Starting a New Warband!

Discuss and participate in the development of the Mordheim Druchii warband here.

Moderators: Loflar, The Dread Knights

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Killingblowtotheface
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Starting a New Warband!

Post by Killingblowtotheface »

Don't think I have necro posted an entire forum section... but here goes lol.


Myself and a group of friends are currently picking and choosing warbands to start a campaign with. We plan to start off with some one off games to get to grips with what we have. Now, we are fiddling with the rules i.e. making sheilds more useful etc.

I have suggested a few things with regards to the Druchii and wanted to run them on here to see what you think.

Please tear them apart or suggest alternatives at will. All would be very helpful.


Ok to start off.

Repeater crossbows.
They defo have pros and cons, but I wanted to put across the idea of making them Armour Piercing as well like they are in Warhammer Fantasy. Or as an alternative make them S4. My reason for this, is although they are pretty good, its the only missile choice we have and at the points it can be quite a drain.


Heavy Armour
Heavy armour is not uncommon for Heroes or Elite types such as Executioners and Nobles so I strongly feel this should be available to the Heroes in a warband with the exception of the beastmaster and sorceress.



While im on, I have seen people use cold ones as mounts, what are the rules for them?


Also looking at this warband to start off with using the Coreheim item costs. Your thoughts would be appreciated:

Noble(75)
Sea Dragon Cloak (30), Darksteel Sword (21) and Sheild (5). 131

Lordling (45)
Sea Dragon Cloak (30) and Draich (25). 100

Lordling (45)
Sea Dragon Cloak (30) and Repeater Crossbow (20). 95

Shades (35 x 2 = 70)
Crossbows x 2 (40), Swords x 2 (14) and Light Armour x 2 (50)
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Loflar
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Post by Loflar »

Hi.

Regarding RXBs, I don't recommend giving them S4, because it would make them stronger then standard crossbows for lower price. If you want to experiment with Armour Piercing, do it. I don't know if armour works differently in Coreheim, but in standard Mordheim rules, armour mostly does not work and Armour Piercing is often useless.

Heavy armour was dropped in early stages of development, and I no longer remember why ;-) Probably to avoid elves with gromril, shield and SDC, leading to AS 1+. Elves should rely on speed, not armour. Note also, that Mordheim heroes are usually weaker then Warhammer heroes. Once they get some skills, giving them Lightning Reflexes IMHO protects them better anyway.

Rules for cold ones are in Blazing Saddles, article which used to be published on GW website. Locating them now will probably be more difficult - try Google, or asking at http://www.sg.tacticalwargames.net/ or http://boringmordheimforum.forumieren.com/ .

Regarding your warband, I would rather sugges giving your noble RXB instead of sword - putting him in a front line means risk of loosing him. Also, I would wait with Draich for lordling - he should first advance to at least A2. And again, I don't know how armour works in Coreheim, but I would not waste it on henchmen. Remember that henchman out of action has 1/3 probability of death, and it is better to sacrifice henchmen to protect heroes, which means that henchmen are better kept cheap.
Killingblowtotheface
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Post by Killingblowtotheface »

Thank you for your Advice. When you put it that way, it does change my perspective a good bit. Like the idea of a AS 1+ Noble though ;).

I'll track down the Blazing Saddles rules at some point today too.


I'll defo take your advice on the Warband as well. Although I really do want a Draich weilding nut job at some point...
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Dangerous Beans
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Post by Dangerous Beans »

Hiya chaps, I saw the post pop up here and am happy to see that Loflar is still around :) My friends and I have very recently just been chatting and having a crack at Coreheim as it seems more clearly though through than mordheim and thus more balanced, fair and in a way, exciting (you don't know who is going to win the campaign!).

