As a teenager I loved playing Mordheim, that whole "what happens in the first game, effects the next" and so on really appealed to me as it lends itself to story telling really easily.
If you've never played before I hope the following campaign encourages you to do so. For those who have played before, dig out that old rulebook, nothing beats nostalgia-hammer!
Back in September I decided my boys were old enough to start playing and I set about building and painting 4 warbands and terrain to boot. If I could find any of my original teenage collection, it wasn't up to the standards of my current painting skills.
The new Games Workshop WarCry set, Defiled Ruins gave me a decent amount of terrain to start with and using the bitzbox, I Mordheim'd then up a little.
As for the warbands themselves, most of the figures had already been in my bitzbox in various stages of completion or assembly. Some models where bought new like the Vampire, apparently I never collected one?
I you have been following my Instagram, the individual figures painted have been detailed there. However to summarize; I picked the Possessed as my own faction, my eldest son the Human Mercenaries, my youngest son the Skaven and we all decided my wife was going to play the undead.
Initial warband rosters.
When starting a new warband you each have 500 gold crowns (gc) to purchase your warriors and equip them. For the Skaven and undead, the currency simply represents the available resources to the warbands leader as I doubt the Ratmen have a current account...
The Iridescent Conclave (cult of Possessed)
For my own warband, I spent my 500gc on;
A Magister with a sword (the leader), he rolled the Lure of Chaos spell which takes control of an enemy model for a turn if successful.
A Possessed spawn of Chaos and bought it an extra arm (extra attack).
One Mutant with Sword and Great Claw mutation (+1 strength bonus).
As for the henchmen, the remaining gc got me 3 Brethren with hammers and shields and 3 Brethren with short bows.
The Imperials of Marienburg (Human Mercenaries)
My eldest son picked Marienburg as the home city of his mercenaries, as this gives him another 100gc to start off with, bringing the total amount of gold crowns he can use to purchase the warband to 600. This represents the fact that Marienburg is quite a wealthy city in the Empire and their warriors are normally well equipped.
600gc got him;
A Mercenary Captain with a sword and black powder pistol.
One Champion with a great sword.
A Youngblood equipped with a Halberd.
As for the henchmen, he bought; 3 warriors with swords and shields, 3 marksmen with longbows and 2 swordsmen with great swords and heavy armour.
The Squeaky Skullcrushers (Skaven)
My youngest son used his 500gc to buy;
One assassin adept with weeping blades (poison swords).
A Black Skaven with sword and shield.
One Eshin Sorcerer with a sword, the spell he rolled to start with was "Sorcerers Curse" which makes an opponent re-roll successful hit and armour save rolls during the Skaven turn.
A Night Runner with fighting claws, bending the rules here slightly.
For henchmen, the remaining credits bought him 6 giant rats and 3 Verminkin with spears.
Catherine's Cabal (Undead and this is the name of the Vampire, not my wife lol)
I have to admit, I created my wife's warband as I suspect she's just going along with all this nerdy stuff to keep the kids happy.
500gc got us;
One Vampire with a sword.
A Necromancer with club. For the starting spell we rolled Reanimation, which allows the Necromancer to summon 1 Linkin Park album per turn, sorry resurrect 1 fallen zombie.
A Dreg with an axe.
For the henchmen I went with a single Dire wolf, 3 ghouls and 8 zombies bringing the warband to it's maximum size.
Optional rules
Issue 29 of the town cryer, gave us optional rules for encampments, random encounters that might happen when your warband is enjoying some R&R as well as what they might use to seek shelter in after a fight.
The Skaven set set up their camp in a set of tents outside the city. The Possessed and Human Mercenaries picked a nice spot in the ruins and as I type, we've yet to roll for the Undead. I think as a house rule you get to re-roll on the housing chart before a game if you don't like what you've got currently.
As my kids are fairly young for Warhammer, I've decided to place more Wyrdstone in each game. Wyrdstone is the strange glowing magical rock that litters Mordheim, it is the reason each group is within the ruins of Mordheim as it's highly sort after for power, wealth or arcane experiments.
More Wyrdstone = more gold crowns which should make the campaign more interesting earlier on.
Instead of the usual rules, which pretty much only allows players to find Wyrdstone after a game I've added this;
Before opponents roll for deployment or first turn, but after terrain had been placed, roll 1 D6 for the number of Wyrdstone counters in play. Then roll a number of dice depending on the first roll and consult the chart below;
1-3 - Wyrdstone Fragment counter (Worth 1 Wyrdstone)
4-5 - Wyrdstone Shard counter (Worth 2 Wyrdstone)
6 - Wyrdstone Cluster counter (Worth 3 Wyrdstone)
Each player then takes it in turn to place a Wyrdstone counter within the terrain.
