Mordheim Musings: Flawed Warband Design Part 1

Mordheim Musings: Flawed Warband Design Part 1

Before I begin, a disclaimer: I know it's pretty nervy of me, a small hobbyist on the internet, to assume any kind of expertise in this sphere. With that out of the way, let me assume some kind of expertise in this sphere.

As I've mentioned in previous articles, I think about Mordheim a lot, particularly for someone who doesn't currently play it. I build warbands, draft experimental rules, write blog posts, and regularly seek out other people's warbands, experimental rules, and articles about it. So while I may not have the firsthand tabletop experience, I have a serious academic interest in the game.

Recently, I've been going over Nemesis Crown again, which is a bit of an oddball supplement to me. The idea of a Mordheim tie-in to a worldwide Warhammer campaign is cool in theory, but there are some head-scratchers in the idea. First, while the timeline of 2007's Nemesis Crown campaign is ambiguous (at least from what I can tell), it didn't seem to come with any caveats like 2002's War of the Beard, which disallowed some of the more “modern" aspects of the Dwarfs army list. This implies to me that it was set in the “modern age" of Warhammer Fantasy at the time, where Mordheim was distinctly in the past. This is a bit of a quibble, but it'll come into play later.

On a positive note, Nemesis Crown did pave the way for fan-made supplements to come in several ways. The custom environmental rules, events, scenarios, and warbands can all be seen reflected later in Border Town Burning, Mutiny in Marienburg, and beyond. Nemesis Crown is a landmark in post-Town Cryer Mordheim content, that opened the door to years of creativity.

A flawed landmark, but a landmark all the same.

And of course, that's my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt, but while I respect Nemesis Crown for what it is, like it even, I have to acknowledge its flaws. In particular, the flaws inherent in the custom warbands contained in the supplement. The events, scenarios, environmental rules, those are all pretty solid, but the warbands rub me the wrong way. Not all to the same degree, of course: some have more serious issues than others, but they all have something going on that throws them a little off.

Anyway, to wrap up the preamble, I think I can cook up a several-part series on these flaws for the blog. I'd like to start off by examining the one I've been looking at most recently, the Gunnery School of Nuln.

The Gunnery School

The Gunnery School of Nuln is essentially a remix of the Mercenary warband. This is a common enough sight: from Lustria's Tileans to Border Town Burning's Merchant Caravan. The idea behind the Gunnery School is a class of would-be marksmen and orphan students on a field exercise, fast-tracked to becoming the shining stars of the Imperial military. If that sounds like a cool background for a warband, that's because it is! I can't fault Nemesis Crown on its lore. 

What I can fault it on is the design of the warband. To be clear, every warband needs flaws, but the type of flaws I'm exploring are ones that detract from the Gunnery School, rather than adding depth to it. 

But I've rambled enough about how I'm going to look at the flaws. Let me actually look at them, starting from the top: the special rules. The first of the three is “Impeccable Care", allowing the Gunnery School to get a discount on all gunpowder weapons and a bonus to Rare rolls to find them. To examine this, I need to look at the discount, which is frankly misguided and inconsistent: 

- Pistols cost 10 gc, a 5 gc discount (33% off)

- Duelling pistols cost 20 gc, a 5 gc discount (20% off)

- Strangely, a brace of duelling pistols only costs 35 gc, a 15 gc discount (30% off), meaning the second costs an additional 10 gc less.

- Blunderbusses cost 20 gc, a 10 gc discount (33% off)

- Handguns cost 25 gc, a 10 gc discount (abour 28.6% off)

- Hochland Long Rifles cost 100 gc, a 100 gc discount (50% off)

Not to mention the myriad of new gunpowder weapons added as part of the warband, all of which are discounted. This means that a total of 10 weapons are discounted by a significant (and in a few cases, fluid) amount. This is a lot, especially when compared to one of the few other warbands with equipment discounts: Dwarf Treasure Hunters. Dwarfs get Gromril weapons at 3x the price instead of 5x (40% off), and gromril armour for 75 gc (50% off). Those are some pretty serious discounts, but have a caveat that dials them back: they're only available at warband creation, to represent the dwarfs stocking up at the hold. On top of this, there are two soft restrictions on this benefit (which is to say, not explicitly stated): first, armour and armour-piercing capabilities aren't particularly useful in Mordheim, and secondly they aren't central to the dwarfs' strategy. The Gunnery School's discounts, however, apply forever, and are on a wide variety of equipment that is arguably essential to their identity. 

Why is this a problem? Warbands need an identity, right? Of course they do, but let's look back at the dwarfs again. Cheap gromril IS part of their identity: dwarfs have near-exclusive access to the material, and have a martial culture where weapons and armour are commonplace. It makes sense flavour-wise that they would have this discount, it feels appropriate and interesting, but ultimately not something that makes or breaks the warband. The Gunnery School's discount, on the other hand, is excessive. The given rationale is that the warband can procure low-quality firearms in the field and repair them, and I admit that this fits with their niche. However, the idea that such a wide range of firearms would not only be available in the Great Forest, including experimental weapons from Nuln itself and high-end hunting rifles, but be in the hands of people who took such poor care of them that they are now selling them at a discount to the Gunnery School, is laughable. 

