Heroes only warband?

I've been working on a few fan warbands, I was wandering how one that only allows heroes and hired swords sounds? No henchmen .... would it be to weak? to powerful?

The way the game is set up, heroes are your heavy hitters, but also your income generators. The risk reward built onto Mordheim centers around how much of their survivability to risk.

Usually you have henchmen to absorb some of the casualties. You could test this out without making a new warband type with any existing warband. In this type of warband you would be forced to delegate hired swords to meat shields, to keep all your heroes from going out so they could make gold, just to pay all those hired swords. It seems like one bad game would derail this strategy pretty quickly.

Path is right.

Besides, there is a natural limit to the number of heroes in a warband, Iiirc 6 in "vanilla" Mordheim (unless your intention is to allow more that that, but that will arise serious objections with most gamers).

That will make the gang so scarce as to start taking bottle test too quickly imo.

But then, that's only my opinion.

Maybe you could create a 'hero-like' warband. Where the henchmen are also like heroe's in their own way. Say similar to how Hired Swords are in the Henchmen slots but work like Heroes.

So how about, your Amazing Adventurer's Warband.

Amazing Adventurers : Any Henchmen who rolls a stat upgrade they have already taken before, may instead choose a skill from the list provided for them.

Heroes
1- The Leader
0-1 The Mage
0-1 The Paladin
0-1 The Ranger
0-1 The Druid

Henchmen
0-1 The Warrior. May Take Combat Skills.
0-1 The Archer. May take Shooting Skills.
0-1 The Bard. May take Academic Skills.
0-1 The Rogue. May take Speed Skills.
0-1 The Barbarian. May take Strength skills.

But yeah, for just a Heroes and Hired Swords warband... You'd need to make a fair amount of cash each game (And hence, throwing your hired swords on the front lines) to make it work. Maybe if they paid less upkeep, or could take multiples.

Huh, very close to what I was intending someone ... the heroes based on those of Warhammer Quest (Barbarian, Dwarf, Elf, Wizard, Bretonnian Knight, Chaos Warrior, Elf Ranger Knight/Mage, Halfling Thief, Imperial Noble, Pit Fighter, Troll Slayer, Wardancer, Warrior Priest or Witch Hunter ... of which you may choose a combination of 6, only 1 of each).

Wasn't sure if it would work very well though.

Mortimer wrote:

Huh, very close to what I was intending someone ... the heroes based on those of Warhammer Quest (Barbarian, Dwarf, Elf, Wizard, Bretonnian Knight, Chaos Warrior, Elf Ranger Knight/Mage, Halfling Thief, Imperial Noble, Pit Fighter, Troll Slayer, Wardancer, Warrior Priest or Witch Hunter ... of which you may choose a combination of 6, only 1 of each).

Wasn't sure if it would work very well though.

You might want to check out the setting entitled Karak Azgal, which is a fan made supplement, although I believe originally intended to be GW produced as it is mentioned in one of the Town Cryers. One of the adventuring parties is made up of a Mage, Barbarian, Elf, Dwarf, and Imperial Noble for the leader (clearly warhammer quest influenced). Let me know if you can't find it, I have it as a word document and can e-mail it to you.

Joker2and53 wrote:

You might want to check out the setting entitled Karak Azgal, which is a fan made supplement, although I believe originally intended to be GW produced as it is mentioned in one of the Town Cryers. One of the adventuring parties is made up of a Mage, Barbarian, Elf, Dwarf, and Imperial Noble for the leader (clearly warhammer quest influenced). Let me know if you can't find it, I have it as a word document and can e-mail it to you.

Yes I came across it, it was partly what inspired the idea.

Yes!

I believe this is possible.

The main problem would be the Quantity > Quality symptom of Mordheim.

However, there are several things that the warband would have to incorporate:

Fairly resistant to loosing heroes. This means that even though 1 or 2 of your heroes go out, you should still get enough money to pay for at least 3-4 hired swords, and advance your heroes.
The heroes should also be tough enough to soak up some missile fire, so your warband wont go down from just one volley, which would be rather un-heroic.
Also heroes that do go out of action should probably have some form of protection against dying, as if you lose one of your good heroes late game (who has to be in the front line to soak up damage anyway). (some protection against injuries could also be a good idea).

