Warband rating, Mounts & Wagons

Hey there,

after my Border Town Burning game today some questions regarding wagons and riding/draft animals occured.  

• How many points are added by riding animals to your warband rating? The Rulebook says +3/+5 for a horse/warhorse, whereas BTB refers to the Mordheim Rules Review regarding mounted warriors as +20:
  

  Quote :

  All models mounted on a riding creature from this section count as Large Targets as defined in the shooting rules. Unridden riding creatures are not Large Targets.

  To add these 20 points always doesn't make much sense to me as an unridden animal is no large target. This is obviously just meant for shooting and not to further increase the warband rating.
  
  
• Do draft animals add any points to your warband rating? They can't be ridden and thus no points should be added in my opinion.
  
  
• Do wagons add any points to your warband rating? Empire in Flames doesn't mention any increase.
  
  
• If I use other draft animals than the standard horse as suggested in the BTB Appendix, how are draft animals with own attack characteristics resolved in close combat?
  

It's really interesting that you can play Mordheim for years, but every time you use something new (be it warband or additional rules) a ton of questions and grey areas seem to pop out of nowhere.

Hmm... I can't even remember how we ruled this. I don't think we added additional rating for the caravan's trade wagon. My recommendation now would be to not have the trade wagon increase the warband's rating. As I just wrote in the other thread, the trade wagon is not even an advantage but more of a liability so additional rating would not properly represent it. It's against the original idea of large creatures such as Ogres or mounted warriors increase the rating because they are much stronger than the usual warrior which would otherwise not be represented in the warband rating. (Of course, if you wanted to better compare warbands you should also increase the rating for other powerful equipment such as Gromril armour or artifacts but let's not start THAT discussion).

How many points are added by riding animals to your warband rating? The Rulebook says +3/+5 for a horse/warhorse, whereas BTB refers to the Mordheim Rules Review regarding mounted warriors as +20.
We follow the old rules.  +20 is ridiculous (equating a mounted warrior and an ogre is not even a close comparison.) Thus by our house rule if a mount has no attacks +3; if it has an attack, +5. If it is a multi-wound creature +20 (Gigantic Spider)

Do draft animals add any points to your warband rating? They can't be ridden and thus no points should be added in my opinion.
If you are using animals that have an attack +5, if not +3. They can be ridden if your wagon is destroyed and the creatures are not. [Our house rule]

Do wagons add any points to your warband rating? Empire in Flames doesn't mention any increase.
Because they don't as noted above.

If I use other draft animals than the standard horse as suggested in the BTB Appendix, how are draft animals with own attack characteristics resolved in close combat?
By initiative order since they can not charge.

Previous discussion of this topic--
https://boringmordheimforum.forumieren.com/t4086-wagons-warband-ratings

Von Kurst wrote:

...

Thank you for the feedback and the link to that old thread, I am probably going to use that +3/+5/+20 ruling for attackless/regular/monstrous mounts.
So my rating goes up 12 points, which isn't much, but proves the wagons' current ingame value.

I agree that the trade wagons are a liability due to their potential loss, but I could manage to use them for my advantage in the last two games. They provide me with a moving shooting platform (at about 3" height, my marksmen can choose their targets freely) and a lot of defensive potential for the crew themselves. Additionally I can influence my opponent's movement as they always stay out of my front arc to avoid to be run over.

And at some point in the campaign I will face a tomb lord on chariot, which will be a hilarious game.

Finally the Bargain Hunter trickery of mine to get trade wagons at 120gc makes them less difficult to acquire. But my final objective is to introduce a rhinox-pulled opulent coach to the game - the ultimate display of wealth and decadence (and worth the 20 points of warband rating).

Coppermind wrote:

Finally the Bargain Hunter trickery of mine to get trade wagons at 120gc makes them less difficult to acquire. But my final objective is to introduce a rhinox-pulled opulent coach to the game - the ultimate display of wealth and decadence (and worth the 20 points of warband rating).

Could be more fun if we can armor up the wagons filled with, crossbowmen with blunderbuss...

The prize is more impressive it is almost the prize of a new warband.

I had started writing a homebrew for expanded wagon rules (How to run them with variable mounts, modular loadouts, etc), but haven't had the chance to work on it recently. If you want, feel free to test these or browse over them and see if there's anything that's too "Minmax-ish/broken", or take them and rewrite them. The rules were as much a "Narrative toolbox" as much as they were a "Competitive warband tool"

https://boringmordheimforum.forumieren.com/t8689-wagons-questions-and-some-homebrew