ranged warriors

Is there a limit to the number of members in a warband that can have ranged weapons? like 50%? or something?

I ask this because I have a marienburg (I think) warband that uses the extra 100gc. I made a warband with a total of 9 crossbows and 3 warriors. They all have a mace and a dagger, my 4 marksmen have crossbows, and all my heroes have a crossbow. This list seems like a load of cheese. Surviving the first round of shooting against this before, say a beastmen warband gets its charge off, will be just brutal.

Is there a limit? If not I think I might put my beastmen away, as once the game gets going beastmen are not really any better than humans as only their T and WS can go 1 more than a human but have no range.... hmmmm

No, there is not limit because ranged weapons aren't over-powered. Just to make sure, you *do* know ranged weapons don't automatically put stunned people out of action, right? They still have to roll on the injury table as normal. It is not like close combat.

Beastmen are at least a mid-tier warband — that extra point of T and the extra W help a lot. T5 means you are immune to all crits from slings and bows as well. Also, if you use an RAW interpretation on selecting skill tables for TLGT heroes a beastman warband can still get one or two snipers to give a little covering fire to make their snipers keep their heads down a bit.

Well with RAW I can't because shooting is not available to any beastmen heroes therefore a TLGT roll doesn't allow me to pick shooting. The extra point of toughness doesn't help my beastmen that much vs a massive volley from reiklander warbands etc. And if reiklanders get up there, they can knock down, stun, kill all 5 warhounds in the turn of shooting they get before a charge, and stun, knockdown, kill all your gor henchmen and wound some heroes. Add that to the fact that you cannot charge the turn your guys stand back up, and they don't need to put you out of action, they can then target whoever is still standing and drastically outnumber the beastmen heroes in the ensuing melee.

I can't see how ranged is balanced later in the game when the mercenary heroes are just as good in melee, but can peg 1 or 2 henchmen before the melee even begins.

Lord 0 wrote:

No, there is not limit because ranged weapons aren't over-powered. Just to make sure, you *do* know ranged weapons don't automatically put stunned people out of action, right? They still have to roll on the injury table as normal. It is not like close combat.

I totally agree with Lord 0. You need to ensure that you are rolling for injury EVERY time you wound with a ranged attack regardless of whether the target is standing, knocked down our stunned. Not doing this is a very common mistake that greatly increases the power of shooting and destroys the balance of shooting.

Also, make sure that you are using enough terrain.

As for Beastmen against shooting, their Toughness helps a lot against since most shooting is Strength 3. There are two Beastmen warbands in our current campaign and they are the top two warbands. My warband is currently Gunnery School of Nuln which is a completely shooting perturbed warband but the Beastmen are still winning.

Grimtoof wrote:

Well with RAW I can't because shooting is not available to any beastmen heroes therefore a TLGT roll doesn't allow me to pick shooting.

As far as RAW is concerned, I don't believe this is the case. What people often fail to realise is that there is a difference between available to your Warband and available to heroes in your warband.

The table is showing you what skills are available to your warband and the ticks show what skills may be chosen by your starting heroes. Note that shooting is *available* to the Beastmen warband i.e. it is on their table, it is just that none of their heroes may initially take shooting skills. If, however, you get TLGT for a gor, it *is* on your table available to be chosen. The reason that you-can-only-choose-skills-available-to-your-warband rule is there is so that, say, a beastman TLGT can't choose the Sister's special skill list or the Skaven or Dwarf special skill list or something.

In my circle we have always used this interpretation, we are a very competative group, and this option is never-the-less seldom exercised. This tells me that it is not broken, because if it was, rest assured we would all be using it. Instead all it does is add to the flavour of the games by allowing one to have 1 or 2 exra-special heroes e.g. 'Speccy', the Gor hero with Academic and Shooting and modeled to wear glasses, have a sniper rifle, and have a satchel full of scrolls and books and so on . There was also
a dwarf hero that had speed skills and was modelled to have steam-powered boots and a winged helmet with the rune of speed on it.

