Revised rules

Hello; a couple of friends and me stumbled upon a box with some Mordheim terrain and a couple of half finished warbands a few weeks ago, and decided to dust off our old Mordheim board. We really like the 'fluff' of the game (it's a nice blend of comic and tragic, jolly and dark), and we like to paint miniatures and build scenery; but the rules is something of an Achilles' heel for the game (as far as we're concerned, that is).
There's obvious balance issues, some choises are simply better than others (two weapons over weapon & shield, crossbow over handgun, axe over mace), some choises are just plain bad (armour in general), but the main problem is that a battle takes to long time to resolve. Thus I'm trying to write together a revised set of rules for our campaign; I have borrowed quite heavily from Coreheim, which I think is a great improvement to the vanilla-rules, but I think that my version might end up farther away from the original than Coreheim did.
I'm not finished yet (I would like to do a revised Exploration table, a revised Serious Injury table, add some more equipment, and finally try to balance the warbands), but I would still like to hear what you think of it thus far. All critique is welcome.

My revised Mordheim: http://tzapquiel.byethost10.com/mordheim++.pdf

I think the consensus is actually mace > axe

Your link is some kind of broken.

The server tells me to get lost when I try to access your pdf, so I have not yet read it, but one thing I would caution against if you are following Corehiem is the way they have changed what happens when you hit a stunned model.

In the Vanilla Mordhiem, if you hit a stunned model in close combat it will go Out Of Action automatically. In Corehiem if you hit a stunned model in close combat *and with shooting* it will go out of action automatically. If you follow this change then you will notice a significant increase in the deadliness of shooting and warbands with lots of shots will become much more powerful, particularly Skaven because they can get each of their models shooting twice very cheaply.

The base rules are not balanced for ranged getting auto-outs so if you are going to make it so that they *can* auto-out models then be prepared for a game in which ranged is much more powerful.

Lord 0, I understand that there is a learning curve for anyone who adapts new rules but please don't spread misinformation like this. Skaven can NOT easily get to fire twice in Coreheim.

It's true that shooting a better than in vanilla, but it is also balanced out so that henchmen can actually do some damage. (Unlike vanilla where you needed BS4 to even hit.)

the link works if you paste the url into a new window manually

as far as i can tell it tries apply coreheims rationality to the original rules without changing too much around. an improvement over vanilla, certainly

hero wrote:

I think the consensus is actually mace > axe

Yes, mace > axe was actually what I meant to say, I blame the late hour (it was around 4 am here when I wrote my post) for that...

Lord 0 wrote:

In the Vanilla Mordhiem, if you hit a stunned model in close combat it will go Out Of Action automatically. In Corehiem if you hit a stunned model in close combat *and with shooting* it will go out of action automatically. If you follow this change then you will notice a significant increase in the deadliness of shooting and warbands with lots of shots will become much more powerful, particularly Skaven because they can get each of their models shooting twice very cheaply.

Regarding shooting in Coreheim: that was one of the things I liked with the rule set (although I give knocked down and stunned warriors automatic cover, to somewhat balance this change). One of my main goals is to reduce the number of necessary die rolls, to speed up the game.
And I have changed slings to 12" range, +1 armour save, so Skavens will hardly be the main benefiters from this rule... ;-)

Asp wrote:

as far as i can tell it tries apply coreheims rationality to the original rules without changing too much around. an improvement over vanilla, certainly

Yes, I have tried to keep it as compatible with the vanilla rules as possible, so that I can complete it one section at a time, and still have it be somewhat playable in the meantime...

Yeah I figured

Anyway, your to-hit chart under close combat does not make sense to me, an attack with 1 WS against a 1 WS opponent needs 3+ but an attack with 10 WS against 1 WS needs 5+? Maybe it was mislabeled or maybe I'm reading it wrong.

Asp wrote:

Lord 0, I understand that there is a learning curve for anyone who
adapts new rules but please don't spread misinformation like this. Skaven can NOT easily get to fire twice in
Coreheim.

