Mordheim Tournament

My LGS, seeing a huge surge in Mordheim interest, is looking to put on a Mordheim tournament. As I'm the guy taking the most responsibility in organizing the Mordheim community, they asked me to work with them in organizing the tournament.

We'll be using the one-off game rules for building warbands, but my boggle is how much gold should we allow for the start? The book uses 1,000gc as an example, but that seems a bit excessive.

Would 800gc be enough? That's a starting warband and a spread of skills and stat increases, and maybe some extra henchies.

What are your thoughts?

The store that I use to play at used the tournament rules only 1 time and I do believe it was for 1K gcs.

I did not think the amount was too much, nor does 800gc seem like too little really, because I do not think the amount you choose is what is the issue with the tournament rules. I would highly encourage house ruling something regarding how your group spends the gc for their band, namely limiting hero advancements.

When we played the tournament most of us made full warbands with henchmen and heroes maxed out to warband limits and several advancements for our heroes. 2 people however just tricked out their heroes to godlike proportions. 1 was a group of 5 marienburger heroes that could climb any building an rain ranged attacks down on anyone on the table who was out in the open, so the game stalled until someone tried to get him and died under a rain of fire. The other was a group of possessed that had several models, but the had 0 advances (and only hid) save for 2 possessed that were nearly invincible and did all the killing. Games against the other 6 or so players were fine, but not particularly exciting compared to playing a campaign and the games against the other 2 were tragic.

1000 gc's sounds right. Anyone can get a desent warband going. For me, I would set up a campain style tournment. With the usual 500 gc (or maybe 700 gc) to start. The warbnd that wins would be the warband with the highest warband rating after a certen amount of games played. That changes things up a bit. Might be better to bottle out and lose a game as to guning hardcore for the win (might lose some heroes or henchmen in the process of winning which could effect the warband rating). Throw in some house rules about being too passive and such. Would make a different touranment.

I think limiting the advances that heroes can take would be helpful, perhaps with each hero having received a specific number of extra experience blocks, and then they get however many level-ups that would normally have been received in those levels, so leaders will get fewer because they start with 20 experience, but youngblood-esque heroes would be able to get more advancements due to starting at zero experience.

I confess that I would be a player like the one that would scale a tower with 5 crossbow heroes with Quickshot and just rain death upon my enemies.

In a normal campain, that would take a while to get those skills and high BS, so I wouldn't have any problems with that. Even in a stand alone game, I wouldn't mind it because I would create a couple of power houses with the combo of skills and high states to counter act that.

Actually, on the stand aalone game, I would be the Marienburger for the extra gold (HA!!). Use my gold to beef up all my heroes and spend the rest of the money on hired swords....

Give. Champion a higher BS and a hunting rifle (or long rifle whichever it is called)

For advancements, perhaps assign everybody a certain number of experience points they can divide among their warriors, and an individual receives an advance when you sign him the appropriate number of experience points.  In other words, four points would purchase one advance for the captain but two for a youngblood.  

Are you going to have people roll randomly for advances, or let them select?  Points spent on a henchman group should be multiplied by the number of warriors in the group, esp. if players pick the advancement.

I think one of the first things you will need to do is decide which warbands people can select from.  The safe option is the original Mordheim warbands (but not the Lustria ones) + plus the very few others GW ranked as official.  Even some of the GW-released warbands they decided were not balanced, and the fan-made ones are all over the place.  

I have never run this sort of campaign.  Hopefully it will be fun!

In my campaign we gave 1 increase (and increased their exp) to each starting Hero. Nothing for Henchmen though. Also, all warbands started out with 750gc. The increase was rolled, not selected.

If a warband disbands, they will start with this again.

It gives 'a little extra' without new people having to consider all sorts of skill/stat combinations.

Quote :

I have never run this sort of campaign.

What is a Mordheim tournament anyway?

The idea was suggested once as something for the group to do at Gencon. We didn't pursue it.

My brother ran one at Nashcon a couple of years back. Two sessions I think. But it wasn't intended to be an ongoing thing, so he just created several warbands of different sorts, trying to balance them as best he could.

The rules listed in the rule set that my LGS is using states the following for one-off games.



I would further stipulate that Movement can only be increased if at least two other stats are increased to the Racial Maximum, as that is the only way movement stats can be increased normally.

Basically, it would be like playing Warhammer, only you have a far greater control over your forces, they're smaller (unless you're switching from Grey Knights in 40k to Skaven in Mordheim), and the board is smaller.

There will be no rolling for loot, experience, or injuries at the end of each game. You have your set amount of gold (Marienburgers get an additional 20%) and that's it. Your warband then simply plays, tournament style, for the day, completely unchanging from game to game.

Furthermore, you only get access to your starting equipment, so the only way a mercenary hero is going to get a Hochland Long Rifle is if he takes Weapons Expert and snags it from the Marksmen list.

And while it says that only heroes get the upgrades, I would maybe add that you can purchase "Lad's Got Talent" as a henchmen skill in the place of one of their advances. So Mercenaries can take a Marksman hero, but it's 40gc for LGT and it takes up one of the limited advancements that they would get.

