Twilight Elves Warband-trying to make a balanced Elf Warband

Please give me ideas on problems/changes/anything

Twilight Elves
Twilight Elves are warrior elves who live to fight in the Twilight of their lives, and at the Twilight of a society. As Mordheim burns and falls apart, these elves seek to die in battle while fighting the good fight and making sure no evil pervades in the darkness after the Twilight. These elves have sworn themselves to battle and forsaken the use of magic, only accessing the arcane to negate magic used against them. These elves do not like to speak with townsfolk or other warriors, instead preferring to fill up on Halfling-cooked meals and Elven Ale when not doing battle. Their Halfling companions are used as scouts and are responsible for going to markets and doing the bidding of the Elven Heroes.
Special Rules:
• No Twilight Elves may ever use blackpowder weapons, poisons, drugs or magic (Only Ale!).
• Will not ally with anyone or any warband who uses magic, poisons, drugs, blackpowder weapons or considered to be associated with chaos or undead.
• May hire Aenur at any time, ignoring his ‘Wanderer’ rule.
• Elves do not go to the market, the Halflings do, so for each Elf Hero, you must hire one Halfling as his helper or they cannot be sent to search for rare items. If there are no Halflings in the warband, then no trading can be done, even for common items.
• Warband Maximum - 15
Heroes:
High Born (20xp) – 1 @ 90 gc (Combat, Shooting, Speed, Elven) Equipped off of either Blades or Archer lists
Profile M WS BS S T W I A Ld
High Born 5 5 4 3 3 1 5 1 9
Leader – Any warrior within 6" of the High Born may use his Leadership characteristic when taking Leadership test.

Twilight Bladesman (8xp) – 1 @ 45 gc (Combat, Speed, Elven) Equipped off of Twilight Blades list
Profile M WS BS S T W I A Ld
Bladesman 5 4 3 3 3 1 4 1 8

Twilight Bowman (8xp) – 1 @ 45 gc (Shooting, Speed, Elven) Equipped off of Twilight Archer list
Profile M WS BS S T W I A Ld
Bowman 5 3 4 3 3 1 4 1 8

Alemaster (8xp) – 1 @ 40 gc (Combat, Speed, Elven) Equipped off of Twilight Blades list
Profile M WS BS S T W I A Ld
Alemaster 5 3 3 3 3 1 4 1 7
Ale Mastery – Brews one of three Elven Ales for the warband. The Alemaster can only brew one type of ale at a time, so you must choose which type the warband drinks before setting up for battle.
Ale of Courage – Immune to fear, Ale of Health – Immune to Poison, Ale of Valour – Immune to Magic
Wyrdstone Brewer – The Alemaster’s ale requires wyrdstone to brew, so you must sacrifice one wyrdstone per exploration phase to the Alemaster or you cannot use his Ale Mastery Skill (not including first game).
Henchmen:
Blades – can be bought in groups of 1-5 @ 35 gc each, equipped off the Twilight Blades list
Profile M WS BS S T W I A Ld
Swordsmen 5 3 3 3 3 1 4 1 7

Archers – can be bought in groups of 1-3 (3 max total) @ 40 gc each, equipped off the Twilight Archer list
Profile M WS BS S T W I A Ld
Archers 5 3 4 3 3 1 4 1 7

Halflings – can be bought in groups of 1-5 (6 max total) @ 15 gc each, equipped off the Halfling List
Profile M WS BS S T W I A Ld
Halflings 4 2 4 2 2 1 4 1 7
Special Rules:
Small Warriors: One handed weapons (except for daggers) are treated as Unwieldy (can only have a buckler in off-hand)
Small Targets: Halflings are always at a -1 to hit with missile weapons
Talentless: Can never get ‘Lad’s Got Talent’

Equipment


Twilight Blades List

Hand-to-hand Combat Weapons
Dagger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1st free/2 gc
Sword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 gc
Spear. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 gc
Twilight Blade* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 gc
Ithilmar Weapon* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3x Normal cost
Missile Weapons
Bow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 gc
Long Bow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 gc
Armour
Light armour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 gc
Heavy armour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 gc
Ithilmar armour* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 gc
Elven Cloak* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 gc
Shield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 gc
Buckler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 gc
Helmet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 gc

