[Rules] Town Cryer 7/Mordheim Annual 2002 Academic skills

Hello all, i have several questions about theese skills

- Are they officials? They were originally in TC7 so i though they weren't but they appeared again in MA2002 so i don't really know

- Aren't some of them broken? Especially mind focus/Tactician/Hunch

With mind focus there is no point in spending 1 skill point to reduce the difficulty of a spell when for the same skill point you can reduce the difficulty of all of your spells. It seems to me better than "scribe" too wich allows you to roll a spell at+2 ONCE per game

Tactician and hunch seems to be no brainers to gain some scenarios in campaigns



Could you pleasegive me youre advice and tell e if they are legal or not?

Thanks a lot!

Yup, all official.

Thanks

And a little bit broken no?

Tactician is a mess. If you use it you need house rules. You can find it discussed in several threads on this forum.

Hunch is less used in my experience. Mind focus+Sorcery+Rabbits Foot is a nasty combo for spell lists that have a good spell.

The brokenness is mainly a perception. My group used these when we started years ago and then as fewer players had access to all the TC, we stopped using them. Haven't missed them. We are rarely without our Rabbits Foot though.

Thanks, we have already banned rabbit foot, wich is much more better than a pendulum for 4 times less cost (sorry for my english)

I think mind focus is the same way as the rabbit foot :/

I like mind focus! My priest of Sigmar can't use sorcery...

In my opinion, these skills are great for spell-casters. Sure, "mind-focus" is clearly better then skills such as "sorcery," however think of it instead as an additive skill. First you take "mind focus," then afterwards you take "sorcery" and the like. It's similar to combat skills in this respect - people have their favorit skill that they always teach the primary melee combatants first, and afterwards they load up on the other melee-oriented skills.

In my mind, something like "mind focus" is fine due to the relatively low number of spell-casters in the game and the fact that it's only one skill - beyond that there's only the standard academic skills to build upon.

Personally, I would recommend allowing this skill set to increase the efficacy of magic-users, which will add to the variety and flavor of the campaign overall, rather than limitting an already somewhat limited class of characthers.

We decided to let them indeed, thanks all for your answers

I find hunch to be a boon for my Reiklanders, setting up 3 crossbowmen in the tallest building is nice indeed! I also use it to grab wyrdstone with close combat warriors if the opportunity arises.

Sorry, but I need to revive this thread!

I've done some calculations on Mind Focus vs. Sorcery (and Familiar), and in general you can say, that it's 7 - 10% better than Sorcery and just about as good as Familiars (2 - 4% difference both ways, depending on spell difficulty). Another addition is, that not only spell casters can use this skill, but also Priests of all sorts.
My impression is, that Priest spells in general are lower in difficulty, because of their lack of access to Sorcery, but I might be wrong. I just find such spells a bit better than their equivalent for spellusers.
As a bound Lizardmen player, this skill would indeed increase my potential incredibly.

Same goes with Hunch/Tactician. Having Tactician even each other out, might be cool, but it just seems like a fun skill in general. Just seems a bit over the top as well, especially Hunch, where you basically get 3 infiltrators. Not quite as good as infiltration pr. Hero, but a 'cheap' way to get it, especially since you can prevent infiltrators to set up the prefered places.

I'd really like to discuss this further, and hear from all of you who use it. I'm aware that it's official, but that doesn't mean it's balanced

I have asked about Tactician several times. As far as I can tell people who like to use it are able to say that they like to use it. In my group all it causes are arguments, so we stopped using it. Perhaps it would be different if the rules for it were available online, but since I find the rules incredibly vague, I doubt it.
Specifically we find it to be a scenario breaker. Many scenarios have specific setup requirements that the addition of Tactician skews completely. Breakthrough and Defend the Find come to mind.

We find certain spell casters very powerful if Mind Focus is used and thus shy away from anything except Sorcery.

Von Kurst wrote:

I find the rules incredibly vague

The problem, as I see it, arises when several warbands has this.
I see two solutions:
A. Let them cancel out each other.
B. Let the second player 'rearrange' his warband, when the first player has set up and position them 12" in. Then let the first player reposition his warband. Deploying first has never been better, but this is how I interpretate the rules, since it's after 'set up' and not after 'rearranging'.

Von Kurst wrote:

We find certain spell casters very powerful if Mind Focus is used and thus shy away from anything except Sorcery.

Excactly. I'm gonna have to make some calculations, but this could tip the power too much when comparing spellcaster warbands to non-spellcaster warbands.