Noone making a beastman warband replaces all their heroes with TLGT heroes to get shooting skills, noone making a dwarf warband replaces all their heroes with TLGT with speed skills and so on and so forth, *but* a dwarf warband with 1 or 2 heroes with speed skills isn't *quite* at such a disadvantage in scenarios like Treasure Hunt and a Beastman warband with a bit of covering fire isn't at *quite* such a disadvantage when the terrain favours shooting and so on.

We do roll that you have to roll for injury every time, but when your opponent can put out 17-18 crossbow bolts the turn before you charge, he can knock down, stun, and take out of action every henchman you have leaving only your heroes to charge, which will get them all wrecked if you do. Having to roll for injuries every time doesn't help when you can't charge after you get back up.

I can see the arguement for a single campaign that it wouldn't be overpowered as once the campaign is over you disband your warband and start the next campaign, but my friends and myself just keep playing games to make veteran warbands, never really disbanding them. I can see after like 30-40 games the mercenary warbands being so powerful there really is no point in playing anything else as you can only hide until that turn you whish to charge, in which case you come out in the open to see his guys to charge on your next turn, and get shot to pieces.

Oh well I guess I will work with the hand I've been dealt. Mercenary warband here I come lol.

Cover is the key. Beastmen vs. Reiklanders is the set up for two friends I have been teaching to play. The Reiklander thought that would be how things went as well. But taking out one or two henchmen ends up not being all that big of a deal as the beastmen thrash them in melee.

As soon as the Beastmen player learned the rules for Hiding he was able to use his high speed to keep out of sight and close in. Beastmen do not need ranged weapons. They are fast and tough. Remember a crossbow warband will be very powerful, but not highly mobile without sacrificing ranged firepower. So Beastmen will often win objective based games.

If every game is a straight up fight on open ground, yes, crossbows will dominate. Otherwise hide like the cowardly chaos scum you are.

I think that, beyond the direct probability of shooting effecting targets, there are two major factors that affect whether shooting is powerful in Mordheim.

1. Terrain. You've got to have enough to reduce the effectiveness of shooting. And by enough I mean try to have so many buildings that it's mostly narrow streets between them with few open areas. Then add lots of ladders and bridges for climbing and clambering, even up on to the roofs; it's fun to have a vertical battlefield and the ladders and bridges make it less difficult to deal with snipers trying to hide up in buildings. And use cover and the rules for hiding as much as possible.



2. Scenarios. I'm not a big fan of a lot of the original scenarios. They frequently lack proper incentives for warbands to make interesting choices. Sometimes they even lack incentives for players to win at all, beyond the standard +1 exp for the leader of the winning warband and bonus exploration dice. Weaksauce. A scenario without objectives on the board give little incentive for shooty bands to do anything but cluster up and camp.

The worst scenario is skirmish, where you literally have no incentive to move from your starting spot, and only +1 leader exp and the bonus exploration dice as incentives to win . When playing skirmish as a shooting warband when your opponent is a melee warband you're best shot at winning is to clump your units in the spot with the largest fields of vision and just camp there. If you're fighting another shooting warband, you're still best off waiting for them to come to you while you hide all your units together, thus allowing you to fire the first volley with as many units as possible, hopefully with them unable to return fire with the entirety of their firepower due to resulting injuries or being poorly positioned because they had to come to you.

Even a melee warband's best bet in all cases is to group their entire warband for a mass charge against as few enemies as possible, waiting until they move into your charge range while hiding if possible (thus again not moving is optimal) to ensure you get the charge and don't get shot.



Interesting scenarios, in my mind, force players to make choices about movement (which is basically the crux of the entire combative portion of the game) whether to move to a scoring objective, avoiding certain areas or (one of the hardest to accomplish but most interesting) split their warband up to pursue multiple objectives (better still, multiple objectives of varying importance).

Which makes me think of another reason narrow streets, ladders and bridges all greatly improve the game. They restrict the player's ability to swarm all their units into a single combat or objective, forcing them to divide their force and choose which units to send down which paths.

