Adeptus Mechanicus Roster

We'll be playing 1500 point games at my local Games Workshop for Battlefleet Gothic so I've been trying to figure out a list to use for it. What I've got to work with if I use only my GW models (waiting for them to be delivered) is...

• One Battleship (Omnissiah)
• Three Cruisers (Two Gothic cruisers and one as a light cruiser)
• Two Light Cruisers (Endeavour's)
• Three Cobra Destroyers (In a squad)
• Three Sword Frigates (In a squad as Cobras)

It is a bit hard to decide on a list with the limited number of ships I've got since I can't go large on escorts and most of my ships are very expensive. I've been looking around something like an Ark Mechanicus Omnissiah's Victory, three Endeavour Light Cruiser, two Gothic Class Cruiser, and two squads of three Cobra Destroyer's. Sadly this means that I have one too few light cruisers and one too many normal though I could probably change one Endeavour to an Endurance or something so it has a reason to be different.

On a separate note Nova Frigates are not what they sound like, I was expecting something with 1 battery and a nova canon but it wasn't.

Battlefleet Gothic

So my local gaming group has started getting into Battlefleet Gothic along with blood bowl but I'm more interested in Battlestar Gothic. It seems like a pretty interesting game and another small specialist game where I can have my entire army painted relatively quickly. I'll probably start talking about this game soon when I get stuff to update with it.

From what I know my local group is mostly consisting of Imperium, Chaos, and one or two play other races like Orks and Eldar. Sadly there isn't much to easily do Battlefleet Gothic on the cheap except with alternate model companies and tyranids (There is a very nice youtube video about scratch tyranids). I'll be looking more or less though to see what I can do to make a nice fleet that is GW approved (50% or more).

After looking at the armies I've decided that I want to play Adeptus Mechanicus since no one else has a fleet of them yet here. After reading up on them they seem like an interesting fleet to play, especially with the random nature about it.

Ponderings: The Multiverse

I'm a believer in the multiverse theorem that there exists an infinite number of universes where each universe is slightly different than the next. These differences can be as small as one person decide to have soup instead of a salad for lunch one day or as large as the speed of light being different then our own. In the multiverse everything and anything is possible because in an infinite number of universes, expecially how large and varied ours is anything can happen.

When thinking about the multiverse I stumbled upon the question of "Is there a universe where everything is exactly the same as this universe with the only difference being that it is an hour slower then ours." This being that from start to end these two universes are the exact same with the only difference being that one started before the other. If this is allowed into the equation then that means that every second this universe is being created and ending at the same time across the multiverse. However jumping down a few levels into the fourth dimension (time) a quote comes to mind.

Time is relative and we can only observe it in slices. Now I've been thinking about when universes are born in the multiverse. Are they created every second when the possibility of chance comes into play such as is another universe born if we decide to sleep in one day and in the other we don't. Now this kind of thinking can make sense if our universe gets split into thousands upon thousands of multiple universes every hundred millionth of a second to cover all possible alternatives for everything that could happen. However I don't like this idea that much since time is relative and therefor doesn't even enter into when a universe is added to the multiverse.

What I believe is that instead of splitting from each other they all start out from the beginning and play to the end of their existence. So all possible universes in the infinite numbers of the multiverse, they all exist at the same time and since time is relative every point in their histories also exists at the same time when viewed in such a manner. So instead of there being an infinite number of the same universe where the only difference is when it was made you would instead be looking at the same universe along different points in its history.

My new Wizard!

 So yesterday I just finished painting up my wizard, and by I mean finished I mean I'll work on him again for some minor details later. I'm going to call it done now though but later I'll probably highlight his face, some white in his fire hair, and rune work along the red parts of his robe. Also I want to do something with the pages of the book so it says something like "Cheese" or try to make it the magic section or something and I kind of want to do those logo's on the bottom (I have the barcode).

I really love the way the flames came out, and with one layer of yellow glaze, yellow shade, orange shade, red glaze it is no surprise! After finishing it someone commented that my fire is actually backwards as the hottest parts should be the yellow areas. After thinking about it and not wanting to redo it I've decided that it makes more sense with "MAGIC". And if you notice his head is actually a hand holding a skull on fire, because he's an awesome flaming skull head wizard reading the rule book.

 Back-story of hair and wizard as follows.

 

At the rewarding academy known as Elementary College of the Magical Arts (ECoMA) a young wizard's apprentice snuck into his masters private library (on a dare) and cracked open one of the oldest books on the nearest shelf. Skimming a few pages in he decided to test out his budding abilities and spoke one of the spells aloud in words of power. Of course with ancient magics such as those in this enchanted enchantment book our young apprentice managed to set fire to one of the libraries curtains. In his panic he tried undoing the spell with the only logical way possible, he read the spell backwards. Now this may seem like a silly idea to you but all words of power hold within them two separate forces held together in balance until tipped in either direction by one who knows how to call their power forth.

Sadly for our young apprentice he stumbled a bit in his haste and read too hastily causing his own head to catch on fire along with severing it from his neck. Now this might seem disastrous but luck was on his side as the magic that ignited and decapitated him did not sever him but magically separated the two parts and protected them as the fire did not burn his flesh but was cool at the source. Having your head rolling around on the floor was quiet disconcerting though so of course he tried to undo his second mistake and of course it it got worst as his neck grew fingers and the flesh on his head sloshed off as he picked it up.

