Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Fantasy Adventures => Topic started by: Hobgoblin on 13 March 2024, 01:17:44 PM
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I'm finally getting together a Mordheim campaign after at least a year of interest in the project. My son and I have played a few games, and we've got some more participants who're keen, so we should be kicking off soon.
One thing that seems near universal among Mordheim players is a spot of house-ruling. I thought it might be worth canvassing the good denizens of this forum for what works, what is widely thought to work but causes problems and what is just best left alone.
My initial thoughts are to play strictly 'rules as written' - with one exception: allowing a 'fighting retreat (https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=144788.0)' (in the movement phase, a melee participant can move backwards or sideways at half-movement unless entirely surrounded; the other participants in the melee can choose whether to pursue up to full movement or let the retreater go). This is something I'd add to all man-to-man skirmish games that don't already have it, just to keep combat dynamic and to give more tactical options (e.g. retreating onto a bridge or narrow ledge where foes can only come at you one at a time and clumsy antagonists - like I2 orcs - are more vulnerable to falls). From the discussion of that rule, I don't think there are any significant unintended consequences of that.
The second thing that occurs to me is that there probably ought to be a 'full plate' armour option with a 4+ save - really just for reasons of pseudo-historical accuracy. I'd like a mercenary captain in fifteenth- or sixteenth-century-style plate to have the same degree of protection as a Bretonian knight in full mail and a shield (thus allowing the former some confidence in tooling up with a double-handed weapon like a poleaxe). But I won't add that from the start; I'd have to figure out an appropriate cost, for one thing: 100 or 150 crowns, maybe.
A common thing I see online is imposing a penalty for two-weapon use. Realism and Warhammer precedent seem to demand this, but I'm inclined to leave it - at first, at least. It does allow the weakest heroes like night runners and young bloods a little more oomph and thus more of a sporting chance in combat (yes, they may have WS 2, but give them a club and a dagger, and at least they get a couple of goes). Also, the +2 S/going last for two-handed weapons (compared with +1 in classic Warhammer) seems to balance reasonably well with two-weapon use - or going first with a spear or +1 S with a halberd.
But what about balancing with shields? I see a lot of 5+ saves for shields in melee, which does seem to balance better with the dreaded dual wielding. But shield and spear seems to be fairly well balanced against two attacks (going first and a chance of saving), even if shield and sword (club, axe, etc.) isn't. And if we do introduce full plate at 4+, a 5+ shield would throw the balance out again, so we'd have to go with 3+ for full plate (which might be nice from a simulation point of view, but would have to be priced astronomically).
Also, in our games so far, orcs with light armour and shield seem to have made an awful lot of armour saves. It might just be that having a lot of T4 troops is fairly unusual, so the back-up of the 5+ save just amplifies their resilience. But the 25c investment seemed worth it.
Skaven slings are often criticised as overpowered; we had a single slinger in our first couple of games, and he didn't seem any better than the orcish bowmen ranged against him; by the time he got close enough for his 2x -1 shots, the orcs were upon him. Again, I'm inclined to wait and see how they play out in greater numbers; I've also seen people arguing that they work just fine.
Anyway, those are just initial thoughts from a position of inexperience. I'd love to see what those who have played much more of the game think. I've been scouring the forum for such things, including Koyote's house rules (another excuse to gawp at his glorious miniatures!).
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First up, a couple of comments:
- Gromril armour gives a 4+ save. I’d use the cost and rarity of that for for your full plate, if I were you.
- Spears allow you to strike first. As does charging. In such cases, strike order is based on initiative. If you want to tilt the odds back towards the spearman, consider giving them +1 initiative in the first round of hand-to-hand.
Moving on, a couple of house rules that I favour for our games:
- Only heroes, hired swords & dramatis personae dual wield.
- Toughened leathers are available to starting warbands with light armour on their equipment list.
As we often play WYSIWYG using Oldhammer figures, we generally reduce the cost of armour by 50% to allow people to field enough of the tooled up little buggers. Helmets, shields & bucklers don’t get this benefit as they’re cheap enough and useful already.
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First up, a couple of comments:
- Gromril armour gives a 4+ save. I’d use the cost and rarity of that for for your full plate, if I were you.
