Mordheim Warband: Cult of the Possessed

Who
Cult of the Possessed

Boxes
Forsaken (10 bodies)

Optional
Free Company (20 bodies)
Flagellants (10 bodies)

Why These
After the new chaos release the perfect box for your possessed warband's heroes has emerged! All of that lovely mutation from cloven hooves, great claw, extra arms, tentacles, etc is pretty much all there. Besides the beautiful models you'll have all of your heroes in a single box with options to switch them out with different builds. I also suggest either getting Flagellants or Free Company (Empire Militia) is for your henchmen. The Free Company box will of course give you a larger selection of equipment for you to field while the Flagellants box just has some crazy people that goes perfectly with this warband. Either way your warbands heroes will really stand out and you will be feared after your model count goes above four.

Thoughts
Possessed is a slow warband to start due to their high cost heroes since they are 380 gold minimum without equipment for all five heroes. That is also just taking the cheapest mutations which you'll probably want something a bit better like Scorpion Tail. One of the strategies I've read about which I'll probably try in a campaign is just taking the Magistrate, two Mutants with Scorpion Tails, and a naked brethren. Then for the first few games I'll send the brethren to die and rout. Not very interesting but since I'd get the underdog bonus in almost all the matches I'll be able to level my mutants very fast and I'll have enough rounds to get a possessed or two and with that I'll have strong enough heroes to wreck.

For myself I grabbed a box of Forsaken and am currently in the process of deciding what legs should go with what bodies, but I feel the more deformed combinations will be saved for my Possessed while my Mutants and Magistrate will get the less mutated models respectively to set them all apart.

After looking at the mutations table, I'd love to have 400 gold to hire a single Possessed or Mutant with! I can just imagine what a hero would be like with Great Claw, Scorpion Tail, and an Extra Arm as his mutations. Three extra attacks in combat will absolutely destroy. Out of all of them the Scorpion Tail will probably give you the best results since it is S5 by default. Another thing to remember is that Possessed already cause fear so remember not to give them that mutation.

All in all the Cult of the Possessed has some nasty heroes that can absolutely ruin someone's day if you spend some gold on them.

Mordheim Warbands: Mercenaries

And so it begins...

Who
Reikland, Middenheim, and Marienburg Mercenaries.
Averlander, and Ostlander Mercenaries.
This also covers 90% of all the other human based warbands such as Pirates and Norse warbands.

Boxes
Empire Militia (20 bodies)

Why These
The Empire Militia box (Free Company) is the most versatile box of humans in the whole line of Warhammer miniatures, not only does it contain 20 models (5 more then the average max warband size) but it also comes with virtually every bit you'll need for any equipment a human warband can take. It has swords, daggers, bows, crossbows, pistols, axes, clubs, halberds / spears, double handed weapons, rifles / blunderbuss's, and more.

The only thing it really doesn't have that people use on a semi-regular basis is shields / bucklers which can be modeled with some plastic card or even Popsicle sticks. However due to how useful having a second weapon like a free dagger or a club is compared to a small boost in armor save or a parry that can be negated easily in most cases.

Along with the coat, the axe on the back really makes my Captain stand out.

Thoughts
I do suggest mercenaries to be the first warband for anyone to get since they are very versatile, you just have to pick which mercenary warband to use based on what you want to focus on.

• Movement Phase: Averlander's Trappers who can block off paths of approach.
• Shooting Phase: Reikland's BS4 Marksmen
• Combat Phase: Middenheim's S4 Captain and Champions.
• Out of Combat: Marienburg's +1 to find items and +20% gold at the start of the campaign / one off game.
• Equipment: Ostlander's double barrels, dwarf axes, prayers as no other Mercenary warband can use spells / prayers, and an Ogre!

One of my big modelling suggestions involve having your five heroes use the torso with the coat. I did that and visually they are all very easy to find as it is a common trait separating them from the henchmen.

Marksman, Warrior, Young blood, Swordsman.

