Official and Unofficial Warbands

Hi!

Would you allow players to play official and unofficial warbands in your games of Mordheim?

If yes, what are the limitations/changes that you would make (if any)?

Have you experienced problems with unofficial warbands in the past?

Yea we allowed unofficial warbands at our local gaming store when we played Mordheim. We used a thread from the Speacialist Game forum which can be found here. Afterwards we used to play a Test Game to see if the warband is balanced or not. (Note that online statistics aren't always accurate)

Cheers,
Hellfoot

We allow experimental warbands in play with our league, as long as a majority of the League Admins (there are three of us) agree that the warband is balanced (or appears as such) and fit for play. Being an avid creator myself, it is one of the ways I get to ensure that the warbands and spells that I create actually work; it's nice to have a rebutal for the Specialist Games forum when someone says "That won't work" (they often don't have anything to back it up with; they just say "no") and I can reply "Yes, it does. Here are some actual examples!".

I've a list on my personal website with their respective stages of developement attached. Right now I am working on the re-write of my Wood Elf warband. Now that the hype from the new model releases has died down (it's been more than a year, hasn't it?) it seems like only those who are seriously interested in playing the warband for the warbands sake are trying it, which is good. The whole list is likely to be affected by the changes I have in mind, so much as with the Necrarch Warband and their Scrolls of Nagash (any and all apologies to those of you who played the warband for so long without it) the Wood Elves will have a completely different look and feel to them when I am finished.

Cheers!

Tom didn't mention it, but we (that is to say Tom, Hari, me and Patrick) tend to restrict the new "unofficial" warbands in our campaign, fearing they would spoil the entire game by being simply too powerful.
There is one exception though: Hari's Amazons. Hari has been playing an Amazon warband since the beginning and actually the game balance (between the warbands) is rather ok. But Amazons are not official so Tom tried to penalise Hari's Amazons so that in future games, they won't become too powerful... we decided to raise the prices of some weapons (such as the sun staff or the sun gauntlet) because they were simply too cheap for the Amazons to buy!

We'll see what happens next.
It's always hard to tell if a warband is advantaged by its "unofficial status" or not - the Amazons once defeated a combined Reiklander/Possessed warband but was it out of mere dice luck ... or because Amazons are too powerful ?

)

Our ''club'' makes no problem of Unofficial warbands, atleast if they are not too overpowered. We got 2 unofficials, Axel's Shadow warriors and Alwins Dark Elves. I'm not sure if Dwarf''s are official, but if they are, they don't seem like being to overpowered

Tagnator wrote:

Our ''club'' makes no problem of Unofficial warbands, atleast if they are not too overpowered. We got 2 unofficials, Axel's Shadow warriors and Alwins Dark Elves. I'm not sure if Dwarf''s are official, but if they are, they don't seem like being to overpowered

altough I must say I think Shadow warriors ARE overpowerd..

well me against Shadow Warriors would be fun .. Remember it's just a game

Tagnator wrote:

well me against Shadow Warriors would be fun .. Remember it's just a game

knowing me you should know i only play for the win..
Lol, Just kidding it's about the fun

Shadow Warriors ARE overpowered. That's why they are not official although they are in the Mordheim Annual 2002.

cianty wrote:

Shadow Warriors ARE overpowered. That's why they are not official although they are in the Mordheim Annual 2002.

Thanks cianty, for saying that

Could you explain why, cianty? I didn't read their warband-list yet.
I'm very curious about it as one of my friends wants to start a shadow-warrior band

@ Matt, nah you're not kidding I can see your evil mind! Wanting to murder all our warband's out and put the ''walking-corpses'' in yer Warband ..

@ Erkwin, Yes a m8 of me is wanting a Shadow-Warrior's warband to... (he's Axel btw)

but I have no problem with it if they are overpowered, just more fun if you are defeating them or not, becides It's still a game and since he is a huge elf fan, I will let him go with it

I think it's pretty obvious that they are too good. I mean, look at the prices:

Let's compare the Elves to the human mercenaries.

0-3 Shadow Walkers, the equivalent to the human Champion: for a mere +10 gold crowns only and one advance they get:
+1 Movement
+1 WS
+1 BS
+3 Ini
+1 Ld

Seriously, wtf?!

Look at them in general. They get to to have 0-3 "champions" and a spellcaster. That's insane. Especially when all of their models have superior profiles. Also the Sniper skill is simply broken. I think it's easy for any decently experienced Mordheim player to have a look at the list and find some problems there. Personally, I would not allow them in my gaming group - although we use a lot of experimental/house rules.

Elves are not meant to be in Mordheim. That's why no one cares to take a second chance at making such a warband. They officially said that Elves would return to Mordheim "in a different way" one day or something. This sort of happened with the Elf Mage hired sword. But as GW does not support the SG range, you won't see anything happening there soon.
However, there are quite a few Wood Elf warband lists out there, all of which look more balanced than the Sons of Nagarythe.

*vigorously nods in agreement*

I agree with Cianty. However I might add that (and I think this has been said in another thread), I really can't see what Wood Elves would do in Mordheim... apart from looking for SOMETHING that could SOMEHOW threaten Athel Loren from that distance.

But the models are way cool so, being an ex-woodie myself, I can perfectly understand why one would want to play those guys nonetheless

Three champions for 45gc with that profiles?
Holy...

I understand why they are overpowered, thanks for the explanation, cianty.

So, how does people feel about Lustria and Khemri campaign warbands??

We all know that Lizardmen Saurus is horrible powerful for the price.
40 GC for T4 S4 A1(2) coldblooded and 5+ save.
Does the weak skinks and lack of long ranged combat and skills make up for this?

How about something like the Norse?
Most have high WS and two heros with 2A, and everyone with S4
They do lack the ranged combat, and they dont really have skills?

Araby raiders??

Khemri tomb Guardians?

Amazons and elfs are covered I think...

The saurus wariors are way too strong for their price, I played against them and was lucky that none made it into close combat(the player was very new to Mordheim).
I would say they should cost at least 55gc.

There are a lot of Norse lists out there, so I don't know which one you mean.

I mean the Norse list from the Lustria campaign, its on the SG page under one of the Lustria articles...

It was released in Town Cryer 13. Look it up on the Specialist Games site, as Solinan said. Also there is a re-write on the Mordheim forum. I wouldn't say it's needed but whatever...