Models who looks like they carry Wyrdstone
Some figures are converted or painted to look like they're carrying Wyrdstone. Should you manage to put one of these figures out of action, you can roll to see if you claim 1 extra Wyrdstone fragment for your warband.
To successfully loot a Wyrdstone fragment in this way, roll higher than the out of action warrior's toughness value on 1 D6. This represents you over powering the warrior and taking the Wyrdstone for yourself.
I've also created a little league table to keep track of the number of times each warband has fought each other.
Game 1 - Skaven V's Humans - 07/12/19
The first game pitted my two boys against each other, this gave me a chance to teach each of them the basics.
They rolled Scenario 4, Breakthrough for the battle. The Human Mercenaries had to get to the Skaven board edge to win. Other winning conditions like most games involves getting the enemy warband to fail it's rout check.
After the terrain was placed the board looked like this;
The models were deployed in a standard opposite board edge setup, with the human archers in the first floor of a ruined building.
From the top down view, we can see the Skaven heroes in the top left, they ran down the street at the top of the board with the 6 giant rats. The 3 Verminkin with spears (middle left) first collected the Wyrdstone counters and preceded to move across the empty space towards the humans.
Human turn 1;
A group in the bottom right led by the youngblood headed towards the Wyrdstone counters, picking some up on the way towards the approaching Skaven with spears. The Mercenary Captain, Champion and a warrior climbed over the rumble in the top right to meet the Skaven assassin and other characters.
The Marksmen also took pot shots at the Giant rats, putting one out of action.
Skaven turn 1;
The Skaven characters quickly advanced down the top street, the Eshin Sorcerer prepares to cast his wicked magics.
Without any ranged weapons and the sorcerers spell useless without a Ratman in combat, the Skaven turn ended.
Human turn 2;
With the mercenaries in place, most decided to defend their positions against the approaching vermintide. However the youngblood, forever eager tried charging a Skaven warrior and failed, leaving him wide open...
Marksmen let loose another volley but failed to do anything.
Skaven turn 2;
The Assassin rushed ahead and charged the Human warrior, successfully hitting him but not wounding. The warrior, with luck on his side parried the blow.
The giant rats also prepare to line up a charge against the swordsman.
With the youngblood standing in the open, the Skaven spearman charged and knocked the man down.
Human turn 3;
The Swordsman and warrior got the charge on the giant rats and skaven spearman. The More experienced swordsman cleaving a giant rat in half.
The youngblood got up and fueled by embarrassment put the Skaven out of action. The remaining warrior charged the remaining Skaven and knocked him down.
The Marksmen also put another arrow in a giant rat, removing it from the game.
Skaven turn 3;
With the Night runner joining the fight, the Skaven managed to put both the warrior and Captain out of action!
Human turn 4;
With their leader out of the fight, it looked like the men of Marienburg were about to loose. However the Human Champion with great sword got into combat with the Black Skaven and put him out of action.
Skaven turn 4;
With the Skaven now having lost 25% of their warband, they failed their rout check and fled the battlefield.
The Humans managed to collect their wounded and breath a sigh of relief.
After the game. Injuries, loot and experience;
None of the henchmen on either side ended up dying. The fallen Black Skaven was sold to the pits and had to fight a gladiatorial battle before returning to the warband, he ended up winning this and brought with him 50gc in prize money.
The Human captain rolled 24 on the serious injury chart, which is "Madness". Avoiding being dumbstruck, he ended up with a bad case of the angries and now suffers from Frenzy.
The humans, due to their win got significantly more Wyrdstone than the Skaven, however with the Black Skavens winnings, both ended up with a similar amount of gold.
The humans did roll three 5's on the exploration chart, which is a Market Hall but only found 3 gold crowns worth of stuff to sell.
As for experience, there where some stat increases like leadership and weapon skill. The Skaven assassin learnt tail fighting which increased his attack value by 1 and the black skaven learnt Expert Swordsman, he can now re-roll misses in close combat.
As for their encampments, a beggar ending up stealing 2gc from the Skaven tents while they were away and the Human's ruins partly fell on them when they got back, meaning one warrior is out of action for the next battle nursing a head wound.
The Skaven decided to keep all their earning, but the humans managed to find an Ithilmar sword (Elven blade which increases initiative) and hired an Ogre bodyguard. Hopefully they have enough in the bank to keep the ogre within the ranks after the next skirmish.
