Thoughts, Questions and a awesomenessly suggestion...

Have been playing for a few months now, recently even a few games on Ezekiels awesome terrain. And I love the game. Some things don't make sense to me though.

1. My Dwarf Noble starts with 20 exp but has 1 point more in WS and BS over a basic 0 exp Clansman. So where are the other 6 upgrades. In the longterm a Clansman is a potentially better fighter then the Noble.
2. Random upgrades. Random silly upgrades can really sidetrack your idea of what you want your warriors to be. Why not let people simply choose their upgrades.
3. Magic seems very unpractical/underpowered even. Also again the randomness in spell selection. Keep in mind I haven't been playing long and I might have a wrong idea on magic. I can see potential in a good developed Sorcerer with handfull of Magic Tomes but that becomes extremely expensive real fast.

Some rules questions.
4. A Thunderer becomes a hero, I can then choose ANY skill group? (the ones available to dwarfs anyway). Could I choose Combat en Strength for example?
5. I have an open hero slot so when a (wrong) henchman rolls Talent can I ignore that roll because I would prefer another henchman to advance to hero. Or is the only option to reales that henchman, which seems a but silly to solve it that way but ok.

And a suggestion
6. Dwarfs need a mount! A ram, bear, boar, wolf, Ostrich...wait, wait a minute! I see an awesomenessly idea, A GYROCOPTER! Grimnir be praised, make it so

1. It is not so much that the leader is missing out, but more that the Clansman is getting stuff for free. A better comparison would be to a Beardling. That, and the leader has access to more skill-tables than a henchman levelled up is where some of that 20 xp goes. Comparing the noble to a TLGT clansman would be like comaring a captain to a TLGT swordsman - the better comparison would be the captain and the youngblood.

2. Random upgrades mean that you sometimes have to adapt what strategies for your heroes you use, thus meaning there are sometimes slight variations in heroes. If you can choose your upgrades then what happens is that everyone tends to pick the most optimum upgrades so everyone has nigh-identical heroes. In the previous game (Necromunda) you didn't even get to pick your skills - they were random too . That was kind of cool; you tended to value a great deal the ones that got a good combo of skills and stats. That being said there were no henchmen - everyone was a hero so you had more chances. Feel free to make a house-rule if it would make your group happier though.

3. Magic is a bit random, but a houserule that a number of groups have is that casters can pick their first spell and then roll for future spells. In terms of probability a casting roll is on par with a shooting roll-to-hit. Skills like Mind Focus and Magical Aptitude do a good bit to crank up the potency of casters. The spellbooks are expensive, but remember that no other class even has an *option* to effectively buy a skill i.e. a level-up that can otherwise only be gained by xp. Also, the tomes are expensive to buy, but they are not destroyed by use. You can get the free spell out of them for your wizard and then sell them following the normal rules.

4. The interpretation that my circle uses is that you get to pick any two of the basic skill tables (i.e. combat, shooting, strength, speed, and academic) and you get your racial skill table in addition to those two. We have used this interpretation for many years and it has brought us nothing but fun .

5. The interpretation we use in my group is that, yes, bad luck - the first one to get it is promoted. You may keep or dismiss the henchman as you choose. Sometimes henchmen grow and realise that their current position does not allow them to grow and will seek better opportunites with other warbands blah blah career growth, etc.

6. Dwarfs can use donkeys for a mount, but we replace the models with ponies and rams. They are stubborn, but with dwarf leadership, that isn't really a problem.

1. Ya, more Skill tables is a thing, and he generally gets more exp as leader.
2. Still not a big fan of the randomness, but I understand the cookie-cutter problem.
3. Choose first spell would help a lot yes.
4. Sounds good
5. Donkeys? Sigh. I'd prefer a Gyro =P

Thank you kindly for your time and answers.

Death from above

Custom gyro I made. Gyrocopter pieces, Flamecannon piece and classic fighterplane wings.

I love the Gyrocopter alá red baron style.

