Monday Night Mordheim: Thinking About Home Brew

Well, good evening, and welcome to the latest installment of Monday Night Mordheim. Before we get started, I want to thank the over one hundred people that viewed this blog in the last week. Now, chances are that I didn't get real traffic, just some odd overflow since one of the labels I used last week was 'whipping'. I always try to put something silly in my labels, because that's the type of thing that makes me laugh. Lesson learned, more humor, less potentially misleading labels.

Now, as I mentioned last week, this weekend was Cub Scout weekend. Me and the kids went to the local state park where we did some cabin camping. So lights, but no heat. It rained and was freezing. However, the mess hall had a full kitchen and a fire place, so in between snipe hunting, fishing, and helping the rangers stock the creek with rainbow trout, we had a lot of time that we normally would have been running around in the woods spent inside.

So what did we do? We play board games. Lots of board games. The nice thing about our troop is that I am not the only geek. So there were games of Rio Grande's Masons, Munchkin, and of course the old standby Scramble. Now, me being me, I brought my terrain box, some models, and my paint (the idea of painting in an idyllic forest setting in natural light appealed to me, but I neglected to check the weather forecast).

Naturally Eldest Child wanted to play Mordheim, as did some of his buddies. Yet again, we had a bunch of lookie-lous. The guy who played Chaos last time wanted to play something different. He knew since I had Isle of Blood that I had plenty of Elves. However, I have no rules for Elves. He was disappointed and decided to play Undead instead.

So that got me to thinking again. There's a Shadow Elf list online, and some Dark Elf list. Neither one appeals to me, they come across a bit like the Elf Blood Bowl team. Over powered and way too killy. Now, the thing is that I rather like the IoB High Elf models. I think they're keen. So over the next few weeks, I'm going to be working on creating a warband wholesale from nothing but the other things that around. I'm going to refer back to the Mordheim rule book, the High Elf Rule Book, and possibly the good intentions of others (that means you my constant readers!)...not to mention lots of numbered lists.

The first thing that I want to do is set down my goals. I think that's very important for homebrew to set out some goals before getting to work. If you know what you are setting out for, its easier to keep your eyes on the prize.

My Goals for A High Elf Warband:
1. Balanced. I do not want something horribly powerful. I want something that will play out well against everything else.
2. Thematically relevant. I want the HE warband to feel like High Elves. If they play like Mercanaries or worse, skaven, then I missed the point.
3. Using only the models from IoB. Granted a bit of a stretch, but I do not plan on buying a bunch of new models for this.
4. Use as much already published material as possible. Why re-work the wheel?

Now to get a good start, I think the first thing that I am thinking of is what heroes will be. That's a good starting point. Most warbands have 4-5 starting heroes. Given the more elite status of HE, I think that four is better, especially since that is what Dwarves (also special rules heavy) have.
1. High Elf Captain
2. High Elf Mage
3. Sword Master of Hoeth.
4. Sword Master of Hoeth OR Shadow Warrior.
Right now, I'm not sure which to include. I think that having three options from the 'Special' section of the Force Organization chart is a bit over the top. So I want to limit to one or the other. However, I have a fun option for troops broiling in my head. However, that will have to wait until next week.

Monday Night Mordheim: Still Talking About New Players

Well, yet again, here I am talking about new players. I love talking about new players, and I rather fancy that my blog here is for both new players and veterans. Now, the thing is that people all over are hitting on new players pretty hard. Love that, especially since I've been doing that for so long.

Let's take a look at some of the stuff out there.

From House of Paincakes:

Tea and Biscuits I

Tea and Biscuits II

From Bell of Lost Souls:

Barrier to Entry

FrontLine Gamer:

Hobby Needs Evangelists

Does the Industry Do Enough?

So Quite a bit out there. Not to mention my own contributions, which are intriguing and well worth the read. I won't do the links, since they are all there on the left hand side of the screen, which is an amazing little thing to go into. The thing is that they call talk about the same thing, the cost of entry. Granted Bigred is probably the most on point about it, and Frontline Gamer is probably the most prolific. This doesn't change the fact that I primarily started playing Mordheim and blogging about it because of the price increases of GW.

So I am still going on about it for a long time since I was first inspired. These guys have added to the argument, and I think its worthy of continue to talk about it. That's whats getting to me right now, is that there's a great conversation going on, and I on the other hand have either said what I need to or are exhausted to add new stuff to the comments. So I'm out for now. I'll be back next week, and I promise that I'll be hopefully done with talking about new players (at least without just linking). I apologize with the lack of quality this week, but I am hoping that I'll get a energy boost, or at least a new topic to beat like a dead horse.

