Rules Patch: Fear and Terror v8.1

A few of these are taken straight from the recent rumours for Warhammer Fantasy 9th edition.
They are indeed good ideas that re-balance rules that have been mostly nerfed since the beginning of 8th edition, and had caused some spells and items to have become too expensive or useless.
(update: these rumours turned out to be utter fabrication and did not feature in the release of Age of Sigmar at all... but I take my hat off to those who tought them up!)

PROBLEM: Fear and Terror have little impact on the game, mostly due to the ability to re-roll Leadership tests in proximity of the Battle Standard Bearer. The penalties they grant are just fine, but it rarely comes into play.
SOLUTION: Fear tests are taken at a -1 penalty to Leadership, and Terror tests are taken at -2 to Leadership.
In this way, Fear/Terror causing units now suddenly become more risky to fight against, and the psychological impact of having your WS reduced to 1 now and again vs another unit is an effective deterrent during the game, essentially recreating a General's worry that their troop's nerve might not hold against such scary opponents. Additionally, it makes Terror significantly more powerful than Fear, and fittingly so, especially for Monsters and some characters. Also, it makes some spells and items now quite useful.


PROBLEM: many Fear-granting spells and items become useless on units that already benefit from that rule.
SOLUTION: Whenever a unit with the Fear ability gains the same ability from another source, it stacks and grants the Terror ability instead.

Mordheim Narrative scenarios: some playtesting

In this post I'll talk about how much well-designed narrative scenarios can spontaneously generate evocative storytelling in a Mordheim game. Especially when combined with a supply of good scenery and judicious rules-tweaking.

Mordheim lends itself very well to storytelling in the tabletop, particularly due to the unpredictability of the dice rolls, the Serious Injuries, the random events, as well as the Exploration rolls. These are provided by the ruleset itself, and while they are quite good at spontaneously generating story elements for a warband and its warriors, they may start to lose steam as some results start to become repetitive, or not offering players enough choice (something essential in roleplay).

The other source of great storytelling elements emerges while playing the battle itself: the varied abilities that are given to warriors and how players use them, the way each warrior is modeled on the miniature (sometimes very humorously) but especially through of the tactical use of scenery.  These are all under the control of players, and where a lot of the character of the warbands can be brought out. The latter example is especially evocative, where players move about, jump, hide or shoot from cover, in ways that remind us of Wild West movies, Pirates of the Caribbean or assassins in a thriller movie. Instant story out of thin air, before the players even realize what their actions are leading their warriors to do.

  All of these can be successfully recreated during a game, but it all depends on the setup and a little bit of background to set the tone.

This is where narrative scenarios come in: the many scenarios for Mordheim that have been released, mainly through Town Cryer and Fanatic magazine/Online, but more recently through large-scale community projects, like the much acclaimed Border Town Burning and the "in-progress" Mutiny in Marienburg.

In the course of the "Empire Burning" (proper name pending) Mordheim Campaign I am organizing, we have gone through several popular scenarios for the game, released in the past. Many of them requires tweaks and fixes, in order for the rules to become clear and the game be fair, but still true to the story concept set by the scenario. 

  Below are a few golden moments that we managed to create so far. It should be known that, along with evocative scenarios rules and objectives, terrain and scenery are essential to create the right atmosphere.

Mule Train by Robert Walker, in Town Cryer no.14

An Ogre successfully and speedily leads a mule through the ruins (difficult terrain), owing to its above-average Movement speed. Clever use of cover and misdirection saw its warband lead most of its pack animals across the table and out of the enemies hands.
We streamlined the wording on the objective rules, as well as exactly how the mules behave when led, bringing them more in line with the general 'Mounted Animals' rules from Empire in Flames. Still, the rules for mules meant they were extremely skittish and still prone to run away from combat, causing a sense of urgency during the chase.

As a ghoul approaches, ready to claim one of the mules, the Ogre player tactically decides his gnoblar 'snaps' and panics, poking the mule's rear with the sharp stuff he's holding, causing the mule (as per the rules) to run away from any "combat" it is involved in, in the opposite direction. Result: the mule runs off the table, and away from the other warband's hands.

