Cheap warband

Hi!

As I commented in another post, I am very new to Mordheim, I don't know the rules or the warbands well, but I definitely want to give it a try.

I would like to make 2 warbands, so I can play with my nephew. Money is an issue, I don't want to spend a lot on them.

I know Mordheim can be played with any miniature you want (well, that's true for any game, if you are playing with friends) but I'd like to play with miniatures that, at least, seem like the real deal.

So, my questions are:

1) Which minis would you recommend to make a cheap warband?. I rephrase it: Is there, for example, a GW sealed box from Warhammer Fantasy that has models especially great for Mordheim, that would allow the creation of one entire band or two? As I don't fully know the bands, I don't know if, for example, maybe the box: 'Bretonnians men at arms' or the box 'Empire militia' could be made into a warband... maybe a skavens core box set...

2) I have some minis from warhammer and warhammer 40k, could you please tell me if any of them would fit well on a Mordheim band?

- Daemonettes (6)
- Skeletons (18)
- A couple of orc archers
- Bretonnian archers (3)
- chaos warriors 40k (
- ork with rockets 40k (


Anyway, thank you guys! I know people here normally spend a lot and make some nice warbands, I will eventually build some great ones. I like carnival of chaos, witchhunters, skavens, sisters of sygmar, damned, pirates, the ones with vampires.... lol I guess I like them all!

Anyway, thank you guys!

Hi Diegan!

1) The "Empire Militia" and "Skaven Nightrunner" boxes are in fact the original Mordheim miniatures that GW "recycled" as new troops for Warhammer when 6th Ed came out.

They used to be available in Mordheim boxes of 10 miniatures in GW stores. They should still be via Mail Order.

2) There is no real "cheap" way into the miniatures hobby. Of course it depends where your threshold is. The only way to get really cheap miniatures is to either get lucky on eBay (has never worked for me) or having a friend who wants to get rid of miniatures because he is getting out of the hobby (has worked for me).

If you really just want to give Mordheim a try and do a little modelling, painting and gaming with your nephew, I would recommend getting the Empire Militia box. You can make 2 human warbands out of that, with the advantage that rules exist for a few slightly different human factions (Reiklanders, Marienburgers, Middenheimers, Ostlanders, Averlanders...) which can easily be represented with the contents of this box. If you both pick different human factions (e.g. Reiklander vs. Middenheimers) you would both play humans but still have some slight variability in the abilities of your warriors, potentially making for a more interesting experience than playing, say, Skaven vs. Skaven.
Different Human factions can easily be represented with different colour schemes (i.e. if you go with the mainstream, Middenheimers are dressed in blue-white, Averlanders are green-yellow etc... or you can make up your own).

Humans are also the easiest faction to play for beginners I would say, perhaps because they are easiest to relate to. It is intuitive what an archer does or what a "Warband Captain" is. Is is perhaps less intuitive what the difference between a mutant and a possessed or between a nightrunner and a black skaven is.

3) The miniatures you listed can potentially be used for Mordheim of course, however I don't really see a way of integrating them into 1 warband.
With some conversion and green-stuffing, I could see the bretonnians turn into Possessed brethren and the daemonettes into mutants. The orcs really just fit the orc warband, and I can't really picture the skeletons in anything other than an Undead warband... You can use the bretonnian archers are human mercenaries (e.g. Reiklanders) thought.

I would use the daemonettes as random encounters or mission objectives for custom missions (e.g. "Capture the Daemonette!").

I hope that helps somewhat!
Let us know if you have any other concerns, thoughts

Now, I spent ages typing that and Tom was faster Anyway, there is actually something new in there, too, so I just leave it as it was...


The easiest and cheapest method is to buy a box of Empire militia, as they are also the standard mercenary sprues that came with the Mordheim boxed set. With this box, you can make more or less all human mercenaries or pirates and the like. For witch hunters, a boxed set of flagellants might be useful

Also, I believe the Skaven Night Runners have the same sprues as the original set, so they are another cheap option.

Depending on how much you intend to spend, you could also buy some of the new Empire boxes to add more variety to your warbands. For inspiration, just look at the various threads about witch hunters, mercenaries and pirates in the gallery and the painting & modelling forums.

And somewhere, there is a thread with a list which gives you recommendations on what miniatures to buy for what warband, I'll see if I can find it.

Wow, having that list would be great, just what I need!

I don't care to use exclusively GW miniatures.

First of all thank you guys for the thoughtful posts.

What you say is what I was thinking, with a box of empire militia and a box of basic skavens y could make 3 bands, 2 humans and 1 skaven. The question is, which minis should I buy (do not have to be GW) to use as other kinds of units... I mean heroes and other kinds?