Monday Night Mordheim: Thinking about New Guys

Well, its been almost two weeks since the fateful night when I took Mordheim to Boy Scouts. Tonight, I went to pick up Eldest Child from the Cub Scouts where he is a den chief (learning more about the intricacies of the BSA is one of the added benefits of this blog), I saw one of the other guys who had played Mordheim with us. He had been interested since he had inherited some Chaos (Both of the 40K and WHFB varities).

So I got around to talking about stuff that I like to tell new players. There's a bunch of stuff. So I wanted to think a bit about what I consider important.

1. The Location of the Good Game Store: There are four game stores that sell GW stuff in Pittsburgh. ONE of them is worth dropping cash at. Especially since the others don't have discounts, or a bits bin filled with used and old minis.

2. GW Paint: Been having a lot of conversations about this recently (most likely due to the new paint releases). I suggest regular craft paint-with a few exceptions. The metallics are better quality then just about any craft paint. The washes, are in my mind not bad and a good way to get used to them. Are GW the best? Probably not, I've heard good things about Vallejo and PP paints. However, price to quality to volume, I'm not seeing a big enough difference between GW's stuff and Applebarrell or Americana.

3. Paint Techniques: Luckily the new guy's mom knows her crafts. So I just dropped some terms, which she picked up on right away. Over brushing, dry brushing, blending, and base coat. I could spend a whole afternoon talking about that stuff along with color composition and army paint theory. I dig that stuff.

4. My favorite Places on the Net: Seriously, this is a resource that you are using RIGHT NOW. It wasn't available to me when I started, so I picked up techniques and tips and tricks much slower then I did. You can see all the links I sent to him in the Mordheim Links section of this website (plus a few more that I didn't send him).

Those are my top four things I like to impress on New Players. I thought this list would be longer. I really did. Which is why I thought it would be a good blog post. Unfortunitly, I'm a bit short on ideas lately. We've been busy at work, so all that time I spent thinking about cool stuff is going to mundane things like remembering everything that I am supposed to so that I can keep my job. Hence, short post, unless you guys can think of other things that are good to tell new people.

Monday Night Mordheim: Scouting Around

Middle Child readying the Orcs for a game at Boy Scouts.

Hello, and welcome back to another exciting installment of Monday Night Mordheim. As I mentioned last week, I was going to take some Mordheim to the Boy Scouts.

Now, to facilitate this plan, I packed up my terrain and the six warbands that I was taking and put them into my car. Went to work, and then on the way home from work before Scouts, I got into an accident. I'm fine, the other driver is fine. My car is still drivable, but the frame is bent, so its totaled. However, it delayed me from doing what I needed to do.

A ridiculously quick stop home to grab some stuff I had printed out for the kids, and I was back at Scouts. Now, to help each kid, I had printed up the turn reference sheet and a warband roster for each of them.

I had hoped that I had gotten a few more people then I did. My kids took their favorite warbands, and two guys joined us. Both of them are Eldest Child's best buds, so it really wasn't a surprise that they joined us. We had quite a few people stop and look at the tables and question us. I'm hoping that next time, I'll get some more people to join in, or have the kids able to stand on their own enough that I can answer more questions then just quick ones. The most common question asked was 'Are you playing Dungeons & Dragons', and for once I was able to honestly answer in the negative.

What I had not counted on was the fact that I have one table's worth of terrain, not two. Due to the shortened time constraints and lack of terrain, I set the kids up closer then normal. Instead of rolling for a scenario, I created one. It was a variation of the 'grab the treasure' type of scenario. I put an extra model on the top of a tower to act as the 'treasure chest'. Game would end when someone got the treasure chest off their board edge, or the someone routed.

It ended well. Someone got the treasure chest and the other guy got the rout in both games. Here's the breakdown:

Undead (Eldest Child) vs. Dwarves (Buddy #1)- Dwarves got the rout, and the undead (unsuprisingly) walked away with the treasure.

Orcs and Goblins (Middle Child) vs. Possessed (Buddy #2)- O&G got the rout and the Possessed walked away with the treasure.

The best of all possible worlds. Everyone got something out of this. The kids got to show off that they knew something, and the new guys got to learn in a way that was not discouraging. Great times.

Here's some pics of the event. Not much to show, since I wasn't too sure how people were about their kids and the internet. Some people are real stuck up about it, others are more cool. However, this isn't facebook or whatnot, its a blog. So I decided to err on the side of caution.

