Hired Swords and Swords of the empire

Hi!

There is a pdf named Swords of the empire. I Think it was made for the Mutiny in Marienburg setting.
My questions is about opinions and experiences with it.
-The Blood pact rule not works again the game balance?
-Rewriting the hiring system overwrite the initial limitations in the warbands?
- The 'slavering' rules seems fun. Any experience with it?

+ Bonus:
- Any thoughts about 'The Miracle workers' and the human priests?

We are just trying out Miracle Workers in the campaign I am in. No-one objected after reading the rules for them, but we haven't actually tried them yet because no-one is using a human warband yet.

I only have my orcs in this country, but I know at least two others have mercenary warbands so hopefully I will get to see what it is like being against them.

There are a couple of threads that deal with this subject in depth. Hopefully someone with more time will provide a link. We have used Miracle Workers in several campaigns, but we only used the Sigmarite Warrior Priest, the Trickster and Mannon (or whatever its called). The TC Wolf Priest is much better.

Blood pacts are definitely something I would not recommend.

Blood pacts are Great in large campaigns 50+ games.
I can see why people think Blood Pact is Over Powered but it helps balance human warbands.
Miracle Workers is a great supplement especially when there are lots of players or you are sick of sigmar this and sigmar that.

Phantasmal_fiend wrote:

Blood pacts are Great in large campaigns 50+ games.
I can see why people think Blood Pact is Over Powered but it helps balance human warbands.

How do your group manage the upkeep of multiple hired sword until blood pact happen? Or hire them one by one after made a bloodpact?

We play several money or equipment heavy scenario(like wyrdstone hunt, The Wizard mansion, the wyrm egg hunt from Btb, Blocake also from Btb) but somehow my warbands (which are honestly not that great finding rare items, not that educated in academics, has no access to financial hired swords {Undead, Marauder, Beastman}) always got mediocre income, nevertheless the dwarf who's was the punching bag of the group in the early days, literally swims in money. (Which is really fun and like the ironical twists of the events.)

make sure you have 6 heroes each with rabbits feet and keep them alive all game to search for exploration dice, your rabbits feet will give you a re-roll to either make the number higher or get duplicated numbers.

It takes about 15-20 games to get to the point where you can make serious money i.e full roster everyone equipped basically a few hundred GC and shards to spare you start investing heavily in Hired Swords , grab as many cheap ones as you can priced between 5-15 upkeep.

I once had a possessed player spend about 3000 gold crowns on a single possessed he just keeped hiding in a corner and sending out minimum henchmen to rout. then leaving game after game till he had his beast.

Except I want to use 3 wyrdstone pendulum and 1-2 Tarot cards. Rabbit feet is to cheap to have such a powerful ability. Isn't 6 re-roll is to much? I think 3-4 should be enough as you can not reroll rerolled dices.
Are haggle and streetwise worth to bother with or just try to focus in income?

I wouldn't bother with haggle or streetwise,
Many players lose a lot of money on henchmen equipment.
Money and searches for rarity become a joke eventually.
and hired swords will slowly outnumber warband members.

You can have a maximum of 7 hired sword and then you has zero henchman. (in the rooster there are only 7 slot for henchman groups or for hired swords)

we print off more pages

Ok rather interesting but I do not think we will go in that line of houserules.

The rules never state you need to keep to one sheet for henchmen and only one for heroes. For example, I believe that the original rulebook only had room for five heroes on a single sheet even though six heroes are allowed. All rosters these days have space for six heroes but henchmen isn't limited to just one sheet of paper.

I believe Blood Pact rules allow for a maximum of six Hired Swords.

We use Blood Pacts. Some warbands take the risk of getting too many Hired Swords early hoping to get Blood Pact as soon as possible. It is a gamble. Others take it slow and get new Hired Swords only after a Blood Pact is formed. It gives more options for warbands.

The Corebook said:
"You’ll need a warband roster sheet to record the details of your warband. Blank roster sheets can befound printed at the back of this book, one for Heroesand one for Henchman groups."

The original roster has 6 for heroes and 7 for henchmans.

Blood pact do not restrict hired swords to 6. (in my pdf any way maybe i got an older version)

Maybe I interpet it to rigidly. Anyway my problem with it is one part the high upkeep the other is some warbands are allowed far more hired swords then others. If i remember correctly some could have none.

Actually the original roster sheet from the 1999 rulebook really did have slots for 5 heroes and 6 henchmen. REALLY FOR TRUE. (I have a copy) There are threads on this forum from folks who didn't understand how their warband could HAVE 6 heroes (since there was only space for 5) and who did not EVER have more than 6 henchmen groups and/or hired swords because THOSE ARE THE RULES.

People are funny.

It takes all kinds, if that's the way you play, have fun!

Or learn something new and make some copies its all good.

Blood pacts did not work out for us. We play with LOTS of hired swords just using the normal rules. Well OK the normal rules, plus the Merchant, the Thief and Relics of the Crusades Houses, Shoppes and Temples...

Athanatosz wrote:

Isn't 6 re-roll is to much? I think 3-4 should be enough as you can not re-roll re-rolled dices.
Are haggle and streetwise worth to bother with or just try to focus in income?

6 Re-rolls is not too much. The maximum rolls you could possibly reroll in the base rulebook is 29* so only being able to reroll 3-4 isn't enough by a *long* shot. In practice I find 10-15 rerolls enough though.

Really, if you aren't using your rabbit's feet (rabbit feets? rabbit foots?) for re-rolling injury dice or armor saves or initiative checks during the game you probably aren't playing aggressively enough.

