Dark Elves

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I haven't time to look up the precise wording of the rule, but the upshot of the rules as written is that you may not use a type of armor unless you have it on your equipment list.

What is the precise wording from the rules of the game which you are referring to?

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My TC #12 does not list heavy armor for the Dark Elves. Ithilmar has been ruled as heavy armor in FAQs, thus the need for a house rule.

There are various examples from non-Mordheim literature, from the Warhammer game background which illustrate characters wearing gromril armour who are not dwarfs.

I think you are getting the choices available from a starting warband list confused with what can happen during the course of a campaign.

There is no skill required to dress a warrior. My understanding is that if armour becomes available during a campaign then a warrior can wear it regardless of what equipment was listed for the warband at the start.

There are strictures which cover exceptions. ie, Battle Monks and Amazons prefer to fight in the nude.

Armour is costly enough that players ought to be able to decide for themselves what to dress their warriors up in, based on the amount of gold crowns available to spend on them.

Regards,

Werekin

@werekin... You must have missed a lot of different threads on this very forum. Every one of those threads ends in the conclusion that armour can only be equipped if it is listed in the equipment list for the warrior. Gromril, ithilmar and that new armour in BTB are all listed as heavy armour and therefore cannot ever be equipped by warriors who have no armour in there equipment list or only light armour in their equipment list. This is because there is no ' armour expert' skill.

I think the wording Von Kurst was looking for is this bit:

LRB wrote:

buying new equipment between games

As explained in the Trading section, warriors may purchase new equipment and armaments using the warband’s treasury. Warriors can also swap equipment between themselves. Alternatively, old equipment can be hoarded and re-used at a later date.

Weapons and armour purchased, swapped or taken from storage for your warband must be of an appropriate type for the warrior, as indicated by the warband lists.[emphasis added]

When the game was first released RAW it was impossible for *anyone* to use gromril or ithilmar armour because it was not on their lists. Almost invariably every group made a house-rule (sometimes not even realising they were making a house-rule) that anyone who got the exotic armours could wear them. After some time GW released a patch saying that both gromril and ithilmar counted as heavy armours so that anyone with heavy armour on their list could use it.

In my circle we ignored the patch and kept our own house-rule that Ithilmar counted as a light armour and Gromril counted as a heavy armour.

Thanks you for pointing out the particular paragraph regarding the equipping Lord 0. Tucked in inconspicuously as it is with the 'Campaigns' chapter.

To clarify my previous comment was intended to state; My understanding is that if specialist armour (e.g. gromril, ithilmar, chaos armour and any type of enchanted magic armour) becomes available during a campaign then a warrior can wear it regardless of what equipment was listed for the warband at the start.

If the FAQ patch were to stand-up, then the FAQ response statement would need to have been considered by the publishers and the developers of Cities of Gold. I don't believe that it was. Two obvious contradictions from Warhammer background are;

1. The warband rules indicate that Norse warbands wouldn't wear heavy armour. Presumably it gets too hot over in Skeggi, the Norse colony in Lustria! However, they loot more than their fair share of ithilmar and gromril. Norscans will use rare weapons and wear rare pieces of armour of any kind when they steal it. Perhaps the northmen aren't fans of heavy armour but there are precedents for them to strap on gromril or Chaos armour.

2. Dark Elf military are known to wear heavy armour. A fact not so relevant in Mordheim. Light as silk and stronger than steel, Ithilmar is forged in the land of the elves and the druchii are renegades from these lands. Yes if course the Dark Elves wear ithilmar! They have entire wardrobes lined with the stuff.

Screw the FAQ. If neither ithilmar nor gromril impedes movement then it's not as heavy as they said it was.

Another question then...

Q. Does 150 gold crowns buy a Hero a full suit of gromril armour?

A. You'd be lucky to get the breastplate for that price-tag! This mercenary wears one. And he had to kill for it.

Regards,

Werekin

p.s. Oh and thanks Rat Lemming for the reminder about the Cathayan Plate.

