Games Workshop Specialist Games

Jeff White and I have a conversation about Mordheim spanning multiple threads, so I thought I'd start one up here to continue it and open it up to talk about other games in Games Workshop's Specialist Games line: Blood Bowl, Necromunda, Mordheim, Inquisitor, Gorka Morka, Warmaster, etc.

So Jeff, what rules set for Mordheim are you using? The official ones? Any house rules I should take into account in my considerations? What warbands are legit to use? I've seen Ork, Amazons and some others on the "official" list and GW has models for some, but haven't seen the rules for those.

I loves me some Specialist Games, from Space Fleet to Lost Patrol. Never play them anymore, but still, love'm

Yeah it's too bad Games Workshop doesn't make any new ones anymore. The Specialist Games have been their best games. Just not the most profitable.

There are lots of other skirmish sized mini games on the market now, but none have the RPG/campaign elements of Necromunda, Mordheim or Gorka Morka.

BloodBowl was my game for a long time. I used to travel around doing the tourney scene, providing feedback for the living rulebook staff, etc.

Now, for an assortment of reasons we can go into if you want, I prefer the Mordheims and the Necromundas.

As far as what we're using. We went vanilla rules for the last campaign because we had some totally new players. For the next one we will either do a themed one (say, one of the province specific mini campaigns as found here ) or we'll use the Random Happenings and Subplots charts from the Town Cryer Annual.

We're game for any warband, official or unofficial, so long as it was in some kind of GW publication. Tim's Fimir warband you got from some geocities site isn't going to fly.

Better yet, simply select an official or unofficial warband from the generator we use.

The only houserule we've used so far is each warband rolling for initiative prior to every round. It brings another level of chaos, and I think it's pretty fun, but I don't think it went over to well with some. We'll see if we continue to do that.

I'd love to hear about why you prefer Mordheim and Necromunda to Blood Bowl, and which you prefer Necromunda vs. Mordheim.

Two friends and I started playing Necromunda after a brief foray into 40K and realizing we did not have the kind of money required to build full sized armies. I played Cawdor and my friends had an Escher and Spyrer gangs. The guy with the Spyrers didn't really play that often and I got repeatedly thrashed by the Eschers.

Then when GorkaMorka came out we tried that too, but just two of us. GorkaMorka had a really cool Mad Max/Orkz setting and the vehicular combat was fun, but it's hard to get your guys experience when they are driving around on trucks trying to shoot each other with all those modifers. If you get out of the truck you get run over.

Then Blood Bowl came and there were three of us again and we had a lot of fun. I preferred Blood Bowl because it's more like a board game. It's probably because we were 14-16 years old, but we spent a lot of time arguing about distance, coverage and rules when playing Necromunda. Blood Bowl's rules are quite a bit simpler and we were a little older so there was much less bickering.

Still, Necromunda's setting is awesome and I love the flexibility of the scenarios and tactics that can be used. Plus there's all the different equipment selection that just isn't available in Blood Bowl.

Jeff White wrote: BloodBowl was my game for a long time. I used to travel around doing the tourney scene, providing feedback for the living rulebook staff, etc.

Now, for an assortment of reasons we can go into if you want, I prefer the Mordheims and the Necromundas.

I would love to hear your reasons! I got the collector's itch pretty bad (I just dropped several hundred on a complete set + promos of the newest Monsterpocalypse block); I've got the 3rd edition Blood Bowl set and a few extra teams, and sometimes when I'm bored I total up the cost of owning the compleat Blood Bowl - all the teams, plus options, a second pitch, etc. I'd love to hear your take before I commit.

Blood Bowl is great, no question about it. In a full, well run league with dedicated coaches, weekly newzine, etc. it's still one of the best experiences in gaming. In my experience this type of league requires pre-scheduled games, everyone to be committed, etc.

Problem is, that's a lot of commitment. I've seen just about anything else eventually fizzle out. Free-form games mean some players play a lot while others, not so much. OR you get the guys who 'mean' to get their games in later in the week and hold up everyone else. Worse are the coaches whose teams are doing poorly, so they start to drop out.

If you can get everyone committed to see through an entire season and play-offs, incredible. I'm always up for this.

However, as much as I love BB I would still favor skirmish games. They're far more flexible being scenario based so you can have all the players participating in the same game and experience. I like that. If the campaign starts to peter out for whatever reason, you can shorten the narrative and it's no big deal. There isn't a 'tournament' or 'league' mentality so you don't have any level of competitiveness (well, not nearly as much). The warbands may or may not be perfectly balanced as they haven't been run through the ringer of tourney players whining for the past 20years, but so what? The games are more story based rather than wins and losses.