Twilight Archers List

Hand-to-hand Combat Weapons
Dagger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1st free/2 gc
Sword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 gc
Spear. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10gc
Missile Weapons
Bow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 gc
Long Bow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 gc
Elf Bow* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 gc
Armour
Light armour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 gc
Heavy armour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 gc
Ithilmar armour* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 gc
Elven Cloak* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 gc
Shield . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 gc
Buckler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 gc
Helmet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 gc

Halfling List

Hand-to-hand Combat Weapons
Dagger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1st free/2 gc
Club . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 gc
Axe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 gc
Sword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 gc
Missile Weapons
Sling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 gc
Short Bow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 gc
Bow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 gc
Armour
Light armour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 gc
Buckler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 gc
Helmet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 gc

*Can only be bought at Warband Creation
or at the same time as buying new recruits,
otherwise you must use the normal price chart
and rare rolls to acquire these items.

ELF Maximum Characteristics
Profile M WS BS S T W I A Ld
Elf 5 7 7 4 4 3 9 4 10

Halfling Maximum Characteristics
Profile M WS BS S T W I A Ld
Halfling 4 5 7 3 3 3 9 4 10


Special Equipment
Twilight Blade; 15 gc; Range: Close Combat, Strength: As User; (Twilight Elves only)
Can only be used by High Born, Twilight Bladesmen and Blades.
Special Rules:
Parry
Always wounds on a 4+, take normal armour saves
After warband creation, is Rare 10, 15+3D6 gc

ELVEN SKILLS
• Swift Seeker: When rolling on the Exploration chart, the Elf allows you to modify one dice roll by +1. Cannot be used with Thorough seeker.
• Thorough Seeker: When rolling on the Exploration chart, the Elf allows you to modify one dice roll by -1. Cannot be used with Swift Seeker.
• Excellent Sight: Elves have eyesight unmatched by mere humans. The Elf spots Hidden enemies from two times as far away as other warriors (i.e., twice his Initiative value in inches).
• Elven Luck: The Elf is blessed by Lileath, the Elven goddess of luck. Once per game he may re-roll any dice roll he makes (but not one made by other members of the warband).
• Fey Quickness: Few can ever hope to match an Elf ’s inhuman quickness and agility. An Elf with Fey Quickness can avoid melee or missile attacks on a roll of 6. If the Elf also has Step Aside or Dodge this will increase to a 4+ in the relevant area. For example, an Elf with Fey Quickness and Step Aside avoids melee attacks on a 4+ and missile attacks on a 6.
• Battle Tongue: This skill may only be chosen by a leader. The warrior has drilled his warband to follow short barked commands. This increases the range of his Leader ability by 6".
• Infiltration: A Twilight Elf with this skill is always placed on the battlefield after the opposing warband and can be placed anywhere on the table as long as it is out of sight of the opposing warband and more than 12" away from any enemy model. If both players have models which infiltrate, roll a D6 for each, and the lowest roll sets up first.

Why are halflings fighting with elves? It's a fluff connection I've never heard of. I could see them hiring local humans to do some of the grunt work for them, but halflings just seem off.

Well, the general reason is that these Elves are not fighting for Elven Society, just to clear the Chaos out of the rubble of Mordheim. They expect death, and live only to eat, drink and kill the corruption of chaos, blackpowder, poison, evil, etc. Halflings cook well and drink well, so they use them to eat and drink, but also, practically, Elves can't go to a market to buy stuff because they will see poison and blackpowder and kill the marketers. So they conveniantly send in the Halflings to the market to avoid seeing the corruption.

I'm not completely sold on Halflings, really, but the warband needs something cheap and tolerable to balance it out, and I thought by tying in halflings I could limit the Elves in the warband without imposing a 12 limit on it. I tried a warband with beasts instead, but it seemed boring and ridiculous.

Might I recommend something that is a bit...different, then? There probably wouldn't be too many elves like this running around. I could see the elven warband being a shoot-off of the Mercenary warband. Instead of having the usual mercenary bonuses, the warband starts off with 3 elven heroes and 2 mundane human ones. The elven heroes, when buying rare items, always count the d6 roll on the extra price as being a 6, because humans assume that all elves are rich. When an elf hero dies, each surviving elf hero can look for a new one by forgoing looking for rare items (find one on a 10+). If a single elf is left, he must be the warband leader.