For example, I believe Averland can have (sorry if some have different names, I am with a spanish version:


Captain
Sergeant
Bergjaegers
Recruits
Mountain guards
shooters
halfling explorers


From this list, which ones could I build with an 'Empire militia' Box? I am not very good at converting by the way my biggest achieve, protrude an arrow in a shield lol. I guess I could search for 3-4 miniatures (not necesarily from GW) that would make for captain and another 'special'...


On a related note, I may be able to acquire the box from Mordheim - city of the damned, I believe it has 10 skaven and 8 human mercenaries, that would put me in a good track for building a human and skaven band, right?


Anyway, thank you, any help is well received, as I am not knowledgeable in miniatures and manufacturesrs in general, and it's tough to come to a game with so many possibilities, it would be easier if the ONLY miniatures I could use where that one and that one, that way I could even buy them or not buy them hehe, but now, I just dunno where to start. As stated, I would love to build a 'Carnival of chaos' and an 'undead' band, but they are not the best options right now, cause building them may be expensive.

I did not know there where random encounters in Mordheim! I am not very good with the rules, have read them only once, I will get better

Hey Diegan!

The random encounters are not in the basic rulebook, so it is normal that you have not "encountered" them (no pun intended)

To get started, just stick to the basic rulebook and play 3-4 games with it. Then you can expand by reading all the articles (the most important are summed up in the Mordheim Annual 2002). I have everything backed up on my computer and so has Cianty, so you can just drop either of us a line if you need help (Cianty is probably a safer bet than I am, since he is much more organised )

If you can get the Mordheim starter box, I would go for it. For the carnival of chaos warband, there is no way around ordering it via mail order I am afraid. Same goes for undead (or you can buy several WHFB boxes/blisters which may come in rather expensive).

When you say mail order, you mean the GW online store? Or you mean there's stuff that is not in the GW online shop that can be ordered?

What is WHFB?

Any clue where to find the list of recommended miniatures for a given band that Eliazar mentioned?

Again, thank you!

Diegan wrote:

When you say mail order, you mean the GW online store?

Yes. Although I have never used it because of the prohibitively high shipment fee.

Diegan wrote:

Or you mean there's stuff that is not in the GW online shop that can be
ordered?

No. But there are other retailers that sell miniatures from GW. My personal favourite (not only for GW, in fact I order mainly non-gw stuff there) is MAELSTROM GAMES. They have free shipping worldwide.
My numero uno source for miniatures.

Diegan wrote:

What is WHFB?

Warhammer Fantasy Battles. One of GW's main products, along with Warhammer 40k and LoTR tabletop games.

Diegan wrote:

Any clue where to find the list of recommended miniatures for a given band that Eliazar mentioned?
Again, thank you!

I think Eliazar meant this thread:
https://boringmordheimforum.forumieren.com/mordheim-resources-f20/reference-official-citadel-miniatures-for-mordheim-t512.htm?highlight=use+miniatures+for+mordheim+games

*hears his name and steps out of the fog*

Some thoughs/opinions/advice:

- Don't bother with Heroes etc.. you can make them from the regiment box. Simply give them more extras like pouches or weapons (or whatever coms with the box) and maybe paint them in a fancier way (striped trousers, gold chainmail?LOL - you get the idea) to make clear that those are the Heroes. You were going for "cheap" after all, right?

- Evil GW is definately not a cheap miniatures manufacturer but the plastic regiment boxes are about the best you can get. Alternatives usually consist of buying single (or packs of 2 or 3) metal figures which end up being A LOT more expensive.

- The core rulebook is a great start and if you want to get more into it then I recommend the Mordheim Annual, which is about the only other source (aside from the Empire in Flames supplement) which contains official warbands. So if you want to go for warbadns from that book or want to include the additional equipment items then you are safe by doing so.

- TBMF is definately the best source for Mordheim, but you can also check out the Mordheim Yahoo group at
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/mordheim/
The group isn't very active but you can ask questions there as well. The biggest plus is probably that the files section there contains pretty much every relevant Mordheim PDF.

For Mordheim downloads the most convenient way is going here though:
http://www.tabletopgeeks.com/downloads/

As I said, I recommend downloading the Annual and flicking through it. There are rules for other major races and excpet for the Sons of Nagarythe everything in there is official.

Have fun!

About online store: Don't they have free shipping? Or can't you go to your local GW shop and ask them to bring a given item to you for free?

About maelstrom: I know them, a friend of mine has bought from them. The sad thing, they don't have Mordheim stuff. CoolMiniOrNot have a very big store for miniatures non-GW I believe.

About Warhammer Fantasy Battles: I can't find any reference on games-workshop web... maybe I did not look well, but I see warhammer, 40k, LOTR and specialist...

Thank you for the thread, but it's now what I was looking for, I hoped it was a list that would go like:

'For averland: For captain you can use this miniature from freebooter, or this one from GW, or this one from...' and so on and so on


@cianty: I get that about painting a fancier soldier as hero, but how would I get archers and other classes from the box?

