Nemesis Crown

Nemesis Crown was the last worldwide campaign run by Games Workshop for Warhammer Fantasy Battles that ran in June 2007. A small supplement was produced for the campaign and rules were produced for a special character for every army in the game, including ones that were unsupported at the time. Annoyingly the special characters weren't in the campaign book, but in a White Dwarf and on the now discontinued Specialist Games website instead. The campaign came after Storm of Chaos, but was somewhat ambiguous about whether the events of that campaign happened or not. The campaign itself has three battles detailed in the supplement to be played at the event.

The Fluff

The campaign revolved around finding the titular Nemesis Crown, a crown of pure warpstone forged by the dwarven runesmith Alaric the Mad. You might remember him from the 6th(.5) edition codex where his master rune allows you to ignore armor saves. Seems he tried to make some new rune for a crown that could transmit the wisdom of all its bearers and their ancestors to whoever put the crown on. Unfortunately there was no substance that could actually hold this rune without exploding and Alaric gradually became more and more unhinged by his continued failures until he happened to stumble on a hunk of warpstone and in his maddened state decided to see if the crown could be made from that. Good news is the crown didn’t explode when he put the rune on it...bad news was the warpstone twisted the rune so that instead of channeling ancestral wisdom it instead channeled all the evil of the bearer’s race into them driving them mad...whoops! Supposedly from there this thing was then taken and buried under the Great Forest in the Empire by Alaric in a moment of clarity and was promptly lost for generations. That is until a bunch of dwarfs on a mining expedition accidentally stumbled across it and tried to recover it, with the result being only one of the Dwarfs managed not to get killed in the attempt and even then he was left half-maddened by whatever the hell happened down there (best guess being that the Crown drove them all crazy and they slaughtered each other). Sadly things only continued to go down hill for the one who lived, as he was promptly captured by night goblins and forced to tell them what he knew. This led to everyone and their grandma and their dog looking for the crown. After several irl weeks the campaign results were tallied up by GW and based on this the canon ending to the story was that after many, many battles the Dwarfs were able to win thanks to assistance from the Empire (and some unlooked for help from the Elves) with the High King of the Dwarfs taking back the crown and locking the annoying crown of mindrape away forever in an impenetrable Dwarf vault that only he had a key to.

The New Heroes

As mentioned above, each faction got a new special character for use in battles for the campaign. These characters were built using the existing rules for generic characters, but were each granted a special ability for the campaign.

• Beastmen: Panyck the Manic, a Slaaneshi Bray-Shaman. His special ability granted him the Wild Call spell as a bound spell with a power level of 5.
• Bretonnia: Baron Philippe d’Artaud, a Bretonnian Paladin. His special ability allowed all Peasant units within 12" to use his leadership as their own and re-roll all failed leadership tests.
• Chaos Dwarfs: Rykarth the Unbreakable, a Chaos Dwarf Hero. His special ability upgraded him to your Battle Standard Bearer for free.
• Dark Elves: Vykiel the Monstrous, a Dark Elf Beastmaster. His special ability allowed you to take War Hydras as both special and rare choices.
• Dogs of War: Aeolus the Astromancer, a Hireling Wizard. His special ability allowed him to move through water without penalty and gain soft cover while standing in water.
• Dwarfs: Sharpe Ironthorne, a Dwarf Master Engineer. His special ability allowed you to take one engineering rune on a war machine for free.
• Empire: Maximilian von Schädel, a Captain of the Empire. His special ability allowed you to take a Dogs of War or Regiments of Renown unit as a core choice.
• High Elves: Illiam Versefinder, a High Elf Prince. His special ability allowed you to choose not to make an Intrigue at Court roll and always use him as your general.
• Lizardmen: Zlatgar of Tlaqua, a Saurus Oldblood. His special ability granted any Saurus Warriors unit he joined the Blessed Spawning of Huanchi special rule for free for as long as he remained in the unit.
• Ogre Kingdoms: Vazgrat the Lucky, an Ogre Tyrant. His special ability allowed you to re-roll a single die of your choice once per game.
• Orcs & Goblins: Nobber Fangadoom, a Goblin Great Shaman. His special ability gave you an extra power die on your turns if he was not in a unit.
• Skaven: Ratnash the Fleet, a Skaven Assassin. His special ability forced opponents to re-roll successful smoke bomb tests against him and let you upgrade a single unit of Night Runners to Tunnelers for free.
• Tomb Kings: Nyletoth the Charioteer, a Tomb Prince. His special rule made Chariots a core choice as if he were a Tomb King.
• Vampire Counts: Count Rabe von Stahl, a Blood Dragon Vampire Count. His special ability let you take a single unit of Black Knights as a core choice.
• Warriors of Chaos: Angara the Yusak, an Exalted Champion of Tzeentch. His special ability allowed him to know 3 spells instead of the normal 2 for his cost.
• Wood Elves: Sylvain Lathaury, a Wood Elf Noble. His special ability allowed you to upgrade up to two units of Glade Guard to Scouts at no cost.