River Watch by Nick Kyme, in Fanatic Magazine 09

A Middenheimer warband has been hired to man a watchtower. As per the rules, the sentries are moving about, randomly controlled by either player, to represent them searching the premises, while the enemy skulks closer, undetected due to the 'night-time' limited line of sight rule in this scenario. We decreased the amount rolled for of how far the line of sight was for this scenario, to allow some chance of the attackers to skulk a bit closer before being detected (otherwise these special rules would play very little impact on the scenario).
A series of unlucky rolls allowed the enemy player to force the Middenheimer Captain to cross the bridge, "because he heard some strange noise". Needless to say, he was promptly ambushed and charged by the Vampire lying in wait (on the lower right corner).

Fittingly enough, the Undead player had amassed a good number of zombies at this point, so the scenario became a veritable march of the dead on the chokepoint at the bridge. And the Middenheimer player had decided to NOT spend his gold on guns and crossbows... The fight was a vicious push to break the blockade, and allow the Undead Heroes passage to the other side of the table (and thus win the scenario).
It should be noted that buying a rowboat (which is included in the Empire in Flames rules), to cross the river at a point away from the watchtower and under the cover of darkness (ie. lack of line-of-sight), was indeed considered by the Undead warband at some point, but dropped due to lack of gold. But totally doable (again, increase in choices increases roleplayability of a warband).

The Lost Mines of Khrazi Drudd  
by the Nemesis Crown Mordheim Development Team

Good application of old boardgame terrain (circa 1994), as well as the more modern Terraclips modular terrain, allowed us to make a table worthy of the lost halls, sewers and underground ruins of the dwarves.
'The Lost Mines' scenario calls for a setup of several 'dungeon-like' rooms, assembled in advance (not randomly generated), with multiple entrances from the table edges, and warbands are deployed scattered among these several entrances.
Here we see a Clan Eshin contingent making its way through the convoluted paths to ambush another warband. All the while sending its expendable Giant Rats ahead to trigger any traps. Images of giant mousetraps came to mind while playing.

The rules for ''The Lost Mines' included randomly determined wandering monsters, revealed whenever a model would approach one of many markers scattered throughout the table. This created great moments of tension, where players would be reluctant to approach a marker, afraid that a Troll could pop out from around the corner (which could just as well be a spider crawling up their legs). We did increase the number of markers in relation to the number of players, to make it more interesting.
But because the objectives were otherwise "run around the mines and slaughter your opponents", we decided to spice it up a bit: we made use of Werekin's great "Subterranean events" table from the "Burrow Town Collapsing" scenario, with a few modifications. This was rolled whenever a model would enter a new room, and could add significantly more danger to the adventure, or (as illustrated above) lead the warband to a hidden stash of goods and treasure. 
Fittingly, this Bretonnian warband ended up finding a Holy Relic among the goods recovered, "a long-lost heirloom of Quenelles", they said. Which meant that now the warband benefit from its 'Protection of the Lady' rule automatically every battle (as they succeeded their first Leadesrhip save due to the Relic). Great stuff.

The addition of good scenery props cannot be underestimated. Even Legos will do. As the skaven prowling in the sewers found themselves several kegs of gunpowder, a shooting showdown with the Bretonnians in the adjacent hall forced them to take cover behind the very cargo they had acquired!
As they moved their portable barricade around (thankfully safe from exploding, due to Bretonnians not using gunpowder weapons), a nice shooting position was set up for the Jezzail Sniper Hired Sword, creating a great shoot-out scene that saw several man-at-arms dead (dead! by serious injury later) due to a double-richocheting slingshot from a lucky verminkin.

I hope you can see how quickly this skirmish tabletop game becomes a great storytelling medium, especially when ran within a campaign like we are doing. Stories literally are created out of thin air while we are playing. The perfect blend of tabletop gaming and roleplay.
Because the way we generate the scenario restricts which warbands can take part and in which role (attacker/defender), this ensures that each warband always fits the part in any given scenario, seamlessly woven into the story of that scenario. Example: watchtower sentries must always be non-evil warbands, raiders of villages must always be non-good players, Merchant warbands gain extra Campaign points by playing 'Mule Train' type scenarios, and so on.

