Movement Tactics

Hi,

I did not play a lot of Mordheim yet, but keeping all of my models together in one group while running across the battlefield seemed to me the superior strategy than splitting them up in all of my games.

I would like to know if this is the usual case.
If everyone plays like that games will become boring (?).
I have to add that in all games the objective was to make the opponent rout.

If you cannot point out a general flaw in the strategy of moving all models in one group during skirmish games I would be very happy if you can still give some examples of situations where this strategy is not superior to splitting your models into smaller groups.

Mito

A shooty band will allways have to leave most marksmen behind, since they can't run and shoot and have -1 to impact while moving. But I asume you are talking about a CC oriented band, if you advance with all your models together it will be more difficult to hide them from snipers, and you may be surrounded easily by a band with high movility like skaven, leaving your leader and weakest models exposed. There are many benefits in keeping them all together, tho.

But the most important thing is if you advance as one compact group you will be easily targeted by blunderbuss and area spells. Since those are not so likely to appear in early games, that strategy may be the best one for the first matches most times, but an experienced player won't have much trouble to destroy you if you use the same strategy game after game.

There are scenarios that benefit from spliting forces to achieve objectives also, specially when you add more than the ones the rulebook comes with. The player that wins more games is usually the one who ends up winning the campaing, but not allways, keep in mind campaings are about collecting wyrdstone.

Like Bitxo said, when you start playing scenarios with objectives, that'll start to change how you play. It won't always be advantageous, or even possible, to mob up and run.

For a long time I've played with an extra thrown in that MWeaver came up with a while back. Adding a randomized amount of bodies to loot to any scenario, that have to be spread evenly across the board, and that includes evenly on different levels of play. Like if you roll that there are 6 bodies to loot, and you have buildings with 3 levels, 2 would have to be on the ground floor, 2 on the second, and 2 on the third, etc, etc. Its really helped with getting people to explore and move around a bit.

Body looting

Note: this idea was shamelessly stolen from mweaver after i read about it being one of his solutions to get fighting to take place above ground level)

Before a game starts, each player rolls one d6, and the results are added together. The total number is the amount of dead bodies scattered across the board. The bodies must be spread evenly on the playing field, and must be evenly spread about the different floors of buildings. Whenever a member of a warband touches one of these bodies, roll a d6 and consult the following chart:

1 - THE UNDEAD!!!: The corpse has been reanimated as a zombie by the foul energy permeating the city. Using the Undead warbands stats for a single zombie, the body and the warband member are now in combat, which is resolved in initiative order.

2 - Waste of time: Nothing on the corpse but blood and tattered clothing. Move along, nothing to see here

3 - Got a lil' change in his pocket hasn't he?: the corpse has d6 GC on his person.

4 - Pretty well off weren't cha?: the corpse has 2d6x2 GC on his person.

5 - Well what do we 'ave 'ere?: the corpse has d3 Wyrdstone shards on his person.

6 - You sneaky monkey…: the corpse has d3 Wyrdstone shards, and a map of mordheim on his person.

The terrain itself can also do a good job of splitting a warband up. You can create chokepoints where only 2-3 models can pass by at once, leaving the rest bunched up uselessly behind if they're all going in together. This requires some pretty dense terrain, though.

+1 to AOE spells, Blunderbusses, and various missions encouraging splitting up. Also Fire Bombs (equipment available to everyone that works like an AOE ranged weapon).

Annual 2002 wrote:

Fire Bomb; 35+2D6 gc; Availability: Rare 9
Designed by the dwarf engineers of the Worlds Edge Mountains, fire bombs are a rare and deadly weapon. A small batch of gunpowder is sealed within an iron casting with a short fuse fed into it. When lit, the thrower has only seconds before the gunpowder ignites and explodes. This can often prove to be dangerous, as if the fire bomb is fused incorrectly it could be the thrower who finds himself amidst the explosion... The fire bomb may be thrown in the Shooting phase in the same way as blessed water (p53 Mordheim rulebook). If the bomb lands on target, the warrior hit takes D3 Strength 4 hits with no saves for armor and all warriors, friend or foe, within 1” of him take 1 Strength 3 hit with saves as normal. If the throwing warrior rolls 1 when rolling to hit, the bomb misfires and explodes just as if the throwing warrior had been hit by his own fire bomb.

I like the idea of body looting, but we usually have objectives in all our games (correction: We always have), meaning that we usually split our warriors into 3 - 4 groups. The whole 'move directly towards each other to bang your heads together' doesn't really fit with our idea of Mordheim, so I'd definitely recommend using all the wonderful objective scenarios.