Wyvern Hunting

The news of the lost band of elves in Mordheim caused concern in the ranks of the Shadow Warrior. Another band of Shadow Warriors scouting on the edges of Sylvania were commanded to enter Mordheim to investigate and to report back on the growing influence of chaos. The victory of chaos also rippled through the followers of chaos. The rotten god, Nurgle, was pleased with the success and blessed the marauder chieftain with his rancid mark. He has seen Mordheim as an opportunity to strengthen his grip on the world and so has sent his carnival of chaos into the city. The days are growing darker indeed.

The promise of riches and power is tempting but still out of reach for those warbands in Mordheim. Therefore news of a monster (and its treasure) was too much to resist. The Marauders of Chaos (LS) and the Carnival of Chaos (JF) joined forces to hunt for this beast for Nurgle's glory. The blood god, Khorne, was not about to let Nurgle get an easy victory and sent his Beastmen Raiders (NG's Khorneflakes *face palm*) to claim the victory for himself. They came across the ragged band of Reiklanders (BN) and 'convinced' the humans to help them. The threat of Nurgle temporarily outweighed the desire for further bloodshed but in the end it is an alliance in name only. Meanwhile the Shadow Elves (MD) saw an opportunity to extract revenge on the forces of chaos who slaughtered their brethren. They swallowed their pride and approached the Dwarf Treasure Hunters (AR) for an alliance. The lure of treasure was enough for the dwarfs to agree to the deal.

Set Up
This game was a two-versus-two-versus-two battle. The warbands in each of the three allied teams moved simultaneously with their fellow warband to save time. The scenario was Monster Hunt from the 'Chaos on the Streets' article found in the Mordheim Annual 2002 and was played on a  6' x 4' table. The type of monster was unknown until the first encounter.

Round 1
The Carnival convinced the Marauders to take out the humans first before focusing on the monster. (JF didn't realise that the victory condition was simply to kill the monster and have no enemies within 6" of the lair. He thought that the other warbands had to be routed.) The followers of Nurgle advanced towards the humans.

The four Reiklander Marksmen formed a defensive line on the nearby hill. Meanwhile the Captain, Kristof, with a Champion, Bo, advanced forward towards the lair while the other Champion, Jo, headed towards a nearby hut with an intact roof. The Beastmen remembered the delicacy of elven guts and headed towards the four elves who were defending the second floor of a nearby building. The Shaman, Grox Farsight, used his Wings of Darkness to dart ahead into the complete open.

The nimble elves climbed up top of the walls on the roofless building and spotted the advancing beastmen. The dwarfs down below also lined up the shaman in their sights. It was obvious that Grox Farsight had already seen this part of the battle previously and not one of the two arrows nor three bolts touched him.

Round 2
The Marauders half-heartedly moved forward while the Carnival advanced with determination. The performers could not avoid coming into view of the Marksmen. Two heroes (a Strongman and a Tainted One) fell in quick succession. The Champion, Jo, came to the dreadful realisation that the hut would be difficult to climb after losing his footing on his first attempt.

Grox Farsight flew up to charge one of the elves on the top of the two-story building. A second elf nearby charged in to assist his comrade. The three warriors danced upon the narrow wall trading blows. Grox's wings obviously gave him the ability to balance better than expected for a beastman.

The remaining beastmen and the dwarfs enter the building from opposite ends.

Round 3
The Marauders realised that they should not divide their forces and rush forward in support of the Carnival. Three warhounds of chaos advance towards Campion Jo and move into the open space to draw fire away from the other warriors. A single warhound is lost. Jo starts to get desperate but fails to climb up again.

Meanwhile, the beastmen finally engage the dwarfs in battle on the first floor of the elves' starting building. Two warhounds of chaos for the beastmen are quickly taken out of action. The shaman, Grox Farsight, takes out one of the elves before the elf, Cúel, takes Grox out of  the battle.

Round 4
The Marauders and Carnival finally realise that victory lies with the monster and its loot rather than fighting the other warbands. (BN reads the scenario rules for victory out loud again and JF and LS realise that if they move quickly to defeat the monster then they might be able to win while the dwarfs, elves and beastmen are locked in battle. LS tells JF "I told you so".) They head to the opening of the monster's lair. A warhound of chaos charges the Champion, Bo, who is saved by a lucky charm. The last Strongman for the Carnival attempts to charge the Champion, Jo, but misjudges the distance and fails. Jo finally climbs to safety.

Unfortunately the Khornflakes voluntarily rout leaving the Reiklanders without an 'ally' (not that the beastmen were of much use as allies anyway). Kristof the Reiklander Captain counter charges the warhound of chaos attacking Bo. The Reiklander marksmen let off another deadly volley of bolts and scored a head shot to instantly kill Hannibal, the Carnival Master, while also taking the Freak out of action (the Marauders' Condemned hero).

