Mayhem Battle Report and Custom Unit Counters

[Zappi]

Hello all!

I found the Mayhem rules when I looked for a 6mm army scale tabletop wargame similar to Warmaster, and discovered two things:

1. Mayhem is awesome
2. There is very little to be found online about it.

Mayhem is a tabletop wargame in the tradition of Warmaster. It allows for creativity and freedom of choice both during army creation and gameplay.

I decided to start a blog to give an impression of the game for any interested gamers, since I'd have liked something like this when I started playing Mayhem. Contents until now:

- A detailed Battle Report with rules explanations, since I like to read battle reports
- Downloadable, printable proxie unit counters I designed for my first games of Mayhem, because they are a really handy way to try out the game
- Army lists to use the Counters with
- A 'shopping list' for 6mm fantasy miniatures, since it took me a while to get an overview. Only Human Empire for now.

More content to come from time to time, I hope you enjoy.

6mmmayhem.wordpress.com/

Zappi

[Gibby]

What a brilliant blog! Going to thoroughly read it all with a cuppa! As someone who has been wanting to do something like this as a project for a while it looks inspiring!

Regarding your search for Imperial Ogres, have you considered using some 10mm figures?

[Hobgoblin]

Interesting stuff!

I really like Mayhem and have played it quite a bit in a variety of scales. It's a great game. The big obstacle to playing it (more) is the effort require to stat up troops. Although there's a Warmaster conversion on the BattleScribe app, the game would be far more playable with a few pages of "bestiary" (e.g. Tolkien-style orcs, Warhammer-style orcs, dwarf infantry of various sorts ...).

That said, every time I've played it, it's been well worth the effort.

[Zappi]

What a brilliant blog! Going to thoroughly read it all with a cuppa! As someone who has been wanting to do something like this as a project for a while it looks inspiring!

Regarding your search for Imperial Ogres, have you considered using some 10mm figures?

Thanks a lot! Creating a blog like this is a lot of fun. It also really helps to document your project progress for yourself. I'll post updates on my various 6mm armies 'regularly' in the future.

Regarding the Ogres: 10mm Ogres are propably the way to go. They'd look a tiny bit bigger than I'd like, but still are the best option. Other ideas would be to use 15/28mm human sized figures, but then the proportions are off, and they'd look like they got lost and wound up in the wrong game...

Splintered Light Miniatures have a unit of heavily armoured orcs that would be appropriate (they also provide heaps of other cool minis that would fit in a 6mm army: Giants, creatures, treemen, griffons, dragons, swarms...). But my favourite would certainly be Black Gate Miniatures: A whole range of characterful 10mm ogres intended for Warmaster, produced by Warmaster Podcasts own Barry, no less. https://www.blackgateminiatures.com/

I'll update the Empire shopping list soon, now that I finally finished the battle report...

I really like Mayhem and have played it quite a bit in a variety of scales. It's a great game. The big obstacle to playing it (more) is the effort require to stat up troops. Although there's a Warmaster conversion on the BattleScribe app, the game would be far more playable with a few pages of "bestiary" (e.g. Tolkien-style orcs, Warhammer-style orcs, dwarf infantry of various sorts ...).

Battlescribe indeed has TWO extensive ranges of army lists. One of them more generic, the other with army specific special rules intended to be balanced against each other. If you want to skip the army design process, there is a lot to choose from. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/132769/Mayhem-Armies-of-Mayhem

I found it far more fun to design my own list, however, starting with a typical Warhammer O&G / Empire list. Trying to replicate Warhammer units in Mayhem is awesome and works really well. I used the Battlescribe lists to orient myself regarding which stats a typical human / orc should have. I too would have liked a few guidelines in the rulebook, but Brent Spivey seems to value freedom of choice a lot.

My design principles for units have changed multiple times since I started playing. Would be worth an article by itself, actually. You can design the same unit with widely different levels of details, from bare bone stats only to having half a dozen traits and abilities. I think this is yet another strong point of the rules, that you can design an army with dozens of simple units, or the same army  (fluff and points wise) with a few really detailed ones to represent smaller engagements.

I'll do a post on Lizardmen next, the counters are ready, the list finished and I've played a test game with them.

Cheers

Zappi

[fred]

Cool looking blog, I will have to have a proper look later.

We played a bit of v1 of Mayhem a few years ago, and I really enjoyed parts of it. We ended up going with home-brew rules to try to match against the needs of all our group.

Regarding getting figures on the table - what our group has often done with WM figures, is just to base up the front rank of a unit - then you can field a spray painted base of troops, without having to worry about trying to paint the 2nd and 3rd ranks of troops. Once you have painted the extra troops they can easily be added to the base.  On the other hand - they are 6mm, and its mass battle, so get them painted! Production line painting works very well with smaller scales. And keep the paint jobs simple, go for mass effect not detailed individuals.

