Couple of noob questions :)

Howdy,

ok so as I'm learning the rules I keep comng across things I'm unsure about. I'm sure there'll be lots more, but there are two that spring to mind:

Henchmen can only gain +1 on all their characteristics, right? Does this go after or before warband bonuses. So does a Reiklander marksmen ever earn a BS increase or has he already got it? I can see logical arguments for both ways.

Also can a sword wielder parry a pistol shot? Obviously they couldn't parry a bullet, that'd be daft, but if they're in a scrap and someone points a pistol at his chest, you'd assume a skilled swordsman would flick it away?

On the whole though not that many issues. I expected a lot more seeing how often Mordheim gets calld inconsistent, though perhaps as I investigate further?

Cheers,
Si

Yes a Reiklander can still get +1 BS

And yes, a Sword can Parry a bullet fired in hand to hand combat as it does represent pushing the barrel away.

The game does leave lots of situations uncovered, that's why the peeps on this forum are invaluable.

qboid wrote:

Yes a Reiklander can still get +1 BS

And yes, a Sword can Parry a bullet fired in hand to hand combat as it does represent pushing the barrel away.

Just to clarify: This means that you can parry a pistol shot if someone takes advantage of the rule "fire into hand to hand" rule.

Cool, makes sense ta. Like I say I'm sure I'll end up with lots more

Howdy si. You're gonna enjoy Mordheim - great game.

cheers!

One more quick question. I'm not sure I understand the paragraph that explains hiring new henchmen in a campaign. My understanding is you roll 2d6 and that is the total experience of everyone you hire combined. So if you want to hire two guys into existing groups you add the groups experience together and it must be less than or equal to what you rolled, right?

I presume this means you end up starting new henchmen groups a lot because the grizzled guys won't fight with noobs? If you have two groups with 4 and 5 say, and you roll double 1, then anyone you hire would have to go in a new group.

That sound right?

Also I've only played a couple of games just to get the gist of things, but my humans seem to have reached an impasse. They find x amount of wyrdstone, earn x amount of experience points, but one or two heroes have died which cost y amount to replace and they don't seem to go anywhere. I think net experience change last battle was +1 for the warband. Does that seem right? Possibly I need to protect heroes a lot more, but confusing none the less.

Does anyone have a sample warband roster of an experienced crew? I'd be interested to see what sort of stats and skill sets evolve over time. I've found lots of starter warbands but no "this is where you could get" type things.

Cheers again,
Si

To answer your group experience question: No, that is not quite right - at least if i understand you correctly
You roll 2D6 for the total amount of XP you can hire, e.g. 7. If you then want to add new recruits to a henchmen group that has 3 XP already you can add 2 new recruits (2*3) but not 3. You could add another new recruit with 1 XP to a group that has only 1 XP, if that is not possible it is wasted.
For a roster with an experienced group# here is a copy of an army builder printout of my first warband ever. Be careful, it is long...

