Oops Rules

The first campaign I played we decided to interpret some rules completely wrong, and it ended up with some insane gameplay. We played if you could reach it, you could charge, regardless if you could see it or it was hidden or anything. This got increasingly crazy when vampires and possessed got sprint and leap, and were basically raping warriors left and right at 20" intervals of blind charging. Towards the end of the campaign, the possessed were so insanely powerful (we were playing some shitty rule of frenzy doubling every possible attack), they could take out whole warbands solo. the other 3 of us in the campaign would team up to try to take them down, and even pooling resources and focusing efforts would result in catastrophies for our warbands.


What rules have you messed up and only learned later??

Both our Ooops rules were on exploration.

The first was if you could somehow find a way to roll more than 6 dice on exploration, you got to count all of them. Later we learned you just selected 6 to "keep" after rolling.

The next was we awards ALL Multiples, so if our Skaven warband (with 6 heroes) won a game and rolled 2,2,4,4,4,5 & 5 they got a total of 26 plus the shop, the overturned cart AND the fletcher.

We were getting lots of loot really fast and the Elf Ranger was worth his weight in gold....

I think we have managed to screw up almost every rule one time or another,

Some memorable ones:
--I played with a group that did not read the rule about mutations increasing in cost if you bought more than one. Almost everyone ran Possessed warbands and if you didn't you were screwed. There was some discussion before the group dissolved as to whether the players got the rule wrong on purpose...

--The same group allowed a model armed with a sword to parry all of an attacker's hits. And if you had a buckler you could re-roll. I think you couldn't parry 6s, but you could parry any lower rolls.

--We played pistols as per Warhammer 5th edition for many years. Pistols were range 6" but suffered no long range modifier. We liked pistols.

--We played that models only got experience for surviving a battle if they did not go Out of Action. Experience was hard to come by.

Great topic!

So, the biggest Oops'es. Lets see...

Right first of all when we startet our campaign we thought that ALL heroes could go look for wyrd stone. Even if they went OOA. This ment that the 6 man Shadow Warrior Warband earned insane amounts of gold and had little motivation to ever by new troops.

Then there was the misunderstanding with equipment. We had somehow gotten it in our heads that new warriors bought gear from the original warband list, rather then the one in the trading section. This ment that new models where "super shoppers" bringing loads of rare goods for the existing heroes.
Again, great benefit for the elves

for a long time we also thought that, if armed with a brace of pistols, you could shoot once in every round of hand to hand combat. Quite powerfull suddenly.

Looking forward to hear what other crazy stuff people have experienced out there

In my group we played our first few games with heroes getting rolls for all of their experience after their first game so leaders had at least 8 rolls (for their 20 starting exp) . So the second game started off with each warband having their god killing pack of uber heroes and henchmen were just hero fodder which was pretty cool to start with. But it just ended up ridiculous after a couple of games and stopped being so fun with the 6 skaven heroes (tail fighting, fighting claws and the fight unarmed skill ) wiping the floor with everyone else (no ones henchmen were surviving long enough to get promoted so we stopped buying them to free up cash for our heroes).

oh and we didn't realise about voluntary routing .

the biggest mistake my group made was the "+1 to hit" issue. all along, if someone got a bonus of +1 To Hit in close combat (dueling pistol, diving charge) we interpreted it to mean that if you needed 4's to hit, you now needed 3s. Where as... it should be that you need 4's still, but you add 1 to the dice roll.
When it comes to parrying, this can make a difference!

That.. and climbing / jumping. we mixed up the rules, and regardless if you were climbing up, climbing down, or jumping, it was always 1 dice for every 2 inches. didnt even realize there was a difference between climbing down and jumping down. oops.

Story of our most shamefull oooops

Our greatest achievement was misinterpreting the turn sequence order. The way we played it, everyone played each phase simultaneously. Turn looked like: Warband A does its movement -> Warband B does its movement -> A does shooting -> B does shooting etc. In that interpretation a spell cater could easily blast his enemy into bits, even if the attacker was charging. After realizing our mistake Mordheim matches became more, um, dynamic and brutal.