Too ashamed to face his master after all that had happened too and in his library the young apprentice grabbed his head in one hand and ran from the academy into the near by woods. He now travels the land reading that book of his ever trying to find the right combination of words to undo the mess he landed himself in that fateful day. (Or something like that)

Kudos to the first person who realizes the slight error in the last image and says what I did wrong. Anyway I can't wait until I can field him on the plains of battle. In Mordheim he'll be my hired Wizard / Warlock or even my necromancer when I get some zombies for an undead warband. What does everyone think by the way?

Ponderings: Our first steps into the universe

Today I feel a bit philosophical so I would like to share my ramblings that all started with a conversation on Steam. As I watched some episodes of Babylon 5 a part came up when a human male and a minbari female kissed and I commented on it to which my recipient replies with a comment along the lines of "eww". This brought me upon the two subjects I'd like to ramble on about starting with my next paragraph interracial relationships and what classifies as being alive, so enjoy if you like this kind of thing.


Would you kindly imagine that in the next few decades we establish our first long term habitat on Mars. The humans that inhabit these semi underground enclosures live almost exclusively inside these with a few surface walks. They started with enclosed capsules but dug into the ground far enough not to be touched by the harsh environment on the surface. The relatively small hydroponic bays expands underground to sustain the slowly growing population. Of course we can't just leave it at that and more vessels arrive through the years building up several different settlements and adding redundancies.


As this is going on technology has advanced just those few inches from today so that a few complex automatons have joined the crews to Mars. There are a dog like and humanoid robots who help those humans build a future on our sister planet. Here on Earth however we've been expanding into more human like robots to show how far we can go and to make them easier to work with. To take care of children and to better anticipate our needs they'll need to understand some basic emotions such telling a joke when you're sad. As they get more and more complicated the lines between biological and mechanical blur. Eventually...

Something wrong happens, something we never suspect but is bound to happen, an android passed from being just a machine into being alive. Can it think, we've programmed it to think on its own so it can cope with different circumstances. Does it have feelings, most likely not how we would think of them but like in the video being scared of dying / not existing sure does count in my book. So how do we classify something that is like us as being equals and not someone we can just turn off without a second though. What is the requirement to be a person, in the easiest way to describe it is that they need a soul.

But I degress that I should probably move on to the part that I started with and that is humans and not our mechanical counterparts. Years and years into the future and we've spread across the galaxy inhabiting worlds left and right. Now lets focus on a special world that is not just seventy some present water but closer to 98%. There just isn't enough land for us to florist so we take to the waters where most of our nutrition comes from the oceans such as seaweeds and fish. Most of our occupations would consists of something under water and we'll start evolving to better suit our new habitat. Fast forward again a few more thousands of years and sub-human aquatic race has emerged on this far away planet. Our bodies have changed so we're faster swimmers and can go deeper, longer, and into colder waters. We've developed a way to siphon oxygen from the water though we're not a 100% underwater species yet on this planet. We might even resemble something like a mermaid.

Now would you kindly imagine that our distant children who stayed on earth and are relatively unchanged by the hand of time and our petty differences set forth and visit this long lost planet of aquatic humans for the first time in an eon or two and two so happen to fall in love. These two species are now distant cousins but still share the same root origins. Would you deny such a relationship when over a hundred thousand years ago the last racism against biological androids was removed as by that point we've been mingling in with them for so long that we've become one species together.

I think I've probably lost my thread awhile ago but still, you've skipped to the end just to read this.

1500 Necrons vs Land Raiders

So I had a small game of Warhammer 40,000 today with none of my vehicles or wraiths since I was too lazy to carry my one transport case so I ended up with a bit of a limited selection. I pre-wrote my list with whatever I had and stalked my local Games Workshop in search of a friendly match. I was awarded for my patience with a round vs two land raiders, a land speeder, hammer and shield termies, a vet squad with a apothecary, and two sniper scouts. The game sadly ended before turn 5 but it was fun non the least to finally have a game after so long since I'm either working or driving my mom to doctor appointments on my weekends and of course she wants to do everything under the moon so we don't get back until 8pm.

So my list was something like...

• Imotek in a squad of 10 warriors
• Overlord with a Scythe, Weave, Res Orb, and Mind Shackle in a squad of 10 immortals
• Two squads of 5 warriors with two destruction teks each
• 8 scarabs in a swarm and 4 destroyers filling up the other Fast attack slot
• A small 5 man Praetorian squad with void blades
• And finally a Storm Tek with both upgrades

And his list was...

• Two land raiders with melta cannons and flamer sconces
• 8ish man of hammer and shield termies in one raider
• two sets of five man scouts with snipers
• a 10ish man of vets with an apothicary in the other raider
• a land speeder with melta

Turn 1

The game started out as dawn of war deployment with a lot of buildings since we covered about 50% of the board with them. The mission ended up with The Emperors Will which we promptly ignored to just kill each other. I ended up going and deploying first so of course I ran 90% of my army forward to get into range as target priority was a simple "Which land raider can I blow up first!" Sadly I only got four shots with my D-Teks which they sadly failed to glance at all since he castled at the very back of his side. In his turn one he ran both raiders away from my scarabs and destroyer side and shot up my imotek blob taking out half of the warriors. Then his snipers managed to precision shoot and wound Imotek twice while my warriors make 100% of their saves.

