Marienburg Special Skills

Reiklanders are the best core mercs, and Middenheimers go a lot of extra stuff through errata (Wolf Cloaks, Priest, Berserker in WD.) So where does that leave Marienburgers? As an awkward warband, very good at the start, due to their 100gc, and then progressively worse and the campaign rolls on. Also, their skill selection is the worst of any of the three Mercs, so Asp and I did some optional rules:

SPECIAL RULES
+1 to rarity rolls
Start with a brace of duelling pistols that cannot be sold (instead of starting with +100gc)
Access to these skills:

False Orders
Working with the mercantile guilds, an elaborate forgery of a rivalling warband's orders is dispatched to an unsuspecting foe.

One enemy hired sword or henchman capable of gaining experience can do nothing for the first D3 turns of the game.

The Best Money Can Buy
The warrior uses his own standing with the merchantile guilds to upgrade his weaponry.

At the start of each battle, warrior can choose one of the following:
(1) One weapon in the warrior's possession that is not armour piercing gains the armour piercing special rule.
(2) One normal pistol in warrior's possession becomes a duelling pistol for the remainder of the battle.
(3) Warriors armour save is 1 better than it actually is. Warrior must have an armour save to use this.

Spies
The innocuous merchants that the enemy warband was trading with before the battle were actually spying on the enemy warband for the upcomming battle.

Enemy must deploy 2 models each time you deploy 1.
You always get the first turn.

Cloak and Dagger
The warrior has a habit of entering into sinister mercantile contracts.

Before each battle, secretly nominante 1 enemy hero. If this warrior takes that enemy hero out of action, he gains an additional +1 experience. If multiple warriors in the warband have this skill, all must target the same enemy.

Definitely don't like it.
1. 100gc starting bonus is enough (not mentioning +1 to find rare items).
2. Spies - I always thought that player A deploys his entire warband and then player B does the same. So it doesn't make sens to me.
3.False Orders - Background text is bad. I can't imagine captain writing orders for each of his let's say 8 men, that would be odd. And how these fake orders would be delivered? Not mentioning forging "orders" for races such as orcs, skaven, beastmen or undead...and precise the term nothing.
Marienburgers should have "merchant" skills, not spying/intelligence ones.

I too think a 20% starting bonus is substantial, and find that the +1 on rarity is quite nice as well. Given the statistical spread of a 2d6 roll, +1 to the result marks a substantial increase in the probability that you will find the extremely rare (R 11 and 12) items.

Also, as Catachanfrog points out, the rationale for some of the specific changes seems a little dodgy. He mentioned the orders thing, but I also wonder why the "Best that Money Can Buy" skill means only temporary upgrades. Rules-wise I understand (balance), but if the item is supposedly a superior-quality item that the hero was able to acquire because of his trading skills, why would the improvement be temporary and shift from one item to another from game to game?

That said, I don't think any of the new skills are overpowered, broken, or whatever.

Perhaps reduce the starting amount of 600g down to a little less and use percentage modifiers on buying/selling. (this will last all campaign meaning that it wont taper off).

So for example every item is 15% cheaper to buy and when selling an item the gold received is 65% instead of 50%.

Shows they are better at bartering - not sure if this is completely within their fluff though..

straight up 15 % discount on weapons, armour, equipment and hired swords (but not hiring warband members) could also work.

edit: i think maybe the reason for the skills was that marienburgers are like a cross of the dutch and the italian/machiavellian renaisassance. so its quite fitting that they have devious skills, imo.

An interesting suggestion, Lewis, although it might make a better replacement for the existing bonus to searches for rare items than the 20% starting bonus. (I think the +1 BS for Reiklander marksmen and the +1 Str for Middenheimer captains and champs are most significant in the early game, which the 20% starting bonus Marienburgers have also matters most).

I kind of like the effect of the False Orders skill, if not the rationale (like catachanfrog, the idea of formal written orders seems a bit odd in this context). How about:

Carouser: the hero is has a strong head for alcohol, and is adept at making new friends in the seedy drinking establishments clustered around Mordheim. The hero can nominate a human, elf, dwarf, ogre or halfling hired sword or henchman and incapacitate him as the result of a drinking binge; in the next scenario the targeted warrior arrives on a random board edge d3 turns after the the beginning of the game. The hero can attempt to have the same affect on a second warrior, but must make a toughness check. If he fails, the hero rather than the second targeted warrior is deployed d3 turns late.

In our last campaign we used a 10% reduced warband rating. They appear to be weaker in Combat, beacuse they are "just" merchants and not warriors.

Otherwise you could give them a free "Haggle" as warband Rule. They get around 7 gold per game extra, to sustain their troops. This haggle may also be used to reduce the cost of hired swords.