

I may actually give this a go, a friend of mine has his own table and I'm sure throughout my upcoming league and GW v GW tourney at WW I'm likely to make a good couple of friends most likely within skaven players but who's caring! I may actually try and assimilate this into a campaign based somewhat around the warbands 'style' of play on an event only basis between battles.

@LordHamshire: ...several people have mentioned "all this other stuff".

Really, it's an interesting idea, as I've said. But as far as execution goes, there's just so much more you'd need to do. I'd have to say, if you want to include disease in a game, you'd need to do the following:

- make a campaign.
- cover how it breaks out in camp versus not.
- cover what else can mess up armies on the march (deserters, bandits, rations, etc).