Our House Rules

Hey guys. It's been awhile since I popped in. We're about to start a new campaign in March. We've got six people as a core group, and maybe up to ten that might play occasionally. We have a mix of people who have been playing since Mordheim came out and kids who were born when Mordheim came out.

However, we are adding our own house rules and I want to get some feedback on the ones we made, and give the reasoning.

1. Instead of a Free Dagger, all models who can will start with a shield and a club.
Our reasoning for this is that in the vast ruins of Mordheim, finding a couple pieces of board and a tree branch club wouldn't be that hard. We did this initially because we thought that it would allow people to field bigger warbands in the beginning, which it did. We did take the concussion rule away from the free club, so it was just a handweapon. This had one unexpected, but very nice extra benefit. It drastically reduced the number of people who were dual weilding. It still happened, but it was a lot less common.

2. All warbands shall have a maximum number of 15, except dwarves, who are still at 12.
We did this because we thought the warband maximums were pretty arbitrary, and fairly easy to get around. The reason that the dwarves are still at 12 is because the guy playing them won the last campaign with a record of 20-0 and a final warband rating of 414. I think he wanted a handicap.

3. Armor Shall Cost Half.
This seems to be the world's most common house rule in the world. With the free shield, it actually makes armor kinda worth it.

4. Henchmen can use common, non-rare items.
This seems like a no brainer. There doesn't seem to be any reason that a henchman couldn't carry a torch, a clove of garlic, or a rope and hook or what not. However, we did want to restrict what they could use.

5. Sling Ban- there shall be no slings!
We tried to nerf slings. Nothing we could come up with would make sense, or work. So we just decided to get rid of them wholesale at this time. We'll probably re-visit this in our 2015 campaign, but for now, it is only effecting one warband (Sisters), so we might not.

6. No Pussies Rule- You may only Voluntarily Rout at 50% of starting warband amount.
This one came about because of our 2012 and 2013 campaigns. Part of this is because of the way our campaign is structured. We meet once every three months for a whole day of Mordheim, and we play round robin, so everyone gets to fight everyone else. The problem was that some of the kids would only keep going in a game if they were winning. If they started to lose, they would use the rule where you can voluntarily route if you had lost two men. Then they and their opponent would end up sitting around waiting for everyone else to finish their game before they could play again. So we first changed it to you couldn't voluntarily route until you had to start making route checks. That just cause the kids to take sacrificial lamb models. So now, our rule is really hardcore, so that we have good long fights and no one is sitting round the FLGS waiting for another game. It is a bit cutthroat, and a bit of metagame to play against the players, but it should be for the best.

Interesting approach!

My general impression is, that your rules are very resonable and with very little risk of upsetting the balance of the game.

The only exception that caught my eye is the sling ban. Slings are always a very controversial topic, and i cannot really blame your group if you agreed on removing it. Bear in mind however, that it is the only missile weapon for sisters of sigmar, and skaven will have to resort to either much more expensive blowpipes or warplock weapons, or the short ranged throwing knives. So if you go through with this I would suggest that you allow these two warbands to buy bows instead, as I otherwise imagine they run the risk of being seriously downtrodden throughout the game.

J0shua85 wrote:

Interesting approach!

My general impression is, that your rules are very resonable and with very little risk of upsetting the balance of the game.

The only exception that caught my eye is the sling ban. Slings are always a very controversial topic, and i cannot really blame your group if you agreed on removing it. Bear in mind however, that it is the only missile weapon for sisters of sigmar, and skaven will have to resort to either much more expensive blowpipes or warplock weapons, or the short ranged throwing knives. So if you go through with this I would suggest that you allow these two warbands to buy bows instead, as I otherwise imagine they run the risk of being seriously downtrodden throughout the game.

I agree 100%, removing slings entirely is going to cause some serious issues for those warbands. The difference between no ranged firepower and minor ranged firepower is pretty huge.

I'd agree that if you want to remove slings, allow these warbands to buy at least short bows (and if you play WYSIWYG, allow slings to 'count as' short bows so those warbands don't have to remodel).

I may experiment with the voluntary rout rule, as I get kind of sick of warbands bugging out as soon as they hit under 75% instead of taking risks to go for the win (I'm as guilty as anyone in doing that). It'll be a bloodier campaign, no doubt. UPDATE/EDIT: The more I considered this the more I realized it would be too punishing. I think it's just better to give people more incentive to win/not rout.

