Imperial Outriders or Marienburg Mercenaries?

So I'm kinda wanting to run a warband with some mounts as i've never used them before and figure they'd probably be a laugh. Now I'm a bit torn between whether to do a full on imperial outrider army and try to learn good positioning and staying out of charge range and the mobility for grabbing objectives would be pretty cool.

On the other hand i've thought about running some marienburg mercenaries and having the Captain and someone else on horseback (2 people to grab objectives and hopefully get a decent armour save) and lots of bods to soak up the damage and combat.

Now the outriders look pretty underpowered and therefore hella fun, I'd love to do them as a mongolian style horse archer band but would have to of course get the shooting skills to use bows. Or i could do them in the theme of polish winged hussars (great looking cavalry) and have some fun mowing down archers or other less combat based henchman with clever charges.

Of course marienburg have money and numbers going for them and would give me a much better starting boost but considering its a constantly ongoing campaign with plenty of op warbands starting boost might not actually be much help whereas mobility for objective grabbing missions could. However we've been doing tunnel fighting a lot recently and cavalry and animals aren't allowed there so that would be a scary experience (lots of running away from more powerful denizens) so it would have to be a case of hope i roll well for money.

Outriders also lock me out of getting the cheap beggar hired sword for more gold but way easier to get horses and potentially an entire army of cavalry (for shits and giggles)

What are peoples thoughts and/or tactics with either idea? Anyone had fun with outriders or mounting any marienburgers or anyone feel that the fun factor for outriders is worth the slower early game?

Go with the Marienburgers. That starting boost they can can be snowballed if you are clever and the +1 rare trade makes a noticeable difference. Specifically, go for getting all your guys gromril armour, tomes of magic, and the relevant supporting skills. Flying knights throwing fireballs and wielding flaming swords can be pretty fun.

That does sound fun, and hopefully during my summer holidays when im away from uni i'll be able to get in enough games to get all the fun stuff.

One thing i'd also like to ask though, any mordheim campaign tips in general? Whenever i try to take different approaches i never have much luck and i always seem to get charged first. Any potential tips for things to go for with warbands, things to avoid and how best to use heroes (i like to charge them into combat after henchman soak up charges to try and take out models but i often have trouble getting enough attacks to hit and i almost always roll either lots of skills or lots of ws/bs for experience) I'd read on here today someone saying about they usually keep heroes back out of the way of fighting but that feels like a bit of a waste as henchman rarely seem to kill anything or is it more keep them safe early game then when they're op and have good equipment charge them in?

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However we've been doing tunnel fighting a lot recently and cavalry and animals aren't allowed there so that would be a scary experience (lots of running away from more powerful denizens) so it would have to be a case of hope i roll well for money.

I'm always curious about this kind of thing. Is the tunnel fighting just a bunch of scenarios you guys are playing or is it part of the overall campaign?

If your campaign involves a lot of tunnel fighting (which excludes all horses) what's the point of running a mounted warband? Maybe I don't understand what the words 'a lot' mean in terms of games played.

From my perspective as a campaign organizer I am often bewildered by warband choice. One of my players wanted to play his beastmen in the Sartosa setting, despite owning a couple of different pirate warbands. Another brought his Wargods Beastmen to Mordheim despite the fact that we play one campaign set in Araby per year...

well the campaign is just constant ongoing battles with different scenarios and the tunnel fighting stuff is basically a different scenario some of the guys cooked up (i think its mostly taking khemri tomb diving stuff and editing it a fair bit) which they've been working on (hence why its been done a fair bit recently) but since its basically just people playing lots of warbands doing lots of battles (no campaign goal in mind really) we obviously wont always be in tunnels its just been something tested and played a lot in the recent weeks but anyway TLDR: Tunnel fightings basically just another scenario and not the central focus

'A lot' probably means very little in the scope of how many games are played with it but being at uni a lot and only getting to play mordheim at the club when im home on holidays means i have a very different grasp of 'a lot' than others haha XD i'm expecting it to die down a bit for instance on wednesday we had 1 table tunnelling and one table as normal mordheim. Tunnels can be fun though, tough as heck random enemies or traps and lots of good loot!

And I guess that you are ignoring the rules for mounted models in Mordheim since you want to play a mounted warband. (Warbands in Mordheim being limited to two mounts total by the Blazing Saddles rules.)

EiF campaign book, p.24 wrote:

Dense Terrain. Riding mounts are rare both amongst the ruins of Mordheim and in the claustrophobic jungles of Lustria. The dense terrain makes riding difficult and large numbers of riders are highly ineffective. Thus in those settings, a warband may only have a maximum of two mounts (not including those belonging to Hired Swords). In more open settings, such as the open fields of the countryside around Mordheim or the deserts of Khemri, a warband may have as many mounts as they can afford.

Actually no, outriders have a nice rule to ignore the maximum of 2 mounts but if i go marienburg i will of course have no more than 2 of my heroes mounted up for objective grabbing

Ha! Shows me. I thought that warband was an Empire in Flames/Khemri only kind of deal.

The Relics Arabian warband, the Turjuk, would be a perfect Mongol horde since they come with riding skills and don't use black powder weapons (without skills anyway).

I might have to look them up and see what they're like