Sorry, I should have been clearer - I wasn't talking about Skaven in Corehiem. I meant they could easily get to fire
twice in Vanilla so, since he is starting with Mordheim and borrowing heavily from Corehiem, if he keeps the slings double-shot from vanilla Mordheim and adopts the ranged-can-auto-OOA-stunned-warriors from Coreheim then he can expect to see ranged attacks and Skaven in particular starting to dominate.

hero wrote:

Yeah I figured

Anyway, your to-hit chart under close combat does not make sense to me, an attack with 1 WS against a 1 WS opponent needs 3+ but an attack with 10 WS against 1 WS needs 5+? Maybe it was mislabeled or maybe I'm reading it wrong.

Ah, yes, that's one of the thing I have decided to change; in vanilla Mordheim some die rolls are meassured against an attribute straight off others are made against the inverse of an attribute, sometimes you are supposed to roll as high as possible and sometimes as low as possible. I think that it is unnecessary complicated, but a couple of my players have real problems with this, thus I have decided to change the resolution mechanics so that a roll equal to or lower than your (modified) attribute will always be successful. So a roll of 1 is good, while a roll of 6 is...not so good. So WS 1 vs 1 will hit on 1-3, while WS 10 vs 1 will hit on 1-5 (6 is always a failure).I realise that this might seem like an unnecessary complication for those of you used to Mordheim (or Warhammer, or whatever), but I think that it might make it easier for new players if you know that you're always supposed to roll equal to or lower than your attribute (and I'm quite certain that it's easier to roll aganst an attribute straight off than against an inversed attribute, as in vanilla Mordheims shooting rules)...

Mordheim's shooting and armour-saves use the same system. You need a total of 7 to hit/save rather than an inverse stat.

Ballistic Skill + modifiers + dice roll. If the total is 7 or more, you hit. Similarly, Armour Value + modifiers + dice roll. If the total is 7 or more, you save against the wound. For some reason though, Armour Value is a hidden stat and they never talk about it. I don't know why, but for some reason they prefer to call Heavy Armour a '5+ save' rather than 'Armour Value 2'. I suppose it makes it a little easier to work out at a glance, but once you start including modifiers then I think it is quicker to work it out using the stat like BS than the method they use.

Lord 0 wrote:

Sorry, I should have been clearer - I wasn't talking about Skaven in Corehiem. I meant they could easily get to fire
twice in Vanilla so, since he is starting with Mordheim and borrowing heavily from Corehiem, if he keeps the slings double-shot from vanilla Mordheim and adopts the ranged-can-auto-OOA-stunned-warriors from Coreheim then he can expect to see ranged attacks and Skaven in particular starting to dominate.

While this is a valid point, I have lowered the range of slings to 12", thus dual slingshots against stunned enemies will be made within 6" at -2BS (-1 for firing twice and -1 for cover while being stunned), so I really dont think that this will become a problem.

Lord 0 wrote:

Mordheim's shooting and armour-saves use the same system. You need a total of 7 to hit/save rather than an inverse stat.

Ballistic Skill + modifiers + dice roll. If the total is 7 or more, you hit. Similarly, Armour Value + modifiers + dice roll. If the total is 7 or more, you save against the wound. For some reason though, Armour Value is a hidden stat and they never talk about it. I don't know why, but for some reason they prefer to call Heavy Armour a '5+ save' rather than 'Armour Value 2'. I suppose it makes it a little easier to work out at a glance, but once you start including modifiers then I think it is quicker to work it out using the stat like BS than the method they use.

Yes, if you explain it like that is much easier to grok and remember than with the (lack of good) explanation in the rule book, but you still have some die rolls when it suddenly is good to roll as low as possible (such as Ld-rolls)...

Well, I hope the sling thing works out for you . I must admit, in my circle we never used the auto-out from ranged house-rule so we never felt the need to nerf slings. I therefore have no experience with any of the balancing required once you allow it.

