[Supplement] Border Town Burning - Full Supplement Out Now!!

As discussed in other topics I will make a 2nd warband and I was thinking Ogres.
So, one thing that struck me as fun but seems way underpowered is the Mortar.
Hit with BS (which is 2 or max 3)
Shoot every other turn, and no move and fire.
Chance of 1 in 6 missfire.
80+2d6 gold cost!
Ah and rare 12.

So, I am not going to do a statistics analysis but the risks and cost massively outweigh the effectiveness. Is that on purpose? Or is a revise maybe in order? Does anyone use them as written?

Shouldnt we use it more as a rocklobba. Put down a marker. Throw Hit-Die and Scatter-die. Hit is a hit, misfire is a misfire, and scatter = scatter minus Ballisstic skill.

Hi,

Me and my "Garagehammer" mates are about to start a BTB Campaign. Are there any tips or ticks to running one smothly from you campaign veterans?

The new Dread Maw model is the perfect monster for any Border Town Burning campaign:
http://cianty-tabletop.blogspot.com/2013/07/dread-wyrm-of-underground.html

Love it.  

Hey together,
me and my group want to start a BTB Campaign.
Is there any reason why a merchant warband is recommended in a narrative Campaign?

Hi Taugenichts,

the campaign is designed to be playable with pretty much any combination of warbands and objectives. Of course, the battle between evil (Scion of Chaos) and good (Celestial Protectorate) is the core of the conflict in BTB, so if you can get two warbands with those objectives it is perfect. But all the other objectives are also fine.

I'd definately encourage players to first choose the warbands they personally prefer, then pick the objective they identify best with. Only lastly see if you maybe want to change anything to improve the overall constellation.

The bottom line is: You don't have to choose any particular warband/objective. From a narrative perspective, I'd consider the Merchants third place in priority after Marauders vs some other good-aligned warband. But that's no reason to play them over something you'd prefer to play instead.

Hey,
thank you for ur fast reply.
I just was wondering, cause on s.172 is written that the merchant are recommend. But I don't get the point, why they are needed. The only benefites are, that you can interact with other player, when they want to sell items.

Currently consists of our group:
Skaven - The silent Thread
Undead - The silent Thread
Witch Hunter - The Damn shall burn
Carnival of Chaos - The Scion of chaos (i allowed him to play this objectiv, that we have at least on Scion)
Maneaters - scourge of the realm
One more player wich don't know what he Plays,
and at least me. I would choose an warband, which is missing in the campaign (some celectial i think).

#edit: sry for the bad english. It's not my nativ Language

Hi,

no problem with the English! If you want to, you can PM me in German if you like.

It is true that one Scion should be there. Since the idea of that objective is to have a strong leader that gathers the hordes of Chaos I am not sure if the Carnival is such a good choice here. There is a reason they are not intended for this objective. The rules play out so that the Chaos player collects the artifacts and builds his leader to become a strong leader and fighter. Especially the Scourge will ultimately seek the deadly duel with the Chaos leader in close combat and a Carnival leader may be at a disadvantage here.

You could also house rule the Ogres to act as Chaos Ogres and let their leader be the Scion of Chaos. I believe that works much better with the underlying mechanics as they have a strong leader as well and the increasing horde benefits are nice for a warband that may end up being the enemy of every one else.

It is also always cool to have multiple Scions of Chaos and see them compete for who will be the true Champion of Chaos. If you are really free with your remaining warband choices it would be fun to see Beastmen, Norse or Marauders and play the campaign with two Scions. Or the Carnival and the Man-eaters might both play Scion.

Yeah, im Free with the choice of warband.
I love to build new warbands and see them grow.
That's a big point for Mortheim, that a new Warband is less effort, as one whf Army.
I depends on the last player. If he choose an celestial, i go for a Scion warband like Norse (there are great Models out there). Or, if it's no celectial warband, i go for the Battlemonks.

But im with you, the campaign needs at least on Scion and one celestial.

I changend a little bit the scenario system, but that's a better discussion for the pm's (much more details), if you have no Problem with that.

Anyway, u delieverd a really great work here!
I try to conduct the discussion in English, that other player benefites.

Taugenichts wrote:

I changend a little bit the scenario system, but that's a better discussion for the pm's (much more details), if you have no Problem with that.

Sure! I'd love to hear how your campaign works out and what the players think of the overall experience (following the objectives and working on achieving them).

Taugenichts wrote:

I try to conduct the discussion in English, that other player benefites.

Fair point!

Hello!

