Wagons & Warband Ratings

How much does a Trade Wagon add to your warband rating? What about other wagons? I have found rules for mounts and how much they add to the rating, but nothing on Wagons and the animals pulling them. Any help or direction would be appreciated, thank you!

Easy. +0.

Seriously.

I'd still add the +20 for the draft animals even though aren't mounts technically. I think everyone who has played a number of games with wagons will agree that they are way too fragile to also increase the warband rating. They are expensive enough already.

For a total of +40 to the warband rating?

they are indeed too weak... but can provide a nice base for shooters...
and yes, if you have 2 mounts pulling it... +40 rating... if you have but one, only +20, and if you have a sickening amount of money and fancy six horses... +120... but that would be putting yourself at a disadvantage, even if you gain more speed with the cart...

Where are the rules that say a draft horse is worth +20 to a warband rating? Why is a draft horse worth 4x a warhorse? Or is there some revision I have missed that makes horses an even worse investment?

Edit: I originally reduced the above cost by half because my brain couldn't comprehend +20 for a draft horse so I wrote +10.

Actually not. You are quite correct. It's simply derived from the fact that mounted models add +20 to the rating and this is just a compromise. There are no official rules for this. I guess I could bring this up in the Rules Review group and add the consensus to the FAQ...

Oh.
Missed that.

How silly. So a youngblood on a horse is equal to a troll or rat ogre. Really? That's the 'right' way to play mounted?

Now I'm really lost. Do you also follow the living rulebook's optional rules as well and add +5 for a warhorse and +3 for a horse. So a ridden horse adds +23 to Warband rating?

Edit 2. Re-read the wagon should add +0 and agree. Will put away wagon soapbox now.

The Mounted Warriors article from the Annual/EiF replaces the optional rules from the back of the rulebook. The Mordheim Errata reads:

“Large Target: All models mounted on a riding creature from this section count as Large Targets as defined in the shooting rules. Unridden riding creatures are not Large Targets.”

Thus mounted models follow the same rules as Ogres, Trolls and other large models.

Oh for goodness sake. And this is seen as a good thing? A 0 attack horse=a rat ogre. Sure it does. Absolutely.

Oh well, another house rule we didn't know we had.

That means though that the draft animals do NOT add +20 to the warband rating because they are unridden and not counted large creatures.

RationalLemming wrote:

That means though that the draft animals do NOT add +20 to the warband rating because they are unridden and not counted large creatures.

That's why I started the paragraph with "I'd" indicating that it is a mere suggestion.

(The wagon as a whole is a large target so it could be argued that it should add +20. The rules for wagons as they are simply lack a number of aspects.)

cianty wrote:

That's why I started the paragraph with "I'd" indicating that it is a mere suggestion.

(The wagon as a whole is a large target so it could be argued that it should add +20. The rules for wagons as they are simply lack a number of aspects.)

I did notice your clarifying statement. I guess I didn't structure my response very well.

Your new comment now makes me disagree with what everyone else has said. A trade wagon / normal wagon / stage coach / plague cart adds +20 to a warband rating rather than adding +0. This is my interpretation of the rules because:
1) the Empire in Flames suppliment says that a wagon is a large target, and
2) the Rules Review said that every large target adds +20 to the warband rating.

On a personal side though, I do not think that a wagon is good enough to add +20 per draft horse (usually adding +40 (ugh!!!) to the warband rating for a single wagon / coach / plague cart as most have two horses).

The rating however also displays the wealth the warband has... and if they're willing to purchase a cart/coach, whatever, they are appearantly rich enough, or just like to flaunt it too much, and deserve to be put at a challenge? (even though I always seem to loose haha!

RationalLemming wrote:

2) the Rules Review said that every large target adds +20 to the warband rating.

On a personal side though, I do not think that a wagon is good enough to add +20 per draft horse (usually adding +40 (ugh!!!) to the warband rating for a single wagon / coach / plague cart as most have two horses).

I've read through my old printed copy of the rules review and the on-line version I downloaded a couple of years ago and I just don't see anything that says this clearly and without any ambiguity or even in a roundabout sort of backwards way. What page is it on? Or can someone copy and paste it?

Admittedly I don't see a correlation between a wagon, a 'riding' horse or a Rat Ogre in warband rating terms. Yes they are all big/large targets for shooting and that makes sense, the rest is arbitrary and illogical.

I do agree that a wagon is not good enough to add +20/per horse, but I would argue that neither is a ridden horse by itself good enough to merit a +20 without a total revamp of the rules for riding. There is little in the rules as they stand that would make a player wish to use them.

Ezekiel wrote:

The rating however also displays the wealth the warband has... and if they're willing to purchase a cart/coach, whatever, they are appearantly rich enough, or just like to flaunt it too much, and deserve to be put at a challenge? (even though I always seem to loose haha!

Yes, my dreams of buying an opulent coach for my "Lure of Fortune" focused warband are dying as quickly as my warband itself is dying. I don't think I'll ever have enough money to spare for it after replacing fallen warriors.

Von Kurst wrote:

RationalLemming wrote:

2) the Rules Review said that every large target adds +20 to the warband rating.

On a personal side though, I do not think that a wagon is good enough to add +20 per draft horse (usually adding +40 (ugh!!!) to the warband rating for a single wagon / coach / plague cart as most have two horses).

I've read through my old printed copy of the rules review and the on-line version I downloaded a couple of years ago and I just don't see anything that says this clearly and without any ambiguity or even in a roundabout sort of backwards way. What page is it on? Or can someone copy and paste it?