Personally I really do like the Reikland Mercenaries more due to their better Marksmen. When looking at my list it is split into three parts. My dedicated two to four archers places on the tops of different buildings for a wide angle of shots. My warriors and swordsmen act as my dedicated melee users who pretty much rush up and act as a buffer between their melee characters and my firing lines. Then finally my heroes who push up behind the front line of henchmen and either act as archers or melee depending on the situation.

For expanding the warband I think a warlock would be a good choice as most mercenary warbands have zero magic presence along with a war dog or two to help flanking. Beyond that see what you are suffering from as you play and boost that aspect of the warband with more henchmen. Generally though more melee characters are better since piling on three characters into combat with a single one, especially a strong hero will give you better odds of killing him compared to the low strength range attacks.

My two champions, another marksmen and warrior, then my other young blood on the end.

Cheap Mordheim Update

After some deliberation I have decided to test out a restructuring of my earlier Cheap Mordheim posts to a more standardized and readable format. After looking at most of my previous posts the only real take away I've got from skimming them is that the suggestions on what boxes to buy to put together a war band for Mordheim gets bogged down by all the other information I'm typing out along with it. I've wrote these not only for my own use as I gather more and more warbands together as at time of writing this I now have 5 distinctive warbands. I am also putting all the information I have gathered together for each warband in one place so that anyone else interested in Mordheim may use the research and reasons I've come up with to help decide what boxes and warbands to get.

Now remember that any suggestions I make will likely be from Games Workshop as I almost exclusively play at my local Bunker on their tables and in Games Workshop hosted events. To do so each model needs a certain percentage of GW product (50%), so in most cases I'll be pointing to their stuff first and will include links to the products I talk about so you can see what I'm talking about.

To test this new format I'm thinking of implementing I'll be rewriting my first Cheap Mordheim post on Mercenaries and if I like how it turns out I'll be rewriting all of my other posts in the same way. I've just decided I should just say this here anyway in case anyone cares to know why there are two posts for Cheap Mordheim: Mercenaries.

Cheap Mordheim: Dwarf Treasurehunters

Another fun warband to play against and has dominated our Mordheim league (One dwarf warband was about 200 rating over everyone else) are the Dwarf Treasure Hunters. They are also very hard to knock out of action since you have to get a 6 on the injury chart to take them out through lots of armor (hunting arrows can take them out on 5's though). The easiest way to picture Dwarves are as walking tanks. They are very slow (movement 3) and they start out small because of all the armor you'll be crazy to not use.

The biggest problem with trying to figure out how to put together a Dwarf Warband from a single box or two. Initially I'd recommend a Dwarf Warriors Box since it covers all of your non-range dwarves (dwarf axes / hammers). My biggest problem with this is that you have no out of the box ranged dwarves without using some spare bits or making your own. The next issue with this is that you can't really use a normal dwarf as a substitute for those Troll Slayers (Because they're naked) and make it believable / different enough.

Even if you don't get those bearded crazies known as Troll Slayers you'll still be running a 100% melee based warband, which is okay since you could probably rely on one of the dwarves best quallities, being impossible to kill! With a helmet, shield, and armor you'll pretty much shrug off most hits and even if you start undermanned you'll be able to enlarge your group and if someone decides to get too close those axes are deadly. Another thing is that you could use a non-ranged wielding Engineer until you can get a dwarf with a gun.

Another idea to use would be substituting the Dwarf Warriors box for a Dwarf Thunderers / Quarrellers and focus on your pistols and crossbows instead of melee. This may be a better option instead depending on your playing style though I would recommend picking up that pack of Troll Slayers just so you have some melee focused characters to run interference.

So in short, get either a Dwarf Warriors box if you want to focus on melee or a Dwarf Thunderers box if you perfer to sit back and snipe (Get that Engineer for the range bonus. Your Engineer or your Noble can be made from either box (Remember, max heroes always) so the only thing left is to get a few Troll slayers to round out your warband. They can either be your main melee force (range focus) or a flanking force (melee focus). Looking at it I'll probably do the two box setup myself after I finally get around to finishing my Skaven warband! (Or at least having them all put together and have a roster written out)

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.

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).

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.