Starting an Orc Warband

I really enjoy the tactical aspect of most games, and the idea of small
scale battles on a complex game board like Mordheim's is one of the
greater reasons why I enjoy it so much. But a great deal of the
decisions made for this game are done off the board. This means that
the success of a warband also relates to the setup and equipping of the
band before the first game is played...

While I'm not playing
orcs myself, a friend of mine is, and we got to talking about the ideas
of numbers vs quality. Generally, with vanilla rules, it's thought that
you're are better off taking a large number of units and picking up the
more powerful (non-hero) characters later in the campaign. The fact
that you get less dice rolls, and have a chance of loosing a large
portion of your crown investments makes skipping the
ogres/minotaur/etc... more of a reasonable option; but, with the orcs
and goblins a troll is difficult to kill on the board and will never
die after each game. Does this make a big enough difference to make
taking a troll as a starting option? Or is there still too much of a
cost to the rest of your warband to make it an advisable purchase?

Never taken the troll, but my brother did in a campaign I wasn't playing in. As I recall he was a bit unhappy about it being stupid unless right by the leader.

Besides the troll example, I agree with your conclusion - I pretty much never take a warband's Big Expensive Bruiser henchman when first creating the warband.

I on the other hand like the big guy at the beginning option, be it Minotaur, Rat Ogre or Troll. Rat Ogres are very hard to kill and can dish out 3 St 5 attacks. It has to be very unlucky not to win combats. Minotaurs are the best big guy as far as the Troll/Rat Ogre/Minotaur triad goes. High weapon skill, St, W and A. If used with the Centigor and some Hounds it can be the spearhead of a brutal fast attack. And since it can gain experience it gets better! I've only had one Minotaur last an entire campaign (14 weeks) but usually by the time its killed my heroes are ready to take up the slack.

As for the starting troll option, its what I always do. The leader and the troll walk along and kill things. The troll will be stupid, but thems the breaks. It won't die and that's a big plus for my henchmen. (We do play by the Nemesis Crown rule that it can die if taken out by a flaming attack, but despite many threats no one has ever done that...)

I may well just be reacting to bad luck. Whenever I take the Big Guy early on, he promptly goes OOA and winds up dead dead every time. Two games max, usually one, and he's gone. Every #@&*! time.

I've seen that happen a time or two... I try to minimize the possibilities of that happening when facing crossbows or high strength warbands.

Buying the big guy later in the campaign makes less sense to me. Too many threats to its survival to make it worthwhile. For example my troll held up 2 Flagellants and a warrior priest a couple of weeks ago, but at the end of the previous campaign I was using it to draw out frenzied heroes who would eliminate it in one round despite regeneration. My heroes would then charge in and take on the scary nasties. Or shoot them... OK I shot them.

At the beginning of the campaign the big guy rules combat. Later not so much (and the shooters are better at shooting and better armed.)

the only reason to not take 'da big guy' is because you are outnumbered very fast.

You want to put off buying the Troll until later. He isn't bad, but all that Gold can be used a lot better buying mulitiple cheaper henchmen.

Also unless you have him next to your Boss he fails his stupidity test a lot.