When both players did their moves and charges in the same phase was source of other "small" misinterpretations.Example: who charges first used to be an issue. Our most extreme interpretation was something like this : "Only the last model, who charges into combat has the strike first rule".

"But last time we did this the other way!" - remembering which our homerules were approved by all, and which were outdated was... confusing Now we write everything down

Getting all the multiples in exploration? We did that too

One we discovered we were doing wrong recently, after more than a decade of playing: we thought ghouls had the Feel No Pain rule, so they were never stunned. But apparently they are the sissies of the undead world...

Von Kurst wrote:

--We played that models only got experience for surviving a battle if they did not go Out of Action. Experience was hard to come by.

We still do that error! Thank you for let me know the truth XD

Gherma wrote:

Von Kurst wrote:

--We played that models only got experience for surviving a battle if they did not go Out of Action. Experience was hard to come by.

We still do that error! Thank you for let me know the truth XD

Now that is funny Never guessed an Oops thread would end up clarifying rules.

Stronzo wrote:

Gherma wrote:

We still do that error! Thank you for let me know the truth XD

Now that is funny Never guessed an Oops thread would end up clarifying rules.

Little OT : I see you come from Denmark, but do you know that in italian STRONZO is an insult?

what do you mean "you cant have every multiples"?!?

we barely make any money like this! O_O
i can't even buy more than one or two dude after a typical match.

also, we used to play with starting heroes and their 8 advancements.

Stronzo is an insult? i had no idear.
Here its the name of a not-very-good-beer, and i just found the sound of it fitting for my carnival master

...

Just google translated it... uhm... that is quite a funny name for a beer...

Edit: Suddenly these names are pretty funny



Sorry for the OT, ill stop now

Hahahaha I can't believe it!

To close the OT, the translation of google translate is not perfect, because he only give the broadly meaning. The literally meaning is even worst: it is piece of sh*t!

I'm very confused if I'd like tho try or not that beer XD

Haha, proud stronzo is my favourite.

Oops wise, we ran our first campaign and messed up the blackpowder rules - we thought handguns reloaded normally, and blunderbusses took a turn to reload (stuffing them with nails and glass etc. we thought) - add to that my friend Andy's lovely Mordheim board with loads of ultra narrow streets and gangways, and lets say my shotgun obsessed Ostlanders orchestrated some major bloodbaths

OooOoooOOOOOo I bet that was ugly!

After a good many years of playing it was only recently that we realised that while poisons are one-use-only drugs are not.

Lord 0 wrote:

After a good many years of playing it was only recently that we realised that while poisons are one-use-only drugs are not.

Alot of the misc equipment have poor descriptions, and while they dont write "one use item" after every drug, the general text descriping poison and drug does say that they last for one battle, even if they fail to mention drugs.
Another argument for the drugs being oneuse is the side effect of crimson shade

But again, the descriptions are in need of an overhaul. A classic example is healing herbs and hunting arrows. some people ive played with use one or both of these as one use items, while others treat them as permenet upgrades.

In my current gamegroup we went through the entire list and houseruled whereever it diddnt make sense.

Stronzo wrote:

Alot of the misc equipment have poor descriptions, and while they dont write "one use item" after every drug, the general text descriping poison and drug does say that they last for one battle, even if they fail to mention drugs.
Another argument for the drugs being oneuse is the side effect of crimson shade

Oh yes, the *effects* only last for one game. That is why you have to keep using them at the start of each game to keep getting the effects. If you want to keep getting the good part you have to keep risking the bad part. As you mention, part of the bad stuff for crimson shade is that once you get addicted to the stuff you no longer have the discipline to take it only when you need it, but instead chow down on the stuff all the time and end up using a week's worth or month's worth in only a day or so and therefore have to keep buying a new each time.

Stronzo wrote:

But again, the descriptions are in need of an overhaul. A classic example is healing herbs and hunting arrows. some people ive played with use one or both of these as one use items, while others treat them as permenet upgrades.