Free of the beastmen, the dwarfs and the elves set their sights on the monster's lair. The three remaining elves climb down although on loses his footing and falls. He is only knocked down but one of the dwarfs comments to his fellow clansman that it was like "watching a leaf fall to the ground and hurt itself". Both warbands are unable to get close to the lair though.

Round 5
The monster charges forth into the Marauder Chieftain and is revealed as a young wyvern. The wyvern fails to injure the chieftain who was blessed by Nurgle after the previous battle and is now Toughness 6. The chieftain retaliates and gets a lucky master strike to wound the wyvern twice.

The appearance of the wyvern and the lost of  their Carnival Master is too much for the rest of the Carnival who routs. The Marauders realise that they only have a brief period of time before the dwarfs and elves approach the lair and calls out for an alliance with the Reiklanders which is greatly accepted. The remaining Marauders charge into the wyvern and one of the Marauder Champions also scores a master strike to take the wyvern out of action. The battle is won by the Marauders and the Reiklanders.

Aftermath
The alliance between the Marauders, Carnival and Reiklanders was surprisingly honoured and the young wyrven's hoard was shared. The forces of chaos must have been wary of the line of marksmen who had them in their crossbow sights. Three shards of wyrdstone was found and split evenly between the warbands. After that the Marauders were satisfied with a suit of Heavy Armour and the skull of the wyvern to put on the mantle in their cave or something. The Carnival scored a suit of Light Armour, a Sword and 30 gold crowns while the  Reiklanders found a Shield and 25 gold crowns. It appears that a sword that was also found was misplaced while the goods were being split up between the warbands.

During exploration the Marauders found a Fletcher (3 3 3) but the only item of worth was a bow which no one knew how to use. They also found another 4 shards of wyrdstone. The Carnival found a Straggler (4 4) which was sacrifice to initiate their new leader, one of the Strongmen. It is not yet sure whether the Strongman is talented enough to lead the Carnival and there are rumours that this may have been their final performance. They also found a Jewelled Sword and Dagger in an Overturned Card (5 5) and 4 shards of wyrdstone. The Reiklanders forgot that they had a map of Mordheim to help them and only found 2 gold crowns in a Ruined Hovel (6 6) along with 4 shards of wyrdstone. The Beastmen found 3 shards of wyrdstone and 1 gold crown and a Lucky Charm in a Shop (2 2). The dwarfs freed some Prisoners (3 3 3) and surprisingly one was a young dwarf who agreed to join the warband alongside another Beardling. The elves quickly melted back into the shadows and it is not known if they found anything of note.

Useful Websites for Mordheimers

The Mordheim community might not be as big as it once was. However there is still a small, active community spread around the globe. Here is a short list of my 'go to' websites for Mordheim.

Tom's Boring Mordheim Forum
This forum is the primary Mordheim forum out there. It was created by many of the participants from the old Specialist Games forum that used to be hosted by Games Workshop after it was shut down unexpectedly. It is an excellent location to discuss rules, find new material, read battle reports and share photos of painting and modelling.

Liber Malefic
This is the website for the gaming group who are creating the upcoming Mutiny in Marienburg suppliment to Mordheim. MiM is the largest, most ambitious fan-made expansion so far and has been many years in the making. The primary author, Stuart Cresswell (Werekin) has participated in previous fan-made material such as the Border Town Burning suppliment and the Nemesis Crown suppliment. Unfortunately the rules are not available in a central location so you will need to comb through the blog posts to find all of the material.

Border Town Burning
This is the website for the Border Town Burning suppliment created by Christian Templin (Cianty). This high quality material allows groups to run campaigns in the distant lands of Cathay. The material is compatible with Mordheim campaigns set in any other location though. The quality of the material is too high to be overlooked by any serious gaming group.

The Mordheimer Information Centre
The Mordheimer Information Centre (more commonly known as just the Mordheimer web site) is a key resource for much of the material that was released by Games Workshop. A highlight is the master scenario list which contains rules for hundreds of scenarios. The home page is messy these days with an embedded Mordheim web ring banner so I now access the site via the Table of Contents.

Styroheim
This web site is home to a collection of fan-made material by the once prolific post Dave Joria (Styrofoam King). The highlight of this web site is his Sartosa suppliment for playing a pirate themed Mordheim campaign.

Nemesis Crown
This web site contains the rules for the Nemesis Crown suppliment. Nemesis Crown was a global campaign run by Games Workshop for Warhammer Fantasy. A small group of fans led by Ian Davies including Stu Cresswell and Christian Templin created this Mordheim suppliment to allow Mordheim gamers to also participate within the global campaign.