- Spears allow you to strike first. As does charging. In such cases, strike order is based on initiative. If you want to tilt the odds back towards the spearman, consider giving them +1 initiative in the first round of hand-to-hand.
Ah - good ideas, both! Yes, the Gromril works perfectly: hard to come by and suitably costly. And as a Mordheim campaign inevitably tests the limits of WYSIWYG, the acquisition can be assumed to be the mercenary captain or whoever getting his starting armour completed rather than replaced.
Moving on, a couple of house rules that I favour for our games:
- Only heroes, hired swords & dramatis personae dual wield.
That's a neat idea! It's more elegant than adding modifiers to melee (which is generally 'clean' of them), and it preserves the swashbuckling aspects and the chance for junior heroes to at least stand out a bit in close combat.
- Toughened leathers are available to starting warbands with light armour on their equipment list.
Toughened leathers can't be used with a shield, right? That's essentially the only difference from normal light armour? It does seem to me that there would be scope to do something like toughened leathers 6+, light armour 5 +, heavy armour 4+, full armour (or Gombril mail) 3+ with a shield adding 1. But that would be quite a major shift!
As we often play WYSIWYG using Oldhammer figures, we generally reduce the cost of armour by 50% to allow people to field enough of the tooled up little buggers. Helmets, shields & bucklers don’t get this benefit as they’re cheap enough and useful already.
That's broadly what we'll be doing figures-wise; one of our players is contemplating making a mercenary warband entirely from Perry foot knights, which would allow him just five figures in total. Cheaper armour would certainly make a difference.
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Toughened leathers can't be used with a shield, right? That's essentially the only difference from normal light armour?
Yes, plus they’re much cheaper and can’t be sold on. These restrictions don’t sit very well with me but otherwise why would anyone ever pay for light armour?
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The consensus on the problem with armour is that it's too expensive and too easy to overcome. It's largely better to simply have more warband members than it is to pay for armour.
Slings on skaven are the other way around - slings are OK, it's the warband of many-many skaven things all with sling-slings that's problematic.
I'm not sure either is worth house ruling over unless you have some power-players in your group! My view on house rules is to only introduce them to balance out your local 'meta' i.e. if someone is steamrolling the rest of you or someone is really lagging behind lol
This site might be useful if you're not aware of it: https://broheim.net/
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Yes, plus they’re much cheaper and can’t be sold on. These restrictions don’t sit very well with me but otherwise why would anyone ever pay for light armour?
Yes, they're very 'gamey'. What compels you to take off your toughened leathers if you buy or find a shield?!?
One feature of our games so far has been fairly small warbands - precisely because we've been using old-school miniatures: Nick Lund orcs and - mainly - metal Jez Goodwin Skaven. So light armour has been a kind of equaliser. Our starting Skaven warband used only nine miniatures, and the orcs had seven. So the five Perry knights wouldn't be too out of place!
At the start of our campaign, I think that might be a good thing. I'm planning by kicking off the initial session with a big four-player game (or bigger: we might have another couple of participants) and then breaking into smaller games to be played side by side. Small warbands should lead to quicker games - especially the multiplayer ones. But once we get going, we might well revisit armour costs along with other rules.
The consensus on the problem with armour is that it's too expensive and too easy to overcome. It's largely better to simply have more warband members than it is to pay for armour.
Yes - I suppose what's countering that for now is that we all have a preponderance of armoured figures. But that may change (I'm already kitbashing some unarmoured Skaven slingers ...).
Slings on skaven are the other way around - slings are OK, it's the warband of many-many skaven things all with sling-slings that's problematic.
I'm not sure either is worth house ruling over unless you have some power-players in your group! My view on house rules is to only introduce them to balance out your local 'meta' i.e. if someone is steamrolling the rest of you or someone is really lagging behind lol
Good point! I think everyone we play with will be driven primarily by the inclusion of cool or characterful miniatures rather than anything else.
This site might be useful if you're not aware of it: https://broheim.net/
I'm all over it but thanks! It's such a great site!