Thank you Lord 0. I was thinking of this section from the Starting a Warband rules:

Mordheim Rulebook. p.65 wrote:

Weapons and armour
You may buy additional equipment between battles, but your warriors can only use weapons and armour listed in their warband entry.

Either way I could add to the Oops rules thread that we blissfully allowed anyone to use any type of armor they wanted to after warband creation if you found it or bought it. Depending on the player, we still run into the occasional skaven in Gromril or Elf in heavy armor because it follows roleplaying tradition if nothing esle.

As for the Cities of Gold team, they wrote rules for 3 different types of Bone Armour, 2 different stat lines for Cold Ones depending on where you encountered them, 2 Daggers of Sotek again encountered in different ways, different rules for Mist and Fog (thus you could encounter mist in the Fog of War scenario if you were barmy enough to roll for weather); my list goes on. It is not inconcievable that they were unaware of or just ignored the FAQ. Keeping FAQs straight is hard for Mordhiem.

@werekin... yes lamellar armour. We liked it in our BTB campaign. I didn't have my rulebook on hand to get the correct spelling! Thanks Lord 0 and VK for quoting the rules. I couldn't go find them. I do agree though that this is an example where RAW with the FAQ are strict to the point of silliness. I haven't implemented it yet but I am fond of Lord 0's rules to count Ithilmar as Light Armour.

New test campaign. The Dark Elves had three games last night - won two and (due to scenarios and a little luck with the dice) got insane amounts of wyrdstone.

They started out 7 models (5 heros and 2 cold ones). Now they are 9 (5 heros, 2 cold ones and 2 corsairs). The Highborn has Fay Quickness and the following gear:

Axe; Axe; Sea Dragon Cloak; Light Armour; Rabbit's Foot; Shield; Helmet; Lucky Charm; Garlic

Against shooting he will have a 2+ armour save.
Against melee he will have a 4+ armour save (3+ if uses the shield).
That is - if the Lucky Charm or Fay Quickness don't safe him first.

And this is after three battles. But it's not just him. The Fellblades have:

Halberd; Knife; Sea Dragon Cloak; Light Armour; Rabbit's Foot; Shield; Helmet; Lucky Charm; Garlic
and
Halberd; Knife; Rabbit's Foot; Light Armour; Lucky Charm; Shield; Garlic

In the last battle Outlaws managed to get a Fellblade out of Action by a critical hit (bow). Besides that the Dark Elves were pretty much untouchable.

So, yes, hired sword restriction is not enough.

I'm happy so many of you are sharing your views. While reading I realized people argue from different positions. There is the fluff take - "would it make sense for a Dark Elf to do this in Mordheim"? There is the rule book take - "in this paragraph it says that...". And there is the balance take - "the rules are broken/incomplete - what can we do to fix them"? Right now the latter is our main concern. Or perhaps something like: "The rules are broken/incomplete - how can we fix them with the least amount of rewriting and still be true to the fluff?"

Von Kurst wrote:

Not to quibble but I had not heard that Hired Swords were an unbalnacing aspect of the Dark Elves. Why have you found them so?

It is not. But restriction of HS's is one way to balance the imbalanced aspects. We hold warbands against Mercenaries - and of course they can't all have their stats, their eqip options, their special rules (either 600 gcs and Rapier (with Weapons Training), 4 BS marksmen and Rapier (with Weapons Training), or 5 S Captain/Champs and Wolf Cloak), etc. On the upside the Dark Elves have higher stats, more special rules, special skills, Dark Elf Blade, spell caster, Cold Ones. Downsides are limited and expensive eqip, high recruitment costs, limited shooting, and a limit of 12 models. The Warband description doesn't say anything about HS's, and so it could have been an easy way to give them flaws without rewriting anything. But (as stated above) it doesn't look like it's enough .