I would say every additional skill table is worth an upgrade. But basically you are right a hero who collects 20 xp is most of the time better but don't forget, many get evil injuries or die on the quest to collect 20xp.

And a dwarf leader with 40 xp should still be better than the clans man with 20 xp, right?

Regarding magic i am totally on your side. I also think it is too weak. We allow to choose the first spell during warband creation, this helps. Maybe this would be good for hiring of hired swords magic users too.

Interesting. In my group we find magic very potent indeed so I wonder what is being done differently? Are you using any house rules that nerf magic in any way? The only house rule we are using for magic is the 'casters get to pick their first spell' rule (which includes hired swords and so forth, just by-the-by) and that seems to be enough for us. We adopted that rule fairly early on as we noticed that if you rolled well your caster was awesome, but if you rolled poo then he was often poo himself.

That being said, by 'poo' I mean 'something that didn't gain you xp'. Many times the spell rolled was good, but because it didn't earn xp for the caster he was rapidly out-levelled by everyone else.

Some of the things that make magic so potent is that you can cast if you run, you can cast when you stand up, you can cast in melee (unless the spell says otherwise, of course) which means you can e.g. charge, fireball them in the face to kd/stun them, and then auto-hit/auto-ooa them in the close combat phase.

@lord 0:

No charge and firing a missile spell in our games, this is plain broken and in my opinion not what the designers intended to design. Missile spells are handled like range combat in our games.

But if you can choose your mages to have a missile spell it helps a lot. Some mages are support mages and can heal etc. and they have a problem, because they only receive exps for not dying.

For these guys we don't have a sufficient solution.

Sadly (or possibly 'happily' *shrug*) noone in my group has a telepathic link to the designers so none of us can know what they had in their minds and are instead forced to go only by what they wrote down . We play a rule RAW and if it leads to less fun, we change it; in the years of playing we have not felt the need to change the magic/close combat rules.

Every group is welcome to their own house-rules, of course .

We found that the no-casting-if-you-are-in-melee rule meant that you could really only use a caster as a kind of a sniper or, at best, a support sniper. If you had more fun from using your caster in melee and wanted the freedom to do so, well, bad luck for you. I can't remember if this is a real rule or a houserule, but we do play it that if you are in melee and you cast a missile then your only valid targets for the spell are those that are in base-to-base contact with the caster. If you are not in melee then you cannot nominate a target that *is* in melee.

SerialMoM wrote:

For these guys we don't have a sufficient solution.

Perhaps something along the line of "If the caster successfully casts at least one spell and takes no enemy model out of action for the whole game, at the end of the game they receive d3-1 xp.

In my group we either take a direct damage spell or, if they take a support spell, give them a bow or crossbow. That seems to do the trick for us.

Quote :

We found that the no-casting-if-you-are-in-melee rule meant that you could really only use a caster as a kind of a sniper or, at best, a support sniper. If you had more fun from using your caster in melee and wanted the freedom to do so, well, bad luck for you. I can't remember if this is a real rule or a houserule, but we do play it that if you are in melee and you cast a missile then your only valid targets for the spell are those that are in base-to-base contact with the caster. If you are not in melee then you cannot nominate a target that *is* in melee.

We don't have any current House Rules for magic, although we used to use the missile targeting rules as a guide until we got too many new players. We do often find magic to be amazingly powerful and would probably want to nerf it if, for example, we allowed the choice of the first spell.

As far as I can tell the "no-casting-if-you-are-in-melee rule" is one of your house rules. Some spells state that they may not be cast in melee and others state that that if cast in melee they can only target an enemy the caster is in melee with, but that's about it.

@Lord0 i just reread my. It was to harsh, sorry for that.

Do you also play the damage rule by the word?

"damage Some spells cause direct damage, and are resolved the same way as damage from shooting or blows in hand-to-hand combat. Spells do not cause critical hits. Models always receive armour saves against wounds caused by spells unless noted otherwise."

In my opinion you should divide the hit(s) of the spell between the target and yourself ( and others) if you are casting in close combat. This could help to balance the i charge, cast you knocked down/ stunned, take you out automatism.

