Just Finished 8 Game Campaign - Thoughts and Musings

Just finished my first 8 game campaign with my Orcs and Goblins Warband taking on the Possessed and a Undead warband. Managed to finish second but essentially the Possessed ran away with it.

Below are some random thoughts.

• 
  Possessed are tough! In the end I was facing a CC monster with 2xS5 and 1xS6 Attack, T5 with Resilient! With S4 I was wounding on 6s with no chance of crits and even with S5 I needed 5s up!
  

• Resilient is a top skill! Especially with Orcs it means your heroes are all T5 in CC. Against most S3 opponents they'll need 6s up to wound with no possibility of crit.
  

• 
  Crits are scary... and it will be caused by the most harmless looking grunts - zombies.
  

• Our house rule regarding dual wield, -1 to Hit on offhand with no chance to crit worked quite well.
  

• The Troll is not as tough as it looks - a zombie rolls a 6 to wound - crits - causes 2 wounds - dead troll. T4 and 3 wounds even with 4+ ward can and will get taken down if swamped. Also decreases in power as campaign goes on. And yes stupid Stupidity.
  

• Orc Sharman with the Clubba spell is crazy good! 2 x S5 attacks at the start of the campaign!
  

• T4 troops across the board is also crazy good when you first start! Get stuck in as fast as you can! But thing is that they start with ridiculous amounts of XP. You really want to roll Lads Got Talent on your orc henchmen - he'll level up a lot quicker. Having your henchmen at T4 also mean it denies easy XP kills for your opponent.
  

• Undead Dregs are utterly rubbish. Always hunt them down for easy kills as it hampers your opponents post battle searches.
  

• Mutants are not that tough either if you get them jump on them; still only T3 - but avoid the Possessed like the plague!
  

• Don't even bother to shoot stuff with BS3 - over half range with your opponents in cover means you'll be only hitting on 6s.
  

• 1/6 chance of animosity isn't all that bad... except it will always strike at critical junctions. *sigh
  

Starting with Troll meant I had only 7 models resulting in rout tests after only losing 2. Not good.

For out next campaign next month I'm probably going to ditch the troll and start with 4 heroes, 4 squigs, 5 Goblins and 5 Orc Boyz instead.

Thanks for your thoughts.

On the one hand, I'm thinking there were three of you and you only played 8 games. EIGHT GAMES! I didn't get my 6th hero in the current campaign until my eighth or ninth game! (I have had the worst luck with rolling for heroes this time out, which sucks with orcs.)

On the other hand there were only three of you, so I'm betting that you either played odd man out, or just three player games (which can take forever even without animosity or stupidity.) Three player games are also a very different game than a standard 2 player match.

And I'll bet that most Mordheim campaigns are more like yours than mine.

Quote :

Possessed are tough! In the end I was facing a CC monster with 2xS5 and 1xS6 Attack, T5 with Resilient! With S4 I was wounding on 6s with no chance of crits and even with S5 I needed 5s up!

Resilient is a top skill! Especially with Orcs it means your heroes are all T5 in CC. Against most S3 opponents they'll need 6s up to wound with no possibility of crit.

Crits are scary... and it will be caused by the most harmless looking grunts - zombies.

The Troll is not as tough as it looks - a zombie rolls a 6 to wound - crits - causes 2 wounds - dead troll. T4 and 3 wounds even with 4+ ward can and will get taken down if swamped. Also decreases in power as campaign goes on. And yes stupid Stupidity.

Orc Sharman with the Clubba spell is crazy good! 2 x S5 attacks at the start of the campaign!

T4 troops across the board is also crazy good when you first start! Get stuck in as fast as you can! But thing is that they start with ridiculous amounts of XP. You really want to roll Lads Got Talent on your orc henchmen - he'll level up a lot quicker. Having your henchmen at T4 also mean it denies easy XP kills for your opponent.

1/6 chance of animosity isn't all that bad... except it will always strike at critical junctions. *sigh

+1 to all of these.

For myself, I love having the troll against starting Undead or Possessed warbands, because the Troll can take a beginning Possessed or a vampire by himself. You had a troll, your boss and a shaman with clubba at the start? What a great combination to fight those heroes!

[I did too this campaign (although I'm just fighting orcs and more orcs). First game I get Surprise Attacked and clobbered. Second game win big. Third game two heroes out and the missing a game thing starts (which is an awful cycle to enter with 4 heroes.)]

Quote :

Don't even bother to shoot stuff with BS3 - over half range with your opponents in cover means you'll be only hitting on 6s.