Actually the problem is when any warband has the skill. Set up starts to take forever, depending on the players; scenarios with special setup rules must be discussed and then played. Depending on the result of the discussion, playing may take less time because the Tactician wins immediately or sooner, but I don't see the fun in that.

If several players have the skill and you play as written, set up can take literally forever. In addition since multi-player games are supposed to have 6" setup zones, Tactician really breaks the scenarios from Chaos in the Streets. The scenario Ambush is a death sentence for the highest warband.

Von Kurst wrote:

If several players have the skill and you play as written, set up can take literally forever.

With the option B, it would still take longer, but not as long as your way
This is why that interpretation makes sense to me - you can rearrange after set up, but not after your opponent has rearranged his warband, since that's not part of the set up imo.

Von Kurst wrote:

In addition since multi-player games are supposed to have 6" setup zones, Tactician really breaks the scenarios from Chaos in the Streets.  The scenario Ambush is a death sentence for the highest warband.

This was something I considered as well, but forgot to write ^_^ it says 12" instead of 8", so either that should be interpretated to 10" instead of 6" or that it simply doesn't apply in other circumstances than when you have a 8" deployment zone. Weird part is, that Chaos in the Streets and these rules are both in the Mordheim Annual, and this has not been corrected since the Town Cryer version...

In my group we allowed both Tactician and Hunch because it reduces the power of Infiltrate without completely eliminating it. We did have to houserule a bit here and there though for tactician. The scenarios in which Hunch could break the game didn't need any modification for us because the same houserules that stopped Infiltrate instawinning also stopped Hunch.

For Tactician on both sides we play that one person sets up, then the other, then the first redeploys, then the other. We have a guideline that a good game is a swift game so it generally doesn't take that long. Especially since the first deployment is going to be reployed anyway so you don't have to pay that much attention to it. Basically you are only putting down guys as infiltration/hunch denial.

Given that Infiltrate instawins some scenarios and this has never been corrected, it doesn't seem that weird to me that they never corrected any other instawin skill. Remember, Games Workshop's idea of playtesting is to play with mates from down pub - i.e. all friends who know what the rules are supposed to be so noone actually does any boundary testing or anything.

As for the magic skills, we have a similar pattern. Generally you get Mind Focus first and then proceed to Sorcery or the armour wearing skill and so forth.

For a similar reason we didn't ban the rabbit's foot. You get the rabbits foot *first* and then the pendulum and so forth.

Lord 0 wrote:

In my group we allowed both Tactician and Hunch because it reduces the power of Infiltrate without completely eliminating it. We did have to houserule a bit here and there though for tactician. The scenarios in which Hunch could break the game didn't need any modification for us because the same houserules that stopped Infiltrate instawinning also stopped Hunch.

What houserules?

Lord 0 wrote:

For Tactician on both sides we play that one person sets up, then the other, then the first redeploys, then the other (...) Basically you are only putting down guys as infiltration/hunch denial.

What's the difference from just deploying once then? And advancing them 12" onto the table.

Lord 0 wrote:

As for the magic skills, we have a similar pattern. Generally you get Mind Focus first and then proceed to Sorcery or the armour wearing skill and so forth.

I can see this, and I'd do that as well. However, my question is whether this imbalances the game, since the skill is not on par with the rest - it's a lot better, and Priests have access to it as well. Again, there must've been some point in having Priests without Sorcery/Familiar. For instance, they have Holy Tome - but not all Priests, only Warrior Priests (or do you allow it for all Priests?).

Lord 0 wrote:

For a similar reason we didn't ban the rabbit's foot. You get the rabbits foot *first* and then the pendulum and so forth.

For me, Rabbit's Foot is quite incredible. Which is why we've only allowed one of them. That single one is especially good though, since we houseruled, that you can use it to re-roll 1 dice in your injury roll, should the carrier die.

Aipha wrote:

Lord 0 wrote:

We did have to houserule [tactician, hunch, and infiltrate]a bit here and there though...

What houserules?

It was different for each scenario. As an overview though, it was things like 'you can't deploy in anyone elses deployment zone', you get 8" if the deployment zone is 6"' and stuff like that. Basically going through each scenario and making a note in the deployment sections as to whether or not the skills are allowed and how they work.

Aipha wrote:

Lord 0 wrote:

For Tactician on both sides we play that one person sets up, then the other, then the first redeploys, then the other (...) Basically you are only putting down guys as infiltration/hunch denial.

