Possessed battle reports

Hi everyone,

So I finally found someone to play Mordheim against! During the two battles, a surprising amount of people came by saying 'hey that's cool! What is it?' or 'Mordheim! That's cool!', so I hope that soon we'll be able to lauch a small campaign.

The only downside is that I was stupid enough to forget my camera, so unfortunately I don't have any pictures to show you.

But anyway, here goes:

Game 1:
Scenario: breakthrough
Attacker: possessed
Defender: undead

Start of game:
Since there's no active Mordheim campaign going on, we both started with a starting warband. I started with only 5 models and a warband rating of 61: a magister (with the 'dark blood' spell, two mutants and two possessed. My opponent began with 9 models: a vampire, necromancer (with 'call of Vanhel'), three dregs and four ghouls.
I deployed first. The battlefield was just a load of scattered houses, so I placed most of my warband in a somewhat open area (the board was REALLY crowded with buildings), with my magister on the second floor of a ruined tower. The only exception was one of my possessed (with a great claw), who was standing on the other side of a rather large building, intended to outflank the enemy if the opportunity arose, and able to run back to the rest of the warband if it didn't.
My opponent then set up, placing most of his warband exactly 14" from mine (as neither side had ranged attacks save from my magister's 8" spell), hoping to best them in close combat. He placed his dregs in front of my possessed, together with a single ghoul, hoping to pick him off while he was on his own.
First turns:
The game started out rather slow, with me being unwilling to be charged by his vampire and him being unwilling to walk into the range of a D3 S5 hits spell. The only real movement was on the right flank, where both my possessed and his ghoul and dregs moved forwards, with both sides eager to charge. In the end, I managed to charge his ghoul, but that left three dregs in my back.
First blood:
First blood was mine! I cast 'dark blood' at a ghoul, rolling exactly enough to cast the spell. Although I only rolled a 1 on the D3, that single hit turned out to be enough to kill him. When rolling on the injury table for my magister, I rolled that he was only knocked down. At that point, several combats were going on. My possessed was in combat with a ghoul and a dreg (as two of the three dregs failed their climb check), my other possessed was in close combat with the vampire, the first mutant facing two ghouls at once, and the second one in fighting his necromancer. The first possessed managed to wound the ghoul without taking damage, but it only resulted in him getting knocked down. Meanwhile, the second possessed suffered a wound to the vampire without dealing any damage, but was spared from doom when the vampire was struck by a ball of dark blood, causing 2 S5 hits that both wounded (one of them with a critical hit, even). He failed his lucky charm roll, and then rolled out of action on the injury table. In the meantime, my three-armed mutant managed to win the combat against the two ghouls, putting one of them out of action.
Late battle:
My opponent's force was now broken without me having suffered a single casualty.
A single combat still had to be fought, in which my possessed managed to take a dreg out of action. Since his vampire was lost, he had to take a rout test on his necromancer's leadership of 7, and failed the first roll. His warband fled the table, leaving my five victorious heroes (well... 'heroes' ) behind!
Exploration:
While rolling for exploration, I rolled a double six: it turned out to be a disappointment, however, as the ruined hovels only contained a single gold crown.
My opponent found an overturned cart, which contained a Mordheim Map (it later turned out to be 'vague', meaning he could re-roll a single exploration dice in the next exploration phase.
Post-battle:
Having acquired a nice sum of crowns, without having to compensate for any losses, I decided to hire two new brethren with maces and bows. All my heroes were now 1 point away from an advance.
In the meantime, my opponent managed to have all of his casualties survive the battle, and even rolled 'hardened' for his dreg, making him immune to fear. With the gold he found, he purchased a suit of heavy armour for his vampire (selling his old light armour), and four shortbows for his three dregs and necromancer. He also hired a single zombie so that his necromancer could use call of Vanhel.

So, that was the first battle report! As I played two battles yesterday, the next report will be up here shortly. I hope you liked it!

Congrats on the win! Nice report. I look forward to more. And photos if you remember the camera...

