Gromril, You Say? - Mordheim AAR

With the start of the new year comes, apparently, the start of a tradition with some players at Aetherstorm Games - a Mordheim campaign. 

I was intrigued when I first heard about it since Mordheim is one of those old Specialist rulesets that Games Workshop abandoned, but still has a dedicated following. And unlike Blood Bowl, Necromunda, and Epic (sort of), there hasn't been much in the way of reviving Mordheim since the Old World was blown up. 

I decided to go with the Outlaws of Stirwood Forest warband featured in one of the later Town Criers. It's a primarily ranged focused warband of humans, relies only on bows, and can have a Warrior Priest in support. 

This test game was against Bruce and his Dwarves. It wasn't a great matchup for my Outlaws, since I have to roll 5+ to wound (after rolling to hit) and then roll 6+ to actually remove a dwarf from the table. But since this was just a pre-campaign skirmish game, I'd take this as a test.

The table, by the way, is a massive 16'x4' area with a variety of terrain, held at the store and placed by Bruce. It's very thematic and looks great!

For the first few turns, it seems like things might actually go my way. I managed to take out two dwarves after stunning them and charging with other members of the warband. But then Bruce's Noble got stuck in. Between his 3+ armor save, Toughness 4, and an insane amount of criticals, he cut a swathe through my fighters. Even though he was rolling morale checks each turn, the Dwarves' high Leadership meant that they were likely to stick around for awhile (although I now realize he should have also been taking All Alone tests on his Noble as well. Something to remember!).

I eventually decided to retreat rather than allow a single dwarf to take out my entire warband, or just rout from a failed leadershop roll. I won't go into all the details about after game events since this was a one-off, but I did decide to drop two Henchmen and instead give my leader light armor and hunting arrows. My Warrior Priest also recived light armor, which will give him a 5+ armor save with his shield. So while my warband will only have eight members, I'll have a little more survivability and lethality from the get go.

My plan when playing dwarves in the future? Run around them and shoot a lot! Hopefully I'll be able to complete objectives without having to engage Bruce's warband. Otherwise, I'll just have to cause as much damage as possible from a distance.