Turn 2

So after bringing a warrior back to life I continue to chase his raiders with those lovely Entropic Strikes. Imoteks storms decide to die early to my great dismay, though after entering into ruins with my imotek squad they managed to hit the closest land raider four times and rolled (6,6,6,5) to glance it, so close! None of my other shooting was in range or failed to wound his snipers / raiders. His turn was a bit more profitable as he moved in closer to my weaker flank (Imotek side) by disembarking his shield termies and sniping at them some more. luckily enough for me he didn't figure out how powerful void blades can be against vehicles and moved them into turn three charge range. He was really focused on Imotek but I managed to survive the shooting phase and he rolled poorly for the longish ranged charge with the termies so I got out lucky.

Turn 3

Sadly he got a call that he had to go soon so we had to pick up the pace and end it at the end of turn three. So in the end I decided to just say to hell with it all and ran my troops close enough to get as many shots in as possible in our final turn. The scarabs ran to the base of the snipers tower but failed to charge up it, the destroyers managed to deal a single kill, and the praetorians blew up the closest land raider to them after some gauss took a hull point off and wrecked the other one. It was a beautiful sight seeing two wrecked land raiders on the board and I managed to get first blood to boot!

The Termies of course ran up to Imoteks unit and wrecked face in assault against Imotek and his unit and his vets and snipers wiped out the praetorian squad which ended the game with just a few minutes before his ride showed up and me sulking for a round of Mordheim which I failed to get.

Closing

So In points I achieved two kills, first blood, and line breaker netting me four points while he killed two squads and an IC (My warlord was the Overlord) giving him three points making Necrons the victors. The only thing that saved me from getting a tie was running Imoteks unit out of my deployment zone denying the termies from line breaker. I think the biggest mistake I made was not having a strong enough side near Imotek to better support that unit from having practically his entire army descend upon it. Another mistake involved not having them in cover enough so most of his shooting was focused on them which denied cover on half the squad. If the game continued I bet he would have tore through my lines with those darn termies but with the destroyers decending upon his vets with the scarabs I'm pretty sure I could have wiped them out and then hopefully kill a few termies with three squads worth of shooting.

Ponderings: Tabletop to Video game

I don't know about most of you, but I dream of the day when I can play an honest to Zeus tabletop to video game conversion of some of my favorite war games. Video games such as Space Marine and Fire warrior don't scratch that itch since I don't want a shooter, likewise Dawn of War doesn't do it for me either because that is real time when Warhammer 40k is turned base. It isn't even that hard to make either since unlike most video games you would not really need to animate any of the models, there is minimal real time elements, and all of the game mechanics has already been done! Sadly though because it would cut into the table top playerbase since those of us with lighter wallets and don't enjoy the hobby part or the pleasure of handling models would definitely only stick to the digital table top version.

What is needed to make a video game counterpart to Mordheim you wonder? Well lets look at the different features we'll need.

• The third dimension since unlike Vassel (where you can sort of play a 2D version of these games) actually having 3D models in a 3D area, especially for mordheim is not only more engaging but also easier to play, especially with line of sight!
•  Slight modelling options. There is no need to animate them but if you can raise an arm here or make one guys pants pink with a blood splattered base I'll be happy. A game I've pre-ordered called Overgrowth (which has an awesome weekly update blog) has this color picker thing for different areas on the models which works pretty darn well. Just a custom colorscheme is really all that is needed.
• Stick to turn based in the same way the actual game is played, it has been play tested enough that all there really needs to make the game is the 3D models, the game engine, and textures aka making a gray box into a wooden one.
• LOS detection and an automatic distance ruler marker. Line of sight is the easiest part to be honest because all you need to do is check to see if a line between a few vertexes on Model A doesn't pass through other objects  before it touches Model B.

Ever so often I stop and think about just breaking down and writing a game like that myself though I know my current skills are just not up to par to do a game like that justice. I have tried Vassel though, but expecially for mordheim where LOS and multiple levels are pretty important it just didn't work for me.

Can you imagine though starting the program and being thrown onto the main menu with probably a chapel in the background and a band of empire malitia next to it with some skaven creeping around corners. All the models have bases that just don't match the ground (like winter bases on a grassy board) with the options too...

• Local Campaign
• Local Skirmish
• Online Campaign
• Online Skirmish
• My Warbands (So you can pre-make starting warbands and look at existing ones)
• Options
• Credit
• Exit

Want to just play a one off game? Do a skirmish which you can either use an existing warband or take one of your starters and buy upgrades for them like in the rules for one off games. Run through a campaign locally (either against yourself, someone else at home or on a lan line, or against bots or something) or even online since handling packets between users will actually be pretty simple. All there really needs is TCP since nothing is happening in real time and only one person is doing something at a time. There can also be some leniency to protect you from someone "rolling" too fast before you can parry an attack and save your hero.

For bigger games like Warhammer 40k there would have to be a bit more trickery in making it run faster and smoother since there will obviously need to be a fast way of moving units then one model at a time, something like holding shift and moving a single model in a unit then the rest will try to stay in coherency and then you can tweak the rest after they've all moved their 6 inches.

Oh well a man can dream.

