Undead warband for Mordheim

One of the great things about Mordheim is the fact that it is so easy to field a warband. Unlike its big brother, Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Mordheim is focused on small bands of looters. Because of its generic fantasy setting, it is also very easy to put together a band of warpstone hunters from within an existing miniatures collection. I have already commented on the ease with which I mustered some Dwarf Treasure Hunters. Now I am turning to the Undead.

Reading the Mordheim rules before lights out, it is becoming obvious to me that the number of Heroes in your band is pretty important in Mordheim, as they help with finding treasure, navigating the city ruins, and seem to be able to advance much quicker. It looks as if you ought to have at least two, and possibly three Heroes in your starting band.

The Undead list has three different Heroes to choose from: the Vampire, the Necromancer, and the Dreg. The Vampire is a must-have, as they are the effective leaders of the Undead looters in Mordheim. For my warband, I've got a sword-wielding Vampire, a Necromancer, and a Dreg. These latter are human allies of vampires - they are not undead as such, but hope to join the ranks of the vampires at some point in the future. For my Dreg I've gone with an old Citadel thief I bought eons ago in Games Workshop in Reading.

With three Heroes assigned, I also want to add two Dire Wolves, as they are fast movers, and I've got a couple of suitable miniatures from my collection of wolves used at the recent battle of Ashak Rise. No problem there.

My plan is to make up the rest of the warband with Ghouls. At 40 crowns each, they are somewhat cheaper than Dire Wolves, and I've got some nice Heresy ghouls which will fit the bill well.

Undead Warband - starting list

HEROES

Vampire (1 @110GCs) armed with sword (+10GCs)

Necromancer (1@35GCs) - no additional weapons. The Necromancer begins with a randomly-generated spell from the necromantic spell list. In this case I rolled a '3' (Death Vision) for his starting spell.

Dreg (2@20GCs each) - one armed only with a dagger, and no armour. I doubt he will last long, but he's an extra Hero and can go buy supplies during the daylight hours from the human encampments around Mordheim. NB: As I had money left over after purchasing the ghouls (below), I decided to add a second Dreg with an axe (20+15 for a double-handed weapon).

HENCHMEN

Dire Wolves (2@50GCs each)

310 spent so far, leaving 190. None of the characters above has any armour or any missle weapons, which were the big cost items for the Dwarf Treasure Hunters. It leaves scope for a pack of five ghouls to go with the warband:

Ghouls (5 @ 40GCs each)

Total = 510. Okay, so 10 crowns over the budget, but as this is meant to be a friendly campaign, I've decided to leave it at that, and see how we go. I could have dropped a ghoul and gone with a third dreg, but this will give me the incentive to paint these ghouls up and get them onto the table. Let's see how we go from there.

Casting my eye over the list, and having not played Mordheim before, the only major weakness I can see is the lack of any missile weapons. The wolves should be dangerous, as they're fast movers, but the dwarves, who these undead will likely face first, have three crossbows at the moment. They could prove troublesome.

Next up: a band of mercenaries from Marienberg.