Since you mentioned it I am going to remind you that spells do not cause critical hits. Otherwise it sounds like you had a fun game.  

It sounds like a SPLENDID game, &, with the possibility of gaining more gamers, a very successful one. Do try to remember the camera next time; re, a crowded Mordheim board would be a joy to behold.  

Von Kurst wrote:

Congrats on the win!  Nice report.  I look forward to more.  And photos if you remember the camera...

Since you mentioned it I am going to remind you that spells do not cause critical hits.  Otherwise it sounds like you had a fun game.  

So that's why I couldn't find a critical hit table for it
We're both fairly green players, so we probably forgot a lot more rules...
But who cares! It was a fun game

My friends and I have been playing so long, we often have to look up basic rules because no one can remember exactly what the rule might say...  

With my mighty google-fu, i've found this post- i'm his opponent. It was 2 fun games, however i still need to find good models for my dregs and get my hand weapon vampire ready for battle. He did take one picture of the second game, so you'll probably see when he posts the batrep of the second game. After game one, everything not my vampire was 1 xp away from advancement, the vampire needed 3.

Welcome to the forum Günther! If you look in the Painting and Modeling section of the forum you can find other Undead players' solutions to Dregs. I am fond of the plastic kit-bashed Dreg myself, but there are a few evil henchmen types made by miniature manufacturers, too.

So... Next battle report! The two pictures I took unfortunately turned out to be a vague blur that sort of kinda resembles a game board (a bit)

Game 2:
Scenario: street fight
Possessed vs Undead

Start of game:
We set up the street so that it was roughly 20-30 cm wide, containing two bottlenecks and a few piles of rubble and other obstacles. My opponent set up first, but with only a single direction to go in and being well out of missile fire range, deployment was uneventful. We both simply deployed as far forward as possible (even my two archers and his three dregs and shortbow-wielding necromancer).
First turns:
My opponent took the first turn. He rushed most of his warband forward, except for his four archers, who walked up to a ruined house to climb up and fire from the balcony in the next turn. In return, I rushed forwards as well, taking care to stay out of range of his shortbows but within regular bow range with my archers, and keeping the rest out of sight. When the warbands eventually got close enough for missile fire it proved to be rather disappointing: the only hit in the whole game was a friendly fire incident, with a dreg hitting the necromancer in front of him. Unfortunately for me, the necromancer passed his toughness test, and (after hitting the dreg on the head a few times with his staff) could continue the fight as normal.
First blood:
His ( ). My leader no less. My possessed had lost a wound in combat to his vampire (without damaging back due to his accursed heavy armour), and was about to be flanked by ghouls. Taking a gamble, I decided to charge a lone ghoul with my leader, hoping to incapacitate him so that I could flank them with the rest of my warband. That turned out to be a bad idea, as both attacks missed and the counter-attack took him out of action. It also proved to be in vain, as the vampire still managed to take my possessed out of action anyway.
Late battle:
The rest of my warband managed to 'flank' at last, but without the anvil to catch them on, the hammer strike was pretty worthless. A few pitiful and uneventful rounds of combat waged between my mutants and remaining possessed, and his ghouls and vampire. In the end, my other possessed lay knocked down on the ground with a vampire looming over him, and both mutants were beset by multiple ghouls. Thus, I did the only noble and honourable thing to do. With my possessed called 'Run for the hills!' taken out of action, I decided to do exactly that and fled the table.
Exploration:
Exploration was pretty good. I managed to find the same amount of shards as previous game (although that still gave me less crowns due to the increased number of warband members), and also rolled a double 3. Karma helped to compensate for the 1 I rolled when I found those ruined hovels, giving me a nice 6 this time. This resulted in me finding a suit of light armour on the corpse I found laying in an alley. As chaos worshippers aren't exactly picky, my mutant gladly donned his new armour.
Post-battle:
Although my luck had somewhat vanished during the battle, it definitely re-appeared when the battle was over. All my heroes were eligible for an advance. I sent my mutants and leader on a nice school trip to the Shadowlord, for which my magister was rewarded with... Nothing. My mutants were both more fortunate, and both got an additional mutation. My three-armed mutant is now a four-armed mutant, and Heinz 'venomtail' Rechner is now called Heinz 'double tail' Rechner (I'll let you figure that one out for yourself )
For recovery rolls, I suppose I got somewhat lucky, although I'm still unhappy with the result. My magister got out unscathed, fair enough, but my possessed got old battle wounds. He did, however, also get the skill 'mighty blow', so now I can make S5 and S7 attacks with him (he got pissed not being able to punch trough heavy armour, I suppose). My other possessed now has three wounds.
With the gold I got, I bought my now four-armed mutant another mace, and gave my magister a bow as well. With the rest I bought a beastman with two axes (for a grand total of 55 gc, but hey, these guys start with two wounds!)
I'm still toying with the idea of giving my four armed mutant three shields which with our house rules gives him a sweet zero plus armour save. Good luck beating that! (except with criticals, which is my main reservation with this strategy) (or with the insanely high strength my possessed now has  )