Witch Hunters - Meinertzhagen´s Hexenbrenner -
Name # M WS BS S T W A I Ld Sv Cost
×Captain 1 4 4 5 3± 3 1 2 4± 9 4+± 355
Category: Hero
Hates all spellcasters; Sword: Parry; Experience (x47); Leader; Ballistic Skill +1 (x1); Attack +1 (x1);Leadership +1 (x1); Sword (x1); Crossbow; Crossbow Pistol; Shield; Helmet; Gromril Armor; Step Aside; Nimble; Strongman
Lucky Charm 1 First time model is hit in battle, roll a D6 and the hit is
ignored on a 4+[10]
Rope & Hook 1 Re-roll failed Initiative tests when climbing up and down [5]
Ithilmar 2-Hand Weapon
1 Grants +1 Initiative in hand-to-hand and costs 3 times the
normal weapon[45]
Ithilmar: +1 Init; Two-Handed: +2S, Last, 2H; Two-Handed Weapon
Warrior Priest 1 4 4 3 3 3 1 1 3 8 5+ 150
Category: Hero
Sword: Parry; Experience (x18); Weapon Skill +1 (x1); 2. Hearts of Steel: Select a Prayer of Sigmar
spell; 5. Healing Hand: Select a Prayer of Sigmar spell; Sword (x1); Crossbow; Pistol (x1); Heavy Armor; Helmet
2. Hearts of Steel 1 Difficulty: 8; Allied warriors within 8" are immune to Fear
and All Alone tests; Entire warband gains +1 to Rout tests;
Effects last until caster is Knocked Down, Stunned, or Out of Action; Multiple castings are not cumulative
5. Healing Hand 1 Difficulty: 5; One model within 2" of caster (including
caster) is healed to full wounds; All friendly models within
2" of caster that are Knocked Down or Stunned
immediately return to fighting condition
[0]
Witch Hunter 1 3 3 3 3 3 1 1 4 7 5+ 143
Category: Hero
Hates all spellcasters; Dagger: +1 Sv; Hammer: Stun 2-4; Experience (x22); Ballistic Skill +1 (x1);
Initiative +1 (x1); Free Dagger; Hammer (x1); Crossbow; Pistol (x1); Heavy Armor; Helmet; Nimble;
Quick Shot; Blind in One Eye; Leg Wound
Rope & Hook 1 Re-roll failed Initiative tests when climbing up and down [5]
Lucky Charm 1 First time model is hit in battle, roll a D6 and the hit is
ignored on a 4+
[10]
Witch Hunter 1 4 3 3 3 3 1 2 3 7 5+ 150
Category: Hero
Hates all spellcasters; Dagger: +1 Sv; Sword: Parry; Experience (x22); Attack +1 (x1); Free Dagger;
Sword (x1); Crossbow; Pistol (x1); Heavy Armor; Helmet; Step Aside; Nimble; Quick Shot
Rope & Hook 1 Re-roll failed Initiative tests when climbing up and down [5]
Lucky Charm 1 First time model is hit in battle, roll a D6 and the hit is
ignored on a 4+
[10]
Witch Hunter 1 4 3 4 4 3 1 1 3 7 5+ 143
Category: Hero
Hates all spellcasters; Dagger: +1 Sv; Hammer: Stun 2-4; Experience (x22); Ballistic Skill +1 (x1);
Strength +1 (x1); Free Dagger; Hammer (x1); Crossbow; Pistol (x1); Heavy Armor; Helmet; Nimble;
Quick Shot
Rope & Hook 1 Re-roll failed Initiative tests when climbing up and down [5]
Lucky Charm 1 First time model is hit in battle, roll a D6 and the hit is
ignored on a 4+
[10]
Zealots 1 4 2 2 4± 4 1 2 4 7 6+± 85
Category: Hero
Spear: First Once; Experience (x2); Henchman Experience: 2; Experience (x17); The Lad's Got
Talent!; Allow Combat Skills; Allow Strength Skills; Strength +1 (x1); Toughness +1 (x1); Attack +1
(x1); Initiative +1 (x1); Spear; Normal Bow; Light Armor; Shield; Helmet; Step Aside; Strike to Injure;
Mighty Blow
Lucky Charm 1 First time model is hit in battle, roll a D6 and the hit is
ignored on a 4+
[10]
Flagellants 1 4 4 4 4± 4 1 2 3 10 – 55
Category: Hench
Automatically pass all Leadership-based tests; May never become warband leader; Never use missile
weapons; Flail: +2S Once, 2H; Experience (x11); Weapon Skill +1; Ballistic Skill +1; Attack +1; Flail
Warhounds 1 6 4 0 4 3 1 1 4 5 – 15
Category: Hench
Never gain experience
Name # M WS BS S T W A I Ld Sv Cost
Halfling Scout 1 4 2 4 2 2 1 1 4 8 – 15
Category: Hired
Upkeep Cost: 5 GC
Maximum warband size increased by one; Dagger: +1 Sv; Experience (x9); Dagger; Normal Bow;
Helmet; Quick Shot; Eagle Eyes; Dodge
Dwarf Troll Slayer 1 3 4 3 3± 4 1 2 2± 9 – 25
Category: Hired
Upkeep Cost: 10 GC (20 GC if warband contains Elves)
Immune to all Psychology and never roll All Alone tests; Only put Out of Action on an Injury roll of
6 (treat a 5 as Stunned); Ignore the special rules for maces, clubs, and staves; Two-Handed: +2S, Last,
2H; Experience (x3); Attack +1 (x1); Two-Handed Weapon

Si if you are playing Mercs you want to have 9 of them. The 5 starting heroes, and 4 henchmen. At 9 your Route Checks increases from 2 to 3 models.

I suggest if you are playing Reiklanders look into getting 4 Marksmen as your Henchmen and outfitting them with Crossbows.

Here is the Reiklanders I am going to be playing:

Captain - Crossbow, club, dagger
Champ - 2 Dueling Pistols, Club, Dagger
Champ - 2 Dueling Pistols, Club, Dagger
Young Blood - club, dagger
Young Blood - club, dagger
4 Marksmen - Crossbow, dagger

Now this is just for my first match. I plan to equip more weapons to my guys. Ideally they would have a crossbow, or a brace of Dueling Pistols, a sword and a club each.