What's the difference from just deploying once then? And advancing them 12" onto the table.

Mostly for how it interacts with infiltrate; warbands that have infiltrate, but *don't* have tactician; warbands that have tactician, but *not* infiltrate etc. We tried to streamline the rules for it, but in the end it ended up simpler to just follow the basic rules for each of them.

Aipha wrote:

Lord 0 wrote:

As for the magic skills, we have a similar pattern. Generally you get Mind Focus first and then proceed to Sorcery or the armour wearing skill and so forth.

I can see this, and I'd do that as well. However, my question is whether this imbalances the game, since the skill is not on par with the rest - it's a lot better, and Priests have access to it as well. Again, there must've been some point in having Priests without Sorcery/Familiar. For instance, they have Holy Tome - but not all Priests, only Warrior Priests (or do you allow it for all Priests?).

We allow all priests to get a holy tome for their religion. Mind Focus says you can only use it for one roll and we decided that meant one roll per turn. Therefore a caster with Mind Focus *and* Magical Aptitude would require Mind Focus and a familiar if they wanted to reroll both casting attempts. Depending on finance and skill rolls sometimes a caster gets a familiar first and sometimes they get Mind Focus first.

We have played like that for years and it doesn't seem to have imbalanced the game, I think because of the inherent balance in the game already i.e. if you are spending all your skills becoming a better caster you are going to be poo in melee and poo at shooting. Heck, we are testing a whole warband of casters and it doesn't seem to be broken. College of Magic warband

Lord 0 wrote:

For a similar reason we didn't ban the rabbit's foot. You get the rabbits foot *first* and then the pendulum and so forth.

For me, Rabbit's Foot is quite incredible. Which is why we've only allowed one of them. That single one is especially good though, since we houseruled, that you can use it to re-roll 1 dice in your injury roll, should the carrier die.[/quote]Do you mean you have allowed only the rabbits foot and banned the pendulum? We have allowed the use of both of them so that it encourages the use of the rabbit's foot in-game saving the pendulum for the more boring getting money phase. This in turn leads to more climbing, jumping, diving charges etc. because you can always reroll the failed I test or jump distance or what-have-you. This leads to more fun and should be encouraged .

We removed the ability for Rabbit's Foot to be used in the post battle sequence.

Lord 0 wrote:

It was different for each scenario. As an overview though, it was things like 'you can't deploy in anyone elses deployment zone', you get 8" if the deployment zone is 6"' and stuff like that. Basically going through each scenario and making a note in the deployment sections as to whether or not the skills are allowed and how they work.

Sounds confusing!

Lord 0 wrote:

Mostly for how it interacts with infiltrate; warbands that have infiltrate, but *don't* have tactician; warbands that have tactician, but *not* infiltrate etc. We tried to streamline the rules for it, but in the end it ended up simpler to just follow the basic rules for each of them.

I'll take the last advice, if we are to implement this

Lord 0 wrote:

We allow all priests to get a holy tome for their religion. Mind Focus says you can only use it for one roll and we decided that meant one roll per turn. Therefore a caster with Mind Focus *and* Magical Aptitude would require Mind Focus and a familiar if they wanted to reroll both casting attempts. Depending on finance and skill rolls sometimes a caster gets a familiar first and sometimes they get Mind Focus first.

Once pr. turn. I'd agree. Magical aptitude is a bit imbalanced though imo. But I guess you can just leave it, if you're not an Orc, Possessed or Beastman ^_^

Lord 0 wrote:

We have played like that for years and it doesn't seem to have imbalanced the game, I think because of the inherent balance in the game already i.e. if you are spending all your skills becoming a better caster you are going to be poo in melee and poo at shooting.

But there's still a difference in being an incredible spelluser, rather than just being alright

Lord 0 wrote:

Do you mean you have allowed only the rabbits foot and banned the pendulum? We have allowed the use of both of them so that it encourages the use of the rabbit's foot in-game saving the pendulum for the more boring getting money phase. This in turn leads to more climbing, jumping, diving charges etc. because you can always reroll the failed I test or jump distance or what-have-you. This leads to more fun and should be encouraged .

We allowed 1 Rabbit's Foot total and up to 1 Pendulum pr. Hero

We are a pretty competitive group so that limitation would lead to only one hero risking heroic actions. I think we will leave the Rabbit's Foot how it is .

RationalLemming wrote:

We removed the ability for Rabbit's Foot to be used in the post battle sequence.

This is exactly what my group did as well.