@SerialMoM: That's ok, I just interpreted it as a vigorous declaration of your house-rule and why you use it .

As for the damage rule, we do. By "resolved the same way as damage from shooting or blows in hand-to-hand combat" we decided they meant you rolled to wound and rolled for injury as normal and things that let you e.g. save against wounds, modify injuries, etc. would work as normal.

We don't play that hits from magic in melee get randomised because a) there is no rule that says you do, b) it doesn't make sense that hits from magic would be randomised when hits from pistols are not, and c) we haven't found it reduces the overall fun of the game to leave it as it is.

Yes, it makes magic very powerful but you only get one caster, *everyone* has access to a caster of some description - even if it is just a TLGT person with the tome (a popular TLGT hero build that makes a change from a sniper ) and *everyone* knows how you deal with powerful magic - heck, it is a basic tenet of small-group combat across multiple universes from Mordheim to D&D to Shadowrun etc. Scrag the caster *first*.

The maneuvering and jockeying for position protecting your caster while trying to take out theirs is one more thing that discourages the simple 'dogpile in the middle' scenario and encourages a more tactical approach.

I must admit, I have seen other groups do this sort of thing - they nerf casting and nerf shooting (or at least have a gentleman's agreement that it is 'cowardly' and not to use it) and then wonder why they only real valid tactic is to all charge the opponent in one big lump. Ah well, every group has their own definition of fun so whatever works for them .

Also, the charge/kd/stunned/ooa-automatism is self-countered early game (and often into late-midgame too) by the fact that *you have to charge your squishy caster into combat*. If it doesn't work, and there is a very good chance that it won't, then your squishy caster is now in melee and not likely to survive. Even if he *does* survive it is now the opponent's turn and good old 'gank the caster *first*' comes into play.

Quote :

Also, the charge/kd/stunned/ooa-automatism is self-countered early game (and often into late-midgame too) by the fact that *you have to charge your squishy caster into combat*. If it doesn't work, and there is a very good chance that it won't, then your squishy caster is now in melee and not likely to survive. Even if he *does* survive it is now the opponent's turn and good old 'gank the caster *first*' comes into play.

Squishy casters?!
What makes spellcasters "squishy" when compared to other warriors? They have often the same profile as other "basic" warriors if not better and almost none limitation when choosing equipment (except armour of course), so are not worse than other warriors. Beastmen and orc shamans have very strong stats, sigmar matriarch has profile of a m.captain, same is with chaos mages (almost)... other casters are on par with average warband profile fighter - so there's nothing squishy about them. And stunning/knocking down in shooting, taking Ooa in close combat IS unfair and is not "self-countered" as you say. Every time I charge a werrior into combat there's posibility he'll be taken down, no matter who he is.

catachanfrog wrote:

Squishy casters?!
What makes spellcasters "squishy" when compared to other warriors?

Mostly skills. He won't have resilient, he won't have step aside, he won't have strike to injure, etc. Also, he won't have any armour either and it doesn't take long to get one's heroes armoured with at least light armour and shield. Yes, noone spends money on armour, but with rabbit's feet and a few tarot cards one can pick them up from looting easily enough and often using the armour is better than selling the armour so it still gets into play.

If he *does* have the afore-mentioned skills and warrior wizard so he can use the armour then he *won't* have all the skills he needs to make his spells more reliable and deadly. He won't get both until late campaign.

Granted, the matriarch and warrior priest are exceptions to the armour thing, but most of the caster skills don't work for them either, so they are more of a hybrid sort of a hero. Orc and beastman shamans don't have access to the caster skills so they tend to be more of a hybrid also, but even so, the lack of armour still makes them noticeably squishier than their companions.

Generally, the casters get better at casting and the gankers get better at ganking so by comparison the caster quickly becomes squishy by comparison. Yes, by late campaign he will have combat skills and caster skills, but by late campaign everyone else will have either even more combat skills or combat skills and magic of their own should they wish it.

