A new way to play

My brother, brother-in-law,and an old gaming friend came to visit this past week, and we (together with a local gaming friend) tried a new campaign idea. We each had 250 gold to recruit a hero and two henchmen from any (good or neutral) warband. So, some well-equipped warriors, to start. The story line (short version: hunting for a lost artifact) drew these diverse adventurers together in a temporary alliance. We then started a series of scenarios, taking turns coming up with them - mostly as far as we were able to play they were fairly straight forward, and basically treated these fifteen characters as one "allied" warband. The all moved at the same time, shot at the same time, and went through hand-to-hand combat at the same time. We ran the opposition by consensus. There was no limit on promotion of henchmen - if we wound up with all heroes (more like Necromunda), that would be fine. In terms of post-game searches, there was only one slot for "promoted" searching (so, if you had five original heroes and four promoted heroes, and two of the originals went out of action, there would be only four hero search dice rolled).

Although this approach generally means a much quicker game than a five-player competitive game, we were still only were able to play six scenarios (otherwise I think we would have only managed maybe three competitive games). We had a lot of fun. I don't know when we will be able to get together again, but everyone seemed keen on carrying on with the campaign at some point.

Somewhere I have some more notes - but we (my wife and I) are in a transition between old computers and new ones, and some of the notes are inaccessible at the moment. When I find them, I will post some more specifics if anyone is interested.

By the way, the five groups were:

Six free brothers (well, and sisters)*
Three adventurers - led by a wizard (from the Adventurer warband that used to be on the Strike to Stun website)
Three Reiklanders
Three Bretonnians

*The Free Brotherhood is an experimental warband I am working on; basically it is a multi-racial pirate group. The six we had included an orc Captain (brother Jim's hero), a Tilean first mate (my hero), two human pirates, one goblin pirate, and one ogre pirate.

ha! that's funny... we've just started a similar Idea... we each built a witchhunter, and team up with 3 of them... then make an enemy warband and that is played by the forth player... (I'm the evil dude this time around as I had plenty of witchhunters, and didn't feel like making a new one) each scenario we play we have different enemies, and as the witch hunters progress they gain money slowly (we do not use exploration in these games, you need to secure your treasures during the game and loot enemies and buildings for your money) and are allowed to each purchase a henchman and some dogs... and a mount... that's all... we do not gain more heroes, but they become strong and well equipped, so we don't really need them that much...

We haven't played a lot of games yet, but have been working out the system, and it is a very fun way indeed... and especially good for starting players as you only need 1 model to start....

That does sound quite similar.

We have played a fair number of collaborative games through the years - we started because my wife prefers collaborative games to competitive ones - but through experience learned that with four or five allied warbands the games became very long, since it took quite a large number of opponents to offer a challenge. That's the main reason that this time we thought we would try jointly running one warband, albeit a mongrel one.

Very nice idea and reminds me of my old Hero Quest days.

I wonder what a rules-cruncher like Asp would make of it, a shame he's not on here anymore.

Whatever happened to Asp, anyway?

shotguncoffee wrote:

I wonder what a rules-cruncher like Asp would make of it, a shame he's not on here anymore.

mweaver wrote:

Whatever happened to Asp, anyway?

He has been seen at Warseer from time to time, so try posting your ideas there...

This sounds an awful lot like an idea for a game I'm working on. It's a collaborative (or solo!) game where you control typically 1 (maybe 2 or so if playing solo or with 1 other person) and fight against randomized opponents. It includes leveling up and equipment increases between battles as well. I'm trying to develop it using an entirely new combat system as well that allows for more scaling than th GW stuff.

Glad to hear that people like the coop stuff though. Definitely post your full setup when you get all the notes!

Looking forward to hearing more about your project, Svenn.

Here are the house rules we used (applicable to standard Mordheim games, except for the promotion one):


Shields give +2 to armor
saves in melee (still only +1 vs. shooting)


Clubs, maces and hammers are all currently identical, and for their cost (3 gp) the best handweapons out there. In this campaign, clubs will remain 3 gp, but you
cannot cause a critical wound with them. Hammers and maces are unchanged, but the cost is 10 gp. Any warrior that has one of these items as a choice can pick any of them.

Handguns (etc.) gain the Concussion rule (stun on a 2-4), and at very short range (1/4 max range, so 6" for a hand gun) are STR 5.

Search rolls for rare items are modified by +1 if the hero is searching for an item on his or her starting list. So, for example, the Reiklander captain recieves a +1 when searching for a dueling pistol, the shadow weaver receives a +1 searching for an elf bow, etc.

