Possessed tactics

[Scumdog47]

Because I was bored I decided to post my own, very personal, observations on how to play a Possessed warband.

Here we go:

Creating the Warband:

Heroes:
A Magister is mandatory. No way around it.

Possessed:
Always buy two of these.
It's as many as you're allowed and although fairly expensive they definitely are worth it.
Tough and dangerous they will almost inevitably be your main solution to just about all problems that crop up in Mordheim.
Buy them mutations? I'm undecided here. Although Great Claw makes your Possessees very dangerous (+1A, S:5) it's also quite expensive and you'll be finding yourself running short of cash soon anyway.

Fear-causing is also useful and might prove crucial in preventing enemies from charging you (instead of the other way around) or reduce their To Hit to 6 for that first round of combat.

Mutants:
Although far less powerful than Possessed, they are Heroes and will contribute to your cash flow which you will need right away.
You have to buy at least one mutation for your mutants. Make them cheap if possible.

Initially I usually deploy my mutants behind my Possessed so that they can move in and finish off any Stunned or Knocked Down enemies left in the wake of the more powerful possessed.
Easy XP for your muties and well needed too.

Henchmen:

Beastmen are nice with 2 Wounds and WS:4 and T:4
Quite costly though.
I tend to wait a while before I recruit any.

Brethren:
Comparatively cheap and can be equipped with bows.
Usually the mainstay of my henchmen.
For no particular reason I tend to deploy them in groups of three.

Dark Souls:
Although S: 4 and immunity to psychology is nice, I tend to think these guys are simply not good enough.

Equipment:
Clubs and Axes are nice.
Both are very cheap at 3 GC each.
Clubs increase the chance of stunning your opponent which is desirable.
Axes give you an additional -1 Save Modifier which for all practical purposes proves my coming point regarding armour.

Bows: Equip at least some of your henchmen with bows.  Close combat is all nice and good but sometimes you just need some reach.

Spears: Can be useful but with revised rules (Strike at Initiative rather than First) they are less so.

Fighting with 2 weapons:
Yes. Do it.
Even with the optional rule of -1 to hit while fighting with 2 weapons the additional attack is more than makes up for it.

Armour:
Totally worthless.
Never in the slightest worth the huge cost.
The odds of making a save is too low and an enemy with an axe and/or S4 (or better) reduces your armour save to 6+ at best or nothing at all.
Don't waste cash on this crap. Sure, if you find some free armour when you loot, you could slap it on byt even then it's hardly worth the bother.

Helmets:
Unlike body armour a helmet is actually worth the money spent. a 4+ Save against Stun (and unmodifiable to boot) makes a helmet a good investment.

Magic:
Yes, I know, the Magister has a spell.

Whatever.
It never works anyway.

Unless you're a Skaven or a Priest of Sigmar all magic is basically worthless.
Casting diff is too high, ranges too short and effects usually easily evaded.
Ignore magic, never invest a skill selection in spells. Get something useful.

Skills:
Mighty Blow
Strike to Injure
Resilient

Get them as soon as possible.

Tactics:
With fast and powerful Possessed you should generally adopt an aggressive stance in my opinion, regardless of scenario.
With your opponent dead or routed you win by default even if you play Breakthrough or Treasure Hunt or other potentially low-violence scenarios.
Keep Brethren and Mutants nearby as support for your Possessed.
When your mutants gain in experience, skill and lethality you can usually afford being a bit bolder with these as well.

If you have archers, use them to keep enemy missile troops down.
In close combat you are usually quite likely to prevail anyway.

Well, that about sums it up for this time.

[MortiS-the-Lost]

When creating a Possessed Warband I tend to pick Mutants and Darksouls rather than buying a Possessed because with my luck I find whatever I sink the most Gold into tends to get killed out right in the first turn of the first game I play and I spend the rest of the campaign trying to recover from the loss.

For the Mutants I tend to go for the Extra Arm or Spines mutations due to the potential to do more damage in close combat. I do wish that the Mordheim rules had a few mutations to choose from, yea there was the 'Power in the Stones' supplement which had a lot of mutations converted over from the old RoC books, but you couldn't use them right away and you have no guarantee of getting the mutations you want, so tactically it's useless. Still I'd rather be playing the real Path to Glory when mucking about with mutations.

Tottally agreed with you on the Spells and Armour, with my poor dice rolls they never work and if you rely on them as you would in other game you will die. A lot.(especially when one of your regular opponents is Mark who is incredibly lucky with the dice)

Brethren armed with Bows are vital tactically but seem uncharacteristic for a chaos force, still it's good to have a use for my old bow carrying Chaos Thugs.

One problem I find with The Possessed Warband (and quite a few other Mordheim Warbands) is that the stock miniatures GW provided for them are useless on the table top and/or wildly costly in the game.

[Scumdog47]

"Power in the Stones"?
This intrigues me. Care to elaborate?

As for the minis provided for the warband, yes, they do leave quite a lot of adaptability to be desired.

I had hoped for something like the mutations-sprue for 40K to help create a wider range of mutations.

For brethren with bows I tend to use old Chaos Thugs or minis by other manufacturers.
The first option is not always open for many gamers .

As for not being much in line with Chaos, I disagree. As late as the provisional army list for 4th Ed. there was an option to field Chaos Thugs with bows and even crossbows after all.
It's just these newfangled army lists that have wussed out and left Chaos without missile fire power.
:D

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Power in the Stones was a set of optional rules for using Wyrdstone to improve your warriors stat-line of course using the stones in this way carries the risk of gaining chaos mutations, after a battle, each hero who carried a stone makes a check to see if they have been effected by the stone (the rules do not make it clear if hero's who picked up a stone during the game are supposed to make this roll too, but I've always played it that way as a house rule) after a few rolls, there was a chance the warriors carrying the stones could gain mutations.
The bulk of the rules is a long-ish (but not RoC long) table of mutations that borrows heavily from the ones in Slaves to Darkness. (I have, in the past tried to write a price list allowing Possessed players to purchase the additional mutations when starting a warband)
The rules first appeared in Town Cryer 15 and were available for PDF download from the Specialist Games Website.
You can find a copy of the rules here:  http://www.mordheimer.com/downloads/downloads.htm

It's probably a coincidence but the author of Power in the Stones is called 'Daniel Carlson'

[Scumdog47]

Alas, I cannot take any credit for it.

:)