We're a group who're going to try out the BTB campaign rules in the near future. I'm really looking forward to it, but I have some concerns about the Assassination achievement that The Silent Threat has at 35 CP. It seems very drastic to me to just outright remove a leader from the game. The leader is usually near and dear to each player but also very important for both Scion of Chaos* and Scourge of the Realm. It feels like taking either of those two out at the end game will whack them right out of the campaign. The Damned Shall Burn also has a pretty dramatic achievement at 35 CP but atleast it isn't automatic.

Has there been any complaints or issues occuring from Assassination? If so, do you have any suggestions on how to alter it?

*Edit: Will they be able to assassinate a transformed daemon prince as well? Or will its status as a dramatis personae stop that from happening?

The way we adapted it in our campaign was, instead of auto-kill a model, to allow the Silent Threat warband to choose the "Stake-Out" scenario from then on whenever they could choose a scenario, but only to challenge to highest WR warband.

That way we kept it very sneaky-assassiny style, not for free, but still pretty destructive for the victim (because it puts the warband leader in a very vulnerable position).

Thanks for the quick answer. Something like that seems more fair to me, putting a warband's leader hot on the line but still giving them a chance to escape instead of just getting a NUKE button at 35 CP. Now since we haven't actually played with these rules yet I'm perhaps overestimating the effects this has but still, it just feels vicious.

Hi! I got a little bit of munchkin-ish question:
What happened when the Condemned hero from Marauders of Chaos gets a mutation which fix one of his variable attribute? (Like crystalline body from the corrupted Charaters supplement)?
Can it be the mercy of the Condemned new god?
I think a +2 strength mutation will change his attritube a 1d6+2 but the crystalline body says:

"crystalline body

The  mutant’s  body  becomes  living  crystal,  which  is tough,  but  easily  shattered.  The  mutant’s  Toughness becomes 6, while its Wounds become 1. Neither of these attributes can subsequently be altered by  experience  or  mutation.  In  an  experience  advance indicates  a  change  in  one  of  these  characteristics,  re-roll the advance until a different characteristic advance is obtained.

Cost: 60 gold crowns"

I'd treat it like the rules state: T6, W1. The Marauders of Chaos player in my group chose to keep skipping advances until he got rolled a T5 or T6 anyway so at least with 'Crystalline Body' the player has to pay 60 gc to guarantee the T6 and at the same time is restricted forever to W1.

I agree that another mutation like 'Hulking Brute' would be 1D6+2 when determining Strength.

RationalLemming wrote:

The Marauders of Chaos player in my group chose to keep skipping advances until he got rolled a T5 or T6 .

Ques it's never roll an Strength:2 and a Toughness:1 in a row of 3 turns.

Back to Crystalline Body:
It's seem reasonable, but it somehow overrule the main concept of the condemned. For fix one attribute is okay but trying to fixing the others (with other mutations or other way) could be against the unit concept.

M S wrote:

Has there been any complaints or issues occuring from Assassination? If so, do you have any suggestions on how to alter it?

I have toyed with this objective in several campaigns. I made the scenario Assassination* (from Mordheimer's scenario list) the objective scenario instead of the auto death of the leader. The scenario allows the assassin to pick his target from the Defending warband. If the target was successfully taken out of action it was killed in action with no roll on the injury table.

*Note: The file from Mordhiemer is corrupted. The original scenario is no longer available (it was still available through the link to Ye Mordheim Legends Gazette when I was using the scenario.)
Now I am inclined to follow Nuno's example and use Stake Out instead with no auto-kill.

M S wrote:

The Damned Shall Burn also has a pretty dramatic achievement at 35 CP but at least it isn't automatic.

I think having your warband knocked out of the campaign is pretty annoying though. I got rid of this as well since my objective is to KEEP players involved not discourage them from attending game night. I have enough problem with players giving up on campaigns without putting it in the rules.

Von Kurst wrote:

I think having your warband knocked out of the campaign is pretty annoying though. I got rid of this as well since my objective is to KEEP players involved not discourage them from attending game night.  I have enough problem with players giving up on campaigns without putting it in the rules.

That's entirely true. At the same time knocking warbands out of the campaign is how the final objective of TDSB is achieved. Perhaps a defeated warband will merely count as "marked" and once every heretic warband has been "marked" or has otherwise left the campaign on their own volition then the TDSB wins the campaign?

There is that, its been so long since I read the original objectives, I have kind of forgotten them.  I changed the objective pretty radically to fit more with my campaign style.

I don't think that much changing needs doing though, as you say, you could simply declare victory once each 'heretic' warband in the campaign has been defeated by the Burn the Witchers after reaching 35 CP (since that is closer to how the original system works without making any players quit).