Gray Model Syndrome

So if any of you are like me you just want to throw some dice around and you just can't seem to get enough time in the day to do everything you want to do and then paint up some models. Mostly when I go to my local hobby store (Games Workshop) I can find myself a game or two relatively shortly, but when I don't want to play Warhammer 40k or more commonly the case I show up too early and no one else is there to play with I have to hobby. Of course things like requiring a fully painted (three colors) and based (colored base) models to play Mordheim on the pretty Mordheim table helps.

To be honest Gray Model Syndrome (GMS) doesn't only include non primed models. You could be suffering from GMS with any number of models that aren't finished the painting process. Grey Model Syndrome starts when you start collecting more models then you are likely to paint before you get bored of painting or your next paycheck comes in and you buy more little plastic gray men.

Facts you should know about Gray Model Syndrome.

• GMS afflicts 97% of war gamers I know
• GMS is treatable
• When fixed you will feel better for it
• Not only you but your models suffer
• Enjoyment goes up by a factor of Q

Don't worry though, we can help you help yourself help your models help you help I forgot where I was going with this. The simplest thing to do is attack your GMS by targeting its route cause and work on it bit by bit. In our twelve step program we start by priming all the things followed by either focusing on a few models at a time or mass painting bits such as the left knee cap on each model in a unit.

Through destination, determination & deliberation we can teleport ourselves out of this curse and bring a fully painted army to the table, because chicks dig fully painted models. Go ahead and ask them, they'll tell you "chirp chirp chirp".

Mordbuddy: Teaser

So sometime in the near future I plan on getting an android tablet, mostly to have one. More then just to have one I want an easy and small computer device when I head over to Games Workshop, and most of all to track my mordheim warbands! The paper has worked alright for me so far, but after a few games and eraser marks stuff gets hard to read. Am I happy enough with just an xml file though? Not really so that leads me to coding my own application "solution" in today's lingo to track all of my warbands and will be touch screen orientated.
Sadly though I can't freely distribute it as it would infringe upon Games Workshop lawyer stuff and I don't want them breathing down my throat. However I can tease you guys and gals with pictures and information about it (like I'm doing now).

Anyway onto the fun stuff, pictures! I tried making the best legal disclaimer I could on the front to make it stand out to everyone that this is just for private use and I'm not distributing their copy-written materiel. (It's gotten other people in trouble before)

It is still in a non-working state (only build 0.04 right now) as I'm still building a solid foundation (mostly visuals to be honest). I've only been working on it during my free time when I'm not hobbying or doing anything else at all.

I've got to say that I love how the experience bar for heroes has come out so far and it is my favorite part of that panel. Before I just showed how much total experience you had in a number along with how many times you've leveled since the last time you hit "new battle". However now there is a sweet visual that shows experience up to this battle (red, yellow for levels) and experience gained this battle (green, light green when you leveled up) and where upcoming levels are (gray). And it is in the same format as the play sheet! Though I've still got to figure out how to fix that silly dark gray bar to the side of it. (along with some other gui glitches)

For being in an early alpha state though, I think I've gotten some pretty cool stuff done so far. I'm happy with it at least and that is all that really matters on a program for private use anyway.

Cheap Mordheim: Cult of the Possessed

As the number of official warbands dwindle it gets harder and harder to find workable cheap sets that can set each warband apart from another besides painting guys from the Empire Malitia differently. When looking at the Cult of the Possessed entry I've tried to mull over how to best model them without dishing out for some cool chaos spawn models for my possessed.

The biggest difference between Cult of the Possessed and other human warbands is the use of green stuff. In order to set your different characters apart from each other and normal unenlightened humans is your gifts of mutations. These range from extra arms, tentacles, a tail, poison blood, and ugly faces. To show these things you can glue on extra bits and blend them in with green stuff or just use the green stuff to show things like boating or non-standard appendages. Thinking about how they would look modeled and since Empire Malitia is pretty overused already I'd say that Marauders of Chaos would be a better fit in this case.

The biggest thing Marauders are missing is bows though looking at the warband they are close combat orientated anyway, and if you need bows there is always the ability to model them (cut up sprue / green stuff on the base). Yesterday was my first game playing with something besides my Reiklanders (mostly ranged) for my new Orcs and Goblins warband against my own Reiklanders though we did remove their lucky charms, rabbits feet, and skills to make it slightly more even (100 rating vs 230ish). This taught me a lot about how powerful long bows can be, but also how devastating my Orcs can be in close combat.

In all close combat warbands speed and combat skills are the most important, you need to race across the map between cover (hopefully complete so you won't get shot) and getting into combat with nasty skills like Strike to Injure. It is very intimidating when an enemy model can move 12" or more. The cult also has a very interesting addition to it in the form of mutations and the Rewards of the Shadow Lord. You can get extra arms, hooves (+1 movement sexiness) and more reasons to bedeck your heroes with all manner of cool looking modeling magic. (glue an arm on their back, some green stuff to blend it in, and bam!)

If done right the cult can be one of the most interesting warbands to model and paint up along with being extremely fun when you get a few skills under your heroes belts. I'd probably start them myself one day out of bits I have laying around and a Marauders box but that is for another day.

Mordheim Tactica: Staying Alive

Staying alive, staying alive. Ah ah ah yeah.

