Carnival of Chaos seems overpowerd

Hi all,

while its bin a long time since i played Mordheim currently iam recruting a new gaming group of wyrdstone hunters.

So far i got 4 people, 2 totaly new to warhammer wold and table top gaming. But everbody is painting models now and i will start building some terain too.

Unfortunatly one of the players wanted to play carnival of chaos, while i wanted to start with core-bands only. But as fantasy gaming is about doing what u like i hate to prohibit a warband.
I'am a rule tinker so i already got a huge list of house rules i will suggest to my group, and at least will support dualwield penality (-1 to hit) and shield buff (+2 save in CC).

Now i took a close look on the carnival warband abd while i love the theme i hate the rules.

First and most importand point is "Nurgles Rot" absolutly no fun spell, so i beg for suggestions how to houserule this spell/skill
unfortunaly most other spells are rather weak.
Other than mutations, those seem underpriced at least "cloud of flies"/"stram od corruption"/"bloated foulness".

Now to the problem units:

Plage Bearer: wow 50 gold is a lot but its still very cheap for sutch beasts, great stats, and tons of blessings WS4+flies+T4+Aura, hey u got to roll at least double 5 in a row and if u do i roll a single one and wont care. Also ranged attack (no save) + fear + no poision + no psyc, damm so mutch adds, i just cant think of how to kill those beasts, but u definatly wont ignore these heavy hitters. Sorry but these definatly got too mutch ++++.

Next is Nurgling: Same as Bearer but even more obvius 15 gold is already cheap for the stats only, but with all those adds its getting ridiculous. T2 so what, u wont hit cuz of W3 + flies and if u do i got a 5+ unmodified save. Bad joke unit for me

and finaly Brutes: these guys just got great stats for great cost, so thez seem mosty ok, but double S6 attack with strongmen skill makes me shit my pats, i say these guys should have at least more starting exp (12 or even more) as they start up as fighting beasts already.

I know this might seem harsh, but i compare these band with core book bands only and i wont think of mutch fun sending my Marienburgers into this chaos troup.

so what do you think?

Edit: forgot about the Plague Cart, only one problem. It's not overpowerd, but sort of indestructable T8 cant be harmed by most human warbands at all.

They always seemed overpowered to me and Ive never used them in an extended campaign. The demonic instability makes up for the general awesomeness of the demons little but Im not sure its enough. Nurgle's rot is just mean.

I would trend towards encouraging a different warband

Especially for a campaign for people just playing Mordheim, I would encourage you to stick to the warbands in the original Mordheim book. However, it is worth noting that in the last official rules review, the C of C was listed as an official warband. So they clearly thought it was balanced. To be honest I cannot say - I have never, ever seen them played. I remember when I read them that I hated Nurgle's rot.

Perhaps he could play a Chaos band, and use some of the C of C miniatures (if the miniatures are part of the attraction for him).

Skimming them again just now - I don't know. A Tainted One with Nurgle's Rot and a mace or hammer weighs in at 78 gold, so two of them eat a big chunk of the warband's starting cash. If the other warbands make sure they have a healthy number of shooters, and make it a point of going for the Tainted Ones, the CoC could be hurt pretty bad. And the other heroes and the Plague Bearers aren't cheap, so it would be a small warband. The last big competitive campaign we played, one of the players wanted to run Shadow Elves. I pointed out to him that in every campaign I had seen them played in, they were either stomped early and never recovered, or dominated the game. He failed to understand the corollary of this observation (We will stomp you early*). You hate the idea of Nurgle's Rot potentially working its way through your warband... so will all the other players. Dog pile! This point might be worth making to the player interested in the CofC warband.

*And we did. He whined a lot.

I like to limit it to the rulebook warbands plus the ones in the annual minus shadow warriors. I think most of those are pretty balanced

I seem to recall a rule tweak for the rot that simply removed the contageousness of it (it affects the guy who catches it, and that's it). It's on here somewhere.

I always hated Nurgles Rot, it becomes an auto-kill that the CoC gets no Exp for, and the infected player gets to keep all the items that the infected character was holding. Because a character catchs it then they get retired before it can spread.

I would remove the contageous part, that way the character doesn't auto go away, but you still get the long term rolling to see how the character degrades from the disease.

Well, let me weigh in and say that CoC are overpowered, but are very easily fixed.

The simplest fix for Nurgle's Rot is just to remove it from the game. Allow the CoC player to re-roll the spell, don't let Tainted Ones take the gift, and scratch it from the Cart's special rules (no price adjustment necessary, in my opinion). The other option, which I think is a pretty good fix, is to have Nurgle's Rot be a one-time permanent reduction in toughness, just like a chest wound.

Other than Nurgle's Rot, I have not found any of the gifts to be overpowered or underpriced. Cloud of Flies is maybe on the edge, but it's manageable and Tainted Ones aren't exactly terrifying in melee (until they've had several advances, at which point so has everyone else), so it's not too big a deal.