I don't remember exactly what my opponent did post-battle, so instead of giving my own (probably faulty) version, I'll just let him tell that part himself

Even without the photos it came across as an exciting battle...CONGRATULATIONS on your after-battle successes.  

My post-battle:
Exploration:
Fate was kind to me, my mordheim map wasn't. I got to roll 6 dice with one reroll. My map rerolled a 1 into a 1, but i rolled 3 sixes for a free merc and just barely enough for 5 shards, which was great on the money. Since a buddy of mine plays ogres, im going for the ogre bodyguard for lots of punch.
Post-Battle: living (well, not-dying) up to their name, not a single thing that got taken out of action died or had injuries again, so far not having taken a single injury or death in the wardband.
All of my warband (except the single zombie) had enough xp to advance, due to the now stellar performance of my vampire. my ghoul pack rolled +1 I, which now makes them strike before any humans and rolloff against his posessed, which was great. My necromancer rolled a skill and picked battle wizard, as to be less squish. My vampire also rolled a skill and picked lightning reflexes, now being allowed to strike in initative order when being charged, which with I5 A3 should prove most handy. I forgot to roll advancement for my dregs, so those will be mentioned before the next battle report ( In the interest of fairness all dice rolls shall be done in front of someone else). With my newfound lots of cash, i bought the necromancer a helmet,shield and toughened leathers, and my vampire a repeater crossbow (gotta make use of that BS4, even though i don't get shooting skills on my vampire). After this game i made up most of the fluff of the warband, hence the current username (it's the vampire). I might be able to take better pictures of the following games, assuming i can find the zoom function on my vita somewhere.

Günther von Strauss wrote:

My post-battle:
Post-Battle: I bought the ... vampire a repeater crossbow (gotta make use of that BS4, even though i don't get shooting skills on my vampire).

Sorry, but unless you have the ranged weapon equivalent of Weapon Master (in the Shooting Skills) you won;t be able to use a Repeater Crossbow on the Vampire- you can only use weapons which are in his equipment list; anything else can only be used after you take the relevant skill

Congrats on the win though, it;s nice to see an Undead Warband doing well after all the times I hear people saying they aren't as great as other 'bands.

Feh, then i'll buy a dire wolf instead i think. Kinda strange that a 200 years worth of martial training doesn't involve exotic weapons at any point.

More possessed action today! My possessed faced off against a starting Witch Hunter warband.

Also, I remembered to take pictures!
...but only in the deployment phase. Also, the quality looked a lot better on my camera

Game 3:
Scenario: Wyrdstone Hunt
Possessed vs Witch Hunters

Spoiler:

End of deployment from my side of the board.

Spoiler:

Opponent's warband; the pack gnoblar on the left was actually a wardog. The warband contained two flaggelants who deployed on the far right.

Spoiler:

My warband; my second possessed is directly to the left of the one in the picture.