So far we (in the group) have discussed:

Hired Sword restriction (will be a disadvantage late game - right now it makes them spend all their gcs on gear, making them extremely well-equipped). They could cost double.

Dark Elves can't wear Ithilmar Armour (current discussion: in favour of allowing Ithilmar, but making the SDC less powerfull)

Not letting the Sorceress wear the SDC (we are testing it in our current test campaign and will probably end up allowing it).

Make them count as Skavens on exploration (neither an advantage nor a disadvantage, but true to the fluff)

What scenarios are you playing? In most scenarios we play the use of mounts would be pointless. The only campaign I've ever played in where mounts were helpful on a regular was the Nemesis Crown adventure, because the games were all played in a Games Workshop battle-bunker using Warhammer tables where wilderness terrain was sparse and buildings were in short supply!

If the dark elves are mounted on cold ones then they have a huge advantage. Otherwise you have a small well-equipped warband, which struggles to avoid routing after the first couple of casualties occur.

If you're playing on a fairly open wilderness battlefield then I would recommend investing some time in building the table up into 3-dimensions. This will restrict the effect of elven missile fire dominance and put tactical limitations on mounts.

My main criticism really though is that you've permitted one of the 'elder race' warbands to start with 5 Heroes. A lot of campaign groups place a 4 Hero handicap on elf warbands. There is even a file containing the house list version of the Dark Elf warband floating around. Essentially it is the same, but has only 0-1 Fellblade.

It's worth applying other relatively minor handicaps if a player in your campaign is using dwarfs or elves when it's been established they are one of the strongest players in the group. My favourite one is to apply a +2 experience point handicap to Dwarf & Elf henchmen & hired swords plus a 4 Hero handicap for dwarfs. If a player joined mid-way through a campaign then the GM could similarly apply a reverse of the handicap to give the player's warband a head-start.

Regards,

Werekin

p.s. Lamellar, yes that's what I realised the Cathayans call their plate armour while we were playtesting BTB. Dragon Swords was the Reikspiel for the katana blades. Cathayan 'candles' should have been firesticks/firepots (research slip). Cheers for that Lemming.

werekin wrote:

What scenarios are you playing? In most scenarios we play the use of mounts would be pointless. The only campaign I've ever played in where mounts were helpful on a regular was the Nemesis Crown adventure, because the games were all played in a Games Workshop battle-bunker using Warhammer tables where wilderness terrain was sparse and buildings were in short supply!

If the dark elves are mounted on cold ones then they have a huge advantage. Otherwise you have a small well-equipped warband, which struggles to avoid routing after the first couple of casualties occur.

Cold One Beasthounds = Cold Ones for short . None of the Dark Elves are mounted. Still they are doing fine (though they did voluntarily rout in their second battle against Possessed).

werekin wrote:

My main criticism really though is that you've permitted one of the 'elder race' warbands to start with 5 Heroes. A lot of campaign groups place a 4 Hero handicap on elf warbands. There is even a file containing the house list version of the Dark Elf warband floating around. Essentially it is the same, but has only 0-1 Fellblade.

It's worth applying other relatively minor handicaps if a player in your campaign is using dwarfs or elves when it's been established they are one of the strongest players in the group. My favourite one is to apply a +2 experience point handicap to Dwarf & Elf henchmen & hired swords plus a 4 Hero handicap for dwarfs. If a player joined mid-way through a campaign then the GM could similarly apply a reverse of the handicap to give the player's warband a head-start.

The Dwarven Treasure Hunters only start with 4 heroes (as it is written in the Annual). Right now they are the second most successful warband in the test campaign - after 5 battles they have 6 heroes (the regular ones and two Thunderers) and they even had a LGT to spare

The most successful warband so far is the Beastmen.

But of course one test campaign doesn't say it all...

