Warhammer: Mark of Chaos - Chaos Campaign - Chapter 2, Mission 1

Here are general tips for playing the Chaos Champaign in Warhammer: Mark of Chaos on HARD Difficulty. At the end of Chapter 1, Mission 6, we chose Nurgle instead of Khorne. A list of all our Warhammer: Mark of Chaos articles can be found here.
We won't be hand-holding you through absolutely everything, but instead just give tips on situations that we found tricky or that you might not have considered.

Chapter 2: The Wrath of the Rat-Kin

Mission 1: Herald of the Dark Gods

General Notes

• At the very start of this Chapter, you can buy an Aspiring Chaos Champion. DON'T do that yet.
• You won't be able to field him alongside both Thorgar (mandatory) and the Undivided Sorcerer (too useful to leave behind) for the initial two missions. The Skaven mission use their own heroes. Only in the last mission for the Chapter will you be able to bring a third hero with the Chaos army.
• When you buy a hero, they start at the level of your main character. The more you put off buying one, the higher their starting level. If you buy one too early, you will need to level them in missions. If you can win the missions without any heroes, wait until you have levelled up all you can or until you have to move on in the Chapter and won't have access to buy them..
• If you do get a Chaos Champion, you can get them a horse and mount them. In addition to more HP, when mounted you can attach them to mounted regiments (Chaos Knights), but not infantry regiments.
• Don't spend too much money early in this Chapter. You need a lot of money to outfit the Skaven army comfortably, and that could cost over 11,000 gold.
• The store and barracks change when you enter the Brigand's Glade after the Skavan missions. Once you enter Brigand's Glade, you will not be able to buy a Chaos Champion or the magic items that are in the store at the start of Chapter 2. Instead, you can buy different items and (if you chose Nurgle at the end of Chapter 1), a Sorcerer of Nurgle.
• The magic items in the store are worth a mention:
• The Spelleater Shield stats list +30% Magic Resistance. If your hero has Magic Resistance 0, it gives Magic Resistance 6.
• The gottenhelm, which gives 10% resistance to various physical attacks, is bugged. According to the stats after you put it on, you get +10% vulnerability. Check your resistances to various items by hovering your mouse over your armour value. Put on the helm and you will notice the percentages went up instead of down.
• Two cannons are available for sale now, and another one will be available in Brigand's Glade after the Skaven missions. If you buy them all you will have four. In the final Mission for this Chapter, you can field only one artillery piece.

Overview for this Mission

• Because Sudobaal is a stupid and continues to move ahead without you, you need to keep up and there's not a lot of time for side trips.
• Tight valleys and nooks means you probably won't be able to field two regiments of Knights in some areas without a lot of traffic jams. I recommend instead taking more ranged units since traffic jams mean less to them and more to the enemy if they have to march to your position.
• For minimal net losses, bring infantry units because the Undivided Sorcerer cannot be mounted, and therefore cannot attach to mounted units and resurrect them with Steal Soul.
• If you got Thorgar a horse, remember to dismount him before entering this mission so that he can also attach to infantry units.
• It is still useful to give Thorgar a mount because on solo duel missions, he can be mounted for extra HP.
• On lighter difficulties, you can proactively explore the map with Knights because you can kill the smaller enemy regiments quickly. But on Hard, the larger enemy units means doing so will tie you up too long to deal with the enemy before you need to get back to Sudobaal. Instead, stay near Sudobaal and let the scripts for this mission move the enemy to you.
• Some enemies will appear behind. All enemy units are actually on the map already, but some are farther away or have move orders based on Sudobaal's progress.
• All enemy units eventually show up, so just sit tight and concentrate fire whenever you can.
• We chose four units of Marauder Axe Throwers, the same veteran units we developed earlier in the game. Net losses (after Steal Soul) were pretty low (the summary at the end of a mission doesn't account for resurrection).
• When the Warpspawn was added to the army, we kept it in the back: It can get swarmed by a regiment of enemy infantry and get killed, so we need to be careful to support it.
• We can't buy demons from towns, so it is valuable to keep alive all the free demon regiments.
• We chose Nurgle in Chapter 1 Mission 6 so we got Plague Bearers. We used them aggressively to get some levelling and to block enemy charges from our Axe Throwers. The Sorcerer can attach to them to resurrect dead models.