ALWAYS take that shot. There is always a 6 or two out there and even if you just take away a lucky charm, its worth it. That one time when you take a vampire or a possessed out of action with Mr. BS2 (AND crazy luck) is worth all the misses. (Mr. BS3 ought to do it often enough over the years to not even seem special).

I dropped a 2+ armor save Boss on a boar this week with a BS3 guy with a bow (the enemy boss failed TWO 2+ armor save rolls!) Always shoot if you have the chance and have nothing else to do. Its all about rolling dice. My BS4 heroes with crossbows both failed (as did the BS3 hero with bow, quickshot and hunting arrows...).

Von Kurst wrote:

For myself, I love having the troll against starting Undead or Possessed warbands, because the Troll can take a beginning Possessed or a vampire by himself.  You had a troll, your boss and a shaman with clubba at the start?  What a great combination to fight those heroes!

Yep they were super killy in CC. However having the troll does mean your warboss becomes more or less tethered to it. A sneak warlock will try and cast that fear spell forcing you to take a Ld test or run away. Happened to me once - was in CC and failed my Ld check so had to run away. Enemy models got 3 free hits on him and took him out which left me with a Ld4 Troll testing for stupidity every turn.

Von Kurst wrote:

ALWAYS take that shot. There is always a 6 or two out there and even if you just take away a lucky charm, its worth it. That one time when you take a vampire or a possessed out of action with Mr. BS2 (AND crazy luck) is worth all the misses. (Mr. BS3 ought to do it often enough over the years to not even seem special).

Agree that you should definitely take the shot. I guess my thoughts were is it ever worth it to make dedicated marksmen out of BS3 troops... I'm debating whether to give my goblins short bows but at 5gc a pop and with their crappy BS I'm not sure if it'll be worth it.

Here's my built for our next campaign:

Heroes - club and dagger

Warboss
2 x Big Unz
Sharman

Henchmen

5 x Goblins - club and dagger
4 x Cave Squigs
5 x Orc Boyz - club and dagger

18 models all up to start

Eighteen should swamp most warbands. Or animosity will swamp you...

What I have loved about the troll is that most of my opponents get fixated on taking him down. In my first game last Thursday my opponent moved a boy into charge range of the troll. I sent the troll alone, because I really didn't want to fight the whole enemy warband just then. But my opponent obliged me and attacked the lone troll with everything he had. (Mainly because he was marched blocked.) Usually this means that my troll disappears, but not this time. This game my troll was still there at the end. Stupidly staring at all the orcs hacking at it, but not falling. In the mean time my ladz were able to perform a miracle and take out the enemy tank of a Boss with an arrow or two.

Lol yeah... statistically 1.6 hench of mine every turn will go down due to animosity. This coupled with random M squigs that can go wild should ensure some hilarity and general chaos. But at 15gc for WS4 and S4 how can you say no?

And yes the troll can be an effective albeit expensive tar pit. As long as his regen holds up because  most of the time it's the auto-stomp that gets you rather than a 5/6 on the injury table. That's why I'm always hesitant sending in models by themselves and unsupported.  

What do you think about the madcap goblin with ball and chain?

I'm not too impressed so far as an initial purchase. At 65gc he's expensive - you can pretty much get 2 Orc Boyz and a Goblin for that price. Also he'll cost 25gc upkeep (for the madcap) every game. Every turn there's a 1/3 chance that some thing bad will happen with his movement and given the proximity of our terrain setup the random direction D12 will almost certainly mean a dead goblin.

After the game regardless if he has been taken OOA you'll need to roll with a 1/3 chance of him dying.

2 S5 attacks causing D3 wounds is nice but in early games most models only have the one wound. Plus he's guaranteed to be a arrow/bolt magnet.

Agree with most of your observations. I'm glad to see there's still people jumping into Mordheim

I've run Cult of the Possessed many times, is my secondary band, and they are ok but start weak despite the beasts Possessed are, and with their low starting numbers are vulnerable to early rout when facing a ranged oriented band. I guess the guy got lucky with the advances to become that successful, because they usually develop slower than most bands, and if your possessed gets +1I and +1Ld as first couple of advances, and your magister starts with a crappy spell... well, good luck. Something similar happens with the Undead and their Vampire dependence.

Resilent is great for the Vampire or Possessed if they earned R5 already, to make them tanks in close combat, but I think it's a waste on a R3/R4 guy with one wound, because he can easily die from a shoot or spell before taking advantage of that skill, and S4 attacks are common in close combat. You faced two close combat bands during this campaign, and that's why that skill looks so great, because it looks like an extra R point, but it isn't a top tier skill IMO, like step aside or strike to injury.

We usually play with a houserule to limit critics. You have to confirm the critic with a 4+ roll. It indirectly improves armor and makes dual wielding and shooting not so great.