More playtesting and stories to come!
Feel free to leave comments if you have tried these scenarios.

Rules Patch: Miscasts v8.1

##### Credit to Raymond (from the Lustria Online and Bugman's Brewery forums) #######
Also similar variations have been discussed throughout forums.

6-dicing spells of ultimate destruction sequentially and/or on first turn, to ensure they go off reliably, can precipitate a lot of frustration from opponents. The threat of miscast exists, but the amount of dice committed is irrelevant for the severity of the miscast (and thus not a deterrent). On the other hand, a unlucky miscast on few dice can be horribly crippling, and kill an entire game due to bad luck.

PROBLEM: The severity of a miscast is completely unconnected from the amount of dice committed, leading it to be little of a deterrent when considering 6-dicing spells.
SOLUTION: When a Wizard miscasts, roll D6+(number of power dice used). Refer to the following table to see what happens:

D6+power dice      Effect

                3-4         Magical Feedback (allied wizards take S6 hit, lose power dice)

                5-6         Detonation (S10 hit to all in base contact, lose power dice)

                7-8         Calamitous Detonation (S10 under small template, lose power dice)

                9-10       Power Drain (-D3 wizard level, cannot cast spells that phase)

                11-12     Dimensional Cascade (S10 hit under large template, wizard or power dice lost)

The details of each result above are as described in page 34. of the Warhammer Rulebook 8th ed.
Note: if a miscast is triggered by an effect that did not involve spellcasting or use of power dice (such as the Hellheart), assume that 2 power dice were used for the purposes of the roll.

This change simply reorders the miscast table, and makes it progressively worse depending on the base number of dice used. This causes that triggering a miscast on a high number of dice is an extremely risky proposition, either risking losing Wizard levels or a Dimensional cascade. Throwing more dice at a spell is literally playing with fire now. On the other hand, unlucky miscasts on a few power dice are no longer crippling.

Rules Patch: Winds of Magic roll v8.1

##### Credit to Raymond (from the Lustria Online and Bugman's Brewery forums) #######

The Magic Phase is a part of the game that can change the fortunes of players significantly, whether they are the caster of the dispeller. It is not only random, but the degree by which it can grant a sudden advantage to a player with is highly variable.

While the roll for the Winds of Magic is ultimately statistically fair for each player, because it is the same randomized value, the fact that the number of actual Magic Phases that really matter are so few means that it can be incredibly swingy. Especially for armies which use magic not as an additional bonus, but actually rely on the Magic Phase being successful.
In this way, there is no amount of wizard or magic items that can be brought that guarantees magical reliability, so that between two players a game can be ultimately decided because of two bad Magic phases in a row.


PROBLEM: the roll for Winds of Magic at each player's turn is very swingy, sometimes creating situations where a victory is earned purely due to a few bad rolls on the Winds of Magic compared to the opponent.
SOLUTION: When the first player in any given Turn rolls for the Winds of Magic, that roll applies for all players for that turn (ie. do not roll again for winds of magic for every player after the first, each turn). Place those dice aside in a place where they will be untouched, so that the following player(s) can refer to them when their Magic Phase comes up. At the beginning of next Turn, after all players had a go, roll the Winds of Magic anew.

Any effect that modifies or affects the roll of the Winds of Magic takes place when this roll is first made (ie. the first player's Magic Phase). Any effect that is triggered by the roll in the Winds of Magic when it's a specific player's turn (such as the Reign of Chaos table) only takes place during that player's turn, using the Winds of Magic roll rolled at the beginning of the turn.

This change retains the flavorful random value of the Winds of Magic, but eliminates imbalances between each player's Turn, which often lead to frustrating losses due to a simple die roll involving no decision from the part of a player. Each player gets equal opportunity at exploiting the Winds of Magic in each given Turn, eliminating a random factor which often led to uninteresting games.

(75 points worth of the Master of the Black Arts vampire power do seem worth it now, hey?)

Coming Soon... (I'm still alive and kickin)

Right, this space has been relatively quiet for a bit too long, so for those still tuning in to check for updates, this post is to let you know I am still very much cranking stuff into completion (its just not at an "upload-worthy" format yet).