Whereas we took those as precedent. We had always used healing herbs and hunting arrows as purchase once, use many and people bought and used them and the balance was fun and good. Hunting arrows mean bows can compete with crossbows so if you want to use a bow for the look of the thing you can and don't feel compelled to upgrade from bow to crossbow at the earliest opportunity. Healing herbs will heal you, but it is still pretty easy to dogpile whoever has them and take them out - it is just a bit more difficult to do the same thing from range.

In any case, I think the over-riding factor is fun. Treated as one-shot-wonders they are too ineffective to justify purchase so noone ever took them. Now that they last they are enough value that you can take them without gimping your chances of winning more people are taking them from time to time; either because they want to take a gamble or just for the hell of it. In these circumstances more options means more fun.

The drugs we thought were one-shot wonders were, after a while, never purchased because they were so expensive even if you won you still lost because you would effectively be getting no income.

Stronzo wrote:

In my current gamegroup we went through the entire list and houseruled whereever it diddnt make sense.

I think the danger of doing things this way is that putting realism ahead of fun can make things less enjoyable. Mordheim is already definitely a game rather than a simulation with lots of things abstracted out for the sake of convenience, much of it to do with resupply. You don't have to resupply ordinary arrows so surely it isn't *that* much of a stretch to imagine the same process keeping you in hunting arrows i.e. you have a big cost up front getting the initial stockpile and then some games you lose so you leave arrows behind and some games you win and so can collect more arrows than you started with and you usually have to make/purchase one or two anyway and this is abstracted to 'you don't have to pay for ammo except at the start'.

Also, there is no upkeep for armour, food, shields, accomodation, etc. so since you are cherry-picking what you apply 'realism' to anyway, why chose to apply it in a way that makes things less fun? Especially when instead of changing the rules you can just change your interpretation of the background e.g. the healing herbs are not eaten, but instead bruised and then sparingly rubbed on the wound. Given how many real herbs are used externally and how horrific Warhammer magic is I don't think it is that much of a stretch of the imagination to imagine a powerful magical herb saturated with magic that it is potent enough to heal quicky and stupidly dangerous to consume. Similarly, by adjusing assumptions about dosage size and cost per dose it is not too hard to imagine someone that has now located a few dealers topping up their stash from time to time from the same budget that repairs and services all the warband's good and needs.

That is what we found in my group ayway. YMMV.

the fact is, mordheim has a lot of holes that never got fixed since gw left it to die (and tried to kill it some years ago).
at best, you can try rules and balance them on the go...at worst you have completely broken mechanics

Gherma wrote:

Hahahaha I can't believe it!

To close the OT, the translation of google translate is not perfect, because he only give the broadly meaning. The literally meaning is even worst: it is piece of sh*t!

I'm very confused if I'd like tho try or not that beer XD

Perhaps they are doing it intentionally. We have a beer in America that calls themselves "Arrogant Bastard Ale". According to Wiktionary Stronzo can have a similar meaning http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stronzo

On topic now...

Until a couple months ago we didn't realize that you could get 6 heroes in any warband. We just assumed the limit was the same as the max you could start with. If you were playing mercs with 5 heroes and got TLGT you had to reroll.

When I first started, I also did the 8 advancements for a captain mistake. I still have to remind some of the guys I play with about that one.

One guy that has just started playing as Dwarfs thought that "Slayer Skills" meant that his Slayer heroes automatically started with those abilities... His reaction when I told him otherwise was comical. "What do you MEAN I don't get a +1 to hit on the charge? It says it right there on the warband article!"

We made a mistake with the routing test. we thought every 25% loss you have to test.

Skaven with an (un)holy symbol were nearly unbeatable:
21 members:
1. test after 6 modells autosucces because of the symbol
2. test after the next 4 modells OOA (15 modells left after the first tests, 25% of this is 4 Modells)

You had to put 10 Modells OOA until the first real test for a skaven warband...

We have made many mistakes over the years. Here are some of our mistakes...

* Warbands had to start rolling for rout after leader was taken OOA.
* Warriors did not need to roll to wound when shooting and hitting a warrior that is knocked down or stunned.