How to go get off the ground floor in mordheim?

maybe you know this problems from own experience:

you choose a scenario, setup a nice terrain etc. and then the game starts. But as often the warbands stick to the ground level only. They march directly towards each other, fight each other, sticking at the very same place, until only one warband is left.

So during the whole game only a small portion of the terrain had been "used" at all and almost nobody even cared to climb a building at all - no climbing walls while the upper model thought about diving charging on the lower model, no jumping down a building or between buildings, risking falling down running around on roofs looking for a nice place to make a diving charge etc...

The whole game was literally BOUND TO THE GROUND.

So I wonder how to motivate players to "go 3D". I tried to place some wyrdstone shards on upper floors to give a reason to go up, but as soon as they got them, they went to the ground floor again...

How to make them use all three dimensions of the game? Did you even face this problem too or not at all?

Walkways between all buildings! Make sure you don't add ladders up to the second floor of every building and make sure every one is joined to at least one or two other buildings by walkways above the ground floor.

The walkways, if you haven't already got them, are easy to make (from coffee stirers or ice-lolly sticks or balsa wood) and quick to paint (spray black, dry-brush dark brown, dry brush light brown). Turn the table into a propper 3D environment.

I can't remember if it's a house rule but we also treat all ladders, stairs and walkways as "open ground" - allowing verticle charges and running between levels.

The stairs, ladders, walkway rule is in the rule book.

There is another thread or 2 around with the same question. (Of course I'm not going to search for it, but this discussion comes up regularly.)

We use them if they offer a quicker way to the enemy, or an advantage or if we must because of the table set-up most all of our Wyrdstone Hunts or Hidden Treasures now require a bit of 3-D movement.

I've found that building risers of various types greatly encourages this because the buildings themselves are no longer just sitting on a single level. My risers start at 1" and go from there (6 to 8 inches).

Risers and walkways work great indeed (I like some obstacles in narrow streets as well, where you either have to go around, or just take to the second or third floor.)

other than that, we have a different way of exploration. we roll prior to the game, and add all the doubles and triples etc. to the game -physically- therefore, if you want to benefit from the bonusses you will have to make a move for those items/buildings/characters. Also, you can loot from the enemy (only one small item) or you can claim the trophies they've taken during the game. therefore movement becomes more important, and players tend to venture out a bit more than usual.

Also, it helps a lot if the buildings are rather accessible on the higher floors, so as not to have to much trouble placing your models there. (learned this the hard way...:s)

Shooty warbands tend to take to higher levels a bit quicker, and also, they force the other warbands to use the terrain slightly more in search of cover.

combination of all these, and you'll have yourself a nice 3D fight!

Also if you play Wyrd Stone hunt, don't allow the guys playing the senario place the wyrd stone make an outsider place the stones, hopefully up high.

Ezekiel wrote:

other than that, we have a different way of exploration. we roll prior to the game, and add all the doubles and triples etc. to the game -physically- therefore, if you want to benefit from the bonuses you will have to make a move for those items/buildings/characters.

Hmm, i like this idea, please elaborate!

Diving charges FTW!! The Nik Harwood tactical approach to Mordheim will get you off the ground every time...

Regards,

Werekin.

B-)

Ezekiel put it well, in my opinion. Back then when we had the 2nd Boring Meeting, we simply put some wyrdstone shards in buildings and on the upper floors and the fighters started to move apart and climb etc. way more than they did before.

I haven't seen anyone mention it... but make sure your city is jam packed with terrain as well. If it's very spread out people can easily just maneuver through without needing to use the upper levels for anything. Give them a reason to use them. Barriers that people can go over instead of around, high vantage points that can shoot all over the place (shooting on the ground shouldn't work so well because you will have a very limited view of your surroundings due to lots of terrain).

Higher ground is mostly a strategy. Terrain (the amount and placement) is a lot of strategy as well. My group doesn’t pack a table in buildings, its just the way we like it. We have buildings with second and some third floors. We have even painted up large Styrofoam blocks to form raised up sections of the table for building placement with ramps and stairways up. Having raised sections of the city area is also good to add rivers and canals. Plus, then you can add bridges and walkways. Also, having a non-packed table means you have more open street areas for ranged weapons. With shooters providing cover fire from higher building windows for ground troops, fighters tend to use more builds to avoid being hit. Fighting inside buildings makes the “pitfighter” skill more useful as well.



Maybe, you could try this idea. Make you table base, on a 2 inch thick Styrofoam plate, or several squares and rectangle sheets. Put some deep crater sections in some or the plate sections. The craters would difficult and impassable terrain. You could then place buildings at the edges or the craters and then walk ways from building to building. The buildings would be easier to travel than going around the cratered areas. The crater idea could be anything. Maybe, collapsed sewer sections, or fallen in basements. If you used the larger buildings that would span over larger rivers or canals, they would become a fighting ground at what ever floor was the longest over the span.