I had to put the "Mordheim Roleplay rules (social interactions)" a bit on ice for now, as its quite a deviation from what the game normally runs on, and I'd like it look at it soon again with a fresh set of eyes to see if I missed anything.
Meanwhile here's a list of what I''m currently cooking up, and what it consists of:


"Theaters of War" Warhammer Fantasy Battle Mission Generator
(currently in playtesting) still experimenting with it

- Usable with both pick-up games or to generate campaign-appropriate scenarios
- Uses scenarios from 6th to 8th edition (mostly), with some appropriate for multiplayer. Much material adapted from White Dwarf magazines.
- Different scenario types: Pitched Battles, Capture the Objective, Ambush, Defensive Stand/Siege, etc. Each of these types lists over 20+ different scenarios, all published by GW.
- Balanced approach to scenario vs terrain selection: "attacking" player selects scenario and "defender" selects Terrain environment.
- Composition of the army (units of particular types) influences probability of players to get the scenario type they want. Some scenarios are specific for use by (or against) certain armies.
- Additional balance to scenarios by means of Stratagems which can be selected by the underdog player.
- Adaptable army list preparation: bring 3 prepared army lists, play with the most suited to the scenario generated.
- Support for scenarios with unbalanced points armies, via add-on contigents of Mercenaries (from Triumph and Treachery) and/or Bound Monsters (from Storm of Magic), prepared in advance. Instantly boost your army's points on the fly without changing original list.


"Empire Burning" adaptation for Mordheim Empire in Flames Supplement
Easily the laziest title in the world. Better name is pending.
Campaign currently in playtesting.

- Expanding the original Empire in Flames setting with material from Town Cryer magazines (by GW) and the Border Town Burning and Munity in Marienburg unofficial supplements (by Christian Templin and Stuart Cresswell, and many other members of the Mordheim Community).
- Objective-based campaign progression (as in Border Town Burning).
- New expanded scenarios list, including themed scenarios for different warbands/objectives that grant Campaign Points upon victory.
- Access to different Settlements during the Trading Phase, depending on the type of warband, based on the Encampments articles from Town Cryer and their adaptation in Mutiny in Marienburg. Heroes can visit different locations in search of additional resources, find a bargain on items or Hired Swords, get help locate rare items or just go look for trouble in the drinking dens.


"Nutters and Negotiations" social interaction rules for Mordheim roleplay adaptation
(in development)
- Adaptation of Core Mordheim rules for Pen and Paper Roleplay purposes.
- The Leadership "mental" characteristic broken down into personality characteristics: Generosity, Forgiveness, Logic, Willpower, etc.
- Base mental characteristics vary with each race, but otherwise each is randomly generated when making a character.
- Warriors must make tests against their mental characteristics to be able to perform actions not in line with their personality (in the spirit of Warhammer/Mordheim randomness and "bad things happen to your warriors" all the time).
- The game challenges players with trying to get the most out of their character while adhering to its personality skills and roleplaying them as such.
- Social Exchanges between a warrior and an NPC pit one of their mental characteristics (depending on what they are trying to argue) against one of the NPC's mental characteristics, with further circumstantial modifiers (ie. how much the NPC finds the warrior dodgy or hates his race's guts).

Rules patch: Monster Mounts v8.1 (and chariots)

Much discussion has been had recently regarding the new "End Times" combined profile of models mounted on monsters. Here I wish to address how to re-balance the existing split profile mounted models, which, in conjunction with my previous patch on cannons, should render these models fully attractive for fielding and for the right reasons.
But before, I will rant. I'm so sorry. (please scroll down for actual rules patch please)

