While I was still re-writing the 'Castle Wittgenstein' scenario (as promised), we had a reunion with our friends from our Edinburgh Gaming Group, staying at a lakeside cabin in Minnesota. Fishing, marshmellows by the campfire and of course, wargaming.
We hadn't played together in more than a year, so we couldn't let the opportunity pass.
'The Undertown' scenario (click to download):
This scenario is very much based on Werekin's 'Burrow Town Collapsing' scenario from 'Mutiny in Marienburg', and follow most of the guidelines and standards he set there.
I also drew from some of the original work done on Mordheim sewer scenarios, by Christian Elegaard in Town Cryer, adding rules for navigating slippery sludge and rickety sewer planks, which I felt were missing, as well as an added fear effect that can get models running in the dark.
The Undertown pits the warbands stalking each other while they navigate the sewers and catacombs under the cities of the Empire.
New stuff in this underground scenario:
The Undertown focuses mostly in the defending warband (the one who picked the scenario) trying to find a special Hidden Room, which will be different depending on what type of warband it is and what they are trying to achieve. This can be a warpstone deposit, an illegal congregation to Chaos, a Traitor contact with secret info and contraband, or even the keep's dungeon to spring their comrades out of solitary confinement. The last tile will always be this Hidden Room, if someone hasn't found it yet.
Along the way, they can find random rooms with some loot, like a well to the surface, a crypt, or an abandoned cellar. Bodysnatcher warbands can have their fill raiding those crypts in search of fresh corpses and heirlooms.
For attacking warbands, there is also something to be gained other than just pursuing the defending warband: arresting the Traitor or burning down the Chaos shrine earns Campaign Points to warbands following particular Objectives. They can also stumble upon other special rooms by chance, just by Exploring new tiles.As in 'Burrow Town Collapsing', there are random Subterranean Events, which include the deadly infamous traps and wandering monsters and denizens of the tunnels. Both of these were the target of a bit of tweaking, for reasons that will be explained below.
Re-balancing in random-tile scenarios:
There were a number of things we felt needed addressing. We have played 'Burrow Town Collapsing' quite a few times now, mostly without too many problems. However, there were a few things we felt needed addressing.
Random tile generation mostly works well, but its not uncommon that a warband finds themselves surrounded by dead-ends at some point. Of course, there is the "Heroes search for the secret door" mechanic, which solves this problem, but in the case of some warbands (especially low-Initiative warbands) this can take 1-3 rounds. And often this occurs near the beginning of the game, so some warbands remain isolated from everyone else for a large part of the battle. For the sake of "The Rule of Fun", we felt that we needed to reduce the chance of this happening, so I reorganized the 'Unexplored Tiles' table to increase the probability of generating T-junctions instead of more turns and corridors. More access to the table is always good, players get to move around better, and the game moves along faster.
I also added an Aqueduct tile (represented as a narrow bridge across the tile), which has the same rules as the Aqueduct event in Burrow Town Collapsing (if you fall on the water you are washed into another random tile).Subterranean Events I find are very interesting, but two things stood out as being a bit too distracting from the game. These are Traps and the Rats & Spiders. Oh my sweet gods, the rats.
Let's go by parts.
The Traps in these underground scenarios come from the Khemri ruleset, and I love their originality. However, it is clear that some traps are far, FAR deadlier than others. Particularly the Sandbox trap. But their order on the table makes some of the deadlier traps have a higher probability to appear than others, which doesn't make much sense. Sandbox can kill an entire warband in one go, through no fault of the player. I know this is Mordheim and it is supposed to be deadly, but I felt some re-ordering of the table was needed.
Another trap-like event, which was a very big offender, was the Mold (the sleep-inducing fungus). This is the one that Stuns models if they fail a Toughness test. Is an interesting trap, but it happened far too often and delayed the game far too much. I placed it in the table as the lowest probability event to occur.Now for the animals. The rats were just everywhere, all the time. So many Giant Rats. Warbands spent more time fighting them instead of each other. We first reduced the number that appear, then I decided to move them to the Tunnel Dwellers Subterranean Event result. I kept a "swarm of rats" event result, which just deals damage but then goes away, to still feature rats often (its the sewer after all), but it keeps things moving much better.
And the spiders, oh the spiders. Warriors getting caught in webs everywhere, dwarves and zombies failing their Initiative tests to escape, and us watching our gaming time being occupied with meaningless combats. It happened too often in the Events. I removed the Spiders altogether, and kept them for a more cave-based scenario.
To finish, I padded out the Subterranean Events table results with slippery floors and rotten planks, which add a bit more variety but don't delay the game as much, and present the players with an interesting challenge yet one that is easier to plan around. I also introduced the 'Spooked!' result, which scares D6 warriors (dripping water, noise in the corner, feeling something crawl up their leg, etc) who have to test for Fear or run away screaming. Of course, Skaven, Dwarves and Night Goblins get a bonus as they are used to these tunnel conditions.This helps make a trip underground in the dark a scarier prospect, and make those Ld scores on every model count!
Tunnel Dwellers: I changed the table for random monsters in this scenario, to make sure that cultists and mutants show up (it wouldn't be The Enemy Within if they didn't!). There is also a chance that Sewer Jacks show up, who will team up with Lawful warbands and fight against smugglers and evil warbands, so it's not all bad news.
Campaign Special Rules (click to Download):
Here are the special rules that apply when running The Enemy Within campaigns. These may evolve a bit more still, as I start now to connect all the working parts of the ruleset to ensure they all run smoothly.
Putting warriors under arrest works like in Mutiny in Marienburg, but the Conviction chart roll is modified by having worse results if the model is a Chaos worshipper, a Criminal or carrying drugs or illegal items.
This campaign requires that players assign Alignments to warbands, which will determine what roles they play in many scenarios. Lawful warbands will always be the ones protecting civilians, while Evil warbands will always be the ones attacking them, and so forth. Nonetheless, there are Objectives that allow many warbands to remain Neutral in alignment, and still have some flexibility in their roles.
There are also expanded rules for taking hostages during battles, and what options are available to each warband if they acquired captives during battle or Exploration. Because this campaign makes use of structures built within encampments, using captives as slave labour (Prisoners of War) can speed up construction and free up henchmen to join the battles.
Trade rules are the same as laid out in Mutiny in Marienburg, but more scenarios in this campaign make use of Information Points. These allow the warband that earns them during a game turn to be able to choose their next scenario, gain Campaign Points or unlock special scenarios.
The rulesheet also reprints the 'Eye of the Gods' and 'Marks of the Dark Gods' rules, which allow any Chaos warband to have access to Marks of Chaos, and earn mutations when they advance.
New to this campaign setting is Heretic Converts: whenever your warband has too many models with mutations, carrying magical wyrdstone shards or illegal spellbooks, you may have to start rolling to see if Chaos seduces them. If they do, they will stage a coup within the warband, and install a new leader that can promote the glory of Chaos (and possibly forcing the warband to change Objective).
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| The Fantasy Flight Games center outside Minneapolis. What a humongous gaming space. With a full bar as well! |
This is all for now, folks.
I hope to get the Castle Wittgenstein scenario up sooner than this (its been quite a while since my last post!).
Until then, roll high and prosper!