Admittedly I don't see a correlation between a wagon, a 'riding' horse or a Rat Ogre in warband rating terms. Yes they are all big/large targets for shooting and that makes sense, the rest is arbitrary and illogical.

I do agree that a wagon is not good enough to add +20/per horse, but I would argue that neither is a ridden horse by itself good enough to merit a +20 without a total revamp of the rules for riding. There is little in the rules as they stand that would make a player wish to use them.

I totally agree that the rules for mounts and wagons work against people wanting to use them competatively.

Page 32 of the Empire in Flames suppliment says that wagons count as large targets for shooting. I guess this may not actually mean that they are Large Targets for warband rating though.

Page 1 of part 3 of the living rulebook (page 77 of the rulebook?) says that large creatures such as Rat Ogres add +20 to the warband rating. It does not specifically say whether the 'creature' can be anything that is treated as a large target for shooting purposes or whether the 'creature' is simply anything with the Large Target rule.

Don't you just hate it when people force you to actually read the rules... I guess that I have always made the jump even though it isn't explicitly stated.

Thank you for looking for the rule.

@rules for mounts and wagons: Actually they not only work against 'competitive' play, they work against even fluff use. If something is always negative its very hard to find a positive reason to use it. There ought to be an advantage to using a horse in the game to justify all of the hoops and pit-falls put in the way. The person or persons writing the Blazing Saddles rules could just as well have titled the rules "Expensive Ways to Kill or Cripple Your Heroes and Your Warband" but "Blazing Saddles" is much more catchy.

We use mounts often in our games but we never follow the letter of the Blazing Saddles rules anymore.

Trade Wagons, and to a lessor extent horses are not much of a bonus in Mordheim. The trade wagons are really only useful if you are a Lure of Fortune objective, and horses are only useful for heroes, and are rather expensive. Horses really only improve movement, and the alt rules for riding a horse and taking wounds aren't a great advantage over the normal wound rules.

1-2 is basically a knock-down (spend a round getting contorl of the mount),
3-4 is like stunned really you are knocked-off,
5-6 is Out of Actions with a chance of it being worse then a tradational Out of Action.

Yeah the extra movement is great, but the cost and the penalities aren't really worth it. You are better-off spending your money on armor, and hired swords. There is also nothing worse then when your mounted units out run you foot units and become easy pickens because they are cut-off from their friends.

Also you eat-up a lot of skills trying to get your heroes to do things that they can do on the ground normally.

The carts I think are a better deal because they are worth CP if you are playing Lure of Fortune. The advantage of higher ground can be good as well.

I have always considered mounts as
+4 Movement
+1 Armour Save
-X Danger modifiers (worse injury table, large target)

Usually I'd only suggest mounts to warriors who then gain a 1+ armour save (awesome if you don't house rule it to auto-fail on a roll of 1).

Wagons are kind of nice because you can move your marksmen about while still shooting from an elevated position. Other than that is is a fluffy accessory that is not even meant to be adventageous. It's dangerous to be a merchant and transporting your goods around like this so that's what the wagon represents. Other than in Carneval of Chaos and Merchant warbands I don't see much point in using wagons. Unfortunately! This will have to change...

Mounted warriors are generally gaining an additional S3 or S4 attack as well, depending on the mount. That's significant. With the ability to gain another trample attack with the mounted skill.

So the advantages are:

+3 - 5" Movement; paired up with a sprinter or another mounted, this is nice, especially for "collect the goods" objectives.

+1 Armor Save, and for 30gc and -1M this becomes +2 Armor Save (barding).

+1 S3/4 Attack

The cons are that it could die easily, it takes additional skills, etc.. but much of that can be mitigated by smart play and barding (which reduces an OOA mount death to 1 in 6 rather than 2 in 6). The Whoa Boy table isn't so bad either, if you have Ride X and use an animal that is Battle Schooled (warhorse, chaos mount, etc..).

The lesson here is "dont ride a riding horse into combat". Spend the 80gc if you're going to do it, and its definitely worth +20 warband rating as written.

As far as wagons, I have no real comment because I'm part of the group the OP is part of, and we couldnt come to consensus on. I still believe (n)horses+wagon=1 large target as a whole, therefore +20 for the whole thing, but its not a big deal. Nobody has mentioned how defendable they are; only being hit on a 6 regardless of WS of the attacker is HUGE.

Thanks!

Normal horses don't get the additional attack though.

The Movement bonus is lost in difficult terrain. Depending on your gaming table this can make the mount nigh useless.

Wagons "explode" like crazy. There is little need to attack the enemies on board the wagon when you can just as easily strike the horses and watch the wagon go boom against the nearest wall. A wagon is like a time bomb. But a fun one at that.

I totally agree with normal horses; i.e. don't bring a knife to a swordfight And true, terrain can be a trick, but there is almost always a path around the really nasty stuff. That's where tactical defense comes into play of course.

As far as wagons, so long as they are in motion, aren't even melee attacks randomized with horses only being targetted on a 1/3 of the time? Keep 'em rolling around the field and they are much much safer

Personally, I'm a Marauder and look forward to detonating said time bomb, and from my perspective it doesn't look like nearly as easy a task as everyone is saying. I haven't tried yet though, so maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised

Yes, you are correct: Attacks at moving wagons are randomized. But with 1-2 they are rather easily hit and just hitting them is enough to cause a roll on the table. And then when the wagon swerves and hits a piece of scenery you roll again cause another swerve, another roll, another move... until you crash into something. We've had ridiculous situations. On the other hand, we have also seen a wagon crush enemy models (with the petty S4 hits) and thus win the game.

You'll definately have to try the rules yourself.