Hermit warband idea

Thought I'd run it past you guys, I want a little conversion and painting project on the side of the warband I'll be using in games first. Basically I want to put a band together, of shaman, wizard and hermit looking guys, obviously not using them all as spellcasters, I just want a weird and wonderful fairytale bunch, with some in universe fluff. One problem, I'm not sure what rules to choose for them! I was thinking of Sisters of Sigmar, but not shooty enough for me, any thoughts? For looks, imagine a bunch of Ankh Morpok mages, been out in the woods too long, but with bows and weapons. Cheers!

I am having one of those 'I don't think the word means what you think it does' moments. Hermits tending to be solitary types combined with 'warband'. Not computing.  

As for warbands you could use the Stirland Outlaws rules or perhaps the Sorcerous Society or perhaps even the Adventurers warband.

I'll look them all up, using the word hermit, I only mean by the looks of the members, wizards and sages in other fantasy genres that I read can be found as being hermits for the most part. By Stirlad, do you mean Stirwood? And I haven't even heard of the other two you mentioned, thanks!

The image of an Ankh-Morepork spellcaster warband is pretty cool. There is a reasonably good Wizard College warband here that you could try.

I have used it a few times and had it used against me and it seems reasonably balanced - especially if you take some of the situational wizards more than the pure blasty wizards.

That's great thanks, I saw some chatting about it on Warseer I think, but couldn't find any rules. These look petty complex, but fun to use. I'll have to read it through a few times to get a better insight, but it seems just like what I'm looking for. Is the glyph not a little over powered? A strength 4 hit with what looks like no penalty from movement, like using a bow but stronger.

-1 for moving is a standard ranged penalty and it specfically says that all normal ranged penalties apply.

Think of it as a S4 bow that only exists on a 5+ and can't be used with any shooting skills. It is handy at the start, but becomes less powerful as the game goes on. Also, like the skills, they are not restricted to just the wizard warband. *Any* wizard can get a glyph of blasting. Similarly, *any* wizard or prayer user can get dispell - not just the College Expedition.

Perhaps more importantly, we found including the glyph made the game more fun because it was a decent - albeit basic - attack you could give your caster so your first spell didn't have to be a boring blast spell to earn them xp.

Just by-the-by we use a house rule that casters get to pick their first spell and then roll randomly for the rest. We did that because we found that casters that rolled an xp earning spell would progress normally while those that didn't would be gimped and that was less fun. Including the glyph meant that we could include the less-damaging spells without gimping their progression.

Happily, the complexity of the warband is mostly front-loaded i.e. the complexity is in picking the wizards. Once you have done that it plays mostly like any other ranged-oriented warband. Depending on how competative the group you are in is, don't fall into the (admittedly tempting) trap of making your whole warband wizards. If you do that, then melee heroes will pwn you.

Right okay, there's so much I fail to notice, hopefully all this will come flooding back soon I loved reading the different colours of magic (especially Jade), that's something that could definitely add to the modelling and painting of the warband. With the colours though, can they be chosen for individual casters, or are they to reflect the specific school which the Arch-Mage has taught them i.e do they all have to follow the same trend? And, did you have a part in developing this warband? Just a wonderment

I am something of a caster fanboi, so I made the warband with the intention of using it with my group. It hasn't has as much play-testing as I would like, but it has had most of the rough edges sanded off.

It is intended that each caster gets to choose their own colour when they first become capable of casting, so when a Student becomes a Mage - that is when you pick their colour. This, of course, cannot be changed once chosen and casters cannot learn more than one colour. They can still learn Lesser Magic through the normal method though. We had a house-rule that when they did learn lesser magic they could re-label them like they do for their colour of magic.

Nice! I really like the look of it all, I'll be using this as the template for my warband, and hopefully if I find some local Mordheimers to play with, I'll take what notes I can on the warband and let you know how it plays out. Just a suggestion, your house rules seem to make the warband more playable, have you though of including your house rules in the rules so that they can be tested? I think choosing a first spell for mages is a must with a warband like this. I also like how you can only have 50% of the warband as students, which forces you to play with a mix. I'm thinking I'll be making the melee characters look almost like the wizards, imagine wizardy typess using a sword and shield

That would be cool. I have a few models like that - wizards wearing armour, but I usually save them for when I have an Alchemist's notebook (or something else that lets me get Academic skills) and then choose Combat and Speed or Combat and Strength for the student. Then I can have a pretty fierce melee wizard.

Our house-rules are getting pretty extensive now, so I am working on something that has all our rules in it. I will likely post it here once it is done.

P.S. Just went over the rules again, and to clarify, Dispell - only the caster with the Dispell skill gets to roll (assuming they have LOS) and spell 6 Debuff only affects the *target* enemy.

If any more questions come up feel free to ask here and any usage data you can supply will be most helpful .

Nice, looks wise I imagine an Amber Wizard would look pretty cool with melee. So are you thinking of changing the rules around for the college warband when you post the house rules, or just wait for some testing? I can imagine a lot of people have gone for this warband, looking up images on google and things, I see people with collections of really well painted and converted wizards of all schools. I think I'd head more for grey and amber if just for the style, maybe even a grey wizard warband.

I think the warband is about as good as I can make it without more playtesting and feedback. Well, aside from including those clarifications I mentioned.

I have just moved country and all my wizard models are back in my home country until I can earn enough money to have them shipped over. Until then the only warband I can use is my orcs. Moving to a new country I wanted to have an official warband and I only had space for one warband on the flight over.

Just by-the-by, I have a werewolf warband that I made for my nephew. If you know someone that likes werewolves and would try it out, feedback from that would be appreciated too. A Werewolf warband I made. Eventually the Wizard warband will be as pretty as the werewolf one, but I think the wizard one needs a bit more fine tuning.

Of course, the warband is awesome, was just thinking if you added a few of your house rules into it for people who happen across the rules

I don't blame you, safe sticking with an official warband, my official one will be Reikland when I can get going, still nee the free company box, I have my bitz on standby.

I'll have an ask around about the werewolf warband, I'm not really in touch with any local Mordheimers, but working on it, as I get some people involved, I'll get as many testers as I can haha It would be good running a whole campaign of warbands in want of testing, suppose you'd need some balanced ones in there for comparison though. Where is it you moved from - to? I see New York on your profile, is that where you are now?

Any testing you could manage would be happily received . I re-uploaded the rules to be slightly more readable in certain locations and to include the clarifications I posted here in the forums. I also included the last of the hard-copy notes that I had.

I was previously in Auckland, but now I am in the howling arctic wasteland of upstate New York to be with my wife.