In mordheim there are a lot of ways to improve the longevity of your heroes which is very important since when they go out of action you're losing out on crowns and on top of that they could die or get seriously injured. Of course this means there is a lot of defenses you'll have to get through yourself.

One of the first things that comes to mind on defending your heroes is armour and a shield. They benefit you with a 6+ to a 3+ save (Gromril with a shield). This save is enhanced by getting hit with a dagger (+1 to save with a basic of 6+ so you could have a 2+ save!) or hindered by the strength since every strength above 3 decreases your save by one until you lose it. Not only can the strength of the hit decrease your armour's efficiency but some weapons also have negative armour modifiers like axes along with critical hits having a chance to ignore it completely! So why would you take armour, the biggest reason would be against shooting attacks since they are normally strength 3 or lower. Crossbows and black powder being strength four though black powder grants a -2 to armour. In almost all of my games I've played only dwarves take armour (there are a few exceptions but hardly anyone takes it). The best time to buy armour is when you have nothing else to buy such as more men (or other species) and other equipment.

The next thing that pertains to armour but is separate is a helmet which is the number one defensive armour to take. It is cheap and on a 4+ you go from a stunned to a knocked down result so if you are facing two opponents alone your character won't be automatically put out of action since knocked down results still need the opponent to roll to wound (One more dice roll between you and out of action). This also means that if your helmet works, you're character can stand up and fight in your next turn instead of just rolling over that turn.

After armour you have some rare equipment you can purchase (besides gromril armour) that can help you out. These are of course lucky charms (the first thing most people search for) because ignoring the first hit on a 4+  is worth it. In one game this has saved three of my heroes in the first round of shooting (he rolled to see what would have happened and my leader would have been KO'ed by a critical arrow). The next piece of rare equipment that is on the extended list is a rabbits foot which lets you reroll once (lucky charm or even an injury roll!) and if you didn't use it you can reroll an exploration die. The biggest thing I'd use the rabbits foot on is to reroll the injury table so a knocked down turns into an out of action followed by rerolling a lucky charm or step aside / dodge. Just remember that they are both once per battle items though they can be used every battle.

The next thing that many people take is swords for that parry save. Against one attack in close combat where the strength isn't equal to or over your strength you can attempt to parry it by beating the roll to hit (so if they roll a three and you parry with a four you ignore that hit).

Finally the next thing that can save your heroes are some certain skills, these are more reliable then armour but are less likely to show up since you need to roll a new skill and be able to learn the skill. They can also be used more then once a battle making them better then a lucky charm. The top two are step aside (a chance to ignore every close combat wound on a 5+) and dodge (ignore ranged hits on a 5+). Step aside is extremely helpful because it can be used against critical hits. Dodge is also very sweet because it happens before lucky charms so you don't have to use it if you can dodge first. Another two useful skills include lightning reflexes which ignores all knock down results that aren't caused by things like successful helmet saves. Finally resilient is useful since your opponents are striking at -1 strength against you in close combat. Out of them though Dodge and Step Aside are the most useful as you'll want to get some more offensive skills with your spare skills like strike to injure.


The best thing about most of these is that they stack so in close combat you can Lucky Charm, Parry, Armour save, Dodge, Helmet and use a rabbits foot to reroll any of these. At most that is five dice rolls your opponent has to get through to knock your hero out of action. I've tried to organize them in relation to how useful they are but I'll display a list of most to least useful saves based on my own personal tastes and ideas.

1. Dodge and Step Aside (depending on if your hero will see more ranged or close combat, my marksman hero uses dodge while my young blood uses step aside)
2. Lucky Charm (once per battle 4+ to ignore the first hit)
3. Parry (can't parry criticals (unless a dwarf has a certain skill) but you're just buying a weapon with a save attached, buckler not really that useful since that second weapon is very nice)
4. Helmet (For when that attack goes through but you have a chance of not being useless or auto killed for a round of combat)
5. Armour (expensive and lots of things negate it but good later game when you have money to burn and against arrows)
6. Shield (Same with the buckler, in most cases a sword and club are more useful)
7. Buckler (I'd personally rather have a second weapon then a re-roll-able parry)

• Finally the rabbits foot, as it is not a direct save and just a reroll it isn't listed but it is really good.

Cheap Mordheim: Beastmen Raiders

I have to say that beastmen raiders are an interesting warband to go with since they have zero ranged weapons. The only ranged attack you can get is from magic from your shaman and that is it since most hired swords don't work with beastmen. Since your primary focus is close combat their biggest advantage is speed since they have a Movement of 5" instead of the universal 4". Taking this into consideration you'll want to give your heroes a speed skill or two to increase their maximum threat range to make up for the lack of 16" to 30" range attacks.

For this Leap and Sprint are very useful abilities since you can move triple your normal movement (15" charge range) and with leap you can increase that by one to six inches. I've seen this setup on a ghoul in an undead warband and it was scary to deal with.

I'm a little torn between what box to use for the base of the warband, since there are no ranged weapons the Ungor box's bows are useless, but the Gors box doesn't have any two handed weapons for a lovely strongman + double handed weapon, also since there is a minimal amount of swords (two in the Ungor box) you'll have to give up that parry on most characters. Good news though is that if you use the Ungor box you'll be able to make halberds with the spear and axe head. On the Gor box you'll get all the swords you want.