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Another house rule that might work for your group is that warband hero casters pick their spell rather than roll for it. Most have stat lines that are not that impressive to start with and it’s quite a downer to be lumbered with a duff or difficult to cast spell as well.
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Another house rule that might work for your group is that warband hero casters pick their spell rather than roll for it. Most have stat lines that are not that impressive to start with and it’s quite a downer to be lumbered with a duff or difficult to cast spell as well.
Yes, that's a good one, potentially. I think we'll start out with random spells to see how they go, but that's a great suggestion to have up my sleeve if there's disquiet.
So far, our Eshin sorcerer summoned a single giant rat in the first game. In the second (we 'rebooted', so he got a new spell), he had a powerful transformation spell but failed to hit the required 8 in five attempts!
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Can't do much to houserule for bad dice rolling lol
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Can't do much to houserule for bad dice rolling lol
Indeed! As I have a longstanding distrust of Warhammer magic (as kids, we banned it at one point as we found that it wrecked games), I wasn't too unhappy about the underwhelming results! And at least there was (short-lived) excitement about the transformation spell.
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Magic in Mordheim is pretty low key. I can count on the fingers of one hand the amount of times it’s had a major impact on any of our games. And I’ve been playing, pretty solidly, since it was first released.
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We got a few more games in over the weekend, including a mini-campaign with advances, and yes, magic did seem suitably underwhelming. I quite like the random roll, though, just to enforce creativity.
With more campaign games in the offing, I'm thinking that the way to go with armour is probably to make it more effective rather than more affordable. I was wondering about essentially doubling all saves apart from toughened leathers to get a spectrum like this:
Toughened leathers (no prohibition on shields, though) 6+
Light armour (e.g. byrnie or breastplate or buff coat, etc) or shield 5+
Heavy armour (e.g. mail hauberk + extensive limb protection or similar) 4 +
Light armour and shield 3+
Heavy armour and shield 2+
Full plate (the toughened-leathers prohibition on shields could be applied here on 'historical' grounds) 2+
Gromril armour +1
Saves below 2+ would just negate modifiers. So a mercenary in Gromril full plate would still fail his save on a roll of 1, but he would still save on a 2+ if attacked by an S4 Black Skaven. Ditto for a mounted man in full plate.
That would obviously be quite a change; it might be too much. But it would balance dual wielding and two-handed weapons with shields quite nicely. And it would also balance the 'heavy armour and shield' Bretonian knight with the 'full plate' mercenary captain for a bit of verisimilitude. I also think it might make small, heavily armoured warbands more viable without unbalancing things; there are an awful lot of ways to reduce saves in Mordheim, and there's falling (no save) too.
It would also mean that it's better to have a shield than not against the average human halberdier or Black Skaven swordsman, which seems only reasonable.
Another rule tweak I'm seriously considering is a 'WYSIWYG over lists' principle when it comes to buying equipment. So, if you're fielding a classic Kev Adams goblin with a crossbow, you just buy him a crossbow from the orc list. And if you want to field Grom's Goblin Guard, you simply pay your 20gc for light armour.
I'd even extend that to mutations - so if you want to field Throt the Unclean, you can shell out 40gc for an extra arm as per Possessed.
All in all, I think that's much less disruptive than the armour tweak - though I'm very keen to get a game in with the latter to see how it goes.
This seems pretty minor
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I always lean away from anything having a 2+ (particularly one which can't be reduced, etc.). While it would still be a rarity, that's "feel bad" territory for gaming. If you left it at 2+ maximum and all normal modifiers applied, it's slightly less "feel bad" in my opinion.
You could always do simple re-writes for how armour/shields function in the game, or certain ones, at least. Shields could apply a parry, or incur a -1 when attacked by missiles, rather than actual armour. Certain armours could reduce incoming enemy strength instead of providing a save (makes the most sense for stuff like light jerkins, leather, padded armour, etc.). Some armour could reduce your to-hit roll, etc. All this stuff would remove the armour save roll, which would be a nice streamlining effect.
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I always lean away from anything having a 2+ (particularly one which can't be reduced, etc.). While it would still be a rarity, that's "feel bad" territory for gaming. If you left it at 2+ maximum and all normal modifiers applied, it's slightly less "feel bad" in my opinion.