This also indicates one of the driving philosophies of the warband's design: firearms are too expensive. In brief, I don't think this is true. I think the price of firearms isn't the thing that puts people off of using them, but the fact that many players might not understand how to turn their limitations into advantages (read more here). I think it would be interesting for the Gunnery School to rely heavily on flawed weapons. The advantages that the warband already has balance out the high price of firearms. Further reducing their price takes them from being a strategy, to a gimmick, and while gimmicks aren't bad, they are irksome. I don't know about you, but I would rather play a warband where I have to choose to use a strategy that might not work for a different faction because there's a skew towards it, than one where I'm railroaded into the strategy. It's already clear, right from the name “Gunnery School", that they use guns, without even knowing about the discount. 

It would be bad practice for me to write four paragraphs on how I dislike one aspect of a warband without proposing a fix. So what can be done? Well, like I mentioned, it doesn't feel right that there's a ready source of experimental weapons in the middle of the Great Forest. The gunners will have to stock up on those in Nuln, and school or not, they shouldn't come cheap. As Rare items, it's enough of a bonus to just allow them to purchase these unrestricted, at base price, at warband creation. So first, the discount on everything but firearms from the base rules gets dropped (i.e. pistols, duelling pistols, handguns, and blunderbusses). Second, the discount is an even 5 gc across the board, since the percentages don't line up well. Third, all braces of pistols cost twice the base cost, no volume discounts. These discounts can persist beyond warband creation, since these weapons should be the easiest to obtain. The bonus to Rare rolls can stay too, since the warband should have a supply line from Nuln to draw on even for the weird stuff. As I write this, I'm thinking duelling pistols should probably lose the discount too, since they're usually custom, high-end pieces. A modest discount on the three baseline firearms and a niche bonus to Rare rolls is more than enough to establish identity, without being overbearing or overpowered.

The other special rules aren't problematic at all: Properly Used mitigates the effects of the Misfire optional rule, which is fairly situational, and Proud to a Fault just cements the warband's identity as firearm-centric by restricting them from using other ranged weapons. Nothing much to see here, let's move on.

Equipment

Next up comes the warband's armoury, which is fairly standard stuff if one ignores the Gunnery School's arsenal of experimental and unusual firearms. I'd like to focus on those, because again there seem to be some glaring design flaws here. The firearms can roughly be divided into three categories: double-barreled weapon, repeaters, and explosives. 

The double-barreled weapons are interesting in that they actually already existed in Mordheim, and yet were inexplicably complicated in Nemesis Crown. The Ostland Mercenaries warband, presented in Town Cryer 11 several years before Nemesis Crown emerged, provided rules for double-barreled pistols and long rifles as a gold sink for the shopaholic Ostlanders. The rules as presented were fairly simple: a souble-barreled weapon can fire both barrels at once, rolling once to hit and twice to wound, or fire one barrel at a time and thereby fire every round. The Gunnery School warband adds a system of tokens that must be placed and removed from next to a warrior to represent the firing and reloading of one or both barrels, and I can only wonder why. Of course, it would make things easier to track, but it also adds one more thing that a player needs to have to play, and that is unique to the Gunnery School. I think it's safe to trust players to remember what firing mode they're using, or to simply suggest the use of tokens rather than requiring them. Double-barreled pistols also cost 5 gc less in Nemesis Crown than in Town Cryer 11 (or 10 gc less for the Gunnery School, which I've already mentioned I would cut). While this isn't a major flaw, it is a head-scratcher: did the designers make this change consciously? If so, why? I may never know.

Next, the repeaters, which can either fire three shots in a round, or one at a time, every round. Oddly enough, with more barrels it's apparently not necessary to use tokens to mark reloads. I do think the designers got the repeater handgun right, but the repeater pistol is another oddball. First, there isn't any reference to using a brace of them, which is interesting given that's a common strategy with other pistols. Second, the repeater pistol has the confusing “Not a Club" rule, which states that after the first round of combat, the pistol “doesn't count as an additional hand weapon", but also won't be discarded by the owner so they fight with one fewer attack. This seems both unfair, and like a misinterpretation of the core rules. In terms of misinterpretation, nowhere in the core rules does it state that regular pistols act as hand weapons after firing the first shot in melee. I wouldn't be surprised if this was someone's house rule, but in terms of the rules as written one would have to switch weapons anyway after the first round, so the clause of not “counting" as a hand weapon doesn't really mean anything. In terms of unfairness, it doesn't make sense to me that this pistol should be impossible to holster after firing it. Losing a hand for the whole combat is a strange disadvantage to impose, since it discourages the use of the weapon at all. A single extra S4 attack doesn't outweigh a warrior's bonus attack for the remainder of the combat, and since warriors with pistols are generally kitted for melee, pistoliers would be better off opting for a regular or double-barreled pistol instead. Not to mention that, with a brace of such weapons, the warrior would be unable to fight after round 1. I would argue that the “Not a Club" rule should be removed entirely, both for clarity and to encourage the use of this innovative weapon.