Spoiler:

Another group shot (high quality, yay). The two corpses and the two piles of skulls counted as the four warpstone counters.
NOTE: this is not the awesome Mordheim terrain we have at my gaming club; this is just my relatively poor personal terrain collection

Start of game:
I rolled a 5 for the D3+1 roll for the number of warpstone counters, thus we placed the four counters in a square in the middle. Deployment was fairly unoriginal, with both of us simply placing our models as far forward as possible. His only ranged weapons were pistols, and all I had were three bows, so it was pretty much a dash for the counters.
First turns:
The witch hunters took the first turn: the wardog ran forwards, picked up a counter and ran back towards the board edge. The rest ran the full 8'' forwards. His warrior priest attempted to cast Hearts of Steel but rolled a 5.
I responded with running my models the full 8" or 10" forwards, with the exception of the two bowmen. They moved to the right, onto higher ground. Their two pitiful shots at one of the witch hunters both missed. During the movement phase the beastman also picked up a warpstone counter.
In the second turn, the witch hunters moved forwards, hoping to stay just out of charge range. The warrior priest succeeded in casting his spell this time.
What he forgot, though, is that possessed have M5. Thus, I managed to charge his witch hunter captain with both possessed. In a historically uneventful round of combat did none of the eight total S4 or higher attacks cause any wounds (in fact, only one actually hit). The beastman split off to the right, to pick up another counter. The archers remained on the hill, and the other three models moved forwards. The archers missed again, but my magister managed to cast 'Dark Blood' at the warrior priest, knocking him down. As it stunned the magister, it might not have been the best course of action.
First blood:
First blood was mine! Two flagellants charged in to aid the embattled witch hunter captain, scoring a single wound on my possessed. In return, the other possessed attacked the witch hunter captain, scoring two critical hits on him. Having no clue what to do with two critical hits, we decided to roll twice and take the highest. These turned out to be 4 and 5 (respectively a +1 and +2 to injury rolls), but since I rolled a 5 it didn't matter anyway. In that same combat, the other possessed took a flagellant out of action instantly, bringing the witch hunters down to their break point.
Late battle:
There wasn't really a late battle to speak of, as the witch hunters failed their first rout test (with a roll of 11). However, perhaps noteworthy: the other witch hunters managed to stun one of my mutants with their pistols before fleeing the scene.
Exploration:
Although my opponent rolled four dice and I rolled six, we both found four shards of wyrdstone, bringing his total warpstone gain from the battle to 5 and mine to 7. He also found 2gp in ruined hovels, while I found a straggler to sacrifice to the Chaos Gods.
Post-battle:
Having gained quite a lot of experience, I had 5 advances to roll for: a mutant, both possessed, the two cultist archers and the beastman. The mutant gained +1 initiative (bringing it to four). The possessed with great claw gained another skill; he can sprint now. The other possessed gained an extra attack. The beastman got promoted to the rank of hero and gained a wound with his free advance, bringing it to 3. History repeated itself with the archers, as they gained +1 strength. Every archer henchman group I ever had rolled strength as first advance (I've had three in total).
Having a total of 122gp to spend, I decided to add two more axe-wielding beastmen to my warband. The rest went to two suits of toughened leathers for my heroes.

As my warband is now rather different from what I started with, here's the full warband list including total gold costs:
Magister
M W B S T W I A Ld
4-4-4-3-3-1-3-1-8
Dark Blood, Leader, axe, mace, bow
88gp

Mutant
M W B S T W I A Ld
4-3-3-3-3-1-3-1-7
Extra Arm x2, axe x2, mace x2, light armour
181gp

Mutant
M W B S T W I A Ld
4-3-3-3-3-1-4-1-7
Scorpion Tail x2, axe, mace, toughened leathers
158gp

Possessed
M W B S T W I A Ld
5-4-0-4-4-2-4-2-7
Great Claw, Lightning Reflexes, Sprint, Old Battle Wounds
140gp