On the subject of dice rolls, I don't know if they did this on purpose, but the division is if you are testing against a stat then you want low numbers (I test, Ld test, T test, M test, etc.); when you are trying to achieve something you want to roll high (score a hit, score a wound, make a save, etc). I would guess that making you sometimes want high and sometimes want low helps lower the utility of loaded dice. Something of a concern for a multinational gaming system, something less of a concern for a system that will only be used among friends .

Now I have updated the pdf with a new Exploration table; I have removed all gold, wyrdstones and negative stuff from the results, and added more weapons (including gromril and ithilmar) and equipment, and even the ability to gain new skill lists for one of your heroes at five of a kind (we discussed the ability to gain new skill lists the other night and it sounded like a good idea, I hope it still does after some playtesting).We played a couple of games today too and after playing against a pack of skavens with slings I really cant see that it would be a problem. What seemed like a problem, however, was the duelling pistol, which we decided to nerf a bit (+1 to hit became ignore range penalties)...

After a first read, I like these rules. I think changing the way rolls are done isn't really necessary, but if it's easier for your group then so be it. I also like the additional/edited Armament Abilities, which seems to add a little more dimension of complexity to your weapon selection. I'm not sure I like the change to parry, but I would have to play with it to really tell. I still like the hit table in Coreheim over the standard Warhammer/Mordheim table. Overall, I think its a solid set of rules. I might play some single games with it.

I actually kind of like the parry idea and was thinking of doing something like that myself but it doesn't really work if people are rolling their attacks simultaneously.

Has anyone tried forcing the first successful hit per turn to be rerolled, maybe "unless a six to-hit is rolled", for parry?

Reclaimer wrote:

After a first read, I like these rules. I think changing the way rolls are done isn't really necessary, but if it's easier for your group then so be it. I also like the additional/edited Armament Abilities, which seems to add a little more dimension of complexity to your weapon selection. I'm not sure I like the change to parry, but I would have to play with it to really tell. I still like the hit table in Coreheim over the standard Warhammer/Mordheim table. Overall, I think its a solid set of rules. I might play some single games with it.

Yes, I'm actually quite pleased with the way that the Armament chapter turned out; both the re-balancing of of the various pieces of armament, and the re-structuring of information into attributes asigned to weapons and armour. Alas, precisely the Parry rule is one that has proven to be hard to get right, this is the third try and I'm still not sure that I like it.
Regarding the Coreheim to hit table: I don't know know, it looks like it would make models with high WS really, really good (especially combined with high Initiative) while a fight between low-WS models could drag on quite some time; but it's all guess work from my side, I don't actually know since I haven't been able to playtest it (none of the others seemed to like it). I'm quite interrested in a review of the implementation of that table in play though...

hero wrote:

I actually kind of like the parry idea and was thinking of doing something like that myself but it doesn't really work if people are rolling their attacks simultaneously.

Has anyone tried forcing the first successful hit per turn to be rerolled, maybe "unless a six to-hit is rolled", for parry?

Our previous try at the Parry rule read exactly like that (reroll the first successful hit per turn, unless a six; I think that's the Parry rule from Necromunda, right?), and it worked rather OK, far better than the original rule at least; but we decided to change it to get rid of the extra die roll, but wether this is better or worse I'm still not sure.

And then also, what does one do to maintain the mechanics for sword + buckler, which normally allows rerolls of failed parries, if we have parries force a reroll. Maybe -1 to the reroll?

Perhaps allow one parry for one or two weapons with parry, two parries or one parry with -1 to the reroll with a parry weapon and buckler (in order to make bucklers not totally bad), and the dwarf skill master of blades allow two parries when using two dwarf axes and allowing parries on to-hit rolls of six.

I guess for me personally cutting out die rolls is not a huge goal as I think much a lot of fun comes from people's emotional reaction to very lucky or unlucky rolls.

Well, I actually did some math (sorry I'm sure a lot of you are tired of seeing this sort of thing )

So in the table below the first number is the attacker's initial roll to hit and the second number represents the parry dice rolls, which is either the attacker rerolling their to-hit roll or the defender attempting to roll a 5+ to successful parry.

