My Groups Compiled Rule Changes

I just got done working on these two documents and thought I'd share.

My groups has been playing Mordheim for a few years now and have around 200 games between us using a score of warbands. We have play tested most of the rules I'm outlining quite extensively and found them to be fair and fun. We hope you have a similar experience. I welcome comments and critiques, but this is mostly just a way of help out those who haven't worked out may of Mordheim's kinks for themselves. The revised skill trees may be of wider interest.

Mordheim Rule Changes

Revised Skill Tree

Enjoy.

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My appologies. I'm not used to uploaded file hosting. I made the account for this post so people can use my account to view.

Username: rhoaran
Password: mordheim1

How do other people post pdfs?

i liked the thing about low walls but don't you get into endless fights about what constitutes a low wall ? when to apply it and when not?

overal, i like your rules -theyre like halfway between Mordheim and Coreheim with some extra colorfulness thrown in

Glad you like them. They've been quite stable. And you hit the nail on the head (between Mordheim and Coreheim).

The walls have never been an issue because we have very defined terrain: building/ruins, walls, and forests. There is no real grey area.

I'll propose the strongman skill mod for sure. Rageful swing is cool too ! Militiaman would encourage the use of halberds and is indeed a must ! I like packmaster but I fear it will give another advantage to warbands that have access to animals (they are cheap/expandable). Animals are a great advantage for any warband !

I also like the torches ! Interesting and cheap add-on...

Warband erratas are useful, tough I would not give the dwarf that advantage... they are already strong enough...


I think that the rules for building/looting are well done but if you play a bit of narrative they become an advantage for ''evils'' only as the ''good guys wont'' pillage citizens !!! Seen this way they are useless for us...

I ask your permission to include some of your stuff to my own home rules PDF. I'm currently ''scribing'' it.

@Von Kurst

We never saw it written one way or another about the difficult terrain so we specified.

Mind Focus and Magical Apititude were simply added to the list for easy reference. And we don't allow the other skills in that issue (hunch, tactical??, scrolls).

There is a lot from the annual and we do use most of the other stuff too. We included some within our house rules if we changed them. Torches for instance don't have a penalty to hit as they do in Empire in Flames.

@Goglutin

Looting can be seen also as 'borrowed, loaned, or awarded' so it makes sense for goodly bands.

I dont know about Militiaman, seems a little forced to me, as it is just there to make halberd a more viable choice. In reality, if they underwent militia training, and thus learned discipline, I'd limit it to that. Sorta like this:

Militia Training:
The warrior has at some point undergone militia training, learning the basics of combat and dicipline from a combat instructor. The warrior can use the Ld of any model within 6", not just the ones with the leader skill.

This works better IMO as a militia fights as a unit against a threat of some kind, and therefore the "strength in numbers" feel should be elevated.

But that is just me. I prefer fluff over gameplay most of the days

I rather like Militiaman and to me it doesn't seem any more forced than Expert Swordsman is for making a sword a viable choice. Speaking of which, I notice that you have expanded Expert swordsman to work with a rapier, but not the swordbreaker. Given that they are both count as sword weapons was there any reason in particular the rapier was included, but the swordbreaker was not?

I like packmaster and rabble-rouser and will most likely be stealing them. What was the reasoning for putting packmaster in academic rather than animal? Was it because you don't use the animal handling skills from EIF?

In my group we use the Animal Handling and Cavalry skill tables from EIF and allow all heroes access to them in addition to skill tables they are allowed normally.

Of curiosity, what made you disallow tactician and hunch? In my group we found that including tactician in the academic skill list meant the lack of access to academic skills for your leader was a bit more serious and actually *meant* something. The only warbands this affected in our group were Orcs, Dwarfs, Ostlanders, and Beastmen. Because these are all top-tier warbands it didn't affect their viability very much.

Hunch we put into Leadership skills (accessable to all leaders and heroes with max LD). This reduces the sometimes overwhelming power of Infiltrate without nerfing the guts out of it. Because only Skaven and Elves had access to Infiltrate it was effectively a nerf to those top-tier warbands it wasn't really considered a bad thing.

Having such potent leadership skills available means you now have a choice with your leader. You can make them a better leader or you can make them a better fighter or something in between. In this case we found more choices meant more fun.

@Lord 0... I like the idea of Leadership skills. A great way to buff leaders and makes Leadership characteristic increases suck less.

I am always curious about how groups who enjoy playing with the skill tactician actually play the skill. It is a horribly written skill with huge implications that are not covered or perhaps even considered by the authors. Can it be used in Surprise Attack scenarios? What about Defend the Find? Can a player who is Ambushed use his Tactician skill? How about Hunch? We found too much arguement, too little fun.