For Ogres - would 10/12mm barbarians work - both Pendraken and Kallistra have them. The black gate ogres are very nice, but will be big against 6mm troops.

[capthugeca]

Nice blog, Zappi. I'll have a good read when life allows me the time.

There are a few blogs and the like around which touch on Mayhem and Brent Spivey is really good at making comments and giving guidance on the ways people have created their units. I've included a couple of reports at http://tenmilwargames.blogspot.com/search/label/Mayhem

Rather than see it in the Warmaster vein, which I have never engaged with, I've always regarded it as a more flexible form of Hordes of the Things and have therefore gone more down the 15mm route. I actually like the way that the rules leave the creating of races and units totally down to the user. No rule set is perfect, though, so I have made a few tweeks to make them suit my understanding of various fantasy races.

Anyway, I look forward to watching how things develop.

[Jagannath]

 Very cool - I handmade some rough tokens when I was trying to learn the mayhem rules too, your look great. It’s a fantastic game.

[fred]

Been reading through the blog - its very enjoyable and entertaining.

I think your points after the first Orcs vs Empire battle are very relevant.

I like your thinking about CQ level, and avoiding the best units being d4 all the time. And using the modifiers to put them at the right point, rather than them starting there.

Leadership cost - we have found that in most games players are willing to spend almost anything on better leadership values. Its therefore very hard to balance leadership costs vs units.

Scaling of games - this was one of the bits we kind of stalled with (along with my opponent disliking the roll a 1 to kill a unit, he thought that this made expensive units far too vulnerable).

[Zappi]

Regarding getting figures on the table - what our group has often done with WM figures, is just to base up the front rank of a unit - then you can field a spray painted base of troops, without having to worry about trying to paint the 2nd and 3rd ranks of troops. Once you have painted the extra troops they can easily be added to the base.  On the other hand - they are 6mm, and its mass battle, so get them painted! Production line painting works very well with smaller scales. And keep the paint jobs simple, go for mass effect not detailed individuals.

For Ogres - would 10/12mm barbarians work - both Pendraken and Kallistra have them. The black gate ogres are very nice, but will be big against 6mm troops.

Thanks for the tip with front rank only units. I think my OCD may prevent me from doing that...  I'll give it a think.

I had a look at the Pendraken and Kallistra barbarians. I think they'd be too small, and again with too 'human' proportions. If someone knows about good 15mm barbarian minis maybe?

There are a few blogs and the like around which touch on Mayhem and Brent Spivey is really good at making comments and giving guidance on the ways people have created their units. I've included a couple of reports at http://tenmilwargames.blogspot.com/search/label/Mayhem

Rather than see it in the Warmaster vein, which I have never engaged with, I've always regarded it as a more flexible form of Hordes of the Things and have therefore gone more down the 15mm route. I actually like the way that the rules leave the creating of races and units totally down to the user. No rule set is perfect, though, so I have made a few tweeks to make them suit my understanding of various fantasy races.

Brent Spivey answered a rules question I posted on BoardGameGeek in about 30 minutes. That man is the most responsive game designer I know, and he's active in whatever little corner of the internet one of his games is discussed  . If you have a rules dispute in one of your games, just post it on whatever forum you like and have a cup of tea for half an hour!

I know your blog, actually. Nice Battle reports, clearly written and easy to read pictures.

Dito on Mayhem being a 'more flexible HotT'. I tried to get into HotT while searching for the bestest army scale rules system, but it lost me somewhere around the movement section of the rules. I also could understand the common criticism about a lack of individuality. Every army gets the same units, no way of further customizing individual units (with banners, elite status, traits...) and so on. It is my understanding that it has a lot of 'rock, paper, scissors' dynamics in its unit types, correct? Mayhem has that too, of course.

I like your thinking about CQ level, and avoiding the best units being d4 all the time. And using the modifiers to put them at the right point, rather than them starting there.

Leadership cost - we have found that in most games players are willing to spend almost anything on better leadership values. Its therefore very hard to balance leadership costs vs units.

Scaling of games - this was one of the bits we kind of stalled with (along with my opponent disliking the roll a 1 to kill a unit, he thought that this made expensive units far too vulnerable).

Thanks! How to balance CQ and traits to reflect combat ability has bugged me a long time. I'm quite happy with the current design philosophy you described.

Leadership: I'd like to play a few games with Leadership d10 costing 9 crowns, and d12 costing 16 crowns, along with equally costed standards. That should really allow armies with low leadership to field more basic units (but would you want to?) or a few really expensive ones. I just think having the Leadership decision be a no-brainer is boring. You should have a reward for nerfing your Leadership stat. CQ and BAR costs rise dramatically as you approach the higher end of the spectrum, which makes for interesting decisions. Ld should follow, I think.

