Into Mordheim!

 So, a new band has been assembled for Mordheim, using the Black Dwarfs warband rules from Broheim.

And of course, for the newest venture in the lost city, I adopted the paint scheme of my repainted collection.

For the models, I went a bit all over the place with a variety of ranges, adding individualism across the warband that way.

The leader, a Sorcerer, Gornash Flamehand, with a double-handed weapon, is the Forge World LE Daemonsmith, and this gives the model a nice centerpiece position instead of just an anonymous spellcaster in a bigger force.

The other hero of the warband, the Gaolor Darbuk the Sadist, with iron whip, sword, helmet and light armour, is from Miniatures Forge, a resin 3d print.

More prints also make up the three Chaos Dwarf warriors in the warband, with a Lost Kingdom Death Guard as the blunderbuss wielding trooper, and two Fabelzel designs for the normally equipped warriors, all wearing light armour.

Finally three Informants join the fray, in the form of two Fabelzel Hobgoblins, one equipped as a Sneaky Git and one as a regular soldier, and a goblin spear wielding one who is one of the old metal Clan Wars models I still have a mountain off.

This all rounds out the warband on a nice 497gc of the available 500gc to start, and 8 models to go round.  I opted to base them on round bases, as the updated rules and errata no longer force to be based square, and I always thought that a better thing for skirmish games after all.

Now to venture into the city in the future and start collecting slaves and wyrdstone shards!

Breakthrough at Mordheime Casino

Tonight I went to the TSA club for a game of Mordheim versus my Nemesis, and to plan our tactic *kuch* IF the Duo Tournament in November should indeed be with fixed partners.

Both our gangs had received a bloody nose in their single battle before as the `wimps` in multiplayers with highly experienced bands, so at my 72 rating vs his 67, one could say we would be evenly matched.

Making use (thanks for allowing this Bruno) of a Monte Casino model as central piece, we rolled the Breakthrough scenario, and with both bands at 7 members, causing 2 out of actions would be enough to cause routing tests.  I was confident if I could take out some of the cultists, I could force him to take the tests and hope he flunked one, as my lower speed put me in a serious disadvantage.

I would be receiving the multiple charges as he outpaced me, and he has 3 models with 2 wounds.

The game started very well, as his Magister cast Eye of God on a cultist, and rolled a 1 putting the bloke out of action.  One more to go!

But there it all ended.  As he tried to force his way through my right flank, the Possessed charged the Gaoler and put him out of action.  A warrior countercharged and managed to wound the beast, but the retaliation put the brave little guy out as well.

 

My archers managed to be unable to even hit a door in front of their noses, and my Sorcerer just couldn`t beat the Difficulty 9 of his Spirit of Hashut, even though he had juicy targets constantly lined up for the spell.

The Possessed charged an archer, and down went my boy.  I was taking tests already, and couldn`t seem to be able to even hit his forces.  When in the penultimate turn that bloody Possessed also took down the second warrior, it all came down to a drop of a chance.

If I could kill a cultist lined before my Sorcerer, I could pray he would flunk his rout test right before the finish line.  I finally after two games managed to beat the difficulty... only to roll a 1 to wound and victory went to the Cultist band of Nemesis.

My Gaoler didn`t survive the encounter, but luckily with the money saved I could immediatly replace him AND buy an upgraded with the experience second spearman again, so on a numerical side I actually went up 1 model again after this battle.  Only the Bull Centaur to replace now before saving for the Chaos Engine, in the vain hope that my characters would stop dying all the time.

The only upgrade roll actually turned up something useful this time, as the Sting of the Dragon, the spearmen, gained one extra attack, so at 2 attacks a piece they might stand a chance against anything that actually charges them.  If my rolls start to improve that is...

That didn`t go as planned...

Tonight I took the field at last in Mordheim with my Black Dwarfs warband I showed you earlier this week.  With 4 players turning up, I knew my novice band would be hardpressed with two high rating bands oppossing me, and a medium ranked band which was about my level.

This multiplayer would be a scenario in which heroes needed to go door to door to inquire information politely (like hell) or torture the residents (hell yeah) for information, the band with the most information points comming out on top of the game.

I was so heavily outclassed, I would receive an extra xp point each for actually just turning up, so the plan was to loose three henchmen and bottle out.