1 1	1 2	1 3	1 4	1 5	1 6
2 1	2 2	2 3	2 4	2 5	2 6
3 1	3 2	3 3	3 4	3 5	3 6
4 1	4 2	4 3	4 4	4 5	4 6
5 1	5 2	5 3	5 4	5 5	5 6
6 1	6 2	6 3	6 4	6 5	6 6

Enemy hit for evenly skilled models: 18/36=50%
Successful parries when enemy is forced to reroll with no parries if the attacker rolled a six: 6/18=33% chance to parry a hit
Successful parries when the defender attempts to roll a 5+ to parry with no parries if the attacker rolled a six: 4/18=22% to parry a hit

Notes and conclusions:
Parries that force the opponent to reroll with have different chances of success if the attacker needs something other than a four to hit, and the rule kind of falls apart for higher weapon skills if you're using the coreheim method of hitting in close combat because the required roll to hit drops dramatically. Also this method requires further clarification for things that allow an attacker to reroll misses (such as hatred or expert swordsmen) because they're rolling a second time to hit. It's pretty clear to me that a parried attack is not counted as a miss (no rerolling rerolls) for these purposes but it's a sticky point and just one more thing to remember or explain to new players. And then more rules need to change to fit sword+buckler and master of blades into this system as mentioned in my previous post.

Summary: I don't think having parries force a reroll is a great idea

On the other hand if you have defender attempt to roll a 5+ to parry the chance to parry is pretty much constant no matter the weapon skills involved. I like this because it allows people more freedom when equipping their warriors, they don't have to always put swords on their high weapon skill models or anything. Also as far as I can tell this integrates perfectly with all the other special rules for parries and the chance to parry seems spot on (I think I remember vanilla parry chance mostly fluctuates between 18% and 33%)

Summary: I've completely convinced myself to use this idea.

Intrigued by the changes to Movement in Coreheim 8, I decided to give it a try; and after some testing we quickly adopted a modified version of the rule.That is: we kept the rule change itself, without adopting the reduced speed. The only change during games will be the removal of the "block forced marching" rule from WHFB (we have slowly been shrinking the distance within which you couldn't run, inch by inch, so it's good it's finally gone), but the presentation became much clearer and we could include a -1M result on the serious injury table without totaly cripling a model.


I also added Serious injuries and Advancement to the pdf.

Next thing up will probably be Magic (don't know if it needs changing or not, but at least I'm going to change the difficulty; so that you should roll lower rather than above it. Also, I will mark those spells that fall under the Magic Missile rule, for clarity), then I will have a look at the warbands.

hero wrote:

[...] parries when the defender attempts to roll a 5+ to parry with no parries if the attacker rolled a six: 4/18=22% to parry a hit [...] I've completely convinced myself to use this idea.

Yes, I can follow your line of thought, and it's not bad; but I would rather find another solution myself, one of my prime goals is to reduce the number of die rolls during a battle...

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http://tzapquiel.byethost10.com/mordheim++.pdf
(for some reason you must copy/paste the link in your browser manually)