To be honest I am not sure I can help you much. To us it was a pretty unambiguously worded skill and we use it pretty much RAW. The only bit that needed a bit of interpretation was the 8"-instead-of-12"-deployment bit, but we decided to go with as close to RAW as we could and made it so that if you don't have an 8" deployment e.g. defend the find etc. then you can't swap it for a 12" deployment so this part is ignored. You still get to redeploy after your opponent is finished deploying though.

By our reading of the rule, Tactician is triggered after infiltration.

We are currently testing a house-rule that modifies the 8"-instead-of-12"-deployment bit to allow it to account for non-8" deployment zones. In single-player you get an additional 50% or 4", whichever is smaller and in multiplayer you get an additional 50% or 3", whichever is smaller. It seems to be working well so far and we have been using it for quite some time.

Similarly for hunch - it is a pretty clearly worded skill with not that much room for misinterpretation. It says who the skill may be used by (the leader), who it applies to (0-3 xp earning , and where they may or may not be deployed (in a ruined building not within 12" or in the deployment zone). While we were playing in Mordheim we left it RAW, but once outside of Mordheim we house-ruled it to be "inside a terrain feature", so copses, swamps, non-ruined buildings, etc were valid deployment locations.

As for when they can be used, well, the skills say they can always be used and none of the scenarios say you can't, so, yes - they can both be used in all those scenarios you listed and, indeed, we have *never* had anyone argue that you can't.

I guess that is the advantage of playing in a group that is almost all competitive power-gamers. We play the rules RAW and only change them if they aren't fun. If an RAW reading leads to an odd situation that is still fun then we will change our understanding of the flavour text rather than change the rule, e.g. healing herbs don't say they are one use only or anything so rather than something eaten they are obviously something applied externally or a kit or replenished after the game or something. After all, it is a game - not a simulation so you just have to put up with a certain amount of abstraction from time to time.

Similarly, for tactician you can still use it even if you are ambushed because event though your leader is going to be ambushed he can think "Ah, this would be a good spot for someone to ambush me - I had better deploy my guys like *so* to avoid it". This anticipation is modeled by your opponent actually deploying and then you redeploying. Multiple people with tactician redeploying models the "but if he knows I know he knows I know, then instead I should deploy *here*" kind of thinking.

Hunch doesn't need any kind of justification, because it is exactly what it says on the tin - your leader gets a hunch about where some people should be deployed.

Now that I think about it, someone arguing that you can't use hunch or tactician because of flavour reasons sounds suspiciously like a WAAC player disguising their reasoning as 'spirit-of-the-game' reasoning. *Shrug*. Each group has their own style, I guess .

What does "WAAC" mean?

I agree with Lemming; great idea on Leadership skills!

Quote :

WAAC may refer to:

• WAAC (FM), a radio station (92.9 FM) licensed to Valdosta, Georgia, United States
  
• West African Airways Corporation
  
• WAAC (Nigeria), an airline that succeeded West African Airways Corporation after its folding
  
• Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (Britain), a branch of the British military in the First World War
  
• Women's Army Corps, once abbreviated WAAC, a branch of the U.S. military in the Second World War
  
• Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center, an extension branch of the College of Design and Architecture of Virginia Tech
  
• Win At All Costs - Motto of the West London Lacrosse Club

You went to Wikipedia too!
That doesn't explain "what" Lord-O means I don't think unless I missed it in there some place.

Yup, the last one - Win At All Costs. This is the sort of player that will argue all the rules, even if they know they are wrong, nudges models, fudges dice-rolls, 'forgets' to apply penalties, 'forgets' to remind newbies of rules that would help them, that sort of thing.

Not to be confused with a power-gamer. A power-gamer will use all the rules they know to win, but they will use the same rules for them and their opponent and in addition to keeping within the rules of the game they will also keep within the rules of normal decency. A power-gamer tends to get their fun from the challenge of opposition, whereas a spirit-of-the-gamer tends to get their fun from the building of a narrative.

Neither of these approaches to fun are any less valid, but if you put a narrative gamer up against a power-gamer neither of them are likely to have much fun. The narrative player will feel that their opponent isn't sticking to the narrative and the power-gamer will feel that their opponent is somehow 'throwing' the game.

Of course, people aren't that simple and most people can enjoy a game of either type so long as they know what type it will be before they start, but most have a preference for one or the other. For myself, I tend to be 80/20 powergaming/narrative. Happily, most of my friends are similarly power-gamey and there is only one WAACer, but if we keep an eye on him he is pretty decent.

lol, how did I miss the Win At All Cost at the bottom both when I looked it up AND when Von Kurst put it up there I don't know (must be the one that actually applied wasn't highlighted at all ). Sorry
I get the types of players and I tend to lean more on the Power Gamer side of things. Fluff is great and all but I want to win... but if I can make my fluff (in and out of game) work for me then all the better.