My plan is to shoot my enemies picking off guys until they get close, then use my Champions and Young Bloods team-up on anyone that gets close.

Thanks for the replies guys.

Horatius I'm going to keep coming back to that list to digest it properly. Do you find it hard to keep track of all the special rules? Seems every dice roll you make must have a modifier or some sort!

Rudeboy, I started with 9 like you suggested, and as soon as I got the gold I bought another marksman. Crossbows seem a must, wounding with a strength three weapon against orcs or dwarfs is like using a pea shooter!

I love the evolving nature of this whole thing though. I'm used to 40k where an army is an army unless you redesign it. The idea of a living warband is very cool. Even if one of my champions keeps getting himself killed!

Sounds like you are being a but unlucky with your out-of-action heroes. I sympathize, since I am notorious for rolling crappy for OOA guys.

Yes Crossbows are a must. There is such a power increase going from a 3 to a 4. The downside of only shooting or moving is a little limiting, but I think it is totally worth it. Most of the time when I was playing Orcs I noticed that I would usually run or shoot so it wasn't that big of a difference using crossbows.

I think 5 games in with my Reiklanders, had two henchmen die and two heroes. It's a bloody pain! By stumping up the cash for the extra marksman though I think I am playing more to their strengths. Of course no amount of extra bows will offset my uncanny ability to roll ones (sure, snake eyes on ld is great, but the rest of the time it's a pain in the butt).

Really want to hire an ogre for no other reason than it'd look great. I'm sure a little muscle might keep my heroes alive more too I suppose..

Had a question about close combat, probably comes from never having played warhammer. I presume you can't allot attacks to different enemies? So if my captain was in combat with two orcs he couldn't shoot one with his duelling pistol and bosh the other with his hammer? Or is that legit?

Also in close combat, am I understanding the attacking stunned warriors part correctly. Back to Albertus, he stuns an orc in the orc players turn. In his turn he doesn't move, shoot and there's no other orc in the fight. Is the stunned orc automatically out of action? Seems powerful, though makes sense.

Cheers,
Si

You choose your attacks so if your guy is in hand to hand with 2 guys and has 2 weapons you would choose which attack goes against which guy. I usually declare them both before I roll. I usually have different color dice so that I can distinguish them apart as well. So the red die is the pistol and the green die is the hammer.

If an enemy is stunned and you can attack him you automatically take him out, you do not have to roll. So on your opponent’s turn the Orc gets stunned, then on your turn there are no enemy mini's in base to base with your guy he has to use one of his attacks and automatically wounds him taking him out of action.

If the enemy model was just knocked-down then you automatically hit, but you have to roll to wound, and if the knocked-down model is wounded then he would automatically go out of action.

If you have 2 enemy models in base to base with your guy, and one of them is knocked down or stunned, and one is up and fighting you have to make your attacks against the standing model first before you can attack the knocked down or stunned model.

The idea behind this is that a stunned model cannot defend himself so you will hit in a place that will wound him, and a knocked down model will get hit the question is can he roll/dodge so that you don't hit him in a vital spot.

Also without this you would never knock a Dwarf Out of Action. One of my first Mordheim games I played a guy with Dwarves and we where both new to the game so we thought that a Dwarve would only go Out of Action on a 6 so I was wounding him left and right but I couldn't roll a 6. I kept restunning him over and over again.

Si, a warband does grow slowly, so normally i have no trouble remembering what a model has. Having distinctly looking models is a must - if all your heroes look the same remembering skills and equipment is next to impossible. Naming them also helps.
Having said that i must admit that in the heat of the game i tend to forget my lucky charms .

Cheers for the clarification Rudeboy. So does that mean you can resolve one attack before making the next? The captain is stood in battle with two orcs, one is stunned at his feet and the other upright and fighting. Could the captain choose to try and dispatch the vertical orc with his pistol, and if that succeeds then automatically put the guy on the floor ooa with his hammer?

Just seems a bit, cheesy. But equally if these guys are as skilled as their stats imply you think they'd be able to hold something back and pick and choose targets.


Horatius, I guess that makes sense. And I suppose it's a real boon when Henchman Bob's group gets an extra WS+1 that you'll be bound to remember it next game. I've tried to keep all my guys distinct and of course wysiwyg to make my life easier!

"Also in close combat, am I understanding the attacking stunned warriors part correctly. Back to Albertus, he stuns an orc in the orc players turn. In his turn he doesn't move, shoot and there's no other orc in the fight. Is the stunned orc automatically out of action? Seems powerful, though makes sense."

