a warband's loop hole

Ok, so I noticed that there are a lot of newer warbands that are kind of powerful starting off like beastmen or orge warband where their toughness starts at 4. Makes it hard for my humans to wound them so I like using the double handed weapons. Only problem is that I strike last mainly because not too many of my heroes can get the strongman skill.

But when my henchman becomes a hero, he get two skills choosen from any of the skills. I usually give him strongman skill and a double handed weapon. They usually become a killing machine.

So I figure, how about I have more then one henchman become a hero? In order to do this, I made a new warband, start with only 3 heroes. Then with the henchmen I want to become heroes later on, I make at least 3 to 5 small henchmen groups ofof 1 or 2 guys. This way it increases the chances of at least one or two henchmen becoming a hero. As a bonus, instead of getting 1 exp for a group of up to 5 guys, I can get up to 5 exp for 5 guys each game.

I did this with my new witch hunter warband. I bought 1 leader, 1 witch hunter and 1 warrior priest. Then I bought 3 warhounds (as 1 group) and then 5 fallegnets each as his own group and with a double handed weapon.

If I get the right amount of luck, 5 out of 6 heroes will have the stronhgman skill with a double handed weapon.

In my current campaign as Witch Hunters, I had a hero die who then got replaced straight away by a LGT Flagellant who had just hit 14xp. For his hero advancement I rolled a skill, got Strongman, and swapped his flail for a greatsword. In the rest of the games that day the flagellant, mighty Praise-Sigmar Jones, was an absolute monster and racked up almost as many OOA opponents as the rest of my heroes put together over the duration of the campaign to that point (this is largely due to the way Witch Hunters work, with the henchmen being close combat specalists and the heroes focused more on range and exploration). It would make your warband extremely powerful in close combat if you got lucky and ended up with a lot of flagellant-heroes early on in a campaign.

We don't have to roll randomly for what skill we pick. We get to pick tthe skills we want. And so far, after two games, I have one flagllent that became a hero. One dies (which I was able to re hire so he has two more games before he might a hero) and 2 got a +1ws while one got a +1 attacks. So not too bad. So, so far, so good.

So it's kind of working. Brutal start though. 2nd game most of the flagllent OOA as with my dogs but only one died. And my heroes live to search for warpstones.

I think davinewrath didn't have to roll which skill to get either. He rolled for advances and when he got a skill he chose strongman.
I also had very strong Lads both in my Beastmen- and WH-warbands and I also put henchmen in groups of one to maximise the chance of rolling "Lad" for advances. But I'd never think of starting with just three heroes due to lack of exploration-dice.
In the LRB I think you have to kick out a henchman that rolls "Lad" if all your six hero-slots are full. So I'd just go with five heroes. The groups I played with all allowed us to kick out an old hero for a new "Lad". So in this case, I'd always go with as many heroes as possible.

I have to admit, the lack of heroes did bite me in the butt a bit but not too much. I just let my henchmem do most of the hard work and made sure my heroes didn't go OOA. As soon as I could route, I did so knowing the game wasn't going my way. Plus I cant switch "old" heroes for new ones so I choose for the less heroes to start. Next time I might go with starting with 4 hoeroes.

Crossbows are a excellent equalizer being S4 and range 30" and beastmen and ogres don't use crossbows

I do agree on that. Mind you most of the beastmen have toughness of 4 so I need at least a 4 to wound. Plus my marksmen weren't all that great shooters to start but when I had my miniburgers, one crossbow shot got lucky and took his leader out of action and then later died. J).

With the double handed weapons, its a strenght 6 with my flagellants so its a 2 to wound. Just hitting them is the problem so far. With other warbands, I'm sure they would be mopped up with a bucket.

I have to admit, its fun to expermient with this.