My main issue is the free clubs and shield rule - it's a bit of an issue with warbands, such as Undead, who have few or no equipment using henchmen. Plus would units who can't normally use armor or shields (flagellants, brutes) still gain this free equipment? Undead would particularly suffer, and they're already one of the weaker official warbands.

I would not use most of your house rules, with the exception of #4, however our group meets at least once a week and I can get a couple of games in most weeks. Our experience of the game is pretty different.

Do you use the current rules (2005) from GW's website? If not I would at least recommend that you check them out as some of your house rules sound as though you are still playing by the original printed rule book.

I would love to see one of your game nights, if for no other reason than to see a Sisters warband that needs a shooting nerf.   

I hate playing scenarios that force 50% losses before you can rout, or worse the ones with no rout tests and no voluntary routing. Talk about warband breakers. Legends of the Old West and Legends of the High Seas both use the 50% break points, awful! Never got through my first campaign of those systems as I was always starting over.

We award any unclaimed treasure to the wining warband if an opponent voluntarily routs. Thus we have no complaints from players who face a warband that just wants to run away.

Hey Guys. Thanks for the responses, they warm the heart.

What we typically do is have a rules committee made up of the veteran players before each campaign, and we talk a bunch about the game rules and the play styles of those who are going to be coming. Typically we try to make things as simple as they can. Part of it is because our make up. We typically have between three to five veteran players (ie adults), and between four and six youngbloods (kids around 13-16). Because we have people of such variable experience, we try to make things easier instead of more realistic or indepth. We generally play from 11am until midnight at the FLGS and take up about a third of their free game space. We play round robin so everyone gets between five and seven games in one game day.

The slings ban is really more of a postponement until we can have more formal rules thoughts. Part of it was that we couldn't think of a simple way to make them work the way we thought they should compared to how they do work. We thought they were a bit over bearing, but we couldn't think of how to do them right. We thought of dropping them to strength 2, lowering the range, dropping the extra shot at half range, doing like with fists where your armor save increases, having them ignored if you are wearing a helmet, and quite a few others. None of them seemed simple or keeping in the spirit of what slings are supposed to be. So for now, they are just banned.

The free shields and clubs rule so far has been beneficial in our campaigns. In the first few battles, it does give a slight advantage to people who take equipment, but generally it evens out after about three battles, when everyone has had a chance to buy some additional equipment and henchmen. So far the results have been far better then we had initially expected. Yes, people who can't use a club or shield gain no benefit from this, but generally they are also models that you wouldn't have running around with just a dagger anyway. Though the idea of a crazy eyed knife wielding flagellant is a delightful image.

The 50% voluntary rout rule is a bit of sticky point even among us. Most of the old school players really like it, and all the youngbloods consider it 'A rule made up by a bunch of fat middle aged dudes who like to torture little kids'. Its a matter of play style. Once the kids stop giving up after things get rough, we might revisit this.

@Von Kurst- yes, we primarily use the printed rule book especially during the game sessions. However we have all downloaded the rules from GW. I wasn't aware of many differences that I was able to see. I'll have to take a closer look with a fine toothed comb.

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I wasn't aware of many differences that I was able to see.

Well for one the rules for slings were changed. For another, voluntary routing. There are a variety of changes and clarifications throughout the rules. There used to be a handy summary available online with all the changes and page numbers.

Slings. I would be one of those who is mystified by groups that still have problems with slings after the rules review. The sling really was more effective than a 'short bow' and real slings were a terror for armored troops (including the Conquistadors in the 16th century). And slings really were a simple, cheap weapon.

On topic: I have to say that a lot of your house rules are not to my taste. The free club and shield option is certainly a new one to me, and one of the more sensible ones to encourage different equipment loadouts; still not sure I'd use it but I like the idea. Armour costing half as much is not something I like, as I prefer the fact that warbands are not made of professional soldiers, they're just thugs that have been drafted in to fill the void by the one (probably ex)soldier that leads them; armour should be rare as they wouldn't have been trained in fighting in it. Plus it makes a good conundrum when you get an excess of money, about whether you save it for buying back losses or investing in something pricey for one guy and making him a tank- then again, I never have had any use for Light Armour whatsoever unless I find it.