RANT START:
  Many have applauded that changing to combined profiles of monster mounts + riders is a good idea that streamlines the game. With the increased numbers of wounds, it is now easier for these important models to survive the first turns of cannon-fire, and thus justify their points worth in the game. However, I put forward that the problem was never in the mounts themselves, but in the rules for cannons (which affect both rider and mount unlike other ranged attacks, as I addressed here). Therefore, trying to fix the problem by changing something which was not the problem itself is bound to cause further disruption of the rules.
  First, combined profile models induce two major changes in how mounts behave: they benefit from all the defenses (armor & wards) of the rider, and (most aggravating) their attacks benefit from the bonuses of the rider. This is best seen on Karl Franz Ascendant's griffon attacks benefiting from Ghal Maraz's power, or Mortach Manfred von Carstein's dread abyssal's attacks being used to fuel the Magic phase. From my "roleplay-y point of view", this is quite unrealistic, and feels far too forced.
  Secondly, because combined profiles blend the defenses and attacks of the rider and mount, this creates unmanageable balance issues which invariably require these models to be pre-designed (such as special characters) and therefore limit customization (which is one of the key features of character creation in Warhammer). In this way, it will become impossible (at least under the current ruleset) to merge profiles as they exist in current rulebooks, as the threat of expanding the attack and defense benefits of the rider to the mount itself will make the game unplayable (10 attack vampire lord on zombie dragon with Red Fury, a 4+ ward and a 1+ armor?... and 9 wounds).
In my humble opinion, the rules were just fine, but I will try to address them a bit further.
RANT END

PROBLEM: Characters mounted on monsters (or chariots, which fall under the same rules) can be significantly vulnerable to be taken down directly (cannons, massed close combat attacks), which contradicts their high points investment. Characters mounted on monstrous mounts (such as elves on Great Eagles or Chaos Knights on Juggernauts) are more protected: they always use the highest of the characteristics between the two (rider or mounts) in addition to increasing the armor save as normal for a mount. On the other hand, riders of monsters/chariots gain no additional benefit other than an increase in armor, becoming more vulnerable and can be targeted freely in close combat by any model that can attack them.
SOLUTION: when models attack a ridden monster model (or ridden chariot), if they wish to direct their attacks at the rider they must first succeed on a roll of 3+ to get past the mount (or the chariot which is in the way). Roll once for each attack that you wish to target at the rider (even if they come from the same model). If they succeed they may target the rider normally, otherwise they must direct their attacks at the mount. Note that this only applies to attack allocation in close combat: abilities which affect a unit in base contact (such as the The Other Trickster's Shard) would still affect the entire mounted model (both rider and mount).
This makes the mount(or chariot) an effective defense for the rider, but the chance of attacks getting through is higher in close combat (3+ to hit the rider) than when the model is targeted by ranged attacks (5+ to hit the rider). This keeps close combat still the best chance to strike directly at the rider, as before, but helps the rider stay protected, as he is on a high vantage point and a huge monster is blocking the way.

The patch is incredibly simple, and the monster can still be taken down first (which tends to actually be easier than taking down some characters, what with armor and ward saves). This will leave the (previously mounted) character very unprotected and (if facing a ranked unit) mostly lacking in attack output to counteract the static CR such a unit can put out (and invariably might force the character to break).
Put together with the patch "cannons only hit the rider+mount on a 5+, otherwise only the mount is hit", which is also incredibly simple, I believe this puts these expensive but very cool looking models back as the centerpieces of your army.

There you go. Simple patches (hopefully) that tackle the initial issue at its heart (instead of switching the rules of mounted characters on their heads).

Mordheim as a Roleplay Game: part 1

In this series of posts I will be discussing how to harness the Mordheim rules to run an RPG game. First I will discuss its benefits and flexibility (and how they can be applied), and in following posts I will discuss how to adapt rules and elements to flesh out the game for roleplay purposes.

Mordheim has a solid game engine: simple and intuitive stats, logical combat procedure, and easy-to-incorporate special rules. The game is very well-suited to be adapted for a pen-and-paper RPG format.

First, the stats (Characteristics): each is obvious and straightforward, and especially define a models key attributes: WS and BS describe combat ability, while M, S, T, I and Ld define physical and (one) mental attributes. W is the rough equivalent of HP. These define a character quite well for RPG game mechanics.

Initiative sees a lot of use, as it not only determines reaction speed in combat, but is used to evade attacks and hazards, as well as to climb and land safely from falling.
Strength and Toughness may see less varied use, but they are so crucial to survivability that they take a very key role in any adventure. Strength also comes in for purpose of pushing/pulling, and Toughness is used as a health/endurance  defense (against diseases).
Leadership is more complicated though, because it encompasses all of a model's mental attributes, and is slightly too limited for a proper RPG (but I'll come back to it later).