Yes, that's a good point. And it would avoid having to count negatives, etc. And even a guy with a 2+ save is still on just a 5+ save if he's whacked by an orc boss with a two-handed sword.
You could always do simple re-writes for how armour/shields function in the game, or certain ones, at least. Shields could apply a parry, or incur a -1 when attacked by missiles, rather than actual armour. Certain armours could reduce incoming enemy strength instead of providing a save (makes the most sense for stuff like light jerkins, leather, padded armour, etc.). Some armour could reduce your to-hit roll, etc. All this stuff would remove the armour save roll, which would be a nice streamlining effect.
Those are great ideas!
One thing I thought of earlier was that shields could parry on a 'match' as well as a 'beat' - so a shield, unlike a buckler, could parry a 6. And shields as cover against missiles rather than saves is nice and clean.
I really like your idea about armour reducing 'to hit' or strength. I suppose the tricky bit would be combining it with the save-modifying effect of high S.
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One thing I thought of earlier was that shields could parry on a 'match' as well as a 'beat' - so a shield, unlike a buckler, could parry a 6.
Like the Dwarf Master of Blades skill? Would you up the cost of shields for the additional benefits opening up the costed for in-game effect rather than cost to produce in reality can of worms?
Parry is an interesting one. There’s an argument that it should not just be limited to swords, bucklers & Dwarf axes. I think it’s makes more sense to have it as a skill useable with any weapon. Perhaps even one that’s automatically available to anyone who’s sufficiently skilled/trained. WS4?
I really like your idea about armour reducing 'to hit' or strength. I suppose the tricky bit would be combining it with the save-modifying effect of high S.
I quite like the concept of armour increasing toughness. The trouble is that such an approach could lead to some very tough models and would probably require a pretty major overhaul of Mordheim rules. Criticals based on to hit rolls rather than to wound, for example, to allow skilled or lucky strikes to weak spots.
TBH, there are plenty of things that could be changed to make Mordheim more balanced and/or realistic. I haven’t found the system to be sufficiently broken to prompt me to do so and deal with all the knock-on effects yet.
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Like the Dwarf Master of Blades skill? Would you up the cost of shields for the additional benefits opening up the costed for in-game effect rather than cost to produce in reality can of worms?
I was thinking that a 'super-parry' would replace a save for the shield (and would apply against missiles too). I'd probably keep shields cheap - if only because so many of the miniatures I own have them!
Parry is an interesting one. There’s an argument that it should not just be limited to swords, bucklers & Dwarf axes. I think it’s makes more sense to have it as a skill useable with any weapon. Perhaps even one that’s automatically available to anyone who’s sufficiently skilled/trained. WS4?
Yes, that's a good idea - not least because it would reduce a lot of the henchman-related rolling. I think one could also simplify things a bit by dropping most or all of the distinctions between 'hand weapons' in the Warhammer sense. This would make assembling henchman groups easier and avoid some of the rules that tend to be forgotten in the heat of melee (axe modifiers to saves; sword parries; and club/mace/hammer stunning).
TBH, there are plenty of things that could be changed to make Mordheim more balanced and/or realistic. I haven’t found the system to be sufficiently broken to prompt me to do so and deal with all the knock-on effects yet.
Yeah, I don't think it's broken at all and have enjoyed all the games we've played so far.
My 'fighting retreats' rule goes in seamlessly, so that's the only tweak we've used to date. I do wonder if improving armour and shields might have a net beneficial effect - allowing smaller, heavily armoured warbands to be viable (so more variety) and balancing dual wielding and two-handed weapons (which become more valuable when armour's more effective). But the game does play well as is.
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Mordheim is definitely "breakable". I'm sad to admit I quit the game (after investing a lot of time building for it) after a few weekends of play. I played it many many moons ago when it launched and was happy to start again...but then I remembered how awry it can go.
It's not necessarily a matter of mechanics, but it suffers like many "campaign" style skirmish games do - in power creep.
It's exceptionally easy to pick-n-choose the best warbands, and if you're not both on the same page, it can go sideways really quick. Warbands with poor initiative or speed are all but helpless, and all it takes is one or two powerful characters to make it really unfun.