Possessed
M W B S T W I A Ld
5-4-0-4-4-3-4-3-7
Scorpion Tail
130gp

Beastman Hero
M W B S T W I A Ld
4-4-3-3-4-3-3-1-7
axe, axe, toughened leathers
60gp

2 Brethren
M W B S T W I A Ld
4-3-3-4-3-1-3-1-7
bow, mace
76gp / 38gp each

2 Beastmen
M W B S T W I A Ld
4-4-3-3-4-2-3-1-7
axe, axe
110gp / 55gp each

Total gold cost: 943
Total xp above starting value: 28
Warband rating: 118

The battle sounded exciting to play; AND, while the photos were a little blurry, the game looked SPLENDID nonetheless.   
I could be wrong...not an unusual thing for moi...but I believe that War Dogs & other animals can not pick up items like treasure.   

We thought that, too, but since the odds were already in my favour, we decided to just go with it

Quote :

We thought that, too, but since the odds were already in my favour, we decided to just go with it

I like the way you play the game.  

On a similar note, you may have already looked this up, but the rules for what to do about multiple critical hits are given in the section titled 'critical hits' in the shooting section of the rule book.

Quote :

this is just my relatively poor personal terrain collection

If this is your version of poor, you must post photos of the club terrain. Your terrain looks pretty good to me.

Von Kurst wrote:

Quote :

this is just my relatively poor personal terrain collection

If this is your version of poor, you must post photos of the club terrain.  Your terrain looks pretty good to me.

I will  

I'm somewhat spoilt in that aspect, as our club has about 40 boxes of terrain (18 for Fantasy, 2 for Mordheim and the rest for 40K). They host a quite large tournament each year where nearly all those boxes are used, so we have a very large and diverse terrain collection to use in casual games.

So with that as a standard, it's pretty poor

Time to bring this topic back to life! I've been wanting to take pictures of my battles roughly six weeks now, so of course this was the first time I actually remembered to bring my camera! Most of them are horribly blurry though, and in hindsight I should've used flash, but it's too late now for that. The photos shown here are in fact the best half of the ones I took, but who cares. It was fun!

So, here's the game:

Scenario: surprise attack

Defender: possessed, rating 190

Possessed with scorpion tail, lightning reflexes, three wounds and three attacks
Possessed with great claw, literally no stat advances and a buttload of skills (passed his old battle wounds for the first time in three games)
Mutant with three arms and just as many axes
Mutant with three scorpion tails
Magister with Eye of God and Dark Blood
Beastman hero with three arms and a great weapon in each one (beastman skill list)
Two axe+mace beastmen
Two axe+mace+bow warriors
Two bow+mace warriors
Two great weapon darksouls
Also, everyone who can is carrying a shield as ranged defence.

Attacker: undead, rating 137

Five ghouls. I believe all of them are T4 I4
A single zombie (who I think got mistaken for a ghoul during the game )
Necromancer whose only spell is to move zombies
Three dregs with sword and shield. One has step aside, one has dodge, one has a higher WS
Nightmare-mounted vampire. I5, lighting reflexes, and a really really nasty statline

Set-up:


Here's the board from both sides. It's likely that even now about half of the ladders on table can't be seen

Deployment:
I deployed first. As we both decided it'd be strange to fight over an empty area, we decided to place D6 warpstone counters on the board. This turned out to be 6, but we changed it to 3 afterwards for realism's sake. For those unfamiliar with the scenario, I had to roll a dice for every hero or henchmen group, on a 4+ they started on the board. These blokes didn't turn up:

So, in total, only 3 of my 10 groups started off the board. Everything else had to deploy at least 8" away from another model. As it would take way too many pictures to cover, here's the general idea: every model with a bow started on top of one of the warpstone counter on the top floors of buildings (covering the first four counters), the were places in the streets to cover the other two while standing as close to one another as possible.

Afterwards, my opponent deployed his entire warband 8" from a random table edge. At this point I realized I wasn't the only one allowed to deploy in higher floors of buildings...