However I think variety is important for making choices interesting, so not every path has to be very narrow and not every building needs a bridge to all adjacent buildings. Similarly a few sporadic, open areas (little or no cover) also can still allow interesting choices. An open area is freely passable and safe, unless units are positioned to threaten it (a choice) with charges or shooting , in which case it becomes a dangerous zone that you may cross, risking injury for speed, or circumvent, trading speed for safety (another choice).

As much as I exult the virtue of variety I do not think it's best to have everything in every scenario, else they would all be the same which is the opposite of variety! Too many choices, especially ones of little consequence, glut the game. The best scenarios and games use objectives and terrain purposefully, providing a focused variety of choices, to make an interesting experience.



Sorry, got a little sidetracked by theorizing and preaching. I'm taking a break from writing essays for school so I guess I'm in a mindset for this kind of thing.

Alright I have looked over what youguys have to say. I think I missunderstand cover, and hiding as, when you are hiding can you charge from being hidden? This would make a HUGE difference and give me no reason to fear ranged much at all really. I currently fear a high ranked reiklander ranged army, not a starter one, a starter one gets trounced by beastmen, but if they keep their marksmen and heroes alive for a few games they really start to get scary.

I have another option I have been mulling over for the past little while. This option includes using my centigor as a late game crossbow bolt shield. I can get him a 1+ save, T5 and 4 wounds, this will give me a great shield for incoming fire, I take on average 2 wounds in a full round of shooting (including the criticals), if I throw in a healing herb I can heal him up to full again and get that charge off with most of my warband intact.

HOWEVER, however, I see the problem with this as a lucky round of shooting could put him out of action risking him dieing or being injured, and over a lot of games this will undoubtedly eventually get him killed.

Hopefully I can look over those hiding rules again, and get a charge off without getting wrecked.

At the start of your own turn, any warriors you had hidden the turned before can act as normal.

alright that sounds good to me this will drastically reduce my casualties, actually this may completely eliminate them. The extra movement speed my warband has will allow me to get there pretty much unscathed.

I am really glad I have joined this forum it has cleared up a lot of my issues since I have started.

I will stick to my bloody hand clan
Thanks everyone for the help.
Cheers.

There are still possibilities for him to get you if he risk sacrificing one model, which runs ahead and discover all enemies in Initiative range (if he is a hero he can use a lantern and gets a bonus to his Initiative for discovering). So you should try not to bulk all, that he can discover all with just one sacrifice.

Another think is, that crossbows can't move and shoot. You have to try to get an ankle he has to move his crossbowmen.

Use the rules for Random Happenings. There are events you have to run away from a building with all models and he will start to divide his men to different buildings or he will stay at ground level and reduce his shooting ability (we play that you can't shoot through your own models, or if they are only blocking part of the sight you hit your own models if you miss by 1 - you need to spread them out, so you get all members to shoot which can be hard to archive...). Another event is mist that reduce your range to 2W6...

If he sacrifices one guy, I can sacrifice one of my own to run out and kill him like a hound. If he has a lantern I will charge out with my centigor and kill him and weather the shots.

If he does try that then I can always switch by running into a house/down a street as all my models can move 10 inches unless he gets within 8, (I will take him down with dogs before he gets there.)

Oh we also do play so you hit your own guys if they are in front of you and I claim my -1 for cover. This is alright when the ballistics skill is not very good, but garbage when they start becoming better shots.

the problem with discovering is, that you have perhaps no chance for it.

Example:
you jump from cover to cover and hide your warband. At least you are only 10" away from the building the mercenaries are in.
Than is his turn. He moved a youngblood (Ini 3 and lantern) 8 Inches ahead of you. With the lantern he can spot all modells in 7" range of him (thats 15" spot range inklusive his movement) and than his shooters can let loose a hail of bolts at your warband.
If you don't rout you can take revenge on this youngblood, but he has already done his part of the scheme and you had some casualties...

Hiding is normaly a good thing, but against a prepared shooter you may need good countermeasures against such tricks...

At least if he was able to hide he'll have a cover save when that happens

Saranor wrote:

Hiding is normaly a good thing, but against a prepared shooter you may need good countermeasures against such tricks...