I tried dwarfs and undead, both slow and low initiative. The armour wasn't enough to save the dwarfs, and you're outrun in every scenario. My buddy had some high BS characters with ranged weapons and it was basically game over. The only way to compete was to powergame in response, something I'm not interested in.
Stuff like Skaven slingers are notorious simply because you could cheaply field 8-10 of them with 18"(?) slings for dirt cheap, etc. The elf warbands were included in various Mordheim groups or the Citadel journal and were more or less outlawed - even by the people who wrote them up. :D
There's plenty to criticise about Mordheim, but it's easiest to simply play with people who are of a like mind and will avoid the power gaming nonsense (unless you're all into it).
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Mordheim is definitely "breakable". I'm sad to admit I quit the game (after investing a lot of time building for it) after a few weekends of play. I played it many many moons ago when it launched and was happy to start again...but then I remembered how awry it can go.
I suppose the upside is that Mordheim terrain is perfect for most skirmish games. I'm restarting last year's building programme (lots begun; only a few ruins finished), safe in the knowledge that if we do tire of Mordheim, the terrain will be great for Song of Blades, etc. I'm also keen to try a table-top-confined RPG experience with miniatures - possibly using Savage Worlds.
It's not necessarily a matter of mechanics, but it suffers like many "campaign" style skirmish games do - in power creep.
Yeah, that's a side of it we haven't experienced yet, as we've only played single games and a couple of short "mini-campaigns".
It's exceptionally easy to pick-n-choose the best warbands, and if you're not both on the same page, it can go sideways really quick. Warbands with poor initiative or speed are all but helpless, and all it takes is one or two powerful characters to make it really unfun.
I'm hoping that WYSIWYG is the best defence here - especially with high-cost armour taking a toll cost-wise (whether or not we make it more effective). That's why I'm keen to have WYSIWYG trump the official lists; I don't think armoured goblins or verminkin halberdiers will break the game, but they might help to balance it - by forcing people to buy more expensive troops.
I tried dwarfs and undead, both slow and low initiative. The armour wasn't enough to save the dwarfs, and you're outrun in every scenario. My buddy had some high BS characters with ranged weapons and it was basically game over. The only way to compete was to powergame in response, something I'm not interested in.
Interesting. With dwarfs, didn't you benefit from the universal T4? In our games so far, orcs have had a huge advantage simply because they're so hard to kill. In our very first game, a lone orc managed to tie up three verminkin with spears for the entire scenario; they knocked him down two or three times, but they failed to finish him off, even with free hits. I can see that the short moves don't help, though.
Undead do get very fast-moving options with dire wolves (they can't run, but they have a 9" basic move and an 18" charge) and the vampire, though. They're a warband I've been itching to try as I have some dire wolves, zombies and ghouls ready to go - just need a vampire (I have the old Citadel Elric lined up but might convert an interim one)! Were you very zombie-heavy?
Stuff like Skaven slingers are notorious simply because you could cheaply field 8-10 of them with 18"(?) slings for dirt cheap, etc. The elf warbands were included in various Mordheim groups or the Citadel journal and were more or less outlawed - even by the people who wrote them up. :D
Yes - we haven't found Skaven slingers overwhelming so far, but they are very affordable. We're constrained here by how many I can convert and paint up: at the moment, we only have three. No one has shown an interest in elves so far, so I'll heed your advice and keep it that way! So far, we're looking at orcs (possibly more than one warband), Skaven, Cult of the Possessed, Norscan marauders, beastmen, mercenaries (again, perhaps more than one) and potentially undead.
There's plenty to criticise about Mordheim, but it's easiest to simply play with people who are of a like mind and will avoid the power gaming nonsense (unless you're all into it).
Right. Yes, we're all keen on WYSIWYG (within reason) and the evolving narrative - and, perhaps surprisingly, the financial-management side of things. Even in our four-game mini-campaign, we were already getting groans about the upkeep of an ogre bodyguard ...
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Well, I got a five-game mini-campaign in last weekend. That helped crystallised some thoughts on house rules; we're going to keep the campaign going with new players coming in (the established players will have secondary and even tertiary starting warbands to give the new players the chance to catch up).
