Had first Mordheim game in awhile.

Last night, I played my first mordheim game in awhile. Terrainwise, we used whatever 40k terrain that was on-hand at the game store. This was my opponent's first game, and I was returning after 10-something years.

We played the Breakthrough Scenario, where I put up a super-basic undead list, and my opponent had a Reiklander list ("If you have a list, I'll play it").

Undead: Vampire with sword, necro with axe, 3 Dregs with axes (proxied by Dwarves), 2 Ghouls (proxied by Tomb King skeletons), 2 Dire Wolves (proxied by 2 Chaos Warhounds), and 6 Zombies (assorted "headless/armless" Empire Militia bits).

Reiklanders: Captain w/ Club & Duelling Pistol, 2 Champions w/ Club & Bow, 2 Youngbloods w/ Halberds, 2 Swordsmen w/ Sword & Bow, 2 Marksmen w/ Blunderbuss & Club, Elven Ranger.

We forgot "specifics" about weapons, just doing +1 attack/forgetting special rules. I forgot to use the "Free Dagger" on my heroes.

-When a model fails its init check to climb or fall, but doesn't actually take any damage, can it still shoot?
-The Necromancer rolled Lifestealer. How does this spell exactly work? We played it that a model drained to 0 wounds was taken OOA (which sort of made sense considering the Diff 10), but the rules allow a model to fight with 0 wounds.
-Can a model jump down and climb up as part of the same charge, provided both Initiative Tests are passed?

Other mistakes made include:
-We forgot to do "Rolloffs" for identical Initiative Steps. (Oopsies) This led to a case where a zombie took out a marksman who also knocked said zombie out, causing it to fail an initative check and fall to its doom.
-We forgot to do Interceptions.

Overall, we had fun and enjoyed the fight. The turns went by really quickly with very little downtime, and we had a very mobile game of cat-and-mouse.

Glad to hear you had a good time! This game never seems to fail to entertain whenever I bring anyone in to try it out.

For your questions.

MagicJuggler wrote:

-When a model fails its init check to climb or fall, but doesn't actually take any damage, can it still shoot?

It should be able to shoot, yeah. The shooting rules only says that running models can't do anything, nothing in there about climbing.

MagicJuggler wrote:

-The Necromancer rolled Lifestealer. How does this spell exactly work? We played it that a model drained to 0 wounds was taken OOA (which sort of made sense considering the Diff 10), but the rules allow a model to fight with 0 wounds.

If the target reaches 0 wounds you roll for injury just as if any other kind of attack would have done it. If the target has any wounds remaining  then the spell does nothing more. It really is pretty lacklustre, especially compared to spell of doom which is both easier to cast and just better, but that's what the necromancer has to work with.

MagicJuggler wrote:

-Can a model jump down and climb up as part of the same charge, provided both Initiative Tests are passed?

You need to start the turn in contact with something in order to climb it. In your scenario the jumper could not continue into a climbing charge since he didn't start the turn in contact with the object. Personally I believe that this just slows the game down needlessly. You could house rule so that a model may climb at any point during movement but still maintain that it can only climb with its base movement as usual, so every inch climbed would count as two out of its entire charging movement.

Thanks for the heads-up regarding climbing. Honestly, the main thing I see being conceivably houseruled later-on (other than "To Dualwield or not"), would be nerfing something like Nurgle's Rot due to its messy "poison pill" effect on a campaign.

The question I had with Lifestealer is more w.r.t. "Remaining Wounds." The way Knocked Down is written, is "The model fights as normal even though it has 0 wounds remaining." Ah well.

Spell of Doom has that 50% chance (or worse) of the target passing a Strength check.

I've played many times as and against Carnival, and Nurgle's Rot has a reputation way over it's real impact on campaigns, in my opinion. Since the Plague Cart is pretty useless and expensive, the only way to spread Nuergle's Rot is thru the spell or the blessing.

First you have to get the spell, (1 chance out of 6), and the biggest downside is it's a contact spell, so if you want it to affect enemy heroes you have to make your vulnerable caster (also the leader) into CloseCombat with some of the best enemy warriors. That's pretty much suicide, but then you also have to roll a difficulty 9 spell and the enemy has to pass a T test (consider heroes usually have rabbit foot). It's pretty risky and not reliable at all.

The most reliable way to spread Nurgle's Rot is thru the blessing Tainted Ones may get. You have to spend 50gc on it, and you will have an (at least) 75gc regular human stats who is also a ranged fire magnet. It may work, but you will find most games your guy goes OOA without spreading the disease to a single enemy model, making him more of a tactic element than a real damage dealer. In my experience, Cloud of Flies is much more cost efficient, but it may be usefull getting one Nurgle's Rot guy depending wich bands are you playing against.

As campaign effects go, it depends how long the campaign is. Carnival is a warband who starts really strong, but fades fast as their expensive heroes have maximum human stats, demons dying 50% times they go OOA are gold sinks, most hechmen don't earn exp, and don't have access to hired swords. They are great for short campaigns thanks to awesome Brutes and Plague Bearers, in a regular 7-9 games campaign they should start dominating but fade fast as campaign advances, and in long campaigns they end up being dominated by more balanced warbands (mercenaries or skaven) and powerfull long campaign bands (possessed or dwarfs). Said that, this is Mordheim and anything may happen. I guess the designer came out with Nurgle's Rot to balance that issue the warband has and give it a nice fluffy gimmick, but in my experience, most experienced players deal with Nurgle's Rot firing ranged or magic to blessed guys till they are out, or using cheap expendable henchmen against them, kicking them out of the band if they get sick.

Even in the case one of your heroes gets Nurgle's Rot, the campaign isn't usually long enough to let the disease make a huge mark. Rabbit foot makes the probability of failing a T test and specially spreading the disease really small, and even if it does, chances are a henchman gets it are high (he will probably kicked out), making it more like a way to screw a bit your rival's finances.

That's why I think Nurgle's Rot isn't much of a deal, unless you play for years with the same warbands... but I think the game isn't designed for that (despite some people liking it), because it brings all kind of balance issues between warbands. Mordheim is designed for 10-12 games per campaign at max IMO.

Sorry for the long post, here's a nurgle potato:

Quote :

The question I had with Lifestealer is more w.r.t. "Remaining Wounds." The way Knocked Down is written, is "The model fights as normal even though it has 0 wounds remaining." Ah well.

What does w.r.t. mean? Not sure what you are questioning. Every one fights on after they recover from knocked down or stunned. You must roll to injure each time you are reduced to 0 wounds or suffer a wound after being reduced to 0.

With regards to. It makes sense now, it's just the whole "fighting on at 0 wounds" threw me off. It was still a fun game, I've been mostly working on cleaning up minis so there's less proxy in the future