Henchmen being able to use common items sounds very good actually; let us know how it works out for you. I can never see myself spending money on things for henchmen in case they die, but I like the idea of henchmen running around with Lanterns as 'spotting dogs' for the heroes and snipers :p I have seen the worst f this rule before, when my group wasn't as rules-savvy: my brother abused rope and hooks for all they were worth, which was actually quite annoying.

The 50% rout test rule seems brutal- I would have thought the extra waiting time would be punishment enough   In all serousness though, that does seem like cruel and unusual punishment; when I run Possessed warbands as one example, in the early game you just have to rout whenever your Possessed get's stunned- he's such a big investment that you can't afford to risk him;making someone tough it out is just mean...

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Von Kurst: I don't think that I have a problem with slings, so much as that they can be abused by Skaven in particular. Having a 20 rat warband all equipped with slings is brutal- and so cheap it isn't even a choice really.

A starting Skaven warband in our recent campaign had 16 men, each with 2x Dagger and a sling. This is compared to a 7 man Dwarf warband and a 12 man Witch Hunter warband. The Skaven dominated the first few games until we started to make alliances (and we all felt dirty that it came to that :p).
It was just the sheer volume of attacks - often from elevated positions, due to Skaven's aptitude for climbing - that just broke the game for us, a little bit.

I don;t think I would ever have a problem with Sisters using Slings, but personally I think the Rats are (as usual in the Warhammer world) in a position to abuse the rules, due mostly to their hefty max  warband size and the innate BS3 on their Night Runners and incredibly cheap Henchmen (as opposed to BS2 on Novices).

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Von Kurst: I don't think that I have a problem with slings, so much as that they can be abused by Skaven in particular.

Ah, now we get to the gist of the 'sling problem'. Skaven have access to slings. There are many things I like about the discussion of slings, but the fact that Skaven can take them seems to be the over-riding issue. Everyone complains about the sling, but if pressed what they are really cheesed about is the Skaven. So they suggest we nerf the sling, because IT is unbalanced. Really?

And as for the Skaven warband being overpowered, I would say that they are an easy warband to understand. Their strengths are obvious and easy to grasp. However, their weakness (low Leadership) is permanent, whereas their strengths have less impact the more games you play. If you play only a few games, of course, their strengths will seem dominant.

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2. All warbands shall have a maximum number of 15, except dwarves, who are still at 12.
We did this because we thought the warband maximums were pretty arbitrary, and fairly easy to get around.

Really? How do you get around maximums easily? Are you going to limit the winner of each campaign to 12? Otherwise it seems kind of arbitrary.    If the Dwarfs won, why are the Skaven in for so much hate?

There are four warbands who do not fit the maximum warband size of 15. Two under, Witch Hunters & dwarves at twelve. Two over, which is Skaven at 20, O&G are also twenty but with exceptions.

There doesn't seem to be any particular reason for the limit on WH. I've racked my brain over it, and I just can't find it. Dwarves with their hard to kill rules make a little more sense, but it has been a rare occurrence where we haven't been able to curb stomp stunned or knocked down dwarves into out of action.

Dwarves didn't win last game. They placed in the last three places. We had waaay too many dwarf players last time. Which is why we instituted a draft to make sure we had no duplicate warbands. Winning player played Possessed, and is switching to dwarves.

Skaven have always been a problem. We've actively avoided them for the last few campaigns. Mainly due to the fact that only me and the guy who won own them. The kids mainly borrow one of my armies, or have started buying their own, but have thus far avoided Skaven.

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There are four warbands who do not fit the maximum warband size of 15. Two under, Witch Hunters & dwarves at twelve. Two over, which is Skaven at 20, O&G are also twenty but with exceptions.

Is this within the warbands that your group has or among 'official' warbands? Among the unofficial warbands published by GW there are many more and of course if you add in the fan-made warbands the list grows substantially. As for a reason, the most likely is for balance.    Although the Witch Hunters are clearly both a mistake and supposedly as they are because of fluff.

Skaven have 20 because they have such a low leadership. Orcs because they have the animosity rule and start with 4 heroes. Lizardmen seem to follow da Mob's formula (minus animosity), while goblin warbands follow the Skaven template (plus animosity).

If Skaven are not part of your warband mix and you use official warbands, what is the point of nerfing slings? Do you really have that much problem with shooty Sisters?