The thing that's become really clear is that boosting armour can't ruin the game: there are just too many opportunities to reduce or bypass armour saves (high-strength attacks, critical hits and so on). And my fighting retreats and forced retreats add dynamism and tactical interest without costing anything.
So, I'm proposing these rules for the rest of our campaign:
- Armour saves are boosted by one increment except for toughened leathers. So toughened leathers 6, shield 5 or 6, light armour 5 or 6, light armour + shield 3, 4, 5 or 6, heavy armour 4, 5 or 6, heavy armour and shield 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6
- Toughened leathers can be combined with a shield but not other armour (it's assumed that light or heavy armour have a jack or gamebeson involved.
- Full plate - with a 2+ save - can be bought for 150 crowns. Gromril full plate would have a 1+ save.
- Saves don't stack past 1+ (so a knight in Gromril plate on a barded warhorse still has a 1+ save).
- Shields and heavy armour each impose a -1 penalty to initiative for climbing; full plate has a -2 penalty (not easy climbing in gauntlets and sabatons!). This is cumulative, so a man in heavy armour with a shield has an initiative of 1 when it comes to climbing.
- Heroes and henchmen can drop shields as a free action; getting out of armour takes an entire movement phase.
- Anyone can pick up a dropped shield as a free action during the movement phase (as long as they pass over it).
- A character in combat can make a 'fighting retreat' of up to a full move during the movement phase; opponents can follow up up to their charge distance or opt to end the combat by staying put.
- If one melee combatant scores a hit on an opponent who remains standing and the opponent does not score a hit, the successful attacker can force a retreat of up to half a move (following up in the process - no follow-up, no retreat).
- When it comes to equipment, WYSIWYG trumps the official lists. So if you want to use one of that old Citadel goblin with a crossbow, you just pay for the crossbow. And if you want to field one of Ruglud's armoured orcs, you can just pay for heavy armour.
- Spears trump charges when it comes to initiative in the first round. So a spearman always strikes first in the first round of combat - unless the opponent also has a spear, in which case initiative is used.
With more than a dozen games under our belts now, I'm fairly confident that these house rules will work well. I think the armour adjustments should have several positive effects: they balance dual wielding, make two-handed weapons more attractive (especially if you're wearing heavy armour!). And they make the myriad light-armour+shield Citadel miniatures I own much more viable (hooray!).
At the same time, these rules should preserve the swashbuckling feel of the game. Yes, you can advance your armoured orcs down a street with a reasonable hope of standing up to bow fire or even crossbow fire. But if you're going to have to climb up buildings after the archers, you're less well placed. And you're still vulnerable to failed saves and criticals.
I think the criticals are going to be more interesting now, because the 3,4 and 5,6 results will matter more: very often, it doesn't much matter if you roll 1 or 4 because your strength/weapon has removed the save anyway. With more and better armour, there will be more resting on the critical roll.
The 'fighting retreat' rule will, in rare cases, allow fast-moving creatures (e.g. dire wolves) to move out of combat without penalty. But in those rare cases, the unsuccessful follow-up will still allow the opponent to be in pole position for a charge in the next turn (to the dire wolf's disadvantage) - although it might allow a vampire or drag with a bow to get a shot in first ...
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While some of this won't work with your house rules, here's a link to some quick reference sheets I put together back when I was trying to play Mordheim last:
https://myminiaturemischief.blogspot.com/2017/03/on-gaming-periphery-mordheim-hacks.html
It includes all the random rules I could find in various publications, etc. One of the sheets includes all the weapon-specific critical tables which add a bit of fun, etc. A new roster sheet, etc. etc.
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While some of this won't work with your house rules, here's a link to some quick reference sheets I put together back when I was trying to play Mordheim now:
https://myminiaturemischief.blogspot.com/2017/03/on-gaming-periphery-mordheim-hacks.html
It includes all the random rules I could find in various publications, etc. One of the sheets includes all the weapon-specific critical tables which add a bit of fun, etc. A new roster sheet, etc. etc.
Those are great! Thanks very much - we'll certainly make use of them!