I'm hoping to have a test through with the druchii.net warband rules in Coreheim and make some suggestions about balancing them to fit (SDCs seem too cheap due to strength not modifying saves in Coreheim for example, and darksteel blades 'critical hit table bonus' does not apply anymore as crit hits only do double wounds these days). Loflar, how would you feel about me discussing my findings with you and perhaps tagging a new chapter onto the druchii warband thread about adaptation to Coreheim rules?
Killingblowtotheface
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Post by Killingblowtotheface »

That is pretty interesting actually. The problem we have, is that we're planning on using a few unofficial warbands such as the man eaters from Border Town Burning and Shadow Warriors so trying to utilize Coreheim fully, for us could be a problem. However, I will help in anyway I can from our Campaign too.
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Loflar
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Post by Loflar »

Dangerous Beans wrote:Loflar, how would you feel about me discussing my findings with you and perhaps tagging a new chapter onto the druchii warband thread about adaptation to Coreheim rules?

Why not? But I should warn you, that it will be mostly work for you. Our group has developed its own modifications to Mordheim rules and I got other things to do IRL, so my capacity to absorb another system or do some development is severely limited.
Killingblowtotheface
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Post by Killingblowtotheface »

What modifications did you do if I may ask?

I have experience with Mordheim and we were only looking to bring over a few coreheim rules ourselves because of the balance issues with weapons. I.E. The rush for two hand weapons over sheilds and two handed weapons.
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Loflar
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Post by Loflar »

KillingBlowToTheFace wrote:What modifications did you do if I may ask?

I have experience with Mordheim and we were only looking to bring over a few coreheim rules ourselves because of the balance issues with weapons. I.E. The rush for two hand weapons over sheilds and two handed weapons.

From rules of our last campaign:
- Shield gives +2AS in close combat
- hired swords with a free hand hold a dagger in the hand
- all spells targeted at a model require LoS
- strongly redesigned rules for mounted models
- clear specification of models affected by holy water
- Arab merchant does not have access to Foreign wares
- rolled 1 always means failure
- two-handed weapon does not strike last
- HA + shield does not reduce M
- whatever happens during campaign, T must not be higher then 6
- a missile can only ricochet once, and not through the wall
...
and 6 pages more, clarifying some scenarios, usage of some terrain feature, reducing price of large models to 75%, if they are bought during warband creation, some adjustments of Kislev and Ostland (mostly to make guns more useful), then

- critical hits which ignore armour and do something else do not ignore armour
- intercepting charge is limited to distance of 1" of charge trajectory
- seeking shards after battle is always done with at least three dice
- spear and halberd used on foot give +1WS and +1I in first round of combat
- a new combat skill - attacking with shield

The some usable rules for healing, if you have n advances after battle you can reroll (n-1)/4 (rounded up) of them, if your hero dies you can choose to replace scenario of a next battle with special scenario to save the hero.

Over time, we have identified that a big problem of Mordheim is total randomness of after battle rolls combined with a strong positive loopback - i.e. player, who is winning and lucky after battle quickly grows so strong, that he is soon winning almost automatically and possible bad luck after battle does not influence him that much, while a player with bad luck in the beginning is later never able to close the gap. Which may not be problem from competitive point of view, but it does reduce the enjoyment of the game. So we are taking a lot of steps to limit dispersion of random results.
Killingblowtotheface
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Post by Killingblowtotheface »

Some good ideas there Loflar.

I have to agree, there is fun in watching funny s*** happen after battles, but when you are trying to play a serious game and watch your warband literally die off or become utterly useless, as much as its part of the game, it does suck.

I had one guy a while back who literally suffered the worst results after a game imaginable, then I got hate for certain things and nothing that bad.

Will defo look to incorporate some rules.
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Loflar
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Post by Loflar »

There is another mechanism we are testing - the Death Index.

In short, every warband starts with DI = 1. If any of your models die, you can choose to save it. Saving hero raises DI by 1, henchman by 0,5. Letting hero die lowers DI by 1, henchman by 0,5. DI will never get below 0. Saved henchman must miss DI battles, saved hero must randomly choose DI injuries from following list: -WS, -BS, -M, -T, -I, miss next battle, old battle wound, frenzy, stupid, robbed.

This one IMHO works quite well, but even in last campaign when we were using it, there was a player with such a frequency of deaths, that even this system could not keep it at manageble levels...
Killingblowtotheface
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Post by Killingblowtotheface »

Well hopefully we'll be kicking off our first campaign very soon!

We have all played before in the past bar a couple.

Once concern I have, is there is an Ogre player... The cheak I have gotten from him about putting the sheild and weapon changes over was staggering lol.
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