Koyote in Mordheim (And some WHQ)

[horridperson]

Great looking project.  Thematically Mordheim was awesome but some of the skewed rules made it so predictable and gamey.  Your house rules look like a fair fix that balances things out a bit.  One of those games I'd love to revisit if I got a suitable terrain set together.  Some games are only worth doing right so I'm interested to see your project come together.

[MagpieJono]

Which part of the country are you running this campaign?
I echo the previous comments in that the alterations you've made seem fair and balanced.

[Koyote]

Which part of the country are you running this campaign?

Bellingham, Washington. 

[MagpieJono]

I'm not even on the right continent never mind in the right country. Oh well. Good luck with the campaign. Would've loved to participate!

[Koyote]

Thanks, everyone.

Here's some (bad) photos of my Mordheim terrain.  I have since replaced the stone ruins with many more 4ground ruined buildings and added additional scatter terrain made by THMiniatures (see below).  I've kept the ruined cathedral as a center piece, but I've painted a ruined tower (see below) that I can use as well.

[Charlie_]

Fantastic. Your conversions, terrain and house rules make me think that one day, perhaps, I might get back into Mordheim. Never thought I'd find myself wanting to get back into a GW game.... But the setting was so damn good! The artwork from the rulebook.....

[Koyote]

Fantastic. Your conversions, terrain and house rules make me think that one day, perhaps, I might get back into Mordheim. Never thought I'd find myself wanting to get back into a GW game.... But the setting was so damn good! The artwork from the rulebook.....

If you or your gaming buddies don't like the Mordheim rules, there are other options, such as Frostgrave.  Aside from the setting and the focus on wizards, Frostgrave is essentially Mordheim in the snow, but with much better rules. 

And now that Frostgrave includes rules for Captains rules, your warband's heroes are no longer exclusively wizards.  Additionally, the Maze of Malcor supplement is not just a new set of scenarios, spells, and magic items, it includes a number of optional rules that address some of the game's most glaring problems, like how xps are earned and how treasure markers are earned and deployed in the basic game.

If you don't have a snow table and have no desire to make one, then do what I did and play Frostheim (i.e Frostgrave rules played in a Mordheim setting).  I play Frostheim using my regular Mordheim terrain and because of the large variety of Soldier types available in Frostgrave, converting my existing Mordheim warbands into Frostheim (Frostgrave) warbands was relatively simple. 

For example, in Frostgrave the Barbarian soldier type has a relatively low armor value, but a high melee attack value, so what I did is use Dwarf Slayers to represent the two Barbarians in my warband.  I decided that they were a father and son team and named them Sven and Sven's Dad, after the two beserks in the movie Eric the Viking





Once free from the creative constraints imposed upon you by Mordheim rules, you are free to interpret the Warhammer world in different ways.  For instance, when I decided to add a Crow Master to my Frostheim warband I began by associating crows and ravens with characters and races from the Old Empire and other fantasy worlds. One of the strongest associations to float to the surface of my little mind is the long relationship between the Dwarfs of Erebor and the sentient ravens of Ravenhill, near Lonely Mountain.  Now, Warhammer is not Middle Earth (although some would argue this), but its close enough that the idea of Warhammer dwarves taming crows or ravens isn't too much of stretch, so I got to work converting a Mordheim beardling into a Crow Master. 








Similarly, when I decided that I wanted to add a Treasure Hunter and a Bard to my warband, I dug through my collection of unpainted GW models and found these two guys.





And when I wanted to add a Trap Expert, I put this little fellow together using extras from GW's old Ogre sprues.

[Timotl]

Great stuff! Mordheim is still one of the best games out there. This campaign looks like a fun one.

[Bloggard]

guess I'm sounding like a stuck-record, but your painting and modelling are fantastic.

and you're one of the (all-too-) few (as far I've seen) that justify the painting of eyes - your work in this area really does enhance and complete the figures.

[Dentatus]

So much awesome there. Excellent work  - as usual.

I've always wanted to try Mordheim but kept hearing the rules are clunky and inconsistent.
And then there's how to incorporate 6 players...

Perhaps it can be ported into ASOBH?

[Koyote]

So much awesome there. Excellent work  - as usual.

I've always wanted to try Mordheim but kept hearing the rules are clunky and inconsistent.
And then there's how to incorporate 6 players...

Perhaps it can be ported into ASOBH?

Like any game, Mordheim is what you make of it.  IMHO, the best part of Mordheim is the whacky stories is produces.

For instance,  during our last campaign, my Averlaners' Road Warden was an absolute monster and was taken out-of-action only once during the entire campaign.  The shot that took him out came from a Witch Hunter warband.  My opponent won the roll-off and elected to go first.  On Turn 1 the Witch Hunter's Elf Ranger fired the very first shot of the game, at long range and through cover, but he shot was dead on and my Road Warden toppled from his saddle.  Later in the game, my Marksman armed with blunderbuss avenged the Road Warden and took out the Elf Ranger with a blast from the Marksman's boom-stick.  During the campaign phase we rolled for injuries and both my Road Warden and his horse recovered fully.  The Elf Ranger was not so lucky.  He died from his injuries.  Go Marksman!

