Mordheim PvP After Action Reports 2

 More Mordheim PvP shenanigans. This time between Ben’s Undead army and my Chaos warband. We each had 7 units: one Leader, two Heroes this time and four Henchmen.  We started off in an arc around our wagons on opposite sides of the map.  Again, we were deployed in a ruined neighborhood of Mordheim, but this time a three-story dilapidated manor house was to my north-east, surrounded in part by an iron fence just west of it.  I had chosen a random secondary objective, and we both ended up with Wyrdstone Rush, which simply is a race to collect the majority of the wyrdstone on the board.

My units started in a good position. A little over half of the wyrdstone was on my side of the board and there was a large cluster of stone on an open street in between ramshackle buildings and the iron fence I mentioned earlier. I aggressively seized the field, clearing out some treasure pockets with my forces broken into two formations.  My Magister Leader, Marauder Hero, and a Brethren Henchman archer comprised the western flank and made a moderate beeline for the wyrdstone cluster to my north-west.  My other three Henchmen, Darksouls all, were led by the Doomweaver and began approaching the abandoned manor house to the north-east.

My Leader Knarr preparing for battle

Now I should also mention that two of my Darksoul henchmen had lost weapons last conflict and were equipped strictly with daggers because I had forgotten to resupply them with proper weapons.  Despite this I still found them useful because the initiative bonus from the daggers brought them close to the top of the initiative track.  I was going to use the Darksouls as tanks anyhow and let the heavy lifting damage be done by my Heroes and Leader. That was the plan anyway.

As my Leader and associates group began to creep up on the wrydstone cluster, my other group lead by the Doomweaver began to converge with them.  I was wary of Ben’s dastardly Hero the Skaven Poison Wind Globadier (named Halfear) so my Leader ran up to the cluster, eagerly grabbed two wyrdstone shards and retreated into the safety of the rest of my forces.  As expected, Ben’s Globadier Halfear showed up and put a cloud of poison over the cluster to deter any further looting on my part.  As we eyed each other, one of Ben’s zombies walked out of the mist to take up a defensive position next to the Globadier. 

Mentally preparing to take down the nasty-nasty Skaven with my Magister Leader and adjacent Marauder, Ben made an observation. “Hey can you see the Daemon?”  “What Daemon?” I asked when suddenly a four-armed slavering Pink Horror galloped around the corner and engaged my Leader, the Magister.  Ironically, I was excited.  This was the first time Ben and I had seen a Daemon in action in a Mordheim player vs player conflict.  Eager to see what this thing had in store for us I engaged it with my Marauder Hero to back up my Leader.  “Uh, that’s a lot of hitpoints it has” I remarked as my Marauder sliced into it twice, deeply, and only knocked its health down by a sixth or so.

Then Ben unveiled his wicked plan. A second Poison Wind Globadier took the field. His name was Khan Something.  Soon my Leader, Marauder and the Daemon were surrounded by a dense cloud of poison gas generated by the dual actions of the two Globadiers. And that wasn’t the worst part.  Despite a desperate dodge, the Daemon ripped into both of my important units.  “Uh. So, it has three attacks per turn. Interesting.” I stated without a quaver of worry in my voice. 

My Leader and Marauder continued to be tied up by the Tzeentchian Horror, trading blow for blow, but constantly losing health due to the evil poison gas from the dastardly Skaven.  With a cry, both of my poor units were put out of action by the poison, just as the Pink Horror was about to die.  One of Ben’s Skaven took aim and finished the thing with a warplock pistol shot just as my Doomweaver was rushing to try to finish the threat.

 “I think I see a graphical glitch,” Ben said. “What do you mean?” I responded. “I see two Blue Daemons.” Right then my Warhammer lore kicked in very belatedly.  Pink horrors, SPLIT when slain into two lesser, but still dangerous, versions.  And my Doomweaver was now facing two slavering very hungry maws.

My Henchmen in the right flank fared much better despite being mostly equipped with daggers.  There was a ruined gatehouse outside, south of the three-story manor house and my archer had take up an overwatch position on what was essentially a two-story staircase.  Ben’s Leader Vampire, who has been much abused by injuries over the course of our games, creeped forwards to engage my archer but he was counter-ambushed by a nearby Darksoul, this one with proper weapons.  Ben’s ghoul attempted to jump up to the second floor (this melee was all taking place on the second floor) but based on the Vampire’s position, could not engage either of my troops.  

Luckily, with stunning blows, my archer (who carries a sword and shield just for this eventuality) and the Darksoul engaged the Vampire and were acquitting themselves handily.

A dagger armed Darksoul on the ground engaged Ben’s nearby Zombie sent in to support, but it was too late for me tactically.  At this time, I was trying to disengage from the dual Blue Horrors with my Doomweaver and retreat.  Didn’t matter. The Daemons tracked down the Doomweaver, ignoring Ben’s Skaven to the north, and tore the Hero apart.  Warband moral check failed; lessoned learned.

I was very happy when I learned my Magister Leader, Gnarr, returned home without additional loss. Then he promptly collapsed on the floor and died from his injuries.  Such is the power of Chaos. 