Attacks however is an attribute that specifically only contributes to Close Combat (which it does immensely), but has zero value for anyone who specializes at range. There may be space for development here (I'll get to it later).
Movement is movement, and running is at double speed limiting your ability to shoot (intuitive). The way charging mechanics works does put some strange quirks into combat movement, but these are not too severe. But the fact that jumping and climbing mechanics are fleshed out, together with good movement measurement practices (distance in space as opposed to a square/hex grid) makes fully 3d movement very easy. Because of this, you can play on any terrain surface (even or uneven) and props, with no problem.
Wounds and the Injury table put a nice spin on HP, doing away with larger numerical bookkeeping of damage and putting emphasis on saves that prevent wounds. The injury table also adds a LOT of uncertainty to combat, making it very dangerous and hyping drama. And finally, the game is deadly: it is not that difficult to get knocked out of combat, which increases realism and definitely makes it NOT a good game engine for" heroic fantasy". There is a mitigating factor on the deadliness, which is the Serious Injury table: you only have a certain probability of dying outright after being knocked out, but chances are you will end up with nasty battle wounds and handicaps. There are no resurrection spells, and many risky things (including exploration) can get you hurt. This makes the game engine very suited to gritty dark fantasy settings (which Warhammer is).

In terms of character progression, the Experience and skills system of Mordheim have it covered. By default your upgrades are somewhat random (except in choice of skills), but this could be adapted. But most importantly, it is VERY EASY to generate a new character, making it less of a burden to get back into the game if your character dies. But the randomness helps ensure that a player will not do the same character twice. Another hidden perk of the system is that this ALSO makes it easy for the Games Master to create new NPCs (anyone who has spent hours optimizing an NPC with class levels, in D&D/Pathfinder, know exactly how painful and time-wasting this is).
The skills list offer mostly a choice of combat-oriented abilities (as eexpected but not dissimilar to many other rpgs). Yet there are many skills devoted to movement, and also exploration and relating to purchase of goods. It really only lacks "social" skills, because the game runs otherwise with no role play interaction. But for the most part, existing skills cover everything you'd want.

Mordheim also offers a very good equipment inventory list, and includes already a rarity/availability roll, and skills that interact with it. It is low-magic oriented, so again, well suited to a gritty campaign. The weapons system has a good level of complexity, but their characteristics are well modeled and have a significant effect on a character's combat output and strategy. On top of this, the Hired Swords and henchmen rules provides all costs required for additional recruitment of NPCs into the warband.

The Exploration system of Mordheim is simplified and appropriate for a behind-the-scenes scavenging and resource gathering. However, the exploration mechanics play a large role in the game (especially as a source of income) and have a lot of skill support, so they will always weight significantly in character choices. But good news: the rules mechanics of Exploration dice can very well be adapted to on-the-spot exploration (I will tackle this later on).

Furthermore, the scalability is very good. The game rules power just as easily a regimental army-based game (WHFB) as well as an team skirmish-based game (Mordheim) so scaling up the number of models does not complicate the game too much. Again, this is a boon to Games Masters, as it becomes simple to just throw more enemies at the group without making the fight last forever. Also, the level of threat of multiple enemies increases more realistically, and the characters can be in considerable danger from this (anyone who has tried to stage a combat against many weak enemies, in other RPG games systems, knows how frustrating this situation normally is).

On top of this, because the characteristics system is so intuitive and it is relatively easy to design new special rules, it becomes very flexible for the Games Master to design new creatures and monsters.

So, in summary, the rules are well fleshed out and support most of the aspects required to run an RPG fantasy game. The rules are all there in the internet, for FREE as the product has been discontinued (so distribution between players will NEVER be an issue), and a lot of great material is available online. Check Liber Malefic: these guys produce amazing, professional-quality material, and are responsible (in part) for bringing the much acclaimed "Border Town Burning" supplement for Mordheim.

Watch out for the next part in this series of posts, where I will try to supplement and adapt the Mordheim rules for general everyday RPG use.

UPDATE: The releases about Mordheim RPG can be found in later posts, click HERE.