The Mordheim campaign is getting close to the end now, with only a couple of games left. This weeks games was a witch hunt in the forest, with everyone trying to stop a bunch of witches from escaping off the board. All the usual suspects were here for the game, which was a mostly wooded board.
Deployment was random and I ended up deployed right next to Andy and his Witch Hunters, with Ian next to him. Rory and Dave were next to each other and the Skaven were opposite me, nice and far away.
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| The Bad Guys |
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| Witch Hunters |
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| Dwarves |
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| Marienburgers |
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| Protectorate of Sigmar |
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| Skaven |
Early game and everyone advanced cautiously, except for the Skaven as, safe in the knowledge that they were faster than anyone else, and deployed closes to the objective they made a bee line straight for the bad guys. Everyone else advance cautiously, watching the other players.
My undead advanced, towards the bad guys, with the Witch Hunters sneaking up behind me, and the Dwarves to my left. I was starting to feel a little bit squeezed, as there were opponents on all sides.
In the end I had to split my forces. I sent the ghouls and Dire wolves ahead to try and clear some of the baddies out of the way, left the slow moving zombie at the back to try and distract the witch hunters and then formed a firing line with me heroes to try and pick off some of the Witch Hunters before engaging in the inevitable melee. I thought this was a sound plan given the circumstances but in the end it didn't quite work out that way. My ghouls and dire wolves failed to inflict any damage on the bad guys, despite having 13 attacks between them, and my shooting was also very disappointing, with only a single Witch Hunter falling to a couple of round of shooting.
Elsewhere the Skaven were making short work of the remaining witches, mobbing them with their huge warband. the dwarves continued to advance up the board and the Marienburgers and Protectorate of Sigmar started to fight each other. The Witch Hunters had a couple of rotten turns trying to get rid of my zombie, before losing patience and mobbing him with a large chunk of his warband.
I eventually managed to clear out the two Wargs I was fighting and managed to charge a couple of witches, taking them out of action, but the Dwarves and Witch Hunters were by now breathing down my neck, and the Skaven were mopping up the last of the bad guys, giving them a clear run at my warband.
Andy duly did this, charging in with a rat Ogre and another Skaven, with the rest failing their fear tests. that was until Rory reminded Andy that an item he had picked up negated the fear causing effects of Undead for the bearer and everyone within 2", while also giving the wielder +1 to hit undead. The one weakness the Skaven had to the undead was the fear tests and low leadership the Skaven had and that was now effectively negated. Predictable the Skaven rat Ogre made a mess of my warband and I decided that I did not fancy fighting three warband at once with only 6 models left and called it a night.
By this time the Protectorate of Sigmar and Marienburgers had also given up leaving just the dwarves and witch hunters to fight the Skaven. The Witch Hunters had a good go at the Skaven, and despite high casualties managed to force them to make a break test, which being Skaven they duly failed. This left the Protectorate of Sigmar and Dwarves on the table. The Dwarves were fresh, having basically spent the entire game moving up the board and not much else, so the witch hunters decided to call it a day, leaving the dwarves the winner by default.
So another miserable performance from my Undead, although I feel they were really up against it. Thankfully no casualties this time and with all six heroes surviving a good tally of loot was found as well. As usual the Skaven ran ahead of everyone else, hovered up everything and then failed their break test as soon as they reached the limit, while everyone fought amongst themselves until it was only one warband against the Dwarves, whom everyone avoided for the whole game due to their slow speed. That is pretty much the pattern for this Mordheim campaign now, and I don't think that it is likely to change now, with only two games remaining. I think I will spend the last two games just picking fights with other warbands, and not bothering with the missions as every time I try and complete the game objective it ends badly.
I wonder if a campaign of purely human warbands would be better balanced if a little boringly?
ReplyDeleteJohn
I think this is more a case of the way the campaign turned out more than anything else. The most important stat this time has been movement, by a long way! The last couple of campaigns have been a bit different.
DeleteI think movement has largely been the deciding trait for the last couple of campaigns with the nature of the multi-player scenario's, speed has proved to be key along with the ability to pick your targets and get the charges in. It was your Beastmen last time and Ian's Skaven in the first. I think the larger boards have actually made this difference worse putting the other bands at a disadvantage due to distances. Food for thought.
ReplyDeleteYes I think it is a feature of the game rules more than anything else. It might be interesting next time to play the campaign as a series of rounds, with players pairing off against one another. it may change the dynamic somewhat. Or perhaps make it so that the main treasure, that is good enough to want to stick around for can only be obtained by the game winner. My Beastmen did well in the last campaign, but I think there was a lot more fighting involved in that one, and a lot less running about hoovering up objectives. I don't remember the Skaven being particularly dominant in the first campaign, and my Beastmen did ok last time as I was very aggressive with them. the first campaign we played everyone was either new to the game or coming back after a long absence, so perhaps it is more a case of trying a different system next time, like as you suggested Necromunda. YaK tribe also have a set of rules for Inquisimunda, which uses a much wider range of races and gang types.
Delete