So, to resume a little:

With an Empire militia box I could make: Reiklanders, Marienburgers, Middenheimers, Ostlanders, Averlanders

With a 'skaven nightrunner' I could be on my way to a skaven band

With a box of flagellants, I could make nice witch hunters...

By the way:

http://www.heresyminiatures.com/hv025.htm

This guys would be great for undead, right? Very nice minis!

With a box of flagellants AND a box of Empire Militia, you can have a nice band of witch hunters. Only flagellants won't suffice.

Other than that, I did not mean the thread Tom advised... but I can't find the one I'm looking for. It was a little like "With the Empire Militia box, you can do this, buying that additional box will enable you to do the following warbands, too, etc."

Generally, I'd suggest you just get the militia box and give it a go, for special models from GW or another range which fit a special role (like Witch Hunter, or Averlander Captain), I suggest just reading the warband fluff in the beginning of the rules, looking at the official models (in the thread Tom posted) and the artwork, and then browsing through online stores to find fitting models or this forum to get a lot of inspiration from the stuff other have converted. It's really difficult to suggest some special miniatures, especially as you do not know what warband to play exactly, yet.

But with Empire Militia, you can't go wrong, it even has options for bows, pistols and a blunderbuss in it, so really everything you need in the beginning. If you want to go for some special heroes right from the start, you could buy the Empire General in addition and mix the sets for some unique models as you heroes.

Looking at the images of the militia, I guess they could even be made pirates as Tom sayed, they are so mean-looking....

So, I guess militia is a must, right? With militia I can get stuff for:

- Human warband (I would probably need a 'nicer' mini or two, for hero and magic-caster)
- Witch-hunters (I would also need flagellants)
- Pirates (I don't know much about this warband, but I would need some more nice minis).

Is this correct?

By the way, I believe I have closed the deal and bought the box with the 10 skaven and 8 humans... when I get it I'll put pictures of what are its contents, once I have it I'll see which box would be the most interesting to buy, maybe with a militia box, a flagellant box, and a skaven blister for a special skaven, I could be on my way to have a human warband, a witch hunters band and a skaven band!

Yeah, what you said about the militia is correct.

As for pirates, I made some, you can see them here:
https://boringmordheimforum.forumieren.com/miniatures-f2/scurvy-dogs-prepare-to-be-boarded-t812.htm

Diegan wrote:

Don't they have free shipping?

The GW mail order? Not a chance.

Diegan wrote:

can't you go to your local GW shop and ask them to bring a given item
to you for free?

Yes. This works in the UK at least. Here in Austria they charge you €2.50 if you order below X euros (can't remeber the minimum).

Diegan wrote:

About maelstrom: ... The sad thing, they don't have Mordheim stuff.

None of the boxes mentioned above (except for the Mordheim starter box) are Mordheim specific. They are all WHFB boxes, so they are available on MG!

Diegan wrote:

About
Warhammer Fantasy Battles: I can't find any reference on games-workshop
web...

I don't believe you. You missed WHFB on the GW website?

If you order vial GW Mailorder, you get free shipping as long as you buy enough. In Germany, it's 100€ I believe.

That's a great looking pirate band! Tomorrow I'll read the whole thread, to see which minis are those.

Until 30 june, you can order in germany and it's free if you spend only 17 euros, check it out, its in all countries!

The WHFB link does not work, how exactly do I find this category?

Diegan wrote:

The WHFB link does not work, how exactly do I find this category?

Sorry, you are right. The link seems dead. Here's another one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhammer_Fantasy_Battle

Lol, you mean their main product, warhammer fantasy??

Lol, I thought you meant another one!

About ebay, I just ALMOST won a nice witchhunters warband... but another guy took it from me in the last minute

Diegan wrote:

Lol, you mean their main product, warhammer fantasy??

That's the one

Sorry about your ebay auction.

I just called to a GW store, and they said now they only have boxes with 10 militia at 17,5 euros each, they do not have the boxes with 20 for 30 euros anymore.... what a rip-offf!!!!!!!!!!!

Diegan wrote:

I just called to a GW store, and they said now they only have boxes with 10 militia at 17,5 euros each, they do not have the boxes with 20 for 30 euros anymore.... what a rip-offf!!!!!!!!!!!

*cough*maelstromgames*cough*

Yeah!! Maelstrom all the way!

Hi!

I was wondering if you recognize this edition of the empire milita box (because I believe it's not the current one), I can buy it at half price and was wondering if this would be good for starting my cheap human warband.




Does this box brings 15 or 20 figures, cause in the back of the box, in the photograph, I count 15, right?

It comes with 20 minis. I wonder why they only pictured 15.