Thank you for the compliments, and for the additional considerations/suggestions!
Here's my website for Mordheim, on which you can find the link to the
Warband Roster we use:
http://sites.google.com/site/wyldhaunt/games-workshop/mordheim. I found after publishing the roster that I do need to add a spot to keep track of the cost of
Warband Equipment - for now, just write it in the right-hand side of that space. By having the columns for model and equipment cost aligned, I can easily add up the columns and write each at the bottom of each page, then add those two and write them in the bottom-right corner of each page. At some point, I'll include all of this as an exampe in my rules revision.
Some may not believe this, but we do give precedence to official rules, only changing what we consider necessary to get to our desired play-goals of fun. For that reason, we're still using the other rules for
warband rating, including +5 per model (+20 per large model), +XP, +Hired Sword rating, etc. The only thing we cut out was the +rating for Mounts, considering these as included in Value/Profit.
One thing I forgot in the first post: we do not include the "value" of Hired Swords (nor their equipment). Since we already include their Hired Sword rating (and have re-balanced this rating add based on what we've calculated their "value" to be), it's much easier this way since Hired Swords' equipment is set. To close one loophole, we also don't allow warbands to buy equipment for the Imperial Assassin (he has plenty already).
We could easily not include model rating, and only go with their gc in the Value/Profit. If so, we would use straight Value rather than Profit in order to make sure the initial 500gc gets counted. Skaven would love this; Witch Hunters would not. In our experience, numbers
do count more than value, so I'm not convinced that we should make this adjustment. However, valuable models are worth more than inexpensive models, so we definitely want to include their cost.
We use rating for underdog bonus, determining who becomes Defender/Attacker in some scenarios, finding Settlement Housing in encampments, and will use it for other campaign effects (like drawing the attention of the Shadowlord and Campaign Objectives) when we write these items in.
Since we include the value of found items (and those can be at least as powerful as bought models/items), we don't just keep track of income. Also, models and equipment are lost, so rather than keep track of that lost value separately, we just add up the value of what the
warband has. We tried keeping track of income/losses in an earlier iteration, and it proved very cumbersome, just like accounting. The way we have it now, we can easily, at any point, re-verify what a
warband's Value is - we don't have to remember that we lost certain henchmen and equipment way back in Campaign Turn 3. We thought about including the value of unspent gc, but some in our group argued that since
warband doesn't get
current value from it, it shouldn't count in
warband rating.
We have massively revised many rules, including the relative value of equipment - we
do still use a hybrid of "value by effectiveness" and "value by fluff." For example, while we have not adjusted the value of body armor, we have bumped their HtH AS by +1, and included a basic Leather Armor. We have reduced the cost of shields to 3gc (to match club). We've also allowed armor to possibly help against
all Critical Wounds. If you try out our rules, you'll find that armor is a value-viable model-saver, and that swords are really more valuable than clubs, especially for skilled models (due to our Critical Hits additions and Parry adjustments).
Even so, I won't say that this system requires items to be absolutely balanced cost-wise. I do get what Tuomas was trying to do - enforce rarity - when purposefully pricing items out of line with their in-game value. Is Heavy Armor really worth +5 to the
warband rating, even if it gives +3 AS in HtH (+2 in shooting)? Not in a scenario effectiveness comparison - but it might well be worth +5 to your
warband rating to help protect a critical model after you've filled out your
warband and got basic equipment for them.
We are still considering how to value Artifacts, and 100gc is what we're using right now. We might assign values to them individually at some point, especially since we're going to add more lesser magic items.
There are still some holes, like the value of a Mordheim Map (20gc regardless of which type). If we feel like this gets too much, we'll specify individual values for these things at a later revision.
Alright - so this works in the context of Wyldhunt's Mordheim Revision. But can it work with the official rules? In replacing model rating adds with pure Value, I'd say
no. Equipment costs are just too much out of effectiveness balance. I would say that rating adds from Profit is still useful. Armor is already ignored in favor of DW clubs - this wouldn't excerbate that tendency. Profit would still help properly rate warbands with loads of equipment.
The Profit system isn't perfect, but we find it balanced between our desired goals of getting some sort of
warband rating balancing mechanism in place which includes gc value of
warband models/equipment, while attempting to keep it simple.
Subject: Adding Profit to Warband Rating 
Sat 23 Jan 2010 - 1:49
A concept like this is definately needed, one way or another. Either you calculate the warband properly or not at all. Factoring in equipment is definately highly relevant for determining the actual strength of a warband.