Scaling: I'll test the 'personal CP' rule in the future. Each character gets one CP each round on top of the ones you rolled, and only a unit in his Command Range can use it. Should lessen the impact of bigger armies on your CP ressource pool and give each character a bit more of a presence on the battlefield.

The dreaded 'autokill-1'. I don't like it myself. My preferred house rule right now would be to assign two disordered tokens for a critical hit, but the second token doesn't trigger a unit elimination when it is placed. So a fresh unit that receives a critical hit would survive with two Disordered Tokens even if it doesn't have Heavy Armour. Makes it more costly to Rally or Fight On, and more vulnerable to further attacks.


Cheers

Zappi

[fred]

I had a look at the Pendraken and Kallistra barbarians. I think they'd be too small, and again with too 'human' proportions. If someone knows about good 15mm barbarian minis maybe?

Copplestone are certainly good barbarians - I've used them as Ogres with 10mm figures. You might want to look at some 15mm orcs to get a different style of figures?

[Zappi]

Copplestone are certainly good barbarians - I've used them as Ogres with 10mm figures. You might want to look at some 15mm orcs to get a different style of figures?

Thanks Fred. Turns out I just found Copplestone via North Stars website earlier today, what a coinkidink! They indeed have great options for Ogres. I ordered some Pict Warriors as 'evil' ogres / orc allies, and Barbarian Characters as semi-Empire Ogres. They look more like Kislev than the Empire, but they sport signs of civilization in their clothing and the beards are indeed very impressive. That's 'Empire' enough for me... 

Also of note: Copplestone offers awesome Giants: I also ordered both of their Hill Giants today, and some Yetis and Snow Trolls. The latter two I know from Frostgrave publications, but all of them will make great additions to orc / wild tribes 6mm Armies. Looking forward to them. When they arrive, I'll do some size comparison shots with regular 6mm orcs / humans, and how they look on 40mm square bases.

If anyone has more tips for 'proper' empire Ogres, let me know.

Cheers

Zappi

[Hobgoblin]

Battlescribe indeed has TWO extensive ranges of army lists. One of them more generic, the other with army specific special rules intended to be balanced against each other. If you want to skip the army design process, there is a lot to choose from. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/132769/Mayhem-Armies-of-Mayhem

I found it far more fun to design my own list, however, starting with a typical Warhammer O&G / Empire list. Trying to replicate Warhammer units in Mayhem is awesome and works really well. I used the Battlescribe lists to orient myself regarding which stats a typical human / orc should have. I too would have liked a few guidelines in the rulebook, but Brent Spivey seems to value freedom of choice a lot.

My design principles for units have changed multiple times since I started playing. Would be worth an article by itself, actually. You can design the same unit with widely different levels of details, from bare bone stats only to having half a dozen traits and abilities. I think this is yet another strong point of the rules, that you can design an army with dozens of simple units, or the same army  (fluff and points wise) with a few really detailed ones to represent smaller engagements.

Oh, yes - I'm all in favour of designing and individualising units, and I think this is a really strong feature of Mayhem. The only problem is that it does take a while, so it militates against getting a game going on the spur of the moment. The BattleScribe app is a bit fiddly (and doesn't seem to work except on phones, which makes it fiddlier still). So I think a PDF with a few printable pages of (non-prescriptive) sample troop types would really help the game - perhaps with notes on why they're statted as they are. I'd love to see a few different takes on various orc and dwarf units for example. (I confess that I tend to lose my statted-up army lists between games - but I think that in itself is a symptom of how seldom we play it compared with HotT!)

I'd love to see your profiles for various units.

Dito on Mayhem being a 'more flexible HotT'. I tried to get into HotT while searching for the bestest army scale rules system, but it lost me somewhere around the movement section of the rules. I also could understand the common criticism about a lack of individuality. Every army gets the same units, no way of further customizing individual units (with banners, elite status, traits...) and so on. It is my understanding that it has a lot of 'rock, paper, scissors' dynamics in its unit types, correct? Mayhem has that too, of course.

As an enthusiast for both games, I'd say HotT combat offers a lot more than rock/paper/scissors. There's quite a bit of subtle risk/reward built into the troop types. So, for example, if you attack blades with warbands, the warbands are most likely going to lose (all else being equal), but if they win, they'll "quick-kill" the blades rather than just drive them back. That reflects wild shock troops overwhelming disciplined formations - but only if the shock troops manage to break those formations in the first place. But then you can hope to improve the odds by massing your warbands against the blades - either through flanking or through depth - or, preferably, both. If you do that, though, you're committing a lot of your army to one stratagem. And so on: given that there are 20 troop types, there are presumably 400 sets of considerations you might have to run through during a game!