+1 for the original roster having only room for 5 heroes. This was particularly bemusing for me because I first started playing with Skaven and they can *start* with 6 heroes.

 * You can get a maximum of 7** dice to re-roll when rolling on the exploration table (6 heroes, +1 for winning, discard one). If you roll Slaughtered Warband there are 8 tests to find items that can be re-rolled. Of those items 7 have a quantity that can be re-rolled and and one has 3 quantity dice that can each be re-rolled for a total of 10 more re-rolls to be used. There is also a Mordhiem map that, because you found it during the exploration phase, there is no reason you can't re-roll the type of map it is if you don't like your first roll.

** This count is low because there is something that lets you roll two dice and then pick one for an explorer, but I can't remember what or where it is. If you can get one for each of your Heroes that would take the total up to 13 exploration dice that could be re-rolled.

First of all thanks for the replies I appreciate it.

In defence in the rabbit feet question only one of my warband got any (3) and not have any chance to use it, and I have not played with them after they got the foot.

My problem with the rabbit foot is the wyrdstone pendulum which has the same effect (in rality it has less effect) but thrice the prize.  Maybe I interpret it wrongly and going the way that Lord 0 mentioned
wyrdstone pendulums comes in the play when I can maximise my chances in exploration re-rolls and making sure I got at least one re roll per hero even if they used their rabbit feet.

About the roster:

I think we  had carried away.
If there is several type of roster than it is acceptable to use several pages if needed, but counting your hero limit and your maximum warband size with as much hired swords as you can afford.

My main problem is a bit of a theoretical problem. Lats say every warband has infinite income or has all hired sword sworn a blood pact.
In hiring there are limitations for example Undeads or Carnival of chaos cant have as many hired swords as the mercenary warbands or the wichhunters. So a 15 man strength mercenary warband can have like 15 hired swords meanwhile the undeads can only 15 man and like 6 hired swords.

Undead will have nasty hero zombies to contend with. plus there is enough hired swords around to not make it that detrimental.
Beastmen have only 3 or 4 to pick from they suffer the most probably but they are an aggressive force to be reckoned with at that stage of the game anyway.

Blood pact helps human warbands the most but they need the help being trapped behind crappy racial maxs .

I often have my heroes with rabbits feet left because i save it to help keep my last wound.
I see too many players wasting it on re-rolling their lucky charm.
Keep your heroes out of harms way unless you need to fight another hero.

In our group we limit the rabbits foot after game re-roll to be limited to just the exploration roll itself.

The undead hero zombi is a bigger IF that it can be counted, I think.
Racial max is only 1 thing which can limit a warband, max size, access to weapons, armour and equipment and skills could be another. Although In that matter I reached the end of my knowledge as I'm not played late game, developed warbands...

Or last campaign was around 700 games, i don't think i will ever play another campaign that size again in my life. But i can tell you If you are playing an undead warband and a hero dies in game, So long as your spell caster is alive that hero is yours, it will happen.
I have had Pit Fighter Ogre Zombies, Dark Elf Zombies, Vampire Zombies, Possessed Zombies.
I have had Ultimate Dream Teams of Zombies where my spell casters would keep them re-animated all game it doesn't matter it you take them out, there will be more.
For this reason i think undead are the second most powerful warbands.
Undead also have a huge amount of hired swords in fan made content.

Humans suffer when Evil warbands start creating monsters that are toughness 7 and resilient, multiple attacks, or even just having all heroes at toughness 5 and resilent. thats bad.

The Miracle Workers/Swords of the Empire rules, including Blood Pacts, are part of my standard set of rules for running campaigns now, they add too much cool stuff to the game not to.

And let's be honest here, being overly concerned with balance in Mordheim is a recipe for insanity considering how easily even the strictest of Rulebook Only campaigns can quickly generate disparities between warbands - I've seen people so unlucky that they had to retire three warbands in a row each after their first game, by which point one of the other players in the campaign had a warband so grotesque relative to the others that we just called it right there.

Paradoxically I've found that the more "stuff" you throw into the mix, the more even campaigns tend to be over time; whether that's because there's so much new imbalances available to everyong that tradtional forms of cheese just become the new baseline, or because the sheer number of options makes it harder for players to zero in on "the best" combos.

Sick of Sigmar! LoL

Wyrdstone Pendulum has been more popular in our campaigns since introducing the Corrupted Characters chapter.

One player with a Chaos themed warband was lacking inspiration in the equipment area. Once he twigged that tainted items could improve his chances of picking up "gifts" he became a regular visitor to the Alchemists location. From having no real motivation in the post-battle sequence this player suddenly found a purpose between battles which suited him.

He actually became fixated on getting one of his Heroes to become a Chaos Spawn. Sadly, his fortunes were such that his Heroes were only bestowed additional mutations. It was a shame that he did not have the opportunity to model a Spawn of Chaos miniature based on a fallen Hero!

I guess improve chances means he must roll for one and not picking one and paying the price in gold.

My group really enjoys using Swords of the Empire and Miracle Workers.  We haven't had any problems with the latter, but something that comes up with the former: if someone finds a particularly good Hired Sword, then everyone copies them.

"The Thief can do what?"  Now everyone gets a Thief.  "The Witch is really that powerful??"  It's like a coven descended on the battlefield.  You get the idea.

I really, really enjoy the supplement, and the Blood Pact is a fun mechanic that makes a lot of sense.  No one complains about it and everyone enjoys it.

I was under the impression that you can re- roll a re- roll during the Exploration Phase.  Is this not correct?  If you can't re- roll a re- roll during Exploration, then what is the point of all those re- roll granting devices?  Just find the cheapest, least rare item and everyone will go for that.