Last, the explosives, which introduce scatter and explosive templates into Mordheim. I think this is an interesting idea, and don't really have anything negative to say about it. It's debatable how useful a small explosive is in a skirmish game, but the effort is noble. 

The only elephant left in the room is the question of whether all of this experimental weaponry would be available in the Mordheim setting of IC 2000, only shortly after the inception of black powder into the Imperial arsenal. I think it can be argued that such creations wouldn't make much sense in Mordheim, but I disagree. If precision rifled weapons can already be manufactured, why not a double-barreled weapon? Why not a simple explosive with a powder charge or a pigeon to propel it? Why not a pepperbox-style repeater? Human innovation is implacable, and I can definitely see the engineers of Nuln churning out far-fetched designs soon after getting their greasy mitts on dwarfish black powder technology.

Warriors

What about the heroes and henchmen of the Gunnery School? I hate to say it (no I don't), but there are some glaring issues here that need to be addressed.

Starting from the top again, let's see the Senior Gunnery Officer. The price and profile are the same as a Mercenary Captain, but once we reach the special rules two things stand out: a basic Leadership range of 12", and beginning play with the Hunter skill. Like the “not a Club" rule and the alterations to double-barreled weapons, there isn't any reason given for the Leadership upgrade. It's difficult to mistype a 6 as a 12, so I can once again only speculate as to the reasons for this change. Having read a lot of other warband rules, I can confidently say that it's next to unheard of for a leader to begin play with this kind of boost, and so I'd lean towards this being a mistake. The addition of the Hunter skill seems much more deliberate, and while it's somewhat fitting, it needs to come at a price. 10 gc is a fairly standard cost for a starting skill, so the Senior Gunnery Officer should really cost 70 gc. Reflecting on my earlier ideas about firearms in Mordheim, however, I question the reasoning behind the addition of Hunter to the leader. The usual thinking on firearms says that their need to reload is a disadvantage, and adding in this skill implies that the designers also believe this is the case. I feel differently, as I've explained at length, so I would argue that the Hunter skill can be removed without detracting from the warband's identity. 

The Instructor is pretty solid, with the 45 gc price tag being very standard for a specialist hero, and nothing too untoward in the profile. The Expert Weaponsmith special rule is reminiscent of a dwarf engineer, and feels very appropriate in this warband. The Senior Student could cost 10 gc less and still be fair, since they're currently an overcosted Mercenary Champion. Underclassmen are fine as they are.

Looking at the henchmen, Sons of the Guns are essentially standard mooks for a human warband, and Pistoliers are an interesting riff on the baseline Mercenary warband's Swordsmen. Marksmen, however, once again show off the “guns aren't good enough" design philosophy by gaining the equivalent of Hunter for free. For a firearm-centric warband, the Gunnery School goes to great lengths to get rid of a very distinct aspect of the weapons. I would argue for removing the Marksmen's Quick Reload rule entirely, since I think that players should figure out how to make firearms work for them rather than propping them up with crutches. If that's not your cup of tea, Marksmen should probably cost 5-10 gc more than they do currently to reflect this extra skill.

In Summary

I like the idea of the Gunnery School, but the execution is flawed. Instead of leaning towards firearm use, the warband goes to great lengths to make firearms overpowered without paying any price for it, and indulges players' prejudice against some of the negative aspects of firearms rather than challenging it. My changes, in a nutshell, would be as follows:

Special Rules:

- Impeccable Care only applies the cost reduction to pistols, handguns, and blunderbusses, but the bonus to Rare rolls applies to all black powder weapons.

Equipment:

- Only pistols, handguns, and blunderbusses are available at a reduced price.

- Braces of pistols cost as much as two of the base pistol.

- Double-barreled weapons do not require tokens to keep track of reloading.

- Double-barreled pistols cost 30 gc each.

- Repeater pistols' “Not a Club" rule is removed.

Warriors:

- Senior Gunnery Officer's Leadership range is reduced to 6", and loses the Hunter skill.

- Senior Student's cost is reduced to 35 gc.

- Marksmen lose the “Quick Reload" rule.

I'd be interested to see how this truncated version of the warband plays. If you read through all of this, let me know your thoughts too! Do you agree with my assessment? Did I go too far? Should the Gunnery School be taken down even further? Feel free to share!

For some counterpoints to my naysaying, check out this recent analysis of the warband as well. I disagree with it, but you might not!