To add insult to injury, my buddy rolled a 61 (captured) on the Heroes Serious Injury Chart for his hero Witch Hunter, Matthias Lieberstein.   Since my warband included an actual witch (hired sword), who the witch hunters had desperately tried to kill, you can imagine my delight at the thought of taking the witch hunter hero prisoner.

During negotiations for Lieberstein's life, my buddy tore off a piece of paper and scribbled a note. As you can see from the photo, the signed note was an offer from the Witch Hunter Captain, Hieronymus Black, to wed Matthias Lieberstein to my witch, in exchange for Matthias' freedom.  Also, the note declares that Old Witch is "defintly [sic] not a witch." How could a girl crone say no to that?

Needless to say, after a quick shotgun blunderbuss wedding, Matthias was released.

The post game campaign phase ended with me replacing my only casualty, a newbie Mountainguard, with a war-monkey (counts-as warhound), and naming the monkey Lil' Matthias. Good times.




GW's Roadwarden model is covered from head to toe in plate mail and is really quite boring, so what I converted my own from a Mordheim mounted Reikland Captain.  My Road Warden is an ugly cus with a big belly, but you can't deny that he's got character.









And here's the witch that I named simply, Old Witch.  It's the classic Mordheim witch model.  I plan to use her in Frostgrave (Frostheim), so I painted an apprentice to accompany her.  The apprentice model is a Dwarf Witch made by Stonehaven Miniatures.






And here's Lil' Matthias.  When I used this model in Frostgrave as a count-as warhound, his name was Yorick.  This model is a powder monkey from a GW Empire kit. I replaced the barrel of gun powder with a skull, because... why not?   It's Mordheim, and everyone knows that crazy stuff happens in Mordheim all the time.




While I'm walking down memory lane, I'd like to take a moment to discuss my Averlanders' third hired sword, the Human Scout.  I think that this hired sword is too often overlooked.  The Human Scout is dirt cheap, only 10 gc to hire and 5 gc upkeep.  He has human stats (plus an I4), and is equipped with a sword, dagger, and bow. His low price reflects his Not a Fighter rule (i.e. if he goes out of action, he leaves on a a roll of 1-3, instead of a 1-2).  However, if he sticks around long enough to get a skills, he can get infiltrate and/or the ability to shoot his bow and remain Hidden.  By using the latter, his chance of going out-of-action drops considerably. 

I added him near the end of the campaign, and thought of him as an easily expendable model, but he surprised me and proved to be quite useful when it came to achieving certain mission objectives.

[mweaver]

Man, I do love you miniatures - excellent conversions, paintjobs - and photographs!

For the first few years we played Mordheim, we played as intended, competitively.  But increasingly we started developing collaborative campaigns, and that was a blast.  We still return to Mordheim regularly, pretty much always collaborative campaigns.

The rules were not perfect, but were solid - and the campaign system is still about the best I have seen for a skirmish game (and that is very important to me).  We have a few house rules for balance - pretty much in exactly the same areas Koyote mentioned: making armor a little more effective, making other options than two hand weapons more attractive.  The simplest tweak was to borrow the rule from old Warhammer where a shield grants two points of protection in melee (original Mordheim said 1 point); suddenly a fair number of warriors were swapping the second weapon for a shield.

Loved the story about elf shooting the road warden out of his saddle.  One of the things I like about Mordheim is no one is invincible.  No one.   

-Michael

[Bloggard]

that horse rider ...  ... well, all of 'em, as ever ...

I love the AAR write-ups of Bogdanwaz's inspired games in terms of hybrid-frostgrave, and your stuff seems to be very much of the same standard: I can only hope likewise that sometime or other I get close to the games it sounds like you enjoy.
Always liked the look etc of Mordheim although have never played -  and have some trouble understanding why it died a death with GW, and continues to be ignored.
Would be interested in combining the better aspects of it with GA/frostgrave - any more in-depth blogs etc out there about so doing?

[DeafNala]

The miniatures & scenery are GORGEOUS. OUTSTANDING WORK!

[Koyote]

Would be interested in combining the better aspects of it with GA/frostgrave - any more in-depth blogs etc out there about so doing?

My take on combining Frostgrave and Mordheim is very simple.  I simply use the Frostgrave rules and Warhammer & Mordheim models, terrain, and themes.

For instance, for my Frostheim wizard I used the old Mordheim Warlock model (which I already had painted) and then kit-bashed/converted an apprentice.






I swapped out the apprentice's head just before painting it.  The new head has much more character.

 


For my captain, I used a FW model. Frostgrave doesn't have rules for pistols, so I called it a counts-as crossbow.  Apparently the pistol has a REALLY long range.




Instead of using standard treasure markers, I used my custom made wyrdstone markers, which sadly I still haven't painted.




One of the great strengths of Frostgrave is the game is designed to be a fairly generic fantasy world, so players are free to use whatever fantasy models they have lying around.  This is great, because when you are trying to convince your gaming buddies to start playing a new game, your friends have to decide if the expense is worth getting into a new game.  If the expense is low, then they are more likely to give it a try.