This is indeed the case, but the thing is that the countermeasures have countermeasures and there are counter-countermeasures and then there are counter-counter-measures so really, fun is restored because you have now taken things from being either a shooting gallery or a slugfest and turned it into a complex interplay of strategy and counter-strategy.

Game working as intended in my opinion .

what does TLGT mean?

The Lad's Got Talent. The result that makes a henchman into a hero! Well that and a healthy breakfast!

Shooting is effective in Mordheim - but it should be effective (in real life, charging across open ground at people with bows and guns is a bad idea). In my experience, Mordheim does a good job of balancing melee and ranged combat for a game. The few official (or semi-official) warbands I have seen that do seem overbalanced to me tend to be warbands that are good at ranged combat (particularly the Shadow Elves), but their skill at ranged combat is only one part of the reason they are too powerful.

Lord O: "The table is showing you what skills are available to your warband and the ticks show what skills may be chosen by your starting heroes. Note that shooting is *available* to the Beastmen warband i.e. it is on their table, it is just that none of their heroes may initially take shooting skills. If, however, you get TLGT for a gor, it *is* on your table available to be chosen. The reason that you-can-only-choose-skills-available-to-your-warband rule is there is so that, say, a beastman TLGT can't choose the Sister's special skill list or the Skaven or Dwarf special skill list or something."


An interesting idea... but I don't think this interpretation is what the author intended. I don't have a rulebook with me, but as I recall the rules always show all of the basic skill areas and places ticks to indicate which ones individual heroes can take. If no hero can take skills from a certain area, that skill group is not available to anyone in your warband. If they wanted a beastman to be able to take shooting skills or an orc to be able to take academic skills, than it would have been easy to say a promoted hero can choose two from any of the basic skill groups (which are grouped together in the basic rulebook)/

Mind you, I think this interpretation is a fun one, and I may suggest it the next time we start a new campaign.

Here is a question that is posted in the errata

Q: Does a promoted Henchman gain his warband’s specialist skill list AND two other
lists, or does the specialist skill list take up a slot?

A: The Lad’s Got Talent result says “You may choose two skill lists available to Heroes
in your warband”, and as your warband’s specialist skills ARE available to your Heroes
that list does indeed take up one of those two if it is one of those chosen.

Now this question as asking something different then what we are discussing I feel like when they say you may choose two skill list available to heroes it means only skills lists heroes can use, not ones that are on the table.

Just my opinion.

The rules definitely refer to just the ticked lists. If it was the other way then the rules would just fast that a promoted henchman could not pick special skill lists from another warband and then that would be very clear and precise.

RationalLemming wrote:

... and then that would be very clear and precise.

Yes, because Games Workshop has a long history of always writing rules that are very clear and precise with no ambiguity at all .

The way we interpreted it is that if the skill table is on the list then you have *access* to it, if it is ticked on your profile then it is *available* to that hero.

In my circle the most important thing is for things to be fun and balance is often a significant part of that. Years of experience has taught us that this interpretation leads to both the most fun and the most balance so I think we will be sticking with it.

As I say, we are a competitive group and it hasn't caused a problem for us so I would imagine that if you are not a competitive group you would have no trouble at all with it. The modeling opportunities alone should make it tempting to you...

It is certainly an interesting idea, and one I will bounce off people the next time we start a campaign.

Lord 0 wrote:

RationalLemming wrote:

... and then that would be very clear and precise.

Yes, because Games Workshop has a long history of always writing rules that are very clear and precise with no ambiguity at all .

The way we interpreted it is that if the skill table is on the list then you have *access* to it, if it is ticked on your profile then it is *available* to that hero.

In my circle the most important thing is for things to be fun and balance is often a significant part of that. Years of experience has taught us that this interpretation leads to both the most fun and the most balance so I think we will be sticking with it.

As I say, we are a competitive group and it hasn't caused a problem for us so I would imagine that if you are not a competitive group you would have no trouble at all with it. The modeling opportunities alone should make it tempting to you...

Yeah I know. And fun is the most important aspect to playing.