Campaign Economy - Recovering from the loss of a leader?

We had a couple of deaths and limb losses yesterday in a campaign game yesterday and followed it up with a discussion on how best to keep everyones warband "fluid" and not lag horribly behind. My fellow Orc player David lost his warboss which he couldn't afford to replace (or felt like) with only a meager 2 shards and 45g after having sold it. One of my Big'uns - both specialised in twohanded combat lost his left arm but recovered it using the Surgery Table rules on Mordheimer (phew!).

I was wondering how everyone else handles these kinds of losses and what their priorities are when you play.

In my experience of loosing Leaders (and unfortunately have quite a bit!) its the death-nell of a warband. It has normally been the beginning of the very rapidly approaching end and I have had to re-start the warband.

To be honest though its not a big problem for me since a new warband progresses rapidly when playing against experienced warbands due to the quite massive boost of the underdog bonus. The only real problems come from a lack of money to replace the inevitable casualties received along the way!

Something similar happened in our campaign. I wanted to have him still be competitive because we already had a run with a lot of underdog games which turned off the lower players. So I gave him an extra boon of gold to start with and exp bonus's, based on the amount of games we had already played. It put him in the 2nd to last spot in our campaign which is much better than being way behind.

simply boost your leader, or keep him from harm in early games?

- I have to say I've been lucky enough never to have my heroes slain, and if ooa, they mostly got horrible scars and stuff, only boosting their skills and stats!

but, when short on money, you need more heroes... if you run a game with approx 4 heroes per band, you will end up with enough money to add a decent fighting character, and you can get to nominate any of your heroes to be your leader as per the rules... just make sure he doesn't become a target in the next games, cause then you'll get in a downward spiral

if short on money and heroes, play a different game... get in, get shards, get out...
get your cheap guys to die, or at least go ooa, and hope for recovery, and collect shards with the heroes, to replenish your ranks - dogs work great for this ooa tactic, 3/4 dead and you're at 25 percent

How about allowing a single re-roll on the Serious Injuries table for leader (heroes?) after the very first battle?

cianty wrote:

How about allowing a single re-roll on the Serious Injuries table for leader (heroes?) after the very first battle?

That's what we decided to do, but change it to being one Reroll per campaign for the leader instead.

Illanair wrote:

cianty wrote:

How about allowing a single re-roll on the Serious Injuries table for leader (heroes?) after the very first battle?

That's what we decided to do, but change it to being one Reroll per campaign for the leader instead.

That sure is a nice house rule. Actually I like it a lot. Leader are horrible usually with 20 XP and few advances. Giving them a re-roll on the serious injuries chart may be a very good idea to make them less horrible.

[quote="cianty"][quote="Illanair"]

cianty wrote:

How about allowing a single re-roll on the Serious Injuries table for leader (heroes?) after the very first battle?

Myleagues involve a LOT of new player each time and there is no faster way to steer a newb away from wanting to play than to kill their heroes and put them behind the 8 ball before they have even learned the game mechanics let alone any semblence of strategy. We play that no one dies the first game. Heroes who die in the second game may reroll.. After that it is buisness as usual.

Losing the Leader isn't the only thing that will hiinder the band. After 2 games in the middle of our current campaign, I had lost a total of 4 Heros (Including one bought as a replacement after the first fight), and 2 swordsmen. (running Reichlanders).

Now, it's pure stubborness to keep the band going... and perhaps this weekend we'll see if it pays off... I've managed to buy one Youngblood back. It's hard, but also fun. I mean, I'm not worried about winning or losing the campaign, just having a good time. And at the moment, I've been having a blast

That said, Yes, it's hard... especially since the game that cost me most of my loses was the night the Possessed band's Possessed racked up 8 XP in kills... (6 against me, and 4 of those were permenant losses). He has become quite the thing to avoid in battle...

I try my best to keep teh leader protected for the first few games to build him up and get some more troops.

I try to keep a bodyguard/meat shield with him at all times. Not always possible but I try.

I have lost a few heroes and at times I just had to restart my warband.