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We have played Mordheim fairly regularly since it was first released, and it remains my favorite skirmish game. However, after the first three years or so, we mostly play collaborative games.
We don't actually use that many house rules. We do count shields as giving a 5+ save in melee, to make them a more viable option to dual wielding. And with spell casters' starting spell, we let them roll twice and pick from those two.
Elbows, in a long campaign dwarves are awesome. The first three times one of us ran dwarves, we gave up on them pretty quickly for the reasons you give (slow, and low initiative), which you feel from the start. And then I ran another dwarf band, and decided to stick with them. I discovered that their benefits (T4, high weapons skill, can wear heavy armor and carry shields without a movement penalty) mean that they lose far fewer models than most warbands, and by the time a dwarf warband is five or so games into a campaign, those benefits start making a big difference. No dead dwarves = not having to buy replacements and not having to buy the newbies their gear. And if they are not dying, their XP just keeps climbing. I have run several dwarf warbands since, and if it isn't a short campaign, they have consistently done well (although again, many of those dwarf warbands have been in collaborative campaigns).
Great game, Mordheim. Enjoy!
-Michael
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We don't actually use that many house rules. We do count shields as giving a 5+ save in melee, to make them a more viable option to dual wielding. And with spell casters' starting spell, we let them roll twice and pick from those two.
Interesting! Our spell casters have certainly been very ineffectual so far; in last weekend's games, they contributed much more with bows than with spells. So I can see the sense in giving a choice of spells. That said, there's a lot of fun to be had in trying to work out how to use some not-very-promising spell, even if it never quite comes off!
By boosting armour so much, I'm aiming to do a few things. First, make sure that all our participants can make full use of their miniatures: we have loads of Skaven with shields, for example, and other players have lots of armoured knights and chaos types. Boosting shields as you do (or a bit further, as we'll allow 5, 6 vs missiles) makes the shield worth having and thus makes a huge swathe of miniatures viable.
Second, I think better armour ups the risk/reward calculation in an interesting way. So, if you have a couple of black orcs with light armour and a shield, you're on a. 3+ save under our house rules (including the black orc's innate 6+). That means you'd be fairly confident about being able to storm up an alley with Skaven slingers at the other end. But every hit has a 1 in 9 chance of bypassing armour via the critical table, so there's no certainty - the frontal assault is still a risky decision.
Third, better armour means smaller warbands - as there's a better case for buying more gear for your heroes. And that should help to get more warbands on the table sooner!
Elbows, in a long campaign dwarves are awesome. The first three times one of us ran dwarves, we gave up on them pretty quickly for the reasons you give (slow, and low initiative), which you feel from the start. And then I ran another dwarf band, and decided to stick with them. I discovered that their benefits (T4, high weapons skill, can wear heavy armor and carry shields without a movement penalty) mean that they lose far fewer models than most warbands, and by the time a dwarf warband is five or so games into a campaign, those benefits start making a big difference. No dead dwarves = not having to buy replacements and not having to buy the newbies their gear. And if they are not dying, their XP just keeps climbing. I have run several dwarf warbands since, and if it isn't a short campaign, they have consistently done well (although again, many of those dwarf warbands have been in collaborative campaigns).
Your comments about dwarves' durability certainly chime with our experience with orcs so far. That T4 is a big deal!
We've also found that the undead are the speed merchants of the game, with dire wolves and their huge charge range featuring very prominently.
Great game, Mordheim. Enjoy!
-Michael
Cheers! Yes, it's great fun.
The thing I'm finding most enjoyable is the impetus to get old miniatures out of boxes and painted up. I'm currently fulfilling a long-held ambition to get a warband of Jez Goodwin orc types painted up. I'm using his (small by modern standards) Golgfag's ogres and Uruk-hai as black orcs, with Throgg's hobgoblins, the earlier, smaller Uruk-hai and the largest Asgard orcs as Boyz and Nuttaz (I'm probably going to have to convert some of his Asgard barbarians to orcdom to get a full complement of Nuttaz). There will also be options for a conventional orc & goblin force. And then the smaller Asgard orcs can work as a night-goblin warband ...