Von Kurst wrote:

Ah, now we get to the gist of the 'sling problem'.  Skaven have access to slings.  There are many things I like about the discussion of slings, but the fact that Skaven can take them seems to be the over-riding issue.  Everyone complains about the sling, but if pressed what they are really cheesed about is the Skaven.  So they suggest we nerf the sling, because IT is unbalanced.  Really?

Well, we only play with official (main rulebook + Empire in Flames) warbands, so Skaven are 50% of the people who can take slings in their stock equipment list; this might be why other people mention Skaven + Slings together so often as well... I wouldn;t say it;s uncommon for a lot of players to stick to the realms of 'official rules' as the depths of fan-made Mordheim are deep and murky...

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And as for the Skaven warband being overpowered, I would say that they are an easy warband to understand.  Their strengths are obvious and easy to grasp.  However, their weakness (low Leadership) is permanent, whereas their strengths have less impact the more games you play.  If you play only a few games, of course, their strengths will seem dominant.

I never said that Skaven were overpowered, or even in need of toning down- on any issue except Slings. I like Skaven, I think they're fluffy, fun and competitive, which is a rare mix. Unfortunately the Slings seemed to have just so slightly tipped them over the edge into 'I can break the game with the tools here' territory. It's not a problem against players who want fun and quirkyness, but add a mix of competition and every Skaven player will max out on Slings at a moments notice. Sisters players not only tend to be rarer (in my experience; your mileage may vary) due to the fluff not being as attractive and the models harder to convert/ come by. Add the fact that Sisters can't climb all over the place to make the most of the double shots and you can see why they are much less of a risk with Slings than the rat-folk.

This wasn't the point that I was making, but I don't think you give Skaven as much credit as they are deserving. If we do address your point about their strengths and weaknesses, then I have to say that I have never seem their low leadership being a terrible hindrance to them. All Alone Tests come up so rarely that we have forgotten they were an official rule several times; unless someone is playing an Undead Warband there are never instances of needing to take multiple Fear tests with any regularity; and if you stick to the upper warband limits then they rarely need to take route tests- you have to grind at them to force those tests, which is compared to the rest of the field who start taking them after a few lucky long range shots take guys out. Going back to the 'Fear Test' thing again, due to having Slings and a great Initiative on everyone, they are able to completely negate Fear by climbing out of reach and/ or shooting you in the face with two shots per person- why charge and risk failing the test when you can shoot at them and get the same number of attacks as a dual wielder?

We've been building each campaign. This is going to be the first campaign that anyone has played SoB. We only allow the official warbands, and for the most part its been a mixed bag. We've always had at least one Undead, one Dwarf, one Mercenary. The others though, have been either duplicates (last campaign we had three dwarf warbands), or one player who is playing a favorite (like the kid who plays Beastmen).

We mainly banned slings based solely on how abusive they are, this is one of the few rules we made due to our thinking about the rules rather then as a direct response to something that happened during a campaign. We have until March to come up with a temporary solution, and a whole year to figure out a more permanent one.

I'm actually surprised that this is the rule that is causing the most debate. However, I am enjoying it immensely.

Skaven were last years ban. We couldn't figure out a way to get them to work in a way that seemed balanced. A dividing opinion I can see. We came up with some ideas, but since no one has wanted to play them, I didn't even bother posting those rules.

I have to ask, are we talking the rules for slings from the printed rule book or the ones from the 2005 Living Rule book hosted on GW's site? It makes a difference.

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but I don't think you give Skaven as much credit as they are deserving. If we do address your point about their strengths and weaknesses, then I have to say that I have never seem their low leadership being a terrible hindrance to them.

Mordheim is a game that is hard to have common experience with. I have played against the rulebook Skaven with Middenheimers, Marienburgers, Witch Hunters, Reiklanders, Da Mob, Forest Goblins, Undead, Beastmen, various kinds of Pirates, Lizardmen, Tileans, Clan Pestilens, Halflings, Araby Nomads and Araby Thieves off the top of my head. I can only go by MY experience, but I am pretty confident that it is considerable. I respect that your experience is not mine, but the opposite is also true and I might have some useful thoughts. I'm not saying that I always OWN the Skaven when we fight or that I have never encountered sling spam, but I am saying that I haven't found it to be a problem since the 2005 Rules Review.