Of course, *very* early in the campaign i.e. the first couple of games you are right in that his profile will be more or less identical to his fellows, but that doesn't last long. Heck, in my group we barely even play those games at all and start the campaign with a virtual monster hunt (allied victory locked) or two just to get things going faster.

Oh, in my group we use the +1AV-in-melee rule for shields and bucklers and removed some of the ignore-armour-saves rule so that makes armour a bit more useful.

love your Gyrocopter.
The only problem with one in the game though is flight... it would create a whole new set of problems though feel free to if your group likes it to make some house rules.

4: on skills the ability to get 3 skill groups for a LGT is quite strong considering that many warbands don't have a race only skill list and thus only 2 skill list for there LGT heroes. Also reading the LGT rules it states

RB P.82 wrote:

You may choose two skill lists available to Heroes in your warband. These are the skill types your new Hero can choose from when he gains new skills.

House rules again are fine but this to me means that it's 2 skill list not 2+ Race skill list.

It is not so much that you get to pick 3 skill lists, it is more that you pick two of your choice and every racial skill table has a bit at the top of it that says e.g.

RB, Skaven skill table wrote:

Skaven Heroes may choose to use the following Skill list instead of any of the standard Skill tables available to them.

This means that a Verminkin TLGT could choose, say, Speed and Shooting, but when they get a skill they could choose one from the special list instead. The Sisters, Dwarf, Orc, and all others that I can think of all have a similar line at the top of their skill lists.

Yes, not every warband has a special skill list, but not every warband has access to vampires or possessed or casters or steel whips or what-have-you. It is all part of the strengths and weaknesses of a warband. Sure, if your group has fun making non-dwarfy dwarfs or non-orky orcs and so forth then you can make a house-rule that strikes that rule at the top of the skill tables from existence - every group is different and what is fun for some is less fun for others .

I'm reading it as it's optional and that means you can chose to take it not that you must take it.
it also says "instead" not to be confused with "in additon" meaning one or the other.
It seams to me more like your house ruling it to mean that "there a dwarf so they must have Dwarf skills". It is your choice on what skill sets to take as it is with any other warband.

Of course it says instead . If it said 'in addition to' then when you got a skill you would be able to take, say, a Speed skill *and* special skill, and that would be rather over-powered.

To be honest though, the most compelling reason that we use this interpretation is that it both makes more sense (a dwarf is always dwarfy etc.) and leads to more fun, both with and *against* those that have a special skill table. As a point of disclosure: the most common warband I run is Marienburg. The most common warbands fielded are Mercs, chaos, and undead. The most common reason for someone fielding an orc or dwarf warband is because that is what their WHFB army is so those are the models they have lying around. Well, that and the *reason* they chose that race for their WHFB army is because they have a fondness for that race .

I think another reason we don't mind using the 3-table interpretation is that most of the skills just aren't quite as scary as the basic skills (with the possible exception of Art of Silent Death). Generally, even those with access to a racial skill table will still get good old Resilient/Mighty Blow/Strike to Injure (if melee) or the best 3 shooting skills for their build (if ranged) before they start getting their racials.

Having the racials available means that, instead of the second-tier skills, people will take racial skills instead leading to heroes a bit less cookie-cutter than they otherwise would be. Less cookie-cutter means more fun .

@ lord 0: I went back to the rules. Basically your way of playing spells like Fire of U'Zhul is right ( only skaven have similar missile spells). The spell silver arrows of Arha explicitely is defined as range combat spell.

All other area spells we played as you, the difference is only the three vanilla rules spells.

Nevertheless it feels wrong for me that fire of U'Zhul is stronger in close combat as Sword of Rezebel which is limited to close combat.

The pistols also work in close combat phase so maybe it makes sense that the missile spells would also work in that phase. The evil thing is the charge, cast & stun and then simply take out combination for a relative high probability of casting succes.

On the other hand spells like soul fire work in the casting phase, it makes no difference if the caster is in close combat or not.

A caster with a missile spell can only cast in his phase if he is in close combat, so the quantity is also limited in comparison to close combat.