Philosophy and Games: The Ten Commandments of New Players

So a short update before next Monday. I'll start with a bit of recap of the results, and then get into the Philosophy.

Well, Tuesday's Mordheim session almost didn't happen. I was in a car accident. No one was hurt (thank god) but my car is going to that great junkyard in the sky (Tube City Scrap, next to the Target on the top of the mountain near my work).

So we had to play a vastly reduced session, however much fun was had by all. Not only the two guys who played, but also quite a few lookie-lous who stopped by to take a peak.


So here's the Philosophy part of it to me;

The best part of it is that everyone won. I had designed a 'capture the flag' type scenario (which I will post later). It worked out really well. In each game, one person walked away with the flag, and the other walked away with a real win (a failed rout check for the opponent). That was the best of all situations for me, because no one got horribly trounced and discouraged. If someone had walked away with both the flag and the rout win, that would have been bad. Well, kinda bad. Just very discouraging for the other guy.

That's my game philosophy, I want new guys to have a tough but fair battle. There are philosophies that say to trounce the new guy. I remember when I heard about the 'beginner's battles' that GW put on for 40K, back in 3rd Ed. From what I understood it was five tactical marines vs. 5 genestealers. Started at 24 inches. A couple rounds of shooting, and then the genestealers would kill the hell out of the marines. It wasn't a fair scenario. The new player with the marines would ALWAYS lose. From what I understood that was policy. It was supposed to make the new guy want to go out and get his own models and try to get back at the employee.

Er. How is that supposed to work? I don't know about you, but when I get my ass kicked at something, I don't want to do it anymore. Which is why football never really appealed to me (to play that is), I got my ass kicked HARD in football (literally, I got knocked down and the rest of the kids in the neighborhood ran over my prone body).

Winning is good, and loosing is bad. Winning is awesome, however people aren't stupid. They realize when you are GIVING them a win (like when my wife tries to get me to play Monopoly). People don't like that. It makes them feel like you are treating them like a child. Not even children like that. Children ESPECIALLY don't like that. Pulling punches does not work. After your new player goes home, and they think about it, they'll wonder why you didn't use that tank the whole fight.

That's why I think the best thing you can do is give them a fair fight. Something where they have a decent chance to win, but might not. If you win, that's to be expected, you are a veteran player. If they win, all the better. The best thing that can be done is a fight that can end very closely. A close game is always exciting, and it keeps people on the edge of their seat. An unbalanced game does not provide that to people. Especially when one side trounces the other throughly. That's great when you've spent months planning and modelling your army, not so great when you have no personal investment to the army, which is exactly the place that the new player is coming into. They have no emotional connection to what they are playing. The point of a new player game is to CREATE that connection.

Here are my Ten Commandments for introducing new players, some of these are obvious, but I like to beat people over the head with the known.
1. Play fair.
2. Allow the new player to pick which side they want. This proves to them that neither side is superior or inferior, just different.
3. Keep it simple. You might want to leave the odd units and models out of it for now. Introduce things over time. Maybe start with just infantry, then add seige weapons, and then whatever.
4. If you nerf a rule for a new player, nerf it for yourself. An example of this is to not play 'touch' rules in chess.
5. Walk the new player through every step, every turn! If they start leading it, so much the better. They are NEW, so they don't know the rules- don't expect them to. It is hard to keep going over the same thing over and over, but it is so helpful to a new player.
6. Unlike a regular game, you need to point out stupid things they might be doing. 'Hey, you don't want to move that guy, if he moves, he can't shoot!'.
7. Explain what you are doing as you do it. This gives them insight into things they can do during their turn as well. 'This guy is hiding behind the wall so you can't shoot him.'
8. Bring the pretty pieces, and some not so pretty ones. Showing very different levels of prettiness is important. A just assembled model, a primed one, a color base one, and a completed one. That why the new person can see the process up close and personal. The color base is really important. It is the simplest paint, but it still looks not bad. It gives a new person a glimmer of what they should be able to do straight out of the gate.
9. Post game review. I love to throw this one out there. After the game talk to the new people about what went right and what went wrong. Don't shy away from pointing at your own shortcomings.
10. Never blame the dice. It might be tempting, and you might do it on a normal basis, but resist the urge! If the new player realizes that you never got the dice rolls you needed, so much the better. Do not say it yourself. If you played fair and played right, they should by now realize what hurt you (or them) and what helped!