Moral to this long story; your table is flat because you made it that way. No rules say you can’t tweak the table levels. So, jack it up some.

Thanks a lot for the richness and the quickness of all your answers!

I now realize that I made some "traditional mistakes" in setting up the terrain. Although I often do jam the table(s) with terrain, i did not join them a lot. Mostly because I set them too far away from each other. Additionally I always added a ladder/stair etc... to each building to each floor. It became a tradition which I never questioned after some point.

Also I always stuck to the principle that I did not place high buildings in the middle because it made smaller buildings on the margins ineffective for shooters (because they had all their sight blocked). Although I think that this is a problem indeed, I overlooked the fact that shooters never need to get to the center of the board in order to get into a good shooting position. Instead, shooter warbands simply walk 3-4", go up that building at the border and shoot from there for the rest of the game. But if they must first walk to the center of the board to climb that high tower to get a good position they must first get there and its easier for others to attack it from below etc...

WarbossKurgan wrote:

Walkways between all buildings! Make sure you don't add ladders up to the second floor of every building and make sure every one is joined to at least one or two other buildings by walkways above the ground floor.

Sorry I don't exactly get the point, can you please explain again? Why no ladders to the second floor?

WarbossKurgan wrote:

The walkways, if you haven't already got them, are easy to make (from coffee stirers or ice-lolly sticks or balsa wood) and quick to paint (spray black, dry-brush dark brown, dry brush light brown). Turn the table into a propper 3D environment.

what good luck I just bought a 24-ice lollypop package yesterday Your hint comes just on time, thanks

Ezekiel wrote:

Risers and walkways work great indeed (I like some
obstacles in narrow streets as well, where you either have to go
around, or just take to the second or third floor.)

Very good hint, thanks. Never thought about blocking passages (except with a Troll ).

werekin wrote:

Diving charges FTW!! The Nik Harwood tactical approach to Mordheim will get you off the ground every time...

Nik Harwood tactical approach? Is that an article or to be found on a homepage?

Shadowphx wrote:

We
have even painted up large Styrofoam blocks to form raised up sections
of the table for building placement with ramps and stairways up. Having
raised sections of the city area is also good to add rivers and canals.
Plus, then you can add bridges and walkways

How do you mean this exactly? placing a river around the styrofoam block or how did you mean that?

Btw. good idea to use a building to cross a river, thanks


well, thanks again for all your hints, guys . Do you happen to know some scenarios that incourage a similar effect?

Dahag wrote:

WarbossKurgan wrote:

Walkways between all buildings! Make sure you don't add ladders up to the second floor of every building and make sure every one is joined to at least one or two other buildings by walkways above the ground floor.

Sorry I don't exactly get the point, can you please explain again? Why no ladders to the second floor?

I meant "upper" floors rather than just the second floor.

If there are no ladders in one building but it is joined to it's neighbours by walkways, it forces people to climb the neighbouring building and cross the walkways to get to the loot or firing positions in that building!.

Hope that makes sense!

We also identified the ground level fights as problem. We also solved it with walkways between the buildings and to choose our scenarios in a way that we have to use the other levels.

In my playgroup this works well.
SerialMoM

I never had problems with this in my group, though we haven't met in a couple years (people moved away, and I'm only now finding more people to possibly play with).   Part of it was just that there was always an incentive to get high:  good lines of sight and safety from melee fighters for the archers, and a way to get at those pesky archers for the melee fighters!

I used to play a lot of Necromunda back in the day, and as people have rightly stated walkways are the key.

I'm unsure if this has been done/adapted, but the Outlander supplement to Necromunda had a treacherous conditions table. This included various amounts of ''slime/sludge'' at ground level.

Examples:
Slippery floor = requires an intiative test or fall if running.
Waist depth = Strength test to move 4'' or stuck.
Slude Lake = Strength test to swim 2/4" or gets sucked under!!

These obviously emphasised the need for staying on upper stories!

regarding scenarios:

I tried wyrdstone hunt, but it didnt bring the desired effect so far:

warriors went up, got the shard, and went immediately back to ground floor after that.



so: which scenarios have you found to be good in order to get people above ground floor?

I might have mentioned it before in another thread, but I wrote a scenario for my group for the exact same reasons. Trying to get them off the ground level.



The Thing in the Water

We played it a few times, it was pretty fun, which reminds me I dont know if I ever posted the results ..I better go check!!

I use two tables to play on at the same time. One of them is lower than the other, but they "push-fit" over eachother perfectly. This makes the battleground look like a large T, with the upper bracket being the high table, and the lower one the lower bracket. This means that getting a good defensive or backup position from the lower table becomes a priority. Otherwise, I'd say just cram as many buildings you can together on every little nook and cranny, and connect them (as everyone has always stated).

I guess my addition is: use a gaming board with appearent height differences