I truly have little idea about your style of play or your opponents' style of play other than you seem to be letting the Skaven dictate how the game is played. Thus you play against his strength with your weakness. This never ends well.

You are playing Undead right now, yes? How do you handle terrain set up? How do you pick scenarios? Is your warband rated higher or lower than the skaven? How many players in your campaign? Do you play 2 on 2 or lots of scenarios with more than 2 players?

We've mainly been playing straight published book, which I'm slowly realizing. Most of the stuff from the living rulebook was clarifications that we were already using. There are some differences.

As for our upcoming campaign, I'm playing WH, another first for our group. We typically play one on one. We rarely if ever play multiplayer games, which is unfortunate, because then we could all beat up on the big guns.

We generally have anywhere from three to six tables set up for us to use, and we jump between one table to another, so the terrain can vary wildly between fairly wide open to fairly dense. We like the variety.

Yes, the skaven player did play heavily to his strengths and to our weaknesses, but that's what makes him a good player. He did it impressively with Possessed as well.

I don't see why you would first give out free clubs and shields (to promote larger warbands) and then get the 50% requirement to rout. - this will quickly decimate a lot of warbands. Which will not be in favour of the young kids's playstyles or exprience.

I tend to like the fluff based warbands, and therefor am not a likely campaign winner, but I do like to keep my warband alive and keep having fun throughout the campaign. If I were forced to see my bands slaughtered, I would probably start playing cheesy lists and predictable strongpoints, not helping the game's fun diversity.
Keep in mind that the post battle sequence is an important part of the game as well, and that some warbands can depend on this as heavily as on the regular battles.

As for the armor rule, my group made the shield a +2 armor save option (when the opponent is in your arc of sight only - otherwise it's a +1) This makes armor combinations more usefull, and generally sees a lot more armor on the table. This negates the halving of prices, and keeps the game somewhat more inline with the fluff.

I like the #4 rule

hope your campaign will work out for you guys!

As someone who has played dwarves, (opponents were beastmen, mercs and orcs) I found the first few games extremely difficult, the dwarves didn't have the numbers to get any wins and certainly didn't have the numbers to be able to afford to take 50% casualties before running, if you loose just one dwarf in the end game you are unlikely to be able to replace them.

If you lost 2, well you may as well give up as you'll never catch up.

I will admit that after a few games and skill gains they do become a force to be reckoned with, but I know I lost at least the first 3-4 games before my dwarves could actually manage to hang on lone enough to get a win.

Most of the time when I see posts about changing the rules; it seems to be I see this slowly becoming a “is skaven overpowered” debate. (I love these) My group has a Non-Ending campaign. We have Warbands that are years old and some have been just beaten to a pulp, but still have some good going for them. I’ve played them all and against almost all Warbands. I currently have about 20-30 warbands in Game Box and will roll a D20 for the top 20 bands to which will be next. We are more like rules, stats, and strategy players. We know each bands bonuses and penalties.

As Mister Kurst had pointed out Skaven usually route latter in a Campaign, mostly because of their low Ld stat. Let me also add why Skaven can have 20 members in their Band. Look at what’s available for Skaven in the Hired Sword department. It’s real limited. The diversity in types and skills of Hired Swords and Dramatis Personae for Humans is vast, but very little to Skaven. That part isn’t mentioned much. My guess is because most players don’t look into using them often. I would gladly drop my Skaven to 12 members, increase max Ld to 9, and have the same availability to human HS and DP, in a heartbeat.

If your issue is running continually into a Sling Firing Squad, change your strategy. Slings are limited to 18 inches line of sight, that’s long range -1 to hit, use cover -1 to hit.
Use both for -2 to hit, at BS3 it’s a 6 to hit. Good odds they’ll miss. Combine that, with you having Bow, long bow, or crossbow, and you out distance the slings.
more that their strategy doesn’t work to win, therefore the rules must be wrong. I suggest altering your strategy. Try making you opponent’s bonuses into their weakness. In this case, more ground level cover, more open distance between structures, and longer ranged weapons.

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The diversity in types and skills of Hired Swords and Dramatis Personae for Humans is vast, but very little to Skaven. That part isn’t mentioned much.

Good point.