EDIT: Restricting the elven warbands to 4 starting heros is a possibility. Stronzo and I have just discussed the warbands over lunch, and we want to test the Shadow Elves more before editing them further. I don't think we will decrease the amount of Fellblades. Instead we have discussed fixing the Stupidity rule of the Cold One Beasthounds (as of now they don't suffer from the regular Stupidity rule, but they can use the Beastmaster's leadership - not the Highborn's) and giving the Sea Dragon Cloak a 5+ save against shooting and 6+ against melee. As stated above: We try to hold warbands against Mercenaries. And yes, Outlaws don't stand a chance against Dark Elves, but that only means the Outlaws should be buffed (as they would be underpowered compared to Reiklanders). Possibly by giving the Cleric more (combat) skills. For starters . They need to be able to do something about armour.

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Cold One Beasthounds = Cold Ones for short

Haha cheeky. Beasthounds then, ok not heinous at all!

The Dwarven Treasure Hunters only start with 4 heroes (as it is written in the Annual).

Yeh sorry, poor choice of words again by me. What I meant was a minor handicap of +2 experience can be applied to Dwarfs warbands in addition to the 4 Hero handicap (that already applies) for dwarfs.

Treasure Hunters, Rangers (from Nemesis Crown) and the Fire Dwarfs (from BTB) all featured 4 starting Heroes. I think that really says something about how elder races* ought to be handled.

*Note: Maneaters were originally thoroughly playtested with 4 starting Ogre Heroes but this proved to be way too weak in the opening sequence of battles! Ogres sometimes being referred to as one of the 'elder races' I thought to mention this.

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Right now they are the second most successful warband in the test campaign - after 5 battles they have 6 heroes (the regular ones and two Thunderers) and they even had a LGT to spare.

This doesn't surprise me Shelena. Dwarfs are strong. They always perform extremely well in the campaigns I've ran or participated in.

In the first 6 rounds of our last campaign we only had one Hero score a Lad's Got Talent.

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I don't think we will decrease the amount of Fellblades.

A player has been using the Dark Elf Corsairs in my campaign... Being as it was an urban setting he suggested dropping the Beastmaster in favour of hiring 2 Fellblades because you wouldn't generally expect to see elves leashing up beasthounds!

This worked fine for a few rounds... Then as it turned out, the player and I realised that a Beastmaster would have been more valuable in our campaign because; 1. Beastmasters whip arse!! 2. I've written a post battle sequence chapter that includes an Animal Emporium. 3. We have a core scenario which (if you win outright by a huge margin) there is an option to buy a trained beast which requires a capable handler to feed it, whip it etc.

Anyway it's one of those cases where it's nicer to let the player choose his poison. Ahem, awful pun for dark elf fans.

Hey guys

Do you know the dark elves warband from druchii.net? Is a revised version from gold cities of Lustria druchii warband. I have not tried but looks good, although I don't like the idea of ​​having Witch Elves in a non-khainite only dark elves warband.

http://www.druchii.net/viewtopic.php?t=64005

Pyyr wrote:

Hey guys

Do you know the dark elves warband from druchii.net? Is a revised version from gold cities of Lustria druchii warband. I have not tried but looks good, although I don't like the idea of ​​having Witch Elves in a non-khainite only dark elves warband.

http://www.druchii.net/viewtopic.php?t=64005

I've seen it before, yes. I may be wrong, but for several reasons I find it more imba than the Town Cryer 12 version:

Fey Acuity. I find the fluff reason for this weak. It taps into the merits of the Dwarves.

Their start equip is too cheap.

Having Throwing Knives on their equip list taps into the Skaven's merits.

The Draich is awesome, but too cheap.

The Uraithen Master skill is two skills for the price of one.

They start with less experience points. Yes, their stats are worse and they are more expensive, but it looks like gear, income and skills compensate for that.


Dunno. Has anyone tested both warbands?

The druchii from Lustria setting hits the nail right on the head! It's unreasonable having 5 starting Heroes is all. Perhaps the beastmasters should've been Henchmen... I don't know.