I thought I got off relatively well, until I discovered horses can climb 2" for free (or something along those lines). Then (some time into the game) we discovered horses can't enter buildings, but we pretty much ignored that until he left the building again for convenience's sake.

The actual game:
Nine pictures. I took nine pictures, and literally all of them were too blurry to show. Better luck next time

My opponent got the first turn, and immediately went about charging my warrior in the building closest to him with his vampire. Unsurprisingly, he went OOA before he even had a chance to strike. The rest of his band marched forwards, the dregs and necromancer on the right flank hoping to snipe off the lone warrior with warpstone, or else charge him the next round.
My first turn, the darksouls and mutant showed up on the board edge opposite to his. The beastmen would proceed to not show up for the entire game. Only two games ago against the same guy (which was 40K, sisters vs death korps), my seraphim decided not to come out of reserves on a 3+ three times in a row as well... This is becoming somewhat of a habit...
Anyway, the whole gang moved forwards, my tailed possessed charged two ghouls,  stunning one and taking the other OOA, and I believe my shooting stunned a ghoul.

Next turn, he threw pretty much everything he had close at the possessed. A ghoul managed to roll a six to wound, and another six on the crit table, resulting in an instant out of action with no saves of any kind. Ouch! I don't remember the exact sequence to be honest as it involved a lot of guys, but ultimately another ghoul was stunned and the vampire went out of action, while I didn't lose any models myself (although the three-tailed mutant got stunned).

Two more important combats took place: the first was between two ghouls who charged the three-armed beastman. He rolled pretty well, and managed to wound him twice! Unfortunately for him, it's a three wound model... The resulting storm of axes resulted in the first being knocked down and the second taken out of action. He finished him off next turn.

The second combat was the warrior versus the necromancer and three dregs. This is a textbook example of why you shouldn't wait a day before writing battle reports . Through an insane amount of luck, the lone warrior survived a round of shooting from three dregs and a BS4 necromancer, and then went on to take out a single dreg and the necromancer in close combat. Ultimately, he succumbed to the blows of the remaining dregs though.

At the end of the fourth (?) turn, my opponent failed his rout test with 7 models out of action.

Aftermath:
The total tally was as follows:

- Warrior with two axes and bow: survives
- Warrior with two axes and bow: survives
- Possessed with tail: survives, gains 1xp


- Ghoul: survives
- Ghoul: dies
- Ghoul: dies
- Ghoul: dies
- Necromancer: survives, misses next game
- Dreg: survives
- Vampire: survives, loses 1 initiative
- Nightmare: survives

Post-battle:
My opponent's necromancer rolled the spell of awakening, which is awesome but not that useful in game terms. My beastman with three arms now has strongman, and my possessed rolled (guess what) another skill! Seriously, he has four now, this is getting out of hand

We played another game that evening, of which I didn't take any pictures. It was his dark elves versus my recently acquired amazon warband. The models are all unpainted and not even glued to their bases, but the old models with their dagger-buckler things are still awesome
It was a rather confusing game as all the amazons look alike, but after some explaining ("the ones with the feather cloaks are champions, the ones with the feathers on their heads standing in a circle are totem warriors, the ones with the feathers standing up warriors, those with feathers standing to the back scouts, and the one without hands the priestress") it manage to make it somewhat clear what each model was. I lost the game pretty badly, losing three models while not causing a single loss in return. Still, it was a pretty fun (and chaotic) game!


So, that's it! Any comments, rules we got wrong, tips to improve my photography, etc. welcome!

Blurry or not the photos add visual appeal to your FINE narratives. GREAT STUFF!   

Great to see your warband on the tabletop. I find your reports very enjoyable.     

Spell of Awakening--our resident complainer expressed the opinion that the spell should be banned a couple of years ago. I think he also won the Most Heroes Lost During the Campaign Award for that campaign. The spell can be VERY helpful with the right luck...

Since we only have two active Mordheim players, I'd rather not have him have any 'right luck'

Thanks for the kind comments!