Game 2 - Humans V's The Possessed - 08/12/19
So the second game saw the Cult of the Possessed against the Human Mercenaries. With the Mercenaries already having a game under their belt my own chaos forces were up against it.
For the scenario, we rolled number 5, a Street fight. In which the terrain is placed so that a street is formed across the battlefield. Both warbands stand opposite with the aim to break the enemy lines and escape the other side.
This is what the table top looked like. My own chaos forces deployed on the left and the humans on the right.
Possessed turn 1;
After winning the first turn roll off my warriors slowly advanced forward. Two of my archers had deployed in the top of some ruins taking shots at the enemy marksmen and might have taken one out of action if the humans hadn't been hiding behind a makeshift barricade.
Human turn 1;
The Mercanaries decided it was best to hold the line and after missing most of their return arrows the turn ended without highlights.
Possessed turn 2;
Moving ever closer, my archers in the ruins knocked an enemy bowman down. The rest of the warband started racing down the street eager to prove themselves to the dark gods!
Human turn 2;
The fallen marksmen regained consciousness and the other two did what they're paid for, by reduced the wound counter on my possessed spawn down to 0! However after the injury roll it was just knocked down. Phew!
The rest formed rank and braced for a charge!
Possessed turn 3;
The start of this turn wasn't great, one archer in the ruins tried jumping across a gap to keep up with his brethren below but misjudged the distance. The following strength 3 hit from a 3 inch fall was enough to put him out of action...
This guy;
The big pink gribbley spawn stood up from its wounds but was too dazed to do anything. My three Brethren with hammers charged the front ranks of the mercenaries with one unfortunate human having to defend himself from the Mutant with crab claw too.
Most of this combat was uneventful. However the poor mercenary up against two chaos warriors was put out of action. The Brethren managed to critically hit him, knocking him out and leaving him easy pickings for the Mutant. +1exp!
Human turn 3;
With the mercenary Captain now in a state of frenzy from his wound in the last game against the Skaven, he had no choice but to charge my Mutant. Despite his fury the mutant managed to survive. The human Champion charged a brethren and put him out of the fight, not only that but a marksman successfully floored a chaos archer still in the street. I had now lost my 25% of my warriors and would need to check to see if I rout next turn.
Possessed and human turn 4 ;
Fortunately I passed my rout check and the possessed Spawn joined the combat. In this round of combat, attacks were missed, wounding rolls failed and we all lived to fight again. The Mercenary's Ogre, who had up until now been keeping out of the way charged the Possessed spawn. This was certainly a worry, the Ogre was clearly better than the spawn this early on in the campaign. However even with the Ogre hitting it twice it rolled double 1's to wound! The Spawn must have fazed out of existence the moment the Ogre's anchor came crashing down. The Spawn however was far more successful fighting back, taking a wound from the Ogre.
Possessed turn 5;
In this turn my Spawn put the Ogre in its place, taking the remaining 2 wounds but failing to put it out of action. The Ogre was left unconscious.
The leader of the Possessed, the chaos Magister charged the human Champion, successfully wounding him but again not rolling high enough to take him off the board. This was the first useful thing the chaos wizard had done all game. Up until this point he had been trying, and failing to cast Lure of Chaos. Definitely not a favored servant of the dark gods.
Human turn 5;
In this turn the Ogre woke up but but could do nothing but brace himself against the possessed spawn. The human Captain, still in a fit of rage finally manged to defeat the mutant.
With another casually on my side, I was forced to take a rout check at the start of my turn 6. Something I failed.
The humans had won again, the extra 100gc they started with was paying off!
After the game. Injuries, loot and experience;
The two wounded human warriors both survived their injuries and returned to the warband. My mutant made a full recovery as did two of my henchmen. The archer who as shot down in the street however died...
The human Captain leveled up twice, both adding a new skill. Lightning reflexes and dodge will mean that not only can he dodge incoming arrows on a 5+, combat will always go in initiative order, even if someone else charges the Captain. With a base initiative of 4 and an elven sword that boosts it to 5 not many will strike before the leader of the Mercenaries.
The human youngblood also leveled up and got a skill increase too. Leap will allow him to move faster and jump gaps easier.
As for the chaos, both the Spawn and Mutant rolled a skill increase (starting to think the dice are weighted). The spawn picked step aside allowing him to dodge melee attacks against him on a 5+. The Mutant picked expert swordsman as his one attack missed a lot this game.
Nothing of interest was found on our way back to our camps and I spent what little gold I had left on replacing the dead archer. The Mercenaries after paying their Ogre's upkeep of 30 gold was left with 96gc.