What I do know is those malicious corsairs bend-over-double when they end into combat with dwarfs, ogres or the northmen!

In our last campaign, we played both the Dark Elves and the Druchii list.

The Dark Elves list was severely over powered and easily abused. We replaced it with the Druchii list mid way through, and while the latter was still a bit on the powerful side, it was far more manageable.

The ruling for the sea dragon cloak is that it Can NOT stack with armors. This is set by prescedent in the core rules. All pieces of armor that can stack (barding, shields) specifically state that they add +1 to the Armor save. Sea Dragon cloak doesnt state that it Adds, rather that it gives an armor save of 5+/4+. if people started stacking Cloak with Light armor, one could argue that I could then stack Light Armor with Heavy armor. which is silly. fluff wise, it makes no sense, but its the rules.

the Druchii list clarifies this better.


In the end, my group decided to ban both dark elf lists until a suitable fix is discovered for them. reducing the amount of heros they start with ,changing XP values, all good starts.

Shadow Warriors.. again, extremely over powered. so much so, that GW officially banned them. So that tells you a lot right there about their place in a campaign! whatever fix is discovered for the dark elves, im sure will be applied to the Shadow Warriors for equal success.

I disagree with everything in 'elf-hater' Zekk's post.

About 5 or 6 years ago I played Mordheim in a campaign event at Warhammer World in Nottingham. There was a guy playing Shadow Elves. I routed his warband with my Norsemen. Frogprince routed the elves with his Skaven warband! He beat some of the other players warbands. I understand he had a rough time of things against the Dwarf Treasure Hunters.

Build more scenery and stop bitching about elves already. Just saying.

Update - and very much in line with Werekin's post:

I've now rebooted the dark elves 6 times. 6 times the warband felt apart after a few games - mainly due to death of the leader. As we really wanted to test them (and see how they worked late(r) game) we decided to give them a final chance against the lead warband in the campaign. Equipped with one cloak and two black metal swords and little else, they heros hid, while four corsairs (armed with one axe each) met the beastmen in the middle of the battlefield. And after very few turns the elves voluntarily routed. One henchman died and the rest got 4 XP each and leveled. After three games they are doing okay. Not fantastic, but reasonably okay.

So for now, we leave them as written. They might be overpowered late game - we'll see about that. But so far, they have been fragile to say the least. Might be dice, might be lack of skill - but 7 builds are a lot of goes at one warband.

Edit: We've tried the dark elves against reiklanders, skavens, shadow elves, outlaws, possessed, and undeads. They won once over Outlaws and twice over Possessed (a very unlucky build that disbanned as well (all levels went to leadership) - they have just played against the reincarnation and lost).

I think you guys disband too easy haha. High leadership chaos would be scary. maybe not in attacks but they don't rout unless they want too. I don't get the whole disbanding after a death of the leader for the darkies either. its just the leader. slightly higher stats and what str skills.

I played a lot SW. They seem good, but against Reiklanders they are to fragil (we didn't used sniper) and against posessed with speed skills they were still fragil and had problems with high toughness (Possesed 3 Wound and T5).

If you remove sniper for SW and use a lot of scenery every small fragil warband will get its blow in melee...
The same for the dark elf warband from Lustria. I played three times against them.
They seemed strong, but if you use cover you can get near them and hit them.

We like to use many small pieces of scenery like fens, barrels, small barricades. You can run from one to another and hide or at least have cover.

@disbanding after dead of leader:
i think the leader died to early in the campaign, that is was to hard to compensate. Perhaps no henchmen were near an advance and they were cut to 4 heroes without enough income to cover future loss...
I like to keep those warbands to have a warband at hand, if a new player enters the campaign and doesn't want to fight the top warbands...

