Vampiric skill Transfixing Glare

Hi,

Our group has recently gone mad to Mordheim and we are still trying to find balance in the rules. So far we have used the original rules and those found in the Annual 2002 and Town Cryer magazines. In Town Cryer 11 the is the Lords of the Night Article with the Transfixing Glare skill for the vampire. As we all know, if a model in b2b with the vampire fails a Ld-test it is transfixed and counts as being Knocked Down. This test is made at the start of the combat phase.

It happened in my last game that a troll succeeded in it's stupidity (leader did not care to participate in the battle because of Old Battle Wound) and charged my vampiress. It failed it's test and was knocked down. My vampire wounded it once and it failed it's regeneration roll. We concluded that the troll was hence out of action because you only need to wound a knocked down enemy to get it out of action.

This sounds immensely powerful skill especially when the vampire charges a single model with low Ld outside of leaders range. Did we play this right, what do you think? Can a vampire knock transfixed enemy out of action just by wounding once?

Yes, that is entirely correct. The only defenses a knocked down model has are its toughness and any relevant armour saves; if even a single wound gets through it goes out of action, regardless of how many wounds it has remaining.

Needless to say, the glare is a very powerful skill. I haven't had the pleasure of playing with it yet, it has never been allowed in our campaigns...

Edit: The obvious defense against this skill is to either keep your leader or other high-leadership models around, or just try to make sure that the vampire can't get into combat with just one warrior. If it knocks down one model with the glare then it will still have to attack the other one that's still standing.

I'd be careful using the Vampire skills, I think they overpower what is already probably the strongest hero in the game.

While i usually defend Mordheims rules as not being as unclear as some people claim them to be, this is a case where some clarification could have been used, specifically in whether or not the Vampire even can attack an opponent who has been transfixed, since the glare takes place in the combat phase, and a model can't be knocked down/stunned and taken out of action by the same attacker in one round of combat.

The way my old group played this was instead of being treated as knocked down, the enemy couldn't attack and was assumed to be WS1 for purposes of being struck. Probably would have been easier to say they could be automatically hit, but half the fun of mordheim is randomness, and it was always funny to see a vampire miss a transfixed enemy.

The Town Cryers were a resource of official and unofficial rules. The Vampire skills are definitely unofficial, use at your own risk kind of things that were intended to add depth to the Vampire list. Balance was not a concern. We haven't allowed them since back in the oughts and when we used them we made a similar change to Transfixing Glare as whiskeytango. Instead of being knocked down the target just couldn't attack. Even with that change we haven't used them since.

And of course since it was used on the troll there is no harm no foul, since the troll may not die permanently (unless you are using the Black Orc rules...)

whiskeytango wrote:

While i usually defend Mordheims rules as not being as unclear as some people claim them to be, this is a case where some clarification could have been used, specifically in whether or not the Vampire even can attack an opponent who has been transfixed, since the glare takes place in the combat phase, and a model can't be knocked down/stunned and taken out of action by the same attacker in one round of combat.

The way we've been playing the scenario of multi-attack models against knocked down enemies is that the attacker can continue to attack the one who has been knocked down, but the attacks will have to hit, wound, be saved against and then roll for injury as normal. The rules say that a model with multiple attacks may not automatically take an enemy out of action in the same phase that they knocked them down on, but attacking them normally seems fine to me. This might be how the transfix is supposed to work as well; the vampire knocks the enemy down with the gaze but then has to hit, wound and injure them as normal since it's still the same combat phase. The bonus would of course be that the enemy isn't allowed to strike back, which can be a big thing, and that they'll automatically be striking last in the turn where they recover.

This might all just be a house rule in disguise though, for all I know...

@MasterSpark... We play the same way. For example, a Saurus with a bit attack could knock down/stun a warrior with hand weapon and then take the enemy out of action with the bite attack. However, it gets no short cuts and must perform all rolls as if the enemy was still standing.

We don't play with Transfix though so I cannot comment on it.

Thanks for the replies. We played it so that I changed the skill to Arcane Lore. I am anyway dominating the campaing with clever planning (and T6 vampire) so I did not want to use things too powerfull. Now my vampire is using lesser magic to soften up enemies instead. Double sixes for the rarity roll for tome of magic for the win!

MasterSpark wrote:

The way we've been playing the scenario of multi-attack models against knocked down enemies is that the attacker can continue to attack the one who has been knocked down, but the attacks will have to hit, wound, be saved against and then roll for injury as normal. The rules say that a model with multiple attacks may not automatically take an enemy out of action in the same phase that they knocked them down on, but attacking them normally seems fine to me. This might be how the transfix is supposed to work as well; the vampire knocks the enemy down with the gaze but then has to hit, wound and injure them as normal since it's still the same combat phase. The bonus would of course be that the enemy isn't allowed to strike back, which can be a big thing, and that they'll automatically be striking last in the turn where they recover.

This might all just be a house rule in disguise though, for all I know...

RationalLemming wrote:

@MasterSpark... We play the same way. For example, a Saurus with a bit attack could knock down/stun a warrior with hand weapon and then take the enemy out of action with the bite attack. However, it gets no short cuts and must perform all rolls as if the enemy was still standing.

We don't play with Transfix though so I cannot comment on it.

While I could definitely see an argument being made for that, I think its pretty starkly against RAW, with my interpretation at least. Pg. 21 of the rulebook:

"note that a model with multiple attacks may not stun/knockdown and then automatically take a warrior out of action during the same hand-to-hand combat phase. The ONLY (emphasis mine) way you can achieve this is to have more than one of your models attacking the same enemy"

Of course, word giving pause there is "automatically". The way I'm reading it is that you simply can't take an enemy out of action if you've previously knocked them down/stunned them, whereas you guys are taking the "automatically" to mean they still have to wound them and roll for injury. Definitely a quandary.

In my opinion, it's a bad idea to mess with the core warbands, as they're all reasonably balanced against each other. Giving Vampires access to a bunch of new skills, without any downside, is a horrible idea. I shot "Lords of Night" down as soon as it was brought up by our Undead player.

Hmm, I dunno. Transfixing glare aside, none of the other skills are overpowered, if anything, they either make the Vampire more vulnerable, unable to attack with his full force, or simply unable to attack at all, all three of which are good things for the opposing warband in my book. He's already extremely mobile, but like anyone else, at risk while unsupported, and the different forms he can take just make him more likely to outpace his warband. Maybe mist form could use some toning down, since he could conceivably stay in it and be relatively invulnerable until he's in charge range, but theres also a chance he'll only move 2" while in that form.

I think if Transfixing glare was simply an add on to his Fear rule, where instead of needing 6's to hit, they simply couldn't attack at all, would make it less OP than in its current form. I certainly don't think you need to just straight up disallow Lords of Night.

The word "automatically" is key. Warriors who attack a stunned warrior automatically take them or of action. Warriors that attack a knocked down warrior automatically hit. These benefits cannot be used by a single warrior in a single turn of combat.

Disallowing a warrior who previously knocked down or stunned a warrior from trying to finish the warrior with remaining attacks severely devalues bite attacks, ithlimar weapons (that will strike before the other weapon when dual wielding), etc. Allowing the warrior to attack a stunned/knocked down but requiring all rolls is no different to attacking a warrior that is still standing and therefore gives the attacking warrior no unfair advantage.