"So does that mean you can resolve one attack before making the next?"
No.

The captain is stood in battle with two orcs, one is stunned at his feet and the other upright and fighting. Could the captain choose to try and dispatch the vertical orc with his pistol, and if that succeeds then automatically put the guy on the floor ooa with his hammer?"
No.

Just to clarify the question about stunned and knocked down models, for Stunned models if there are NO OTHER ENEMY MODELS standing in the fight, in base to base contact, etc, the Stunned model is OOA. If a model is knocked down then you must roll to WOUND, but again no knocked down model may be attacked if another enemy is still standing and in base to base with the attacker.

Also, be aware of this from the rulebook

"Note that a model with multiple attacks may not
stun/knock down and then automatically take a
warrior out of action during the same hand-to-hand
combat phase. The only way you can achieve this is to
have more than one of your models attacking the
same enemy. So, if the enemy is stunned/knocked
down by the first warrior, he can be hit and put out of
action by the next warrior to attack."

Cool, all makes sense thanks.

One more, whilst I'm at it

Unstoppable charge gives a warrior +1 ws when charging. Does that count for the entire round? So captain again charges an orc and gets ws+1 to hit the orc. Does the bonus also count when the orc retaliates in the same round, or is it purely during the attempt to hit? I'm sure there are other skills which say the same thing so it'd be good to know.

It counts for the entire round.

With shooting, someone who has two shots can resolve the first one before specifying the target of the second one. With melee, you have to designate all of your attacks before rolling for any of them, and you cannot target any of them against a knocked down or stunned opponent if you are in base-to-base contact with an enemy who is neither knocked down or stunned.

Hallo. I have another question or two so I thought it'd make sense to keep all my inane babbling to one place

My Reiklanders are pretty experienced now, but it seems that's becoming something of a problem.

Is there a limit to the number of henchmen groups you can have in the same way as number of heroes? I now have 4 groups with 1 henchman in, two on 14xp and two on 8xp. So without some lucky rolling for recruits I can't add to them.

They also have two hired swords, meaning my henchmen roster sheet is full. Can I just tag on another (so long as I don't exceed the warband member maximum), or will I have to drop a group and replace it with some raw recruits? Something i'm temtped to do anyway to be honest.

They're finally making some money, although still too damned fragile. My leader was taken ooa, but got away with just being robbed (of course now he's trying to find another duelling pistol but damned things are proving elusive). Also seem to be getting through warrior monks like they're going out of business

Had another question but it's slipped my mind, i'll be back when it comes to me. Cheers.

We play that you can have any number of henchmen groups but I know some groups like to limit it to reduce the "multiple groups of one" tactic. We do play to a power limit though - when one or more warbands get to a level that no one can beat them (normally around WBR 300 - 400) we call the campaign over and play a big finale game.

Double-post : sorry!

Warboss was so adamant, he needed to say it twice!

Yup, in some cases, you HAVE to buy a new group, as it's impossible to guy exp for your existing groups.

Our group is pretty relaxed... we don't stick with "what you see is what you get", and we don't mind if you have henchman groups of one. Sure, it maxes out your chances of getting a 6th hero, but if everyone does it (and generously passes on this tactic to new members of the group, rather than keeping it secret), no one seems to mind. Things are only unfair if you attempt to keep it to yourself.

Don't worry about the roster. Go online, and you'll find half a dozen different roster types for Mordheim. You don't have to use a set number of pages, or even a set sheet. Take as many as you need to in the goal of writing your warband.

Like Kurgan, if all of the groups gets super high, we normally play an End-game. If only ONE group gets super high, sometimes he starts a 2nd warband, and plays that one until some of his opponents are caught up.

ooops! I'll try to delete my double-post!

We also play second warbands sometimes, and we are less strict about WYSYWIG than "everything painted"

That's cool, cheers guys. My Reiklanders seem to be progressing well (except for gold, the habit of heros dying I mentioned at the start of this thread hasn't gone away!).

As an aside (I'll start a thread for this at some point), I got fed up with having to rummage through roster sheets and them getting all scratty so I've written a little tool to keep track of things. It's web based, so once I write a quick user management system I'd be happy to open it up to anyone who wants to use it. No stats or rules included, just the equivalent of an electronic version of the roster sheet.

Anywho that question has come back to me. I'd presume it's an unlikely occurrence but what happens if a warband has no heroes or henchman who aren't ooa at the start of a turn, but need to take a rout test? I presumed it was game over. I guess under normal circumstances a warband gettnig that much of a hammering would voluntarily leg it long before that point, but a good round of combat from the opponent and it could come up I suppose.