Saranor wrote:

I played a lot SW. They seem good, but against Reiklanders they are to fragil (we didn't used sniper) and against posessed with speed skills they were still fragil and had problems with high toughness (Possesed 3 Wound and T5).

If you remove sniper for SW and use a lot of scenery every small fragil warband will get its blow in melee...

This is a problem we have seen with both Shadow Warriors and Outlaws. The elves still only have two games in this campaign - first game against a now disbanned Dark Elves build (SW won of course) and second game against Possessed (SW lost). And yes, high toughness (and armour saves) will be a huge problem later on if they don't go melee. And it's even worse for Outlaws with the bow rule (and lower stats).


I agree that it's possible for a warband to flourish after the death of a leader. But not when he dies with gear worth 90 gcs (160 gcs in total) after the first game

Leadership is the least desired stat increase early in the game (with few exceptions - for warband leaders and heroes such as the DE beastmaster it's somewhat okay). Oh, that dreaded '8'! Most heroes will at some point get a leadership increase, but after the second game (especially if other warbands get good levels) it's frustrating - even more so if you are already immune to fear...

But remember - this is a test campaign. We play to test out builds and house rules. And hence we are more inclined to reboot a warband if it can't keep up. That said, I can't wait to play DE against SW this afternoon. A just got a henchman hero with a repeater crossbow, quick shot - and some assist from another hero with Poison Master. Four strength 4 arrows a turn are going to be fun! (and possibly overpowered - we are testing out the combo).

I didn't relies that it was after the first fight you lost your leader, yeah that's a huge loss haha. I understand the whole testing aspect to what you guys are doing. It just feels like the dark elfs in our campaign have been dominating quite well. there sheer speed and ability to stay at range with repeater cross bows 2 shots with a -1 bs throw on trick shot and theirs not much issue hitting tings with bs4 +. But hes pretty developed too so hes got 6 hero's usually none of them get taken out of action. sitting in at like 350+ war band rating.

The rikelanders who are the other well developed team has been relay the only team that has had good luck against them. I made the joke that my orcs have fought them 4-5 times but the 6 way battle was the first time they seen an elf get taken out of action. Im not saying there OP or anything, I just know there prety hard to take out. 3+ armor save 4+ fay/stepaside and or/ dodge. they are very tanky.

Agreed. Their defenses are better than all others in our campaign, but given the storyline of that campaign, plus the fact that they are still limited to 12, means that they are a tough warband to beat, especially later on as they develop.

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A just got a henchman hero with a repeater crossbow, quick shot - and some assist from another hero with Poison Master. Four strength 4 arrows a turn are going to be fun! (and possibly overpowered - we are testing out the combo).

Using quickshot with a repeater crossbow doesn't give your warrior 4 shots. The skill quickshot does not double your shots, it allows you to 'shoot twice'. A repeater already allows you to 'choose to shoot twice'. Quick shot will allow 2 shots without the -1 modifier for firing twice.

Von Kurst wrote:

Quote :

A just got a henchman hero with a repeater crossbow, quick shot - and some assist from another hero with Poison Master. Four strength 4 arrows a turn are going to be fun! (and possibly overpowered - we are testing out the combo).

Using quickshot with a repeater crossbow doesn't give your warrior 4 shots. The skill quickshot does not double your shots, it allows you to 'shoot twice'. A repeater already allows you to 'choose to shoot twice'. Quick shot will allow 2 shots without the -1 modifier for firing twice.

So far we have house ruled the doubling (and also that poison can be used on a whole stash of arrows). As said - we are still testing. Actually, I like your interpretation too. I hadn't thought of that.

Shelena wrote:

That said, I can't wait to play DE against SW this afternoon. A just got a henchman hero with a repeater crossbow, quick shot - and some assist from another hero with Poison Master. Four strength 4 arrows a turn are going to be fun! (and possibly overpowered - we are testing out the combo).

*sigh* I really wrote that? Oh, well. Update:
Two dark elf heroes out after SW's first turn. I routed