Munchkin Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Chaos and Order

With a bit of delay I am happy to cover the new supplement for the Warhammer Age of Sigmar variant of Munchkin, Chaos and Order, which was released in June 2020 in English and June 2021 in German, adding the forces of Chaos (with the Khorne Bloodbound) and Kharadron Overlords as part of the Order faction to the game. The English version of the game is released by Steve Jackson Games with the localised version available through Pegasus Spiele.

Along the base game we've covered the first supplement Death and Destruction (with Flesheater Court and Ironjaws) on here as well. The latest supplement Guts and Gory (covering Undead and the Ogor Mawtribes) hasn't been localised yet, so will wait for the release of that.

As with the other supplements, this one covers 112 cards as well and is priced at a RRP of 19.99 USD, the German box supplied by Pegasus Spiele is a bit cheaper at 14.99 EUR.

The cards are spread across two decks, split into 66 Door and 46 Treasure cards.

Just in case you're not familiar with the new Age of Sigmar background, let me give you a brief introduction. The Old World of Warhammer Fantasy as replaced with a new fantasy World for Warhammer, the Age of Sigmar. The factions in this game are now more or less divided into four Grand Alliances, that all the armies in the new Warhammer are assigned to. As we had the Grand Alliance of Death and Destruction in the first supplement, we add Chaos and Order to this one. Chaos is self-explaining, all the former chaos forces are gathered here, wether they are devoted to one of the great chaos gods, undivided mortals, demons or beastmen. Yet, we go once again for division of the different chaos armies. Where in the early editions of Warhammer Fantasy Chaos was a mixed force, in 6th edition we had a split into the Beasts and Hordes of Chaos (mortals + daemons), with the daemons being seperated from the mortals in the 7th edition of Warhammer Fantasy battles. In Age of Sigmar this splitting up into sub-factions has become more dominant, so you don't have simply mortal chaos followers, but in some cases the devoted to a special Chaos god, like the Bloodbound are the mortal followers of Khorne. All of the "good" forces are fighting under the banner of the Grand Alliance of Order, with a lot of re-worked background for some classic fantasy armies. For example the Wood, High and Dark Elves all got the axe, and were heavily redesigned. For example the Lumineth Realm-Lords replaced the High Elves, with much more exotic designs, the Sylvaneth replace the Wood Elves and the Daughters of Khaine are the sole survivors of the former proud Dark Elves, reducing them to Witch Elves and their variants. And of course, Elves are not Elves anymore but Aelves, along with the addition of a fourth force of Aelves, the Sea Elves of the Idoneth Deepkin. A similar fate hit the Dwarfs, who are now Duardin and split into three subsections, the "classic" Dwarfs as dispossessed City of Sigmar, the former Slayers as a pure half-naked Slayer army of the Fyreslayers and the "steampunky" Kharadron Overlords, moving the Dwarfes / Duardin from regular crossbows and black powder weapons to more advanced technology.

With that being said, the new races of Kharadron and Bloodbound are included in this deck four times each, along with an additional race card for the Hedonith of Slaanesh, Idoneth, Moonclan Grot, Nighthaunt, Skaven and Stormcast Eternals. And of course, as this is Munchkin, you'll find some lovely easter eggs among the curses, items and monsters. For example misreading the Codex makes you lose your armour, you lose a level when you forget to prime your models (very fitting), you lose your shoes if your base has too much flock, and a monster can be a champion (very fitting for Chaos) or be without a base and get a penalty for that. And of course a lot of bloody, for the blood god and different other jokes on Khorne himself.

The Kharadron have a lot of steam punky gear that either picks up their design or are items from the warscrolls, and similar for the Bloodbound a variation of axes along with having a Juggernaut as a mount. Among the mobs you'll find units and characters from various Age of Sigmar factions, you have squigs and Grot pirates, different Nurgle units like Toads, some Ogors. Due to the Age of Sigmar reboot a few of the characters are rather new to the lore, like Auric Runefather or Vorgrun Loshar, and some "classics" like Scyla Anfingrimm or Valkia the Bloody can be found as high level mobs.

In case you want to split the cards into the decks again or want to identify them in general, they have a small icon on bottom center of each card, covering the heads of a Bloodbound and Kharadron soldier.

Conclusion
Once again well made, but in direct comparison - due to the "younger" brand of Age of Sigmar, these don't do that deep or broad "inside" jokes in direct comparison to the 40k Munchkin. But that is mostly due to the Games Workshop decisison on the Fantasy brands Warhammer and not lack of motivation at Steve Jackson Games or Pegasus Spiele. And as Games Workshop moved their factions further from the general stereotypes of fantasy races (like Chaos Marauders in a Conan-Style or very Norse or Viking themed dwarves), it is of course a bit more tricky to include those steretypes in a funny way. On top of that, due to the usage of copyrighted proper names, that is even a bigger stretch. Anyhow, compared to other Munchkin spin-offs, this is maybe a bit less silly, still properly made. Fitting artwork and the designers did their job reading the lore and adapting it to the cards.

Currently another supplements is available in English, Guts & Gory, covering Ogres from the Gutbuster Mawtribe and Nagash's Undead with Ossiarch Bonereapers. No information on the localized German version. But the supplements are of same size, with 112 additional - mostly new - cards for the game, and a price of 19,95 USD. Price point of this supplement is the same as any other Munchkin supplement of that size. The German supplements went up a bit from 12.95 to 14.95, but still reasonable and cheaper than the English ones.

Munchkin is a brand by Steve Jackson Games and distributed in Germany by Pegasus Spiele.

The reviewed product item was provided by the manufacturer.