So after thinking about it, I'd say the Ungors box will probably be the better deal though if you want to get a second box to expand to the full 15 members before halfling cookbooks are added I'd also say get the Gor box too. Sadly though one of the Beastmen Raiders heroes is a Centigor so unless you want to green stuff some bodies together you'll need to get one more box to get all your heroes (it sucks not having them all). The best news about this though is that a single Centigor is fairly cheap compared to other single models (all of my necron finecast). It is interesting that the three centigor choices costs the same as the mordheim centigor so it all depends on which one looks best to you. (I'd choose this one and make his spear into a halbert for that +1 strength)

Cheap Mordheim: Night Goblins

Ah an experimental warband that I'm actually almost done painting right now, and it isn't even overpowered compared to some other experimental ones so I'll be able to use it after a few tweaks in our League. The reason why I chose to start this instead of Orcs and Goblins first is mostly due my wanting to paint them first. The box to get of course is very easy to choose and that is the Night Goblins Regiment!

There isn't much options on the night goblins equipment sheet but they are all covered by the box with swords, clubs, spears, short bows, helmets and light armor (under cloak), and shields. they even have models for nets. Modeling them where pretty easy except I'm still trying to figure out what to do to separate my normal bosses from my henchmen night goblins, my Big Boss and Shaman stick out fairly well since one has a pretty head and the other has a moon icon on a pole (club).

One idea I came up with was to stick a shield on their back (after shaving off the hand attached to it) so they stick out a lot but I got lazy and didn't do anything yet. I'll probably do something along the lines of detailing their cloaks and / or adding rune like symbols on their swords though having the heroes blend in might not be that bad of a thing.

Speaking of not bad things I found one of my favorite combo's for a henchmen group. I have a group of three henchmen with a spear and short bow who's job is to advance in front of my main force and shoot their short bows at whoever I can. Of course I don't expect to hit much with 16" Range henchmen who moved but that isn't their primary job anyway. What they are really there for is intercepting charges. When someone tried to charge my heroes I can intercept with my spear goblin and get to attack first even though my opponent charged, and if my spear golbin lives I can charge my heroes at the model and throw that much more dice for a one, two punch.

My two Night Goblin henchmen groups, one with club and sword, and the other spear and short bow for that one, two punch.

 

 Then we got my six heroes, four bosses with sword and short bow. The Big Boss with his moon sword and short bow, and the shaman with his two clubs (The moon icon is getting called a club by me).

And of course my Fanatic, he's not part of the warband yet but he will be after I play my first game with them.

And finally my three "fully almost fully" painted models in the front followed by all the others. I really like the Green and Purple color scheme I've got going for them. I especially like how good they look on the Fanatic with his jack-o-lantern flail. (Yep he's fighting with a pumpkin!)

To paint them I primed white (be very careful on air conditions) and then washed almost all of the colors on with a few base colors like yellow, purple on two models (bet you can't tell which ones got a purple base coat in the last image), and details like teeth. If you haven't painted your models teeth yet then you'll be surprised how amazingly good they suddenly look. Also did I mention how much I love washes shades and glazes now?

PS: Metal on white does not look good, paint that stuff with a very dark base coat first or you'll regret it (I washed with nuln oil to make metal less flat but still I wish I did black first)

PPS: nuln oil on white primer with 'ardcoat looks exactly like boltgun metal.

PPPS: Be careful with flock, a small drop goes a lot further then I thought it did. (see shaman base)

Cheap Mordheim: Witch Hunters

One of the first warbands I've faced and I've been waiting to play against them again (everyone who played them in the league switched to a Norse warband). This was one of the more difficult warbands to decide what would be the cheapest way of running them as all human warbands can of course use the Empire Militia box, but their main thing is centered around the flagellant henchmen group which the militia box just doesn't give justice too. The box I'd suggest for this warband is the Empire Flagellant one that will provide you with all the crazy bearded guys you'll need.

It comes with flails, morning stars, clubs, torches (clubs with FIRE!), books (holy in this case), and some crazy people. It is the first box I've suggested without access to swords and ranged weapons (that parry is always nice to have) so you will probably want to supplement the list with some Militia if you want some ranged weapons. You can build a very nasty close combat warband with just this box though since flails are scary in the first turn of combat (strength 6 means -2 to armour saves and models with Strength 3 can't parry).

Mordheim Suppliments: Hired Swords

So in my current campaign I've gotten hired swords for free due to an encampment bonus. Every warband in the campaign gets an encampment with different between game bonuses and disadvantages. Some examples include losing D6x5 gold crowns or getting a free hired sword for one battle. This is nice since most of my gold crowns are still going to equipment instead of warband size and it gives me another character that I don't care if it gets Out of Action.

I've mostly been limited to humanoid hired swords since I don't have many other Mordheim usable models. A lot of the hired swords are very useful and can really pay for themselves every battle. The two hired swords I've fielded most recently (pretty much because they are both in the rule book) is the Warlock and the Elf Ranger. Both have served me well, but I like the warlock a bit more since my Mercenaries are lacking in magic without him and that sword spell is nasty.

Some of the coolest hired swords include the witch who can concoct potions to increase another characters stats (+1 strength is really nice) and she has some very powerful spells that makes me want to take her any chance I can. (hopefully I can bring her in our campaign) The Bard is also very handy since being able to reroll any leadership test within 6" with a +1 to the result which is very nice for things like rout tests and keeping your magic sword up on a magic user.