Strong Warriors: The warriors would have to be strong enough late campaign to make them count against a skaven warband with 21 models or a possessed warband that is buffed up, or anything else that can be seen during the end of a campaign. It has to be able to deal with many units, as it often is in Mordheim Quantity > Quality, and this brings a heavy toll to a warband only incorporating 6-10 warriors at most.

Something to stop them from always getting underdog bonus.
Fairly high LD
Things to help them win number/split based scenarios (if you have to split a warband of 6 into two groups, then all alone will quickly become a problem) (Split based scenarios are scenarios were you get very much from splitting your warband into smaller groups).

I did run a low model count possessed warband once (basically magister, 2 possessed & 3 Beastmen who became heroes after a few games), ut went ok, probably because the heroes were so tough and killy at the same time (except for the 3 armed spined magister who hid himself away most of the time).

How I would do it?
Well, I'd attempt to make each guy focus in one area, where he is really good, and then each guy should have a secondary area, IE the mage could be a wizard and secondarily the laeder, the elf could be an archer, but good at dishing out damage in cc as well (not good at receiving it though), the dwarf could be good at receiving damage in cc, less good at dishing it out, and not a shooter, and so on and so forth.
Perhaps you could even make it 7 hero choices and make them choose just 6 of them.
Oh, and think about including some healing spells as well in whatever lore you decide to give them, these spells would be really needed in many combats.

Thanks Master, seems like some good advice, one advantage I am giving them is they can all get nice specialized equipment (based on what they could get in WQ) only available to each hero ... the Imperial Noble can get the Ancient Heirloom for example which causes fear in a random enemy warband, the Bretonnian Knight can get Ladies Favours which grant him bonuses in battle, Wardancer's can purchase the twin swords of orion, etc , etc.

The Wizard's main strength is he will start with more than one spell and will have a 'Battle Magic' to choose from as well as 'Lesser Magic'

Well I been brainstorming on this, so here is the special rules I came up with for a band of heroes.

Ragtag Band: The Adventurers don't follow any one individual, in fact half the time they will bicker about who's in charge. You may nominate any one hero to be the leader of the warband, they do not gain the 'leader' ability but you will use their Leadership when making rout tests. Any hero maybe the leader, no necessarily the one with the highest leadership.

Note: An Adventurer Leader who has the Battle Tongue ability is considered to gain the basic leader ability with a range of 6" not 12" or more.

Last Ones Standing: Adventurers journey into the most dangerous corners of the Old World in small parties of four or so individuals, enough to say they are made of sterner stuff than most (or perhaps just alittle bit crazy) and do not break and flee as easily as other warbands. An Adventurer Warband take a rout test when half or more of the members are taken out of action, rather than just a quarter.

Bold and the Brave: The Adventurers have journeyed into every manner of caves, tombs and ancient underground holds and faced many their numbers, they never suffer from being all alone (Hired Swords on the other hand are effected as normal).

Fate: Its said for such groups of warriors to survive the odds they face that destiny must smile upon them and guide their steps. To represent this the Adventurer Warband has a number of 'Fate' points ... a starting warband begins with D6+3 Fate points, that can be used by your heroes (not hired swords) to reroll any dice roll they are required to make (to hit, to wound, saving throws, climbing, leadership tests, etc), they may only reroll each result once and must accept the second, even if its worse. These Fate points can even be used outside of battle when rolling for injuries, exploration or searching for rare items. The warband regains D3 Fate points after each battle +1 for winning the scenerio.

A warband may never have more than 10 Fate points at a time, any excess rolled are simply wasted.

I like the first three - very colorful, and the 1st two bite as well as help.

I suggest that Fate merely allow a reroll of any Serious Injury result (accepting the 2nd roll, of course), and that any Serious Injury result of Full Recovery allows the hero to participate in Exploration (he finds stuff on his way out of Mordheim). This'll be easier the manage than Fate Points (I know, I'm saying this even though our group uses Fate Points for all warbands).