Baggage Trains in Warhammer Fantasy Battle

Baggage trains are one of richest elements in 3rd edition Warhammer. In my view, no fantasy army is complete without a colourful array of camp followers. And yet, it is an oft-neglected element of the hobby: I could find only a few references to baggage trains on other Oldhammer sites (the best of which was Mouse's Flo's Field Kitchen). 

In an effort to fill in the gap, here are some pictures of the baggage for my 1000 point Wood Elf Army.

Baggage trains add three things to any game of Warhammer game: realism, conflict and creative modelling. 

The realism is simple. Most ancient armies couldn't exist without baggage trains: food stores, armourers and cooks, not to mention the sick and wounded. In the Late Middle Ages (the period corresponding to Warhammer's Old World), camp followers were not merely servants, but the wives and children of the soldiers. A chronicler of the Thirty Years War described the baggage train like this:

A regiment of three thousand men usually had not less than 300 vehicles, and each wagon was filled to overflowing with women, boys, children, prostitutes and  plunder.

This massive impedimenta (as the Romans aptly called it) didn't just vanish the moment the fighting started. Unfortunately for everyone, it was part of the battlefield.

Thus, the second thing that baggage trains add to the gaming table is conflict. A baggage train gives even the most aggressive army something to defend. But even for a victorious army driving the enemy back to its camp, the baggage train can be a peril. 

As written in the 3rd ed. Warhammer Rulebook (pages 102-103), a unit close to the enemy's baggage train will be compelled (by a failed Leadership test) to charge into the wagons and start looting, even if self-preservation would dictate a wiser course of action. What a great rule! This sort of ill-timed plundering was common in the ancient world -- perhaps the most famous case being the first Battle of Philippi, when Brutus' victorious troops dallied after capturing Octavian's camp, giving Octavian and Antony time to rally their troops. No biggie, Brutus. It's just the end of the Roman Republic.

Other interesting (and perhaps overlooked) rules about baggage include the fact that halflings go apeshit when defending baggage (+2 to hit and strength - page 103); armies get extra victory points for keeping their baggage intact (page 142); civilians in the baggage are the only units in the game to use improvised weapons (page 84); and mercenaries are more liable to bugger off when they get too close to either side's baggage train (page 125 of Warhammer Armies).

And lastly, baggage trains are grand because they're an opportunity for creative modelling. This is because Citadel never released any official miniatures for the baggage train (although there are some tantalizing unreleased models). The lack of anything official means that we have to take matters into our own hands, selecting from Citadel's beer-carts, townsfolk and villagers -- or going outside of Citadel. My favourite source for extra-Citadel miniatures is Wargames Foundry. As the Ansells' reincarnation of Citadel, Foundry models will replicate the scale and sculpting style of any Oldhammer force.

For my army, I decided that baggage wagons were inconsistent with elvish mobility. Instead, I used pack horses, combined with Jes Goodwin's elves (slightly converted to transform them into messengers and grooms). To add flavour, I threw in a piping faun (the Talisman Satyr) and a pudgy halfling chef (Samwise from Citadel's original Lord of the Rings series). 

As brilliant as they are, baggage trains were only with us for a short time. They didn't exist in 2nd edition Warhammer, and were dropped from 4th edition. And yet, baggage can be so much fun. As a Welsh soldier cries at the Battle of Agincourt in Shakespeare's Henry V, after the French despoiled the English baggage: "Kill the poys and the luggage! ... 'tis as arrant a piece of knavery, mark you now, as can be offer't." For my own part, I love to commit arrant knavery whenever possible.

***UPDATE: If you have any pictures or posts about your Warhammer baggage train, please let me know and I'll gladly link to this page.