Another nice hired sword to take would be a halfling scout since he grants +1 warband size so you can get that one extra henchman to run around with. I've also been eyeing an ogre bodyguard as a way to soak up arrows with his three wounds. In most cases your opponent will focus a lot of his / her shooting attacks to the ogre since it can move faster and hit harder then most warband characters (3 attacks with base two + two weapons and movement 6 is deadly) though the possibility of it surviving through a battle goes down a lot with all the ranged attacks that is likely to go into him.

Mordheim Suppliments: Wardogs

So your warband can bring puppies or you want to get some war dogs as equipment (still counts toward max warband size) but they are very important and useful for the adventurous (not skavens though). The most advantage of getting a wardog or two be it a henchmen group or equipment (or even a Wolfin for Norse) is their speed. Especially in breakthrough and wyrdstone hunt along with being able to hit and run stragglers very easily.

Now I've seen a few dog models offered by GW and some are metal (wood elves got two in a set), chaos warhounds (spikey bits and has 10), undead warhounds (they're corpsy), and space wolves wolves (5 models). Out of the four options I saw I lean the most between chaos warhounds and space wolves since at the moment they cost the same and it is really just depends on your taste and if you want to shave / remodel some spikes for normal wolves.

At the moment I've been using Squigs for my war puppies as the war dog equipment does not necessarily have to be a dog / wolf. However there was a recent addition to the war puppy list of options thanks to The Hobbit's Fell Wargs. There is six of them however one down side is circle bases compared to the standard square ones on Mordheim.

After a few battles with testing war puppies I've grown to like them a lot especially due to their speed. Take a slow warband like Dwarves, with 2/3 things running at 8" even in breakthrough they'll be able to just push the puppies across and win.

Cheap Mordheim: Undead

Unlike other cheap Mordheim options the undead warband isn't as cheap. This is because not only because you have two heroes that are not all...dead looking, but you also have three fairly different groups. Ghouls (they look nasty in a good way), zombies which are rotting flesh, and dregs which are still unrotten but could probably could use zombies for them and just make them not as dead looking. So this will probably be the most expensive cheap warband if you don't want to buy the Undead Warband itself!

After thinking about it and much searching, I believe I found an okay substitute for your necromancer and vampire boxes themselves and that is the Battle Mages box for the Empire (shown below) since you can have that cool flaming sword for your vampire and a wizard look for your necromancer.

And then all you need is henchmen which a box of Zombies should be able to do what you'll need for disposable bodies, (and with a magic spell they can come back in battle!) Also as I said before depending on how you paint a few less disembodied ones you'll get your dregs.

 

For an idea on how to run your two box warband (ghouls are awesome by the way) is to make your vampire fast to jump into combat with stragglers (hit and run kind of thing, it fits them pretty well too) since after a few battles they will be beasts. The necromancer's hope is to support all the undead who bodyguard him and reanimate any that fall. Just remember that if both your Necromancer and Vampire goes down, you'll be in bad luck. Finally ghouls, ghouls, ghouls. If one gets "Lads got Talent" you'll have a lot of fun doing the same hit and run tactics as the vampire with him. The guy who has an undead warband in our campaign has both a nasty vampire and a nasty ghoul hero are the two things I fear the most (ghoul has around a 30" threat range with sprint, leap, and lots of attacks).

Cheap Mordheim: Orcs and Goblins

Being bored without power at my local GW to play at I've decided to put out another Cheap Mordheim post. As you can tell I've already done two (skavens and most of the mercenaries as they can use the same box) and I got a few more to go before most of the cheap one box warbands are done. Hopefully this will help people who are interested in Mordheim get into it with the most bang for your buck. I'll also be buying these boxes myself for my own warbands or already have so of course I'm searching for the cheapest things myself too.

Orcs and Goblins is another official warband but sadly it isn't as inexpensive as the last two. To do this warband you'll need some orcs for the heroes and henchmen but the goblins, squigs, and troll don't come in the same box. For a single box of orcs, I've found that the Savage Orcs is your best bet. It has spears, swords, daggers, axes, bows (Orc Boyz don't and archers come in 3's), and shields.

 Sadly there is only ten models this time instead of the twenty like in the other two but it is the best box on the GW website right now. Good news is that you'll only need 8~10 Orcs to start the warband with and you can expand from there with a Troll, more Orcs, or some goblins (I suggest a night goblin box, you'll see why later). Good news though is that you can still field a strong list with just 10 models for a few games into a campaign as you can / will spend most of your income on lucky charms, rabbits foot, other equipment upgrades, and hiring any henchmen that died. (After 5 games my Reikland is still only 11 strong, but I'll be expanding them soon)

Just remember to do something to set your heroes apart along with your Shaman and Boss. For giggles I'd probably put the big choppa on the Boss as he'd have the biggest stick (and it would look cool) and use the banner as my Shaman club / axe / spear / whatever I can count it as. Spearing of spears though one of my favorite things to do is to run a group of henchmen with spears and have one escort another henchman / hero through the battle for counter charging. If you are anything like me you'd wonder why I'd give up two attacks with a parry (sword+other) for a single spear as if you are also like me then 90% of the time that single attack will miss (unless it is a bow), but here is the trick. Spears attack first in close combat regardless of any other modifiers such as charging in the first round of combat, so you have a chance at killing the guy who charged before he gets to go, and if he kills your spear henchmen, at least it wasn't your money maker hero. This is why my newest models for my warbands contains a few Spear + Bow models (shot in my turn, intercepts charges in theirs).