Also, while every army has access to the same unit types, it's highly unlikely that every army will field the same unit types. And in a standard army, you're probably only going to field a few types at most (things like spears, warbands, shooters and hordes benefit from greater numbers, so you'll tend to spend a lot of your points on them). So the flavour of each army comes not from the troop types that it can draw on, but the combinations of troop types that are actually fielded. An army with a lot of warbands, hordes and beasts will play very differently from one with a lot of hordes, knights and shooters - even though both have a lot of hordes. So you get a lot of 'army' flavour even if the 'unit' flavour is only visual. In other words, a HotT orc army feels and plays very differently from a HotT elf army.

Both are great games, I reckon - and both work well with really large armies, which isn't true of every (supposedly) massed battle game!

[Hobgoblin]

For ogres, how about these chaps? They're Magister Militum 15mm orcs. You can see them in 10mm context here.

[johnl5555]

  Hi, I actually tried Mayhem out because of an excellent battle report a few years ago here on LAF. It really walked you thru the rules. I immediately picked up the rules as did my buddy and son. We then played our 1st game. There are some really great mechanics in the rules. Overdrive is just great. Sadly, when we played we found the rules layout and explanations were very unclear and confusing at times. We walked away. I toyed with the idea of editing them into something more coherent. It was just too much work. We wanted these to be our set of rules. We really did. Maybe if there were more online materials explaining things it would have helped or we had played with someone more versed in the rules.

I'm glad others love the rules. There is lots of goodness in them. I do hope the Blog helps others look at the rules. 

Thanks.

[Zappi]

Hobgoblin:

Those Ogres are amazing! I investigated, and will add them to the Empire shopping list...

The BattleScribe app is a bit fiddly (and doesn't seem to work except on phones, which makes it fiddlier still). So I think a PDF with a few printable pages of (non-prescriptive) sample troop types would really help the game - perhaps with notes on why they're statted as they are. I'd love to see a few different takes on various orc and dwarf units for example.

That's odd. I couldn't get it to work on my phone at all (it wouldn't accept the army list files), only on the PC. Still it is quite cumbersome to use, and in the end I used a custom made Excel sheet to design units and army lists. I'll make the Excel file available on the blog once it's a bit more polished.

So I think a PDF with a few printable pages of (non-prescriptive) sample troop types would really help the game - perhaps with notes on why they're statted as they are. I'd love to see a few different takes on various orc and dwarf units for example.

That would be another nice idea for a blog post. Anybody here that has something like this and wants to share? For a start there are my army lists for Orcs and Empire in the respective 'Clash of Old Enemies' entries, along with a bit of commentary about design decisions, although now a bit outdated already

But a generic guideline of standard troop types would definitively help a lot with making various army lists 'comparable', as in giving you something to compare them against. Like "My Empire list uses lots of light and medium infantry, but they all get the 'Disciplined' trait because of their training." Using generic statlines as a baseline should make armies easier to read, while making the deviations stand out more and give the units their specific flavour. This is on my to-do list once I get a really good grasp of what 'feels right' (to me, at least). Something to do after a lot more games.

Both are great games, I reckon - and both work well with really large armies

Thanks for the detailed info about HotT. Can you explain how balanced the command points generation feels? IIRC you get one d6 each no matter what, which feels really swingy. Roll three ones in a row and lose the game?? The comparison of HotT to Mayhem in this regard was what made me chose the latter, because Mayhem models CP generation on the command structure you bring to the table. It can be targeted, interrupted and deteriorate during the course of the battle. I like that a lot in Mayhem.

  Hi, I actually tried Mayhem out because of an excellent battle report a few years ago here on LAF. It really walked you thru the rules. I immediately picked up the rules as did my buddy and son. We then played our 1st game. There are some really great mechanics in the rules. Overdrive is just great. Sadly, when we played we found the rules layout and explanations were very unclear and confusing at times. We walked away. I toyed with the idea of editing them into something more coherent. It was just too much work. We wanted these to be our set of rules. We really did.

You wouldn't happen to have a link to this report? Was it the one with all the awesome 80's action stars in it?

About rules clarity: I read a lot of army scale rulesets, and boy do they get fiddly and confusing. I personally found Mayhem to be easy to understand and quite clear on most mechanics. Do you remember any particular things that were unclear?

This is not to say that we came across no unclear situations in our games. I have begun to assemble a FAQ by gathering all rules explanations I found. Brent Spivey answered a lot of questions online, so many things got cleared up already, but you have to hunt those answers across a lot of platforms. Hey Brent, any chance for a revised edition?

Maybe if there were more online materials explaining things it would have helped or we had played with someone more versed in the rules.

I'm glad others love the rules. There is lots of goodness in them. I do hope the Blog helps others look at the rules. 

That's what I thought. I really like the game system and noted the lack of recent online material. My blog is (in part) my little contribution to making Mayhem more popular.

Cheers