I have worked through nine of the warbands now, and updated them to my revised Mordheim rule set:
¤ Dwarven Treasure Hunters
¤ Greenskin Warband
¤ Marienburg Mercenaries
¤ Middenheim Mercenaries
¤ Reikland Mercenaries
¤ Skaven Warpstone Hunters
¤ The Sisters of Sigmar
¤ Von Carstein Warband
¤ Witch hunters
The Skaven, Witchhunters and Sisters are modified versions of the warbands from the rulebook; the Dwarves and Greenskins are modified versions of the warbands from the Mordheim Annual; the Mercinaries are nearly untouched (though Middenheim have been updated as per TC 8, but with some alternations to the prayers); and the Von Carsteins are built upon an undead warband with the same name, that I found on the net some years ago (I never liked the original undead very much).
My goals have been:
1) It's fun to watch your warrior gain experience and grow stronger: thus even animals and lesser undead will gain xp under these rules, although at half rate (like the Ostlander Ogre in the Mordheim Annual), and they can't become heroes.
2) Diversity is fun: thus every warband has been given at least two kinds of henchmen capable of being promoted.
3) It's fun to equip your models, thus every warband should have at least some henchmen capable of wielding weapons and wearing armour - yes, even the undead!
4) Balanced warbands make the game more fun for every one: I'm sure that we will find things that we will want to change as we get to see the warbands in play a bit, but at least they should be fairly balanced...
5) Battles which consists of both ranged AND close combat are more fun than just either one, and worthless attributes and attribute increases are not very fun at all: thus every warrior that can use weapons and has a non-zero score in BS should have access to at least one ranged weapon, even if it is expensive and/or quite bad.
6) Quick and streamlined rules are better than exception-based and time consuming rules, if their generated output is approximately equal.
7) Monsters make bad henchmen: Ogres, Trolls and other large abominations are removed from the warbands proper, they make much better Hired Swords.

I have also updated prayers and spells for the warbands above.

And after some testing, I decided to adopt Coreheims revised To Hit rule after all...

Both rules, magic , and warbands can be found here: http://tzapquiel.byethost10.com/mordheim.html (just links to the pdf's, no fancy website for now)

Any comments, whether on fluff or rules, are welcome (I know that the pdf's are rather deprived of fluff themselves, but atm I'm mostly concerned by whether the rules seems OK in regard to existing warhammer/mordheim fluff out there or not).

i like the prospect of exploring to get a skill

btw if you like the movement system from coreheim 8, you should look into the rout system as well as it allows for a much more flexible engine

doesnt making blunderbuss move or fire make it useless?

if an elf bow is AP, so is a crossbow

how is the exploration system working out for you?

Asp wrote:

i like the prospect of exploring to get a skill

Yes, we haven't had time to play much with the revised exploration rules, and no one has rolled a new skill yet, but the knowledge that it is possible to get a new skill list to a hero is quite fun.

Asp wrote:

btw if you like the movement system from coreheim 8, you should look into the rout system as well as it allows for a much more flexible engine

Oh, hadn't seen that. It is definitely superior to the percent-based system (imnsho ^^), it will most likely find it's way into our rule set during the next edit, except for the +1xp/turn to the leader for not routing...

Asp wrote:

doesnt making blunderbuss move or fire make it useless?

I don't know, it doesn't seem that way, but we haven't had much chance to find out (not many warriors that can use them without a skill).

Asp wrote:

if an elf bow is AP, so is a crossbow

I was going to answer that they are, since their S4 gives a -1 AS modifier, but then it struck me that we hardly ever remembers to take into account Strength-based AS-modifications (and it seems I have forgotten to put it into the pdf, also). Thus, instead of answering your statement, let me ask this: should high Strength subtract from armour saves? What would be the pros and cons of removing that rule?

Asp wrote:

how is the exploration system working out for you?

Really good thus far, since you get dice from staying in the battle rather than having many heroes (which people want to have anyway, since they will quickly become much better than their henchmen allies), we haven't had any problems with volentary routing. And getting mostly useful but not always optimal stuff from the exploration roll is quite fun, we have had much more diverse armaments among our warriors due to this.

i do think you are overdoing it with the skills though. why not just one 5 of a king roll that gives you a skill of choice?

Quote :

except for the +1xp/turn to the leader for not
routing...

yes you can do without it now that you get money for staying instead

Quote :

should high Strength subtract from armour saves?
What would be the pros and cons of removing that rule?

no. we removed it in coreheim because it made AP unattractive (as you always got it anyway) - it gets rid of bookkeeping and diversifies the field. the con is that you need to add an extra rule to monsters and such giving them innane armour piercing.



I would try to keep undead speed skills at a minimum, makes for far more interesting play (they have no pain and T4 on henchmen)

blunderbuss with flamer template is far more fun than blunderbuss with 16x1 template