Also, like you mentioned I like all the items, skills, spells, etc that warbands/gangs can get. After a while, some BB teams can start to look samey, but I find a lot more variety in Mordheim. I could play a Reiklander warband for a good long time and each time they end up looking pretty different. Additionally, the field of battle is different every time you play adding to the re-playability. Obviously, this isn't so with BB.

Between Mordheim and Necromunda? I haven't played with the latest Necro ruleset which I understand has incorporated some of the later Mordheim's rules, but I would lean slightly toward Mordheim. I love the Necro setting, and the older, more detialed ruleset provided some interesting games, but there's just more variety in Mordheim and the game plays a lot faster. In Necro all of the gangs (besides a few outliers like Spyrers) have the same stat-lines and gangs and are only differentiated by the types of skills and weapons they can take. They all have what, a leader, a heavy, some juves, then a bunch of gangers? In Mordheim, every warband has the split between heroes and henchmen, but what makes up those two groups is wildly different between each warband.

Now I haven't played any of the ash waste stuff for Necro, but Mordheim also has rules for playing outside the city. Country-side campaigns, or Lustria, or that desert Tomb King place, etc.

It's also super easy to get Mordheim models because you have the whole Warhammer Fantasy range to choose from. Minis are always in production. Necromunda...not so much.

I should add that if it weren't for my neighbor building a big ass game table in his garage and two members of our group in love with terrain building, I would likely not be back in love with the skrimish games but sticking to BB and looking for a way to make a short term league work.

All of the terrain and stuff for the skirmish games can be a big hassle, and I personally don't have the room for it. BB has a small footprint on the table and on the shelf.

The terrain is huge to consider as it's a whole 'nother level of time sink. Like I said, I've just lucked out on that.

Those are all good points about the benefits of skirmish games over Blood Bowl. The different scenarios do add some interest and change things up each game, unfortunately some of them can end up as just slogs and the objectives are forgotten about. Also in a campaign setting a voluntary rout can be a viable situation, you can't really forfeit a game of Blood Bowl no matter how much of a beating you are taking.

As for Necromunda, I played the original rules so I've just started reading the new revised versions. One thing I noticed were the big changes to the weapons list for each gang. Cawdors skills are Agility, Combat and Ferocity and there are NO hand-to-hand weapons on their weapon list. Not even clubs, just daggers. But any ganger can use a boltgun? Weird.

Yeah, skills are what make up the big difference between gangs except for some of the Outlander gangs like Redemptionists and Scavvies, but for the most part, you're right, all gangs have the same makeup.

I'm still thinking about Witch Hunters for the moment, but the contents of the box set is kind of crummy. I could buy a Flagellant box, and a witch hunter blister and a warrior priest, but then I need to find a good captain and hounds. Kind of a hassle.

A mercenary band would be much cheaper.

What about converting some of the flagellants into 'captains' or 'priests' or whatnot. Theme the whole witch hunter band as a flagellant sect. Doesn't matter so much as we can tell the difference between which model is Witch Hunter/Flagellant captain and what is a regular flagellant.

We've got several dog type minis laying around.

Besides, it'll be later in the fall when we start up the next Mord campaign. You've got plenty of time.

Oh, man. I was hoping you guys would be playing some more this summer. School in the Fall is going to have me busy.

Unfortunately, the rest of summer is going to be difficult for us to all get together with any regularity. Vacations, classes, and work has several of us out of pocket for several weeks. We probably won't be able to get back together until September at the soonest.

Oh well, that's cool. I stopped by the Dragon's Lair yesterday to scope out their minis, they're GW stuff is actually kind of barren, at least as far as blisters go. But then I heard GW is moving away from metal minis to all plastic?

What's your favorite game store in the Austin area?

I heard that about GW as well. I do know they're doing a big summer fantasy campaign (Storm of Magic?) push so maybe folks are buying up models for their armies.

As far as favorite stores, I like Great Hall Games because they carry more wargames and they remind me of the type of odds'n'ends gaming store I used to frequent as a kid in Germany. GHG doesn't really do fantasy miniatures though. It's where the Lone Star Historical guys go.

Dragon's Lair has rpgs, comics, anime, toys, etc. More diverse for sure.