PS: The way we play and as I understand the rule for spears (unwieldy) is that it doesn't let you use another weapon or a shield in close combat but you can use a pistol / bow / crossbow / rifle in the shooting phase.

Cheap Mordheim: Skaven

Another one of the cheap warbands to bring into Mordheim are the skavens with their mass of rattitude and fighting claws / slings they can put up quite a fight. I don't personally own a warband of them myself but a few people at my local Games Workshop and from what I can tell they decided to use the Night Runners box to make their warband from.

The box not only comes with 20 rats (max warband size) but also some fighting claws, spears, clubs, swords, slings, and what you need for a tail weapon / dagger / weeping blades. Though I'm not sure about pistols, halberts, and flails for them. I would suggest you pick up an assassin for your leader just because they look so cool, you won't have too as long as you make your heroes a bit more unique.

You'll definitely be the joy in a campaign with all those henchmen for the slaughter slings. When deciding on what I wanted to do next besides Reikland Mercenaries, Skaven was up there since all I needed was a box and some more paint, alas though we have a few Skaven players in the campaign right now so I decided to hold off on that for another day.

Cheap Mordheim: Mercenaries

So you want to start Mordheim but you only want to buy a single box of guys. Well I have good news for you then and this is the same thing I did myself.

You'll want yourself a box of Empire Malitia!

This box has enough bodies to make 20 humans (average maximum warband size for Mercenaries is 15) with bits for swords, axes, clubs, bows, cross bows, blunderbuss / rifles, and pistols. So you'll have plenty of modeling options.

A cool option to do with your five starting heroes to set them apart from your henchmen is to take the five cloaks from the box and put those are your heroes. It really sets them apart though don't model them exactly alike (same head + legs) as the idea is everyone in Mordheim is slightly different from each other.

Currently I've only assembled 10 of my 20 guys (I haven't expanded my warband size much yet and I got 6 extra archers out of a trade though two are painted), but it is enough to run a heavy hitting warband and when I want to expand my numbers I'll assemble and paint another two / three guys to fill out my henchmen even more.

The only bit of conversion required was the sword in the left hand (cut it off a right hand and glued it on an empty / use to be dagger left hand), and if you want to go WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) then you'll need to kit bash or scratch build shields / bucklers. (Most have daggers strapped to their legs, most hats can be used as a helmet and most can be said to wear light armor though heavy armor could be stretching it). Also the easiest way of modeling two weapons is just putting the second on the characters back / side / leg (Like I did for the axes since it is easier to shave off a hand then to stick it on another one, and the bow looks better in a hand anyway)

EDIT:
So this box should be able to hand Reikland, Marienburgers, Middenheimers, Pirates (experimental), Norse(experimental), Ostrander, Kislevite, and Averland warbands along with "The Outlaws Of the Stirwood Forest" though if I find a better box for this or that mercenary group or other human group (Norse for example) I'll make a separate entry for them, the Empire Malitia box really is a catch all for most human warbands.

Mordheim Introduction

So recently I've gotten into a game called Mordheim thanks to my local Games Workshop where I play another two of their games called Warhammer 40,000 and Lord of the Rings. I'll let others more skilled then I talk about what wargaming is and why it is the bees knees, but I can definitely tell you that it is a fun hobby that gets you to interact with others face to face.

Thanks to my local Games Workshop (The Bowie Bunker) building us a beautiful table with a real working wizard clock tower and started both a Mordheim League and Campaign, it has become quite popular here. There are at least 15~20 people who are actively in the campaign and more in the league so when it is Wednesday or Friday (official Mordheim days here) there gets to be a nice sized line of people ready to play.

The best part about Mordheim too is that it is one of the cheapest Games Workshop games and quickest to get into with its low model count and the rulebook is hosted on GW's website. Average game length is about 30 minutes with another 15 to manage all the campaign post-game setup such as gaining experience, leveling up, and hunting for gold crowns (money). Also you should check out Mordheimer for pretty much all the important stuff about Mordheim in a single spot which includes the unofficial and experimental warbands. Tough sadly Games Workshop has not given Mordheim much love in the last few years our League and Campaign organizers have been tweaking this and that to enhance the experience and balance the different warbands a bit better along with adding more flair. An example they're working on is allowing a goblin in an Orcs and Goblins warband to get "That Lads got Talent" by fighting the warband leader and winning.

Oh yeah, so talking about campaign earlier I'm playing a Reikland Mercenary warband with a Drinking Den (encampment) along the river side on the harbor. So when my encampment is attacked by another warband I'll be defending my booze ship from those varmints who're trying to take me rum! As clarification for anyone who has played Mordheim we get to model a 12" by 12" inch square representation of our encampment to use on the table, and mine is mine will be a boat with a bar on it, because it is awesome. Another guy got a graveyard and is constructing one for his base.

Also for a future note, I'll be making a few posts about what warbands you can make with a single box of Fantasy along with pictures! Also we've got a Necromunda table almost built so expect some more specialty games on here besides 40k (my main game I play besides mordheim at my local Games Workshop).