Shooting my self in the foot?

So i am in a new Mordheim league ( first night was two days ago) and i am really happy with my undead, but do to the way the league is set up , you can only have three games a week, but you are allowed to have two warbands, so my second warband is going to be the possessed, and i am thinking of the "Eggs in one Basket approach" since throwing a beast on the table is pretty awesome

Here is the set up
Magister ( rolled Wings of Darkness)
Sword, Free Dagger ( going to get another weapon when the funds start to roll in)

Mutant (blackblood) X2
Free Dagger , Shortbow ( Make enemies pay for attacking my archers/ however i may go with Hammer's instead)

Possessed
Extra Arm X2, Great Claw ( really the beast of the warband )

so that is Warband size of 4, with a rating of 48, that means i get underdog bonus, and so i should be averaging 2 or 3 shards per game, meaning i will sell them for 55 - 75 gold a game ( depending on if i get any of my squad knocked out)

My plan of early campaign survival is be a little reserved and hopefully make other warbands come to be and set up counter charges with my Possessed, untill i take 25% out of action then route. As soon as i can afford i will pick up more weapons and Beastmen to work toward lads got talent roll, but still keeping my numbers down until i can afford another beastly possessed ( since there is no way to gain mutations after character purchase), i think it would be fun to try and could work, but could also blow up in my face if someone goes crit crazy on my Possessed, then roll poorly on the injury chart.. but it could build up to be pretty powerful.

Anyway , lemme know what you think.
Thanks

You should be beating yourself, but it depends on the warband mix. I had a beardling with a dagger kill a Possessed in my first game a few years ago. He needed a 5 to wound and got a 6. End of story.

I find limited income warbands hard to play, so I take all 5 heroes with nothing much and some henchmen to start. Even without any mutations the Possessed are usually killers if they can get to hand to hand and not wiff. (hard for me)

How about instead of taking the great claw taking a Beastman instead? the 2 extra arms on the possessed are already going to be very powerful, so take an extra guy (and a henchman at that) so that if things look like they're going to go badly you can throw the beastman into combat while everyone else backs off. If the Beasty goes down you'll be able to pull a voluntary rout (I'm pretty sure you round down when figuring guys left for rout tests as you'd need 1 and a quarter guys OOA) and won't loose out on income.

I'd check with the other players in your group before I tried the rounding down thing. My group would not be that kind on skirting that particular rule.

I like the 4 man set up. Go in, kick tail, hope one of your archers go out, then rout.

I think, and it's risky, that this could be scary as sin.

Yeah, despite all downsides of having a possessed warband with only a few powerful individuals, my experiences with such warband speaks for itself. In a campaign we played, the possessed warband came out on top pretty soon, much thanks to being underdogs the forst battle (his possessed hero gained three levels, slaughtering a whole orc warband almost by himself... a bit of luck, yes, but still...)

Now, his magister himself has turned into a Possessed as he took his chances with a "Blessings of the dark lord" and rolled a 12!!! Now, he got a total melee slaughterer warband, easily defeating any other model in close combat.

Remember, though, that only Mutants and the Magister can obtain new mutations after creation (at least according to the original rules), which means the possessed ones can only ever have the mutations they start with. Except your magister... if he becomes a possessed, he can still gain new mutations

I will ask today, but I am pretty sure the ruling will be meeting to loose 25% or more, not close to 25% which does make the four man group a little more appealing.

Hrmmm, thanks for all the input thus far, I am still looking at my options , so more thoughts would be great

Actually I was a little subdued in my reaction to the suggestion that one would 'round down' in the case of 25% losses to rout. The prevailing advice is always to have 1 more than a limit because the rule is stated as "25% or more". Thus it is always better to begin with 9 rather than 8, or 13 rather than 12 because the rout test can be delayed. One can't have it both ways.

Anyway another option is to start with 2 uber Possessed and a Magister with one lowly brethren who wears a red shirt. For the first couple of games poor red shirt is doomed to draw fire. If he lives great, if not he is replaced and the power of the warband grows.

Not my favorite way to play (I would hope for a nice Defend the Find so I could go Magister hunting, if I played against such a warband.)

major flaw is, ur setup cost 510 gold so u are not allowed to play this starting warband under original rules.

Magister(70) + Sword(10) = 80

Mutants(25) + Blackblood(30) + S-Bow(10) = 65 each = 130

Possessed(90) + Claw(50) + 2x Arm(160) = 300

510 total

Also it seems this band will have a very hard job, the entire enemy band will focus the Possessed to take out 60% of ur Investment in a single lucky attack. There is no other treat in ur band, the mutants will just get ignorded, and if u want to distract from Possessed with ur Magister(Leader) u risk ur bands future again.

A good friend of mine tried this very idea a few years back. I was running Reiklanders, my brother was running pirates, my wife was running Sisters, and somebody was running something else (I forget). The first game, we ran the chest scenario (search each building, you find it on a roll of double sixes). As always happened before we gave up on that scenario and redesigned it, the chest turned up in about the first building searched. My lads found it, and were sauntering off the table looooong before anyone was close enough to stop us. One of my marksmen happened to spot, the turn before we exited, this nasty slavering mutant thingie half a table away, behind cover. He could only hit it on a six, but what the hell, right? Nailed it, got a crit, and killed it. It rolled deader than a really dead thing on the serious injury chart. The whole warband was wasted by one lucky shot.

You are building a Death Star - complete with the handy Shoot Here To Utterly Destroy Me button. You might get lucky; you might not.

Of course, since you are allowed two warbands, having one trashed from the start isn't quite as catastrophic.