That way the Burn the Witchers would be similar to how the Silent Threat must win the Heist against every other objective in order to win.

Speaking of alternative changes, where do I find the Stake Out scenario? I thought I saw it among the others in BTB but I can't see it now.

MasterSpark wrote:

Speaking of alternative changes, where do I find the Stake Out scenario? I thought I saw it among the others in BTB but I can't see it now.

I think coreheim scenario list.
And/or Town Cryer 8.

Athanatosz wrote:

I think coreheim scenario list.
And/or Town Cryer 8.

Whipping out my town cryer 8...

...and there it is. Thank you!

The one in Coreheim is a quite a bit different from the original. Still I'll look at both before the next campaign that uses objectives.

We are playing the Border Town Campaign at the moment too.
We'll try to change as less as possible. Just to play the campaign how the Designer thought about it.
Some Parts looks unbalanced, but I think he knows what he was doing.
So we will see how it works, when the campaign goes forward.
Yes, the "the damend shall burn" and "the silent Thread" 35 is hard.
But you could say an warband with 22 Beastman ist hard too!
What i am saying, just try to play how it was thought. Many things look strong, when u play against. But ur enemy think the same about your part.

The biggest thorns we found while running the campaign were:

- The "Famed Travellers" achievement of the "Lure of Fortune" Objective.
While I am all for something like halving the hire cost of certain types of Hired Sword as an achievement reward, making then ALL ~1/3 of the cost across the board, just broke it for us... our Fortune player was very very shrewd    and together with the medical knowledge skill it really created a problem.
It's true we were using the Blood Pact rules (which are not part of the original BTB rules) and maybe that was the tipping factor... But from my point of view it was the price drop plus how strong Medical Knowledge was that really could needed a fix... Dunno if people have had similar experiences. Models in Mordheim campaigns NEED to croak on a regular basis so there is turnover in warbands and power rebalancing.

- Unlike other Objectives, "Scion of Chaos" does not get any achievements that directly benefit its pursuit of its major source of CPs: Chaos Artefacts. With the exception of the 'Siege' scenario, of course, but other than that they mostly get (really nice) buffs to warband combat capability. So while they get pretty good at winning battles, they take ages to find artefacts (unless they invest significantly in Exploration-phase skills) and stand to lose CPs if others find them first, even if they later acquire them. Few other Objectives have a cost like this. I didn't notice this at first, but our poor Chaos player kept being hit with CP penalties because he wasn't able to find the artefacts and then other people would before him.
Should be said that our campaign were 7-8 people, and only one Scion of Chaos and one Celestial Protectorate.

- The Silent Threat doesn't work well for all the warband types recommended for it. Namely, my own Undead warband. Maybe I just wasn't using the vampire to its full potential, but the "Target Eliminated" achievement is mighty difficult when too many elements of the warband are slow. Most scenarios, even many of the more narrative ones, end up with warbands clumping up and therefore unlikely to spread out their forces (so you can potentially trigger this achievement). You need to specifically strike at lone snipers or runners who go after scenario objectives. Also, the constant investment on poison can be very very draining, even with the discounts. Maybe some Undead warbands can do it...


We did fix several of these things in our own way. Don't know if this helps at this point, but I guess any feedback is good for future scenario/campaign designs!

I had never heard of "Medical Knowledge" so I went searching and found it in the blasted "Mordheim Rulebook (Updated)" / "PaulH" / "Knights Templar" rulebook. This compilation of rules contains a LOT of house rules (with nothing to show that they are house rules   ) and not all of the house rules are balanced. I agree with your comments regarding the "Medical Knowledge" skill and wouldn't include it in my  campaign since injuries and death are a large part of the Mordheim experience.

I've done my best to create compilation documents that clearly show the distinction between official rules, rules from various settings (e.g. BTB) and house rules within my gaming group. They are not pretty but hopefully they are useful. Here is the document for skills.
https://1drv.ms/b/s!AFnZpy7SwbcChio
Here is a link to the One Drive folder with all of the compilation documents that I've created.
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21AByFcnV1qMjZdzg&id=2B7C1D22EA7D959%21191&cid=02B7C1D22EA7D959

I think that a BTB objective benefits from having a good number of warbands with 'core' objectives (e.g. Scion of Chaos and Celestial Protectorate) and less warbands with 'secondary' objectives. I agree that it could take Scion of Chaos warbands a while to get going but they can get strong if the campaign drags out too long. The two Scion of Chaos warbands in our group were at the top of the table in our campaign although this was partly due to good use of the 'Corrupted Characters' article without corresponding use of the 'Miracle Workers' article. No one wanted face them.