Sultan Jaffar

This article is a stub. You can help 1d4chan by expanding it

Sultan Jaffar is a minor historical character from Warhammer Fantasy Battles. He was a powerful wizard of Araby origin, who rose to rule a small city-state, but wasn't satisfied with that. By the year 1435 IC, using his charisma and his ability to summon genies, he united the neighboring desert tribes under his banner, and then conquered four of Araby's greatest city-states; Al-Haikk, Copher, Martek and Lashiek. He called his new empire the Sultanate of Araby, and further cemented his power by secretly harvesting warpstone from the desert and selling it to the skaven in exchange for espionage and assassination services.

In 1448 IC, the Skaven managed to convince Jaffar that Estalia planned an attack on Araby. He promptly decided to beat them to the punch by invading them first, conquering the city-state of Magritta before laying siege to the Tilean city of Tobaro. Unfortunately for Jaffar, this wasn't his smartest idea, as his actions triggered what came to be known as "The Crusades"; warriors from the Empire, Bretonnia and Tilea all came swarming into Estalia and kicked the Arabians out. Within a year, Jaffar was making a fighting retreat into Araby as his own men steadily deserted him, now thoroughly sick of his rule. Finally, the Battle of Al-Haikk in 1451 saw Jaffar's final defeat, after which the Sultanate he had assembled collapsed once more into its traditional infighting.

He may possibly have been inspired by the final boss of the old-school video game, "The Prince of Persia". Even MORE likely is that he is inspired by much more popular scheming wizard Jafar from Aladdin, because he first appeared in 5th Ed in 1996, four years after success of the movie.

Jaffar never made an appearance in the Warhammer tabletop, being purely a figure of lore. The Warhammer Army Project decided to fix this for their 9e Warhammer Armies: Araby book, where he was presented with the following stats:

Movement 4, Weapon Skill 3, Ballistic Skill 3, Strength 3, Toughness 4, Wounds 3, Initiative 3, Attacks 1, and Leadership 9.

At 325 points and a Lords slot, he's a Level 4 Wizared who can use the Lore of Shadow or the Lore of Death. He has the special rule Despot; he must be your Army's General, and all friendly units within 12" can re-roll failed Psychology tests - all friendly units outside of his Inspiring Presence range, however, suffer a -1 penalty to their Leadership score; his terrifying presence makes them fight harder when he is keeping a watchful eye on them, but also means they would rather not be fighting alongside him at all.

He carries a hand weapon and two magical items:

• Serpent Staff: This Enchanted Item lets Jaffar attempt to take control of an enemy model in base contact at the start of the Close Combat phase; if the target model fails a Psychology test, it will attack any of its allies in base contact that phase, even if in a challenge.
• Black Book of Ibn Naggazar: This Arcane Item gives Jaffar the Loremaster special rule. But when he casts a spell, he removes d3 models from his unit as casualties, having fed them to the book as a blood sacrifice - he does gain +1 Casting Dice per casualty. If there aren't enough unit models to sacrifice, Jaffar is killed by his own bound daemons. If his Magic phase ends and Jaffar hasn't attempted to cast a spell, he is also killed by his daemons.

References

• Warhammer Fantasy Battles 5th Edition:
  • Warhammer Armies: Skaven (pg 22, Skaven Timeline)
  • Warhammer Armies: Bretonnia (pgs 13, 33)
  • Warhammer Armies: Dogs of War (pg 89)
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition
  • Children of the Horned Rat (pg 30)