Spear and scorpion tail / extra arm / tail fighting

I'm wondering how you play the spear along with things that gets you extra limbs, I don't think the rules are very clear on this.

The unwieldy special rule says:

Quote :

A warrior with a spear may only use a shield or a buckler in his other hand. He may not use a second weapon.

That is, it says nothing at all about extra arms or tails. The spear strike first rule says:

Quote :

A warrior with a spear strikes first in the first turn of a hand-to-hand combat.

Does this mean that a mutant with a scorpion tail, Attack 1, Initiative 3 would strike first with both his tail and the spear against a charging opponent with Initiative 2? The strike first rule says that the model strikes first, not that he strikes first with his spear. The wording of unwieldy special rule makes me think they forgot about this special case when they wrote the rule though. What do you think?

We play it that the spear attack strikes first, followed by the charger, followed by the other attacks from the charged model (unless charger model has something like a great weapon, in which case he'll strike last anyway), which in your example would be the scorpion tail. That means the spear is a special case, and only attacks from the actual spear are subject to the 'Strikes first' rule.

The tail (Scorpion Tail) and Bites are not weapons so the rule does not apply to them.

As to extra arms or Tail Fighting I would say the rules mean what they mean here and the spear is your only weapon you can use even if you got 20 arms.
Though I do think this was something not covered or thought of in the rules and would say allow the extra arm(s) and tail to use other weapons. BUT I would check with my group first.

For Strike First; I think this also goes to the rules as writen vs intent (or rather didn't think about it) as ya your tail/bite is going first... though again this is obviously not the intent so you play the spear per the rule and other attacks per normal rules. This again you want to check with your group though.

Harganok wrote:

That means the spear is a special case, and only attacks from the actual spear are subject to the 'Strikes first' rule.

That's how I'd play it. And imo that is even better than striking first with all attacks. Think about it - a Skaven with a spear and tailfighting-sword getting attacked. If he wounds but fails to take the attacker ooa, he simply has to declare an attack with his sword on an stunned opponent and "only" has to wound on a knocked down one...

Not a valid tactic as per rules as written:

Mordheim Rulebook 2005 Part I, p. 21 wrote:

attacking stunned
and knocked down warriors
Note that a model with multiple attacks may not
stun/knock down and then automatically take a
warrior out of action during the same hand-to-hand
combat phase. The only way you can achieve this is to
have more than one of your models attacking the
same enemy. So, if the enemy is stunned/knocked
down by the first warrior, he can be hit and put out of
action by the next warrior to attack.
If your model is engaged in close combat with an
enemy who is still standing, he cannot attack any
other models that are stunned or knocked down,
since in reality they will not pose an immediate threat
to him and their companions will try to protect them

Nah...
Sometimes the ruleswriting just ...... me ...
A thousand loopholes but THIS has to be covered...

Thank you none the less

Not certain, but it is in my mind there was an FAQ at some point about multiple arms and two-handed weapons, e.g. halberd, DHW, spear, etc.

From memory it says something like you can only use a two-handed weapon with hands from your original two arms because the third might be coming out of your head or something.

For what it is worth in my group we ignored the unwieldy rule completely and it doesn't seem to have made anything less fun.

Schoel wrote:

I'm wondering how you play the spear along with things that gets you extra limbs

We play that the spear's unwieldyness only affects one other arm.

Quote :

Does this mean that a mutant with a scorpion tail, Attack 1, Initiative 3 would strike first with both his tail and the spear against a charging opponent

We play that only the spears strike first, although the rules say something different.

Lord 0 wrote:

Not certain, but it is in my mind there was an FAQ at some point about multiple arms and two-handed weapons, e.g. halberd, DHW, spear, etc.

From memory it says something like you can only use a two-handed weapon with hands from your original two arms because the third might be coming out of your head or something.

For what it is worth in my group we ignored the unwieldy rule completely and it doesn't seem to have made anything less fun.

Yeah I read that also. Random mutating arms which can not use 2 handed weapons. (but what about morning-stars and spears?)

Dunno. TBH we also ignored the Difficult To Use rule for morning stars too.

For full disclosure the house-rules we use are:

Spears: 5 gold. S as user, I+1, Strike First, Parry if used 2-handed.
Halberd: 8 gold. S as user +1, I+1, two-handed.
Morning Star: S+1, Heavy, Cannot be parried.

Fluffwise, it makes sense that you need another hand or a shield/buckler to blaande it with, making it semi-two-handed, so we would play it as just that, TWO-handed (with shield or buckler). Extra arm or tail fighting would allow another weapon, as such.