Southlands Setting

With cities and jungles, lots of material has been written, so you have a lot of neat stuff to reference.

The tricky part is keeping the wide empty plains interesting. Here's a simple thought, which is probably in there already:

"Glare: Any Plains scenario that is not set at Night time uses the rules for Glare. All missile shots made in the shooting phase suffer an additional -1 to hit."

Certain warbands would be immune to the effect, like Ubuntu and models with pith helmets.

Rather than being a weather effect, the glare is constant. What it does is level the playing field against shooty warbands. Otherwise, they gain an unfair advantage in a mostly cover-free environment. The glare has no effect at Night, of course, but that has even WORSE restrictions for shooting.

Wow. Great simple way to fix half the problems I was having. I was going to try to do a lot of really tall grass, but that was a pain to deal with modelling wise.

What system do people like best for Weather and Day/Night?

Wow my Southlands project is over a year old! Thank you to everyone who has helped! Especially to Alex who has done some major editing and helped me do a lot of revisions to make things easier to understand!

I should be updating all the warbands with the latest round of changes. Most are only getting name upgrades and rule clarifications, but a few changes are coming.

I am looking into an idea Alex gave me to reduce the base cost of Pets but then add variable costs to them to represent a more unique nature to each animal.

Glad to be helpful man keep the stuff coming and I'll keep helping. Since my son was born I haven't had that much hobby time but I'm working on some savage orcs and forest goblins and a tilean conquistador warband for the setting.

Sorry i've been silent on this. My Mordheim group (what little there was) fell apart. But I am still working on this, just much more slowly than before. If anyone has specific areas of the game they want me to focus on I will take requests.

Ok current southlands house rules for weapons/armor:

Option 1:
Old Worlder Warbands can buy Light and Heavy armor for half at creation only (includes Safari).
Ithimir Armor is a type of Light Armor
Henchmen dual-wielding weapons suffer -1 to WS (other than Large models)
Bucklers and Shields gain an extra +1 to armor saves (so 6+ parry or 5+)
If armed with a Buckler or Shield you always have a 6+ save similar to lizardman scaly skin
Blackpowder Weapons ignore the scaly skin or shield 6+ minimum save
Heavy Armor and Shield's movment reduction is ignored if you have 4 or more strength
If S of 4+ you only get -1 to their armor. This makes axes and cutting edge much better, as it does armor!
Eventual rework of the critical hit tables to be more varied, but less powerful

Option 2:
Ithimir Armor is a type of Light Armor
Bucklers and Shields gain an extra +1 to armor saves (so 6+ parry or 5+)
Blackpowder Weapons ignore the scaly skin 6+ minimum save
Eventual rework of the critical hit tables to be more varied, but less powerful

Currently i'm going for Option 1. It's a lot of changes but the package of them (barring the almost certain unforeseen consequences) should encourage a lot more variety as well as make armor feel more powerful in a lower tech environment.

There are some good points in both options, for example a new critical hits chart.

BUT, I would go with option 3, don't rewrite the rules! Why I hear you say, well the reason is that you should focus on the southlands setting and not on rewriting more or less flawed rules.

I think writing the warbands rules first might be a problem in the long run, and I don't want to sound to harsh or critical. If you write the warbands first you kind of start in the wrong end, first you should write the framework. By framework I mean fluff for the southlands, some new rules that affect fighting there, maybe the exploration chart and the trading goods chart. And I know you have written some of these, the new skills looks promising!

Then it is easier to fit the warbands to the setting instead of fitting the setting to the warbands.

Again I really don’t want to sound too critical. I really believe in this project and hope it can become a success and I want to help in any way I can

After you left for a while I kind of drifted into the Sylvania setting, but if there are new stuff coming out I think I need to dust off my safari hat and elephant gun and head back out on the savannah.
After I finish painting the Solkanites I’m going to tackle the estalian conquistadors, safari expedition and complete my savage orc tribe.

oh and I think you should do more on the weather and day night stuff next

Alex, as always you have a good point. I get distracted easily...

Setting needs to come first. I think the Tusker Plains need some more attention next.

BalrogTheBuff wrote:

Alex, as always you have a good point.

I have my moments

The Tusker Plains sounds exciting. Looking forward to it!

By the way, are there any "official" maps of the southlands?

BalrogTheBuff wrote:

For the Southlands I had the following as ideas for teams:

Normal Human Mercenaries (new maybe?)
Norse Explorers
Beastmen Raiders (not supported much by fluff but would be cool to convert)
Southlands Lizardmen*
Dark Ones tribes (several versions, at least one beastmaster like, and another proud warriors)
Skaven Clan Pestilens*
Dark Elves*
High Elves*
Dwarfs
Merchants
Restless Dead (maybe searching for some Old One magic to boost his unlife-time)
Forest Goblins*
Savage Orcs*
Snotlings
Others?

Okay so even though I said myself that starting with the warbands is bad I couldn't help but give my two pennies worht of ideas for your list.

Normal Human Mercenaries - of course! They are among the most used warbands and since they can represent all manners of cutthroats, explorers, pirates or whatever they are a must.

Norse - the norse are known for having discovered Lustria and are expert sailors so they definetley have been to the South.

Beastmen - actually they are fluff supported!

Southland lizardmen - obviously

Dark Ones tribes - I have already given you my thoughts on these

Clan Pestilence - well Sotek drove them out once, but the disgusting rats are known to return so I guess they would work

High and Low elves - all elves are supremly annoying but the are also known as masters of the sea so they would fit.

Dwarfs - to be honest I am not sure about the dwarfs. Okay they could be there chasing rumors about Karak Zorn and gold or on a nautilus expedition so perhaps they would fit. They would be a bit difficult to play on the savannah.

Merchants - again I'm not sure, a merchant caravan is an enormous investment so I would be a bit surprised if they chose to send it into the jungle without concrete knowledge of anyone to trade with. I think the mercenarys would work better, they could be more conquistador like.

Restless dead - isn't the southlands the cradle of human life? There are bound to be some old dusty liches still kickong around since the dawn of time. I think they work fine, on the same point I'm not too sure if the vampire undead work. What would a von Carstein be doing there?

Forest goblins and savage orcs - they work perfectly! and the current orc list could be used with minimal modifications, mainly take away the crossbow and fanatic ball and chain.


I think we might have discussed this before but my mailbox is a bit strange so I don't see any old mails. Again I'm just trying to kickstart the project and looking at Balrogs list got me all excited