Hmm it is still difficult for me. I will talk to my players about this topic.

We always played it that the racial skills were always optionsto heroes of that race in addition to the 2 skill lists, after all some of the racial lists only have 3 usable skills (if I recall correctly the dwarf one has 3 skills+ a leader only skill).

SerialMoM wrote:

Basically your way of playing spells like Fire of U'Zhul is right ( only skaven have similar missile spells). The spell silver arrows of Arha explicitely is defined as range combat spell.

Yeah, we never let silver arrows be cast in close-combat - that one is pretty unambiguous and not even the most dubious rules-lawer in our group would try that one . That Skaven one *can* be cast in melee, but almost never is, except in the most dire of circumstances (for obvious reasons ).

SerialMoM wrote:

[assorted valid points pro and anti for melee casting]
Hmm it is still difficult for me. I will talk to my players about this topic.

Some other points to consider re Flaming Sword vs Fireball for melee effectiveness:
As you point out, the fireball can only be cast in your turn whereas the sword will be effective in both the turn it was cast in *and* your opponent's turn and very likely following turns also (LD test to maintain). In addition, the sword will grant you a minimum of two S5 attacks and both attacks and S will increase as the caster levels up - the fireball will only ever be 1S4. +2 ws doesn't sound like much, but it does mean that at the start youngblood-type heroes will be 5s to hit, once you get to WS 5 (usually only 2 WS increases needed) WS3 will be 5s to hit, and when you get to human max with either Pit Fighter or Unstoppable Charge then WS 4 will be 5s to hit you. That means with only the 4 right increases (and pretty common increases at that) the majority of maxed henchmen and the majority of new heroes will be 5's to hit. That is pretty potent.

You could try shifting casting to the melee phase. After a skim through the LRB spells I don't think there is anything that would break too badly, but it might need a bit of testing to make sure. Might be tricky to keep track of who you have used and who you have not if you let casting be done independently of initiative, but if you *do* link casting to initiative then that will nerf casting in general. That being said, there won't be *that* many casters to keep track of. *Shrug*. I am sure your group will find a solution that works for you.

Just thought of one more effect of putting casting in the melee phase. If casting is in the melee phase you are effectively making all normal shooting go before all ranged casting. Because ranged casting generally has a pretty short range and shooters have to go for the closest it will be more common for shooters to clear all the targets for casters. It can be hard enough to get xp for casters - especially those without damage spells and this change would only make it harder. On the plus-side you could make it possible to use a ranged weapon in the shooting phase and then a ranged spell in the melee phase.

Soulfire is a brutal spell and I have been on the receiving end of it more than once, but as you rightly point out the only difference between it being cast in the shooting phase or the close-combat phase would be that the caster would be the only one that couldn't autohit/autoout the person in front of them.

I would be curious to know what your group decides...

Putting magic and prayers in the CC phase feels wrong for so many reasons.

One, they are mostly distance attacks, and so fit with other distance attacks. Fluff wise, you need to keep casting and shooting in sync as they are similar concepts of game mechanics.

Two, making them vie with initiative order effectively mean that you are arguing not only that shooters are faster than talkers, but also brawlers could be faster than talkers.

Third, what about attacking casters in close combat, do they get to cast on an opponents turn just cause they are in close combat? It's hard to justify otherwise.

Four, many spells talk about shooting and close combat rules as if they were from the shooting phase, you would have to house rule just about every caster in the game to make sure they fit, not to mention that half the casters have some form of movement that creates a charge and trying to negotiate layers of charges in close combat makes my head hurt.

Five, targeting gets weird when you have to balance initiative order, close combat rules, post-shooting phase fallout, etc. Suddenly your caster has a random choice at time of casting instead of planned or plotted choice. Not ideal or fluffy for a caster.

Six, etc. I could go on, but it's painful to think how broken it would make the game. Sure, you could suffer through for a while without much of a problem, until it became a big problem, and then you are making rule after rule after rule to fix things. Simple = better always.

Goodness, I did overlook a lot. I think I would rather leave it in the shooting phase too .