LAZ wrote:

As for our upcoming campaign, I'm playing WH, another first for our group. We typically play one on one. We rarely if ever play multiplayer games, which is unfortunate, because then we could all beat up on the big guns.

I do like playing 2 on 2 though. For me I think it reduces the impact of a dominant player. Nothing is suckier than playing The Guy over and over with no hope of winning. If I play a variety of opponents, I feel I can get good match ups, maybe get a scenario that my warband excels at and forget about that awful whuppin' I just took. Multi-player games take too long.

How do you chose scenarios? Do you set up tables for certain scenarios or just roll and adjust?

LAZ wrote:

Yes, the skaven player did play heavily to his strengths and to our weaknesses, but that's what makes him a good player. He did it impressively with Possessed as well.

I expect he will do it again as Dwarfs, despite the handicap of having to play them as written. Oh I hate Stunties!  

LAZtheinfamous wrote:

1. Instead of a Free Dagger, all models who can will start with a shield and a club.

Not a bad rule, but I would recommend instead of jiggering around with the club rules making a new weapon instead. The Concussion rule is good for hammers and maces and so forth, so if you make a new weapon Cudgel and make that have no bonuses or penalties you get what you wanted for the free weapon without removing the flavour of the Hammer or Mace. If you really wanted to, you could even give the cudgel +1 to armour saves like the dagger, but I am not sure how much that would affect things for your group.

LAZtheinfamous wrote:

2. All warbands shall have a maximum number of 15, except dwarves, who are still at 12.

In my group noone would really care. Optimum warband size is 9 or 12 depending on preference and the only time anyone goes higher is when they want to pad their warband rating for some reason.

LAZtheinfamous wrote:

3. Armor Shall Cost Half.

My group tried this for a while and then got rid of it for flavour reasons. With making toughened leathers armour instead of equipment, shields and bucklers giving +1AS in melee, and the -1 to off-hand attacks we didn't really need it anyway.

LAZtheinfamous wrote:

4. Henchmen can use common, non-rare items.

There is discussion of this in my group, but we haven't tried it much. However, we ruled that henchmen can use mounts.

LAZtheinfamous wrote:

5. Sling Ban- there shall be no slings!

We never needed to nerf or ban them. We learned how to play adjusted our tactics and strategies instead.

LAZtheinfamous wrote:

6. No Pussies Rule- You may only Voluntarily Rout at 50% of starting warband amount.

I am always violently opposed to people trying to legislate fun. It is almost invariably counter-productive. You say they would rout if things were going badly, but how much fun do you think they are going to have being forced to watch their entire warband slaughtered?

I have seen this 50% malarky attempted before (thankfully a campaign I had the sense to stay out of) and it backfired horribly. It took the competitive players about 2 seconds to figure out the best way to exploit the issue and start farming other players for xp when they couldn't escape. The less competitive players felt terrible for being bound by law to stomp at least 50% of a warband that was just having a bad day./rant. Whew. Sorry about that - it stirred up terrible memories and I wasn't even *playing*. I would probably be having flash-backs if I were actually involved .

OK, now that that is out of my system, what I would recommend is leaving the rout mechanics RAW and instead make the campaign winner based on Glory. Something like you earn 5 glory for a solo win, 2 glory for a shared win, 0 for a rout/loss and -2 for a voluntary rout. That should encourage people not to run away at the first opportunity, but if it looks like you are going to have a very bad day indeed (e.g. start of your turn, 9 man warband, 4 OOA, 2 stunned, 1 KD) you can take the -2 glory and GTFO of Dodge before the hammer *really* comes down and still feel like you have a chance of winning.

Oooh, perhaps if you made it 5 for an underdog win, 3 for a win, 1 for a joint win, 0 for loss, -2 for a voluntary rout. Moar Glory for the underdog victory, and more temptation for multiplayer back-stabbery. No, wait, 3 for an underdog win, 2 for solo win, 1 for a joint win, 0 for a loss, -2 for a voluntary rout, and +1 for achieving a wipeout and +2 for *suffering* a wipeout. Oooh, and an additional wipeout bonus of +1 if you were the underdog.

Something like that, anyway. I am sure you can get a better method of the others here - they will have much more experience at that sort of thing than I do.

See, the base mechanics a weighted to make ultimate victory go to the most ruthless survivor and, happily,
in my group we have the most fun being as ruthless and competitive as possible so we use the RAW .