Mordheim PvP After Action Reports 1

 Mordheim: City of the Damnned is the video game adaptation of the classic tabletop skirmish wargame Mordheim set in the Warhammer Fantasy universe. The video game is an excellent turn-based squad-based tactics game with a punishing difficulty. If you like XCOM, Battle Brothers or Gloomhaven you will feel right at home. If your warband characters get put out of action in combat they may come back with injuries that persist from combat to combat, or even lose their weapons if your opponent has looted them. Some may see this as extremely punishing, but I see this as adding realistic flavor to the mercenary management portion of the game. For the remainder of this post I'll be referring to the video game as Mordheim.

What follows is an After Action Report of some of the PvP games I have played against opponents Ben and Splizwarf.

In my first game, Ben was playing the Undead and I had my plucky Chaos warband.  We started at Rank zero so we only had 5 units each: A Leader, a Hero and three Henchmen (soldiers). Ben picked a Skaven Poison Wind Globadier as his Hero. I picked a Chaos Mutant (gets mutations at level 1, 4 and 7; currently level zero).

In our initial skirmish our armies were nearly adjacent to each other. I foolishly engaged Ben's Ghoul Henchman with my Leader and got surrounded, putting my Leader out of action.  The game desynced and kicked us both off, declaring us both victors ironically.  Still, my leader had to spend five days recovering from his wounds. 

Undaunted I bought a new Magister Leader, Steiner, and engaged Ben again. Ben saw a trio of my Hero and Henchmen outside a gate and charged with his Vampire Leader. I surrounded his Vampire and promptly pummeled him into the dirt.  But then, then came the Skaven Globadier.  Ben expertly threw poison globes into the midst of the victorious trio multiple times over several turns, taking the high ground of a nearby three story house.  My leader finally engaged the dammed Skaven in the top of the house but the damage was already done. The multiple poison strikes from the globes weakened my trio so much that they died to poison spontaneously, really before Ben even needed to engage.  It was like sacrificing your Queen to take out the rest of your opponent's chess pieces. Oh and my leader engaging the Skaven?  He got knifed to death by the slippery dodging Skaven and a Ghoul that snuck up behind him and pummeled him with an axe. 

My Leader Steiner lost an arm from that battle and that is a permanent injury! We may have more battles and shenanigans to come.

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More Mordheim Battle reports. This time, I talk about winning and the morale mechanic.  To win a match in Mordheim you need to either put the entire enemy team out of action or make them run away by failing a morale test. You have a certain amount of morale based on each unit’s Leadership score.  Your Leaders usually have the lion’s share of your team’s morale, so if they go down, it usually takes one or two more casualties for the opponent to force you to take a morale check by reducing your morale below a certain threshold.  Also, each player has a cart which contains a totem.  Steal the totem and you reduce your opponent’s morale by about one casualty.  

In my game against Ben we spawned on a map neither of us was familiar with.  Imagine a square that was an eight-pointed star with standing stones at each of the eight points, encircled by abandoned houses all around the edge.  Ben had to deploy his warband around his cart in the center of the standing stones while I was made to scatter my troops in a wide arc around in the abandoned buildings.  We clashed quickly at two points as the terrain and deployment encouraged us to.  My Magister (Chaos sorcerer who is also my Leader) was engaged by Ben’s Vampire Leader half way up the collapsed roof of some ruined building.  I managed to have a nearby Chaos henchman charge the Vampire from his rear and between my two Chaos units the Vampire was slammed and put out of action. 

The second point of conflict was in a ruined alleyway where wyrdstone and treasure were littered behind one of my henchmen.  Ben’s Ghoul and Skaven Poison Wind Globadier engaged my henchman, who fortunately dodged his best, but his health was still getting dangerously low.  An archer of mine and another Chaos henchman were isolated from the main conflicts so I sent them on a sneaky mission. Dodging and hiding behind the standing stones I stealthily marched them to Ben’s cart in the center of the plaza and quickly stole Ben’s Undead totem.  This, along with the Vampire Leader’s collapse, forced a moral check on Ben’s forces and huzzah they ran away and I was declared victor of the field!

Then there was the clash with Splizwarf’s Skaven.  After one match where Spliz was getting used to the controls, a cat and mouse conflict began where I would occasionally spy a sneaky Skaven some two buildings away from my eager Chaos forces but by the time we got there, the vermin would be gone.  All that was left were ransacked treasure chests and a distinct lack of wyrdstone.  Finally, I found a Stormvermin hiding behind a crumbling wall and was able to successfully execute him in combat. With one rat down I made the mistake of sending my wounded henchman into a building where he was chasing down a Skaven assassin. The Skaven, known for their frequent dodging, crumpled my wounded henchman onto the pavement and then disappeared.  Searching for rats and signs of tails one Chaos fighter turned the corner of a building and was immediately charged by the Skaven leader, his swords dripping with poison.  Dodging nearly all of my desperate strikes, the Skaven warband encircled my units and took them apart one by one. 

Despite the massacre, most of my warband returned to the lair miraculously fully recovered! Such is the power of Chaos.