The rule that says you cannot run within a certain distance of an enemy model (4"?) is modified so that you can run away from the enemy! (We've all done this one for a long time, I think).

There is no limit to rolls of The Lad's Got Talent for henchmen. If we go with five models as the top end for everyone, that means at the most complicated everyone is running five heroes - which we all do with normal warbands anyway. In terms of search rolls the max heroes who can search = six: the original five starting heroes plus any one promoted henchman. A promoted henchman can pick his/her two skill areas from any skill areas available to his/her "home" warband. So a promoted Bretonnian archer cannot choose "Free Brotherhood skills" as a choice.

Frenzy = +1 attack, maximum.

Spellcasters may pick their starting spell. Subsequent spell rolls will be random. The wizard may pick one starting spell and the other is determined randomly (the wizard was funny in the games we played - mostly strength and attack bumps. He became quite the bruiser. Fortunately, his random spell had been the Sword of Jezabel [or somebody]).

So I mailed Asp about it and he says that he is actually working on a similar idea!

He is, however, also looking to incorporate elements of Hero Quest into this form of Mordheim to make the game fast paced beyond belief.

I am really looking forward to these new developments

Here is our starting storyline, clipped from an email (hopefully reformated OK):


Someone (let's call him Walther) finds a journal where a famous explorer chap talks about his adventures, and specifically about a Powerful Artefact Thingie (PAT) that he found, which was the key to his fame and fortune and the fact that he got laid a lot. Walther sells the journal to some pirates (my lot and Jim's bums). Having made a few bucks off of the sale, Walther comes up with the clever idea of writing down "the important bits" and reselling them, which he does while using the profits of the original sale on ale, parchment, beer, ink, and wine. So, loose lips are the order of the day. Because he came up with the idea of making copies of "the important bits"after he sold the original - and consumed several bottles of ale - the rewrites he sells lack a certain degree of accuracy and detail. Nonetheless, he makes a tidy profit selling copies of "the important bits" until a dissatisfied customer asks for a rebate, "in kind" as it were.

A wizzard (Stampper) hears about the PAT, and wants it, his precious. He buys a copy of "the important bits", and realizes (1) they are useless except that they indicate (2) that Walther probably did have the original journal in hand at one point. The wizzard's bodyguards convince Walther to describe the original purchasers
of the journal, which he readily does before they even begin to seriously smack him around - almost as if he had practice describing the innocent pirates...

The wizzard sets up a meeting with the pirates to discuss business. For some reason (perhaps because he is smart and has a pointy hat to prove it) he doesn't completely trust the pirates, so he hires some additional muscle to watch his back (and other vital bits) at the meeting, which is held at the secret meeting place. He secures the services of three Reiklanders (Kingsbury), who agree to work cheap but nonetheless look fair to partly competent. The pirates meet up with the wizzard and his bodyguards. Discussion happens. The wizzard knows stuff that might help in the search - like his way around Mordheim prior to the Big Ooops. The pirates and the wizzard agree to work together. The Reiklanders, hired for the night, refuse to go away, the greedy buggers. But they all agree - we don't tell anyone else about our quest, it is all secret hush hush and mum's the word. Absolutely no one else. They shake hands. Some elves pop out of the bushes and announce they don't care about the PAT, but they know some dudes who are looking for it that they wanna give an ithilmar enema. Except, of course, being elves they say it much more elegantly (and disdainfully). OK, they're in, but no one else. Some dwarves pop out of hole, but before they can say anything everyone runs away leaving the stunties behind, bereft at the secret meeting place.

So, Part I of the adventure is making it to Mordheim. There may be some trouble along the way from various and sundry groups who bought "the important bits" off of Walther (as opposed to the important bits that were cut off of Walther by his last customer). Part II = exploring Mordheim looking for something - likely the house where the famous explorer or a relative lived so we can find a map or his lucky compass or his favorite peg leg or, you know, something we need. Part III entails making it to a port and hiring a ship. By then there may be more than 15 in the party, so we can probably crew a small ship. Part IV= sailing West toward Lustria, and Part V = exploring an uncharted island looking for the explorer's secret stash. We can have multiple scenarios in each part if we want, and everyone should brainstorm some scenarios.



We played six scenarios, two on the road to Mordheim, and four in Mordheim. By the end of the last, we (in theory) had all of the items we needed to find the artifact, so we just needed to acquire a ship...

I've been thinking of doing much the same, actually... I'm playing HeroQuest with a group of friends (I'm running the game) and I'd like to move to something more like Mordheim.I knew it couldn't be as uncommon an idea as it seemed!