It would be a "bonus" to have three elven heroes who have better stats than humans. (+1 M, +1 WS, +1 BS, +3I, +1 Ld), as opposed to the +1 str for Middenheimers. But the extra bonuses are balanced out by the penalties that elves have.

It represents a few elves coming to Mordheim for the reasons that you put forward, and they have hired local muscle to see them through it. This is especially true because elves are so rare around Mordheim, so the chances of seeing an entire warband of them should be slim.

So, I have reworked a few things, and I think I have a happy mix that makes elves balanced (maybe even a bit too weak).

Easy to read link: https://i.imgur.com/h0BFJ.png

(to clarify some changes, I have clubs as 3gc with no combat bonus, and maces/hameers at 5gc with normal bonus. Short swords count as swords for things like swordsman, but no parry)

I don't like the club being separated from hammers/maces - is it a house rule your group uses?

If it isn't a house rule, then I feel that it is unnecessary and confusing, if it is a house rule, then it is always better to develop warbands for the unmodified ruleset and then apply your usual house rules just for your own gaming.

Just my two pence.

5pointer wrote:

I don't like the club being separated from hammers/maces - is it a house rule your group uses?

yes, house rule for all warbands

edit to standard rules: https://i.imgur.com/bfhrO.png

Just cant shake the thought of twinkling "twilight" elves in the sun..
Seems like a balanced list though
Could put a few ?? at the price of the twilight blade since its essentially a dwarven skill on a stick.
Also not really sold on being able to hire Aenur, but we dont use dramatis personae in our campaign so
could just be me..

Cheers,

stillwater wrote:

Just cant shake the thought of twinkling "twilight" elves in the sun..
Seems like a balanced list though
Could put a few ?? at the price of the twilight blade since its essentially a dwarven skill on a stick.
Also not really sold on being able to hire Aenur, but we dont use dramatis personae in our campaign so
could just be me..

Cheers,

Thanks!

Twilight was chosen just because of Aenur, but yeah.
What price do you think the blade price should be? It is rare 10 and +3D6 after warband creation.
Aenur is more fluffy anyway, as no one is going to pay 150 gc a game to keep him.

I've added some Ithilmar Helmets and Shields for them, seeing as I took away their toughness/wound advances I felt I had to give them something. Both add a +1 to their respective saves and cost double the normal price at warband creation.

personally i would remove the "parry" from the twilight blade and make it an universal weapon upgrade as in
3xnormal price and retains the used weapons special rules. So you could have a twilight axe (-1 as) or a twilight sword ( parry) rare 10 seems fair to me Improving helmet save for +20gc seems like a decent item, but maybe i would make it an universal item for everyone in your campaign to search for (ie rare11) and just make it readily available for the twilight elves at warband creation.

Cheers,

Anybody collecting and painting elves who wants an exceptional warband list for elves that is fair to game with can drop me a PM.

Regards,

Werekin

stillwater wrote:

personally i would remove the "parry" from the twilight blade and make it an universal weapon upgrade as in
3xnormal price and retains the used weapons special rules. So you could have a twilight axe (-1 as) or a twilight sword ( parry) rare 10 seems fair to me Improving helmet save for +20gc seems like a decent item, but maybe i would make it an universal item for everyone in your campaign to search for (ie rare11) and just make it readily available for the twilight elves at warband creation.

Cheers,

I like those ideas, incorporated into the new sheet: https://i.imgur.com/pLtBC.png

While reading the above, and a bunch of other elf warbands, i got this idear:

I actually like most of the Shadow Warrior list, so a few changes to that and i think it would work, at least as a good base for other elf themes

1: Allow the target of a warrior using the Sniper skill to roll initiative to spot the shooter.

2: Remove Powerful Built skill.

3: Remove Excellent sight special rule, and make it a skill to replace Powerful built.

4: Limit the heroes to 4, removing one of the 3 shadow walkers.

Oh yea, and dont allow a hidden model to spot others using a lantern (its just silly really )