Hired Swords may be purchased as normal, but may not take advancements, as they are not heroes. This might be one of the reasons to take otherwise less popular hired swords. It also makes others more popular. A halfling scout is an extra cheap bow that also lets you take one more henchie. A Goblin Lantern Bearer, on the other hand, is pointless.

We tried a Mordheim tournament once. It was more a kind of mini campaign with all the Mordheim typical stuff ( exp, death, etc.)

This worked ok.

To have those on off games as described is possible but I also fear that this can be broken if not reglemented. Some nasty examples were shown above. But allthough I developed from a tournament player to a less competitive more story driven player I accept if you like to play the game that way.

With regards to starting bonus. I think it s not fair to translate the +100gc of the Marienburger to +20%. It is not fair because, Middenheimer still only get +1S for their heroes, Possessed still only have two possessed etc. The only warband with increasing bonus are the Reiklander warband, but the max number of members is also limited. So I would play the Marienburger with +100gc also for 1k gc one shot games, like it is written in the rulebook.

Actually the rules do specify that the Marienburgers receive a 20% bonus:

"To reflect their enormous wealth Marienburgers start
off with an extra 100 gold crowns (600 in total) when
fighting in a campaign. In a one-off game they are
permitted an extra 20% gold crowns when recruiting
a warband. For example, in a 1,000 gold crown game
a Marienburger warband will have 1,200gc."
(p. 69 of the first edition rulebook, p. 51 in the revised pdf)

Thing is, Marienburg gets NO other bonuses in a tournament setting. Their only bonuses are in Warband creation and exploration. With no exploration phase, then to limit their one remaining rule is really just saying "No reason to play Marienburg" and likely prompt the use of Reikland rules. Also, an extra 20% isn't that much, especially if everyone else has 1,000gc to build warbands and pick skills.

Carnival of Chaos, stacking Blessings on their Tainted Ones, would be far more hard-hitting, as would anything that can buy mutations out of the gate.

mweaver wrote:

Actually the rules do specify that the Marienburgers receive a 20% bonus:

"To reflect their enormous wealth Marienburgers start
off with an extra 100 gold crowns (600 in total) when
fighting in a campaign. In a one-off game they are
permitted an extra 20% gold crowns when recruiting
a warband. For example, in a 1,000 gold crown game
a Marienburger warband will have 1,200gc."
(p. 69 of the first edition rulebook, p. 51 in the revised pdf)

Ok thanks I was wrong, Sorry for that.

I still think the bigger the game the bigger this advantage.

But as MrDancyPants also there my orher cheesy combination which are stronger. With regard to vanilla rules warbands I think it is one of the strongest advantage in one shot games.

I dunno, BS 4 marksmen with Crossbows from Reikland are pretty amazing, too.

Yeah Bs is good. But you can have max 7 of them. So it is limited somehow.

But I agree it is one of the more usefull warband skills.

The Middenheim skillset sucks in big games. Witchhunters also do not work well.

Possessed and Skaven and maybe undead could work well because they could just buy all the expensive units up to warband limit.

But whatever you do, it is your choice in the end and you need to have fun. I am interessted how it went after the tournament.

SerialMoM wrote:

Yeah Bs is good. But you can have max 7 of them. So it is limited somehow.

Possessed and Skaven and maybe undead could work well because they could just buy all the expensive units up to warband limit.

As for the marksmen with a BS of 4 for the merc warband, it is a nice but not only limited but cost a lot of money. With the possessed and skaven buying expensive units right away for the tournament, the thing is, you'll stilll run out of money fast. May not be able to get all your expensive units and you could end up spending most of your money on the units and then not have enough money for skills and stats increase.

With Marienburg warbands, when you guys use up your starting money (1000 gc), we still have 20% left. Usually instead of buying the expenivse units, I focus on upgrading my heroes with stat increases and skills. Give a leader the strongman skill with 1 or 2 extra attacks plus 1 increase to either wounds or ws and some aromur and he's a powerhouse.

Actaully with Witch hunters, give the leader and priest the sme thing and you got two power houses that can mop up otheer warbands. Get the warhounds for your main henchmen since their stats could never oncrease, they are cheap and they are effective in combat.

Also with this tournamnet with the marienburg lacking something becouse of their bounse of rare itdems finding, why not allow them to buy rare items that are not on their starting list. Like the dawarven weapons and armour etc. Would reflect on their abitity to be able to have easier. Access to rare and expanvie items.

So we came up with something for the rules that I thought I'd share with y'all, in case you were intredasted in doing something similar.

1,000 Gold Crowns for each player (1,200 for Marienburg and that one Tilean warband that no one really plays).

Each hero is allowed 20xp worth of advancements. For Leaders, who usually start with 20xp, this means 4 advances. Your champion characters, who usually have 12, 10, 0r 8xp; will get 6 advancements. Youngblood-like useless durdle heroes, who start at 0xp, will get 8 advancements out of their 20 xp. This helps prevent people from loading up their vampire with a ton of stats and skills, and having it shred everyone else while hiding two zombies in the back.

Starting equipment only, hired swords may be purchased as normal. Warbands allowed are the ones present in the DeDS rules.

No rolling for serious injuries or exploration between games, no xp gain. Same roster for each game. Scenarios will likely be ones that are more basic, like Street Fight, Wyrdstone Hunt (with a set number of Wyrdstone counters, Occupy, and the like.