Specialist Arms
The Specialist Arms website was an attempt by some fans close to Games Workshop to not lose the Mordheim community after the old Specialist Games forum was shut down. It hosts all of the Fanatic e-zine editions that were released by Games Workshop containing many fan-made Mordheim rules (and fan-made material for other Specialist Games such as Blood Bowl).

Khemri
This is the web site for the original rules of the Khemri suppliment that was released in Town Cryer. Games Workshop made quite a few changes when they published Khemri in Town Cryer and not all were positive. This is a useful resource to have alongside the content from the Town Cryer.

Mordheim Revival Project
This is a website to keep an eye on. It has been created by Tom Bell (Brahm Tazoul) who used to be one of the Answer Mods for Mordheim and who released the Letters of the Damned e-zine for Mordheim. There is a promise that the Letters of the Damned may resume so hopefully the fresh, new material that is being promised will be released.

Mordheim Yahoo Group
This email group has existed since before the Mordheim box set was released. It is no longer active but is an archive of old material if you ever wanted to go searching. It also contains a lot of the PDF files that were released by Games Workshop from Town Cryer and Fanatic.


This is a selection that quickly came to mind when thinking of Mordheim material that is out there. If there is something that I have missed then please add a comment to let me know.

Returning to Mordheim

It has been a while but the lure of wyrdstone has attracted a fresh wave of explorers into the city of the damned. This year there are some new faces (LS, NG, AR and AS) joining the old crew (AA, JF, MD and BN). This campaign will be a training opportunity for the new recruits while allowing the rest of us to muck around  before things get serious. We will continue to use our house rules and will be playing in and around the city of Mordheim itself.

The first game was a large three-versus-three battle.

The forces of evil went up against the forces of good. The evil alliance was made up of NG (Beastmen Raiders), LS (Marauders of Chaos) and AA (Necrarch Undead) while the goodies were made up of MD (Shadow Elves), AR (Dwarf Treasure Hunters) and BN (Reiklander Mercenaries). The scenario was Treasure Hunt from the 'Chaos on the Streets' article found in the Mordheim Annual 2002 and was played on a  6' x 4' table.

Set Up
The good team managed to set up on the edges with the most wyrdstone. They also rolled to move first. This *should* have allowed them to start with some early momentum.

Round 1
The Marauders of Chaos set up last and had no wyrdstone nearby. Therefore the entire warband was put on the table within 12" (and direct line of site) of the entire Reiklander Mercenary warband. Without thinking the Reiklander Mercenaries with four Marksmen with crossbows stood firm but only succeeded in taking a single Warhound of Chaos out of action. In retaliation the Warhounds of Choas charged and dispatched the two Youngblood heroes. (The Reiklander Captain obviously had never encountered this warband before and did not realise that the warhounds were able to charge 14".)

The other warbands started fanning out to collect the loot.

Round 2
The Marksmen took out another Warhound of Chaos but two Marksmen were lost in the counter charge. The Necrarch vampire who had previously climbed to the top of a building to secure a shard of wyrdstone and was taken out of action by a Shadow Walker.

Round 3
The Reiklander Captain decided that losing four warriors was too much and called the retreat (failed rout test). The Abomination trundled out into the open towards the Dwarves.

Rounds 4, 5 and 6
The Dwarves charged into the Abomination which was a very bad idea. The Abomination made quick work of the Dwarves and successfully routed them (voluntary). Unfortunately the Necrarchs lost an Acolyte and also routed. Prior to their rout, the Centigor charged a Troll Slayer and was cut down.

Rounds 7, 8 and 9

The forces of chaos swarmed the Shadow Elves. The fleeing dwarves and humans last saw the five elves fighting valiently but the force of evil was too great empowered no doubt by the high concentration of wyrdstone in the area. Not one of the elves was ever seen again.

Aftermath

NG found found 8 shards. LS found found 4 shards. AA found 2 shards.The evil warbands chose to share the spoils of war evenly though (surprisingly) and so all three ended with 4 shards.

MD disbanded his Shadow Warriors after all five warriors were taken Out of Action and the Shadow Master died. The only other death was a Warhound of Chaos. Both Reiklander Youngblood heroes will miss their next battle (the wimps).

During exploration the Necrarch's found a Well (1 1) that looked interesting but an Acolyte only found poisoned water and will miss his next game. The Dwarfs found a Ruined Hovel (6 6). The Reiklanders found a vague Mordheim Map in an Overturned Cart (5 5) and also found a Ruined Hovel (6 6). The Marauders found a Straggler (4 4) and immediately sacrificed him to the dark gods. It is not known whether the Beastmen Raiders found anything of note.

The human sacrifice must have impressed one of the dark gods as the Marauder Chieftain received a mark of chaos. One of the Gors proved his worth by collecting wyrdstone and was promoted to be a hero.