This is the village where the battle would take place:

The participating forces, ranked from low rating to high rating, where first of all my Dawi Zharr

A bunch of pirates led by a group of wild women of the seas:

A crusade of holy women:

and a very, very experienced force of misguided kinsmen

I started with some tortured information gathering, as did most bands who whomever choose mostly to use the more civilized method:

Turn two saw my Bull Centaur charge a lone pirate henchman, bend on an easy experience point with his 2 attacks, strong armour and strength and toughness 4... and then the title started to kick in as because after three turns of combat it finally ended with the Bull Centaur going out of action vs a lowly dagger...  160 gc of sheer uselessness and it would get worse, see at the end...

Even though one of my archers managed to shoot down a pirate henchmen, after both spearmen where knocked out of action I voluntarily bottled out, taking with me 5 information points (in the end, this actually managed to secure me second place though in gathered points...)

Next to bottle out where the pirates, after the Dwarfs beat them and the nuns up, and ended the game.

Things got worse when rolling for the injuries... both one of my spearmen AND the Bull Centaur didn`t survive the encounter.  I ended up with a lowly piece of wyrdstone I could sell for 35gc, and a rating that though even it had dropped from 83 to 82, my band is now only 7 strong anymore...  bad start for the Slavers, but as this are try outs, I`m sticking with them and I`ll see where I end up with lessons learned once the actual campaign begins.

And what did we gain skill and advancement wise?  RUBBISH, total and uber RUBBISH.  My Archer henchmen gained +1 Initiative and my Chaos Dwarf henchmen +1 Ld, and that was it.  The Bull Centaur would have rolled as well had he survived the encounter, but alas that was not to be...

Oh well, next time, next time...

Chaos Dwarf Mordheim warband

Even though I`ve learned and saw with the recent Blood Bowl League that nowadays club campaigns are fickle business due to that thing called real life getting in the way, the plans are for a Mordheim campaign to start somewhere at the end of this year, beginning of the new year.

As it will allow a lot of extra non-official bands, I of course duely selected the Black Dwarfs list from the excellent Border Town Burning fan supplement, to be found here for example.

Long before, and ever since, the twin tailed cometh struck the city of Mordheim, the evil masters of Zharr Naggrund have set out raiding parties into the Old World.  Always led by a Sorcerer, these bands roam the country sides and raind small outposts, villages and hamlets to look for more unfortunate souls to be thrown onto the furnaces of Hashut.

One such warband is Sorgal`s Slavers

Now, the Chaos Dwarf list is rather different in play `concept` in that it is not for the pure wealth gaining your into the game, but to try and capture models of the opponents and sacrifice them to the Father of Darkness.  Several special rules, like the free extra spell `Sacrificial Ritual` or a Gaolers Mancatcher represent this, but it is almost mandatory that you gain about 200 gold crowns together asap to try and locate, then buy an Engine of Chaos, a sort of armoured chariot cage powered by a bound deamon, as this machine `unleashes` the potential of all those special rules to the fullest.

My band is as such led by the mandatory sorcerer, Sorgal the Firehand, a model produced by Titan Wargames who so far had been leading my forces as I still needed to finish another sorcerer for them until recently.  As he has no ambition at all to fight in the front lines, he is only armed with a dagger.  His job is to slid throats of any models captured after the battle.

Accompaniying him is his faithful bodyguard K`hruzz the Cruel, a noble Bull centaur I equipped with heavy armour for extra protection as these blokes are darn expensive.  Surely, you have a S4 M8 monstrosity, but unfortunatly it also counts as a large target making it a darn tempting target for anything shooty.

The third initial hero of my band is a Gaoler, equipped with dagger and axe.  This fellow is actually one of the Hellcannon crew members. He also has the nice special rule that his reputation causes fear in all opposing humans.

Henchmen wise, I have of course two `regular` Chaos Dwarf warriors with axe and shield, both again from the Titan Wargames range.  These will be the linchpin my force, joining the Gaoler and the Sorcerer in a small wall of T4 models to try and hold any `base` I might set to launch the attack from.

Unique to the list are Informants.  This list doesn`t use the Hobgoblin or other Greenskin slaves one might expect from a Chaos Dwarf list, but instead uses humans captured.  These dregs of society have chosen to serve their slavers in exchange for not being sacrificed, and to add an extra touch of exotica to my band, I went for models that look as though they where caught in the wide world and now followed their masters to the Old World to serve as further fodder.  Their special rule also prevents them from ever becomming heroes.

Two sets of 2 models are selected for this, the first being two Araby archers, called the Desert Wind, and which are Black Tree saracen models, and the second being two Cathayan spearmen called the Sting of the Dragon and are drawn from the historical chinese range from Curtseys miniatures.