The daemons really aren't that bad in my experience, although I know they look it on paper. The plague bearer has some beastly stats and a ton of abilities, yes, but all daemons also have a high turnover rate.
- If they go OoA, they die on a 1-3 rather than a 1-2, like ordinary henchmen
- if the warband routs they die on a failed leadership test (a 1/12 chance of dying every time the warband flees).
- Their armor saves are modifiable, and are ignored altogether by anything magical
- They don't gain xp, meaning by mid campaign many enemies can easily stand up against them (earlier for Nurglings)
- Plaguebearers are limited to 0-2, so you can't really do too much damage with them anyways.
- Stream of Corruption is almost like a weaker pistol, and the Plaguebearer will never become a better shot. Chances are he'll charge or be charged rather than use it in almost any situation.

Now, some of these downsides can be removed with the Plague Cart, but that is a pretty expensive piece of gear to start out with (thus limiting your numbers) and on top of that, vehicles in Mordheim are a little complicated for beginners so I might suggest leaving it out.

Brutes are right on the edge, in my opinion. They're monstrously powerful as starting warriors, and the ability to learn speed skills makes them really, really nasty. Conversely, they do have a few debuffs to balance them a bit, I2 being the most relevant. However, I definitely don't think you'd be out of order by bumping them to starting 12 xp.

One thing that you missed, however, is Pestilence. That spell is way overpowered, and the radius should be dropped to 4" or 6" to balance it out.

On the other hand, here are some of the carnival's downsides:

Their shooting generally sucks, and the best they will ever get is 2 good shooters, if you really want them. They can be shot to pieces by a ranged-heavy warband.

Because of all those daemons, CoC only have 1 xp-gaining and promotable henchman, which is the rather bland brethren, and if you intend to get LGT you'll have to be packing at least a few of those guys, thus lowering your number of daemons again.

Also, don't forget that CoC can't hire any hired swords, period.

coc are broken and poorly designed. dont go there, find a way to field them as possessed

Apart from the change to remove nurgles rot I made these changes;
- Remove shooting from the skills list
- Lower the radius of pestilence to 6"

I also did a fix on nurgles rot so that it wasn't contagious and it when the model died from the rot it would turn into a plague bearer that the CoC could add to its warband. The CoC could also not buy any plague bearers.

Asp wrote:

coc are broken and poorly designed. dont go there, find a way to field them as possessed

This is definitely one alternate route to take. If your player is primarily drawn by the models/fluff of the warband, then you can squeeze them into the possessed rules. Magister=carnival master, mutants=tainted ones, brethren=brethren. From there, you have a little flexibility. You could say possessed=brutes and beastmen=plaguebearers, and then just have darksouls in there as a variant "brethren", but personally I don't think that makes a whole lot of sense since brutes don't get mutations, and possessed are far more daemonic than they are. I'd go another route and say possessed=plaguebearers, darksouls or beastmen=brutes, and then you have one free henchman type swinging around there.

Unfortunately there's really nothing you can do for the Nurglings, unless you hire wardogs or something (that's the best I can think of).

A less drastic nerf for the Nurgle's Rot: If you roll a 1 on your toughness test before a battle, the warrior has fought off the infection for good. This would make it less of a no-brainer to just retire a warrior who contracts the Rot, especially if the warrior has some good advances.

I like that idea a lot. I didn't want to nerf Nurgle's Rot too much. This is what we have done for our next campaign (it will be starting soon... honest!). We are playing a Border Town Burning campaign with a Beastman warband using the Marks of Onogal.

Quote :

Blessings of Nurgle / Blessings of Onogal
Nurgle's Rot / Neiglish Rot
In addition to current rules, after a successful roll of 6 to wound the victim must pass Toughness test or else contract the Rot.

Nurgle's Rituals / Onogal's Rituals
6 Nurgle's Rot / Neiglish Rot Difficulty 9 11 (difficulty increased)
All enemy models in base contact with the spell caster must immediately test against their Toughness or else contract the Rot.

(Potentially need some expensive method of removing the Rot.)

You have provided a good method for removing the Rot that makes sense (perhaps not 100% fluffy if this is some sort of demonic disease but I don't mind). I'll probably decrease the difficulty of the spell down to 10 and maybe even back to 9 now.

MeanBone's idea seems very reasonable – not that I have encountered nurgles rot; but still.

MeanBone wrote:

A less drastic nerf for the Nurgle's Rot: If you roll a 1 on your toughness test before a battle, the warrior has fought off the infection for good. This would make it less of a no-brainer to just retire a warrior who contracts the Rot, especially if the warrior has some good advances.

Meanbone, you are a GENIUS.

That is all.

Thanks, glad you guys like the idea. I prefer solutions that make the minimal change needed, and in this case it doesn't even add another die roll.

I hated the idea of just dumping Nurgle's Rot altogether. It really makes the Carnival scary and ... Nurgley.

MeanBone wrote:

Thanks, glad you guys like the idea. I prefer solutions that make the minimal change needed, and in this case it doesn't even add another die roll.

I hated the idea of just dumping Nurgle's Rot altogether. It really makes the Carnival scary and ... Nurgley.

Ditto to both paragraphs!!!

Sorry for reviving a old post...

I'm in the process of modelling a CoC warband myself, and I have also wondered whether the Nurgle Rot is a bit TOO scary.

I like the idea of successful "save" from the rot on a roll of 1 on a d6, but as an addition I think it could be even more balanced, by implementing that when the rot has been fought off, then the model will be regaining +1 toughness each battle until the base toughness is reached.

In this way, the rot won't be so devastating to a enemy warband.