Making Dwarfs fun: Tabletop Edition - help wanted!

[Super Cosmic Space Magnet]

Hello reader!

I am currently working on a new edition of the Mordheim book from cover to cover, with clarifications on so many rules that were poorly explained (such as Hiding, and shooting from elevated positions), balance tweaks (less oppressive slings, armour not being worthless, etc), and going over warbrands to normalize their lore, increase spell accessibility for human warbands outside of "Everyone has a Priest of Sigmar", and in particular the expanding of warband-specific racial rules so that factions that were previously considered less exotic now get a new lease on life. Here's an example of new warband sheet, as will be printed when the book goes live: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/BkZ_JjYwsX (spelling mistakes possible, still WIP.)

The area I am struggling with at the moment is with Dwarfs. If anyone has played the tabletop you likely know that Dwarfs' combination of terrible movement and initiative mean that unless your board is a huge empty space (which it -never- should be for Mordheim) then you essentially have to choose between not participating in games, and winning because your warband is the last to arrive, or dedicating yourself to a 100% shooty warband (in which case it is boring for everyone involved, especially you).

I am currently looking for ideas about how to design a Dwarf warband that is interesting and offers some variety of gameplay. Slayer warbands are a good idea for that, but I feel there needs to be a vanilla option that isn't boring as hell. Current ideas include, similar to Mercenaries, a standard template of a Dwarf statline then you choose a sub-faction that adds modifiers. "If you are a slayer warband all your dwarfs become immune to psychology, gain the Leap skill, but may no longer use ranged weapons or armour" etc.

Any suggestions would be more than welcome. I adore Dwarfs thematically, but in terms of game design I am finding it challenging to create a warband that will be fun for more than just one or two games.

[Paranoia]

Well, I never played Mordheim tabletop, so I am not much help there.
Though I did create, for my own amusement, a hypothetical Dwarven Warband for this very PC iteration https://steamcommunity.com/app/276810/discussions/1/1737715419908805513/

How I solved the Movement issue was by giving them access to a Passive Skill that increases their Movement for the first three Rounds, and another that gives them extra SP (thus, for practical purposes, Movement) when they pick up Wyrdstone if they set it up first.
Which should lead to them getting into positions reliably, yet still retaining the normal Dwarven crappy Movement outside the first three Rounds or the extra effort.

[Bloodscape]

You could also introduce beasts to allow flexability in the warband. Witch Hunters had war dogs, Possessed had gor, etc. to increase movement in a few troops. Chaos Dwarfs have Black Orcs to use (also just saying).

Out of curiosity, why revamp a (basically) dead game? It would be far easier to start from scratch.

[Super Cosmic Space Magnet]

My reason for it is that I have been running a games club for about three/four years that plays it! It is a small community of about eight to ten people (depending on who comes to what season) some of whom have never played a Warhammer game before, and players come to one of the two available days per week. The initial game was extremely rough, and fan iterations such as Coreheim don't really do it for me - my group enjoys the substentiality of the game, the only problem is the quality of the materials. My new edition aims to improve the quality of materials with a single, improved rulebook.

Frustratingly I spent two hours today on the Dwarf warband part of the book only to have my browser whitescreen on me and delete my progress... That hurt. I have recreated my work but it is still rough, it needs fluff for the unit entries and some better page layouts but it is at least looking close enough to completion: https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/HycBFYqjQ

Thankyou Paranoia for your suggestion too. Movement is the big problem, I don't want Dwarfs to be able to chase or flee at all - but being able to participate is a big deal. My way of dealing with that was also to combine the three seperate-but-similar warbands of Rangers, Slayers, and Treasure Hunters together into a single warband entry. Each subfaction then gains modifiers, with Slayers being better able to climb with their human-level Initiative and access to the Leap skill (which I added to their racial skills list), Rangers being able to deploy into forward locations, and Miners being able to say "Well screw it if I can't get up to the second floor I'll bring the second floor down to me".

[Paranoia]

Originally posted by Super Cosmic Space Magnet:

Thankyou Paranoia for your suggestion too. Movement is the big problem, I don't want Dwarfs to be able to chase or flee at all - but being able to participate is a big deal.

Well, on Warhammer Fantasy, Dwarves could still Flee and Pursue, but did so with 2D6-1 instead of 2D6 as normal. I do not know how those translate into Necromunda, but a negative -1 modifier to their roll is an option.

[killershrike]

I played mordheim tabletop extensively back in the day, original release. the homebrewed rules we used are still online; i've left them online for the last 20 years. I'm not going to post a link / self promote, but if you google "killer shrike mordheim" you'll find them easily enough.

My second warband was dwarf treasure hunters, and they were nearly undefeated over many battles. The backbone of the warband was thunderers with brace of pistols, run in two picket lines. The heroes of the gang were hand to hand, and floated on the flanks to dissuade close combat. People tend to not want to rush into the axes of troll slayers.

They are a bit slow, but conversely they are great on the defense. Some missions I needed to double move / run the first and maybe second round to get into position, but generally I could get on or within shooting distance of what I wanted to project force onto quickly enough. We played with terrain from four core boxed sets plus custom terrain on battefields ranging between 24'' x 24'' to 48'' x 48''. A few times we did massive multiplayer games on two trestle tables, probably about 60'' x 60'' with bare table around the edges for rolling dice and warband lists and whatnot; but there were objectives in all four quarters of the battlefield so I just took my corner and held it.

I didn't find them boring, nor did the other people in the league. On the contrary they were quite fun and "dwarfy". They suited a different style of play.

However, we did write up a few variant dwarf warband lists; Dwarf Miners, Dwarf Wreckers, and Dwarf Meteor Seekers. Why so many I couldn't tell you; it was a crazy time, and everyone seemed to have a different idea of what dwarves should be like. They're on the site under "new warbands", if you decide to check it out. It's old school html and basic css from way back in the day so its not super pretty to look at, but the content is as it was at the time mordheim was released and is usable.

[Super Cosmic Space Magnet]

@killershrine Thanks for your reply! I find reading your message interesting because it seems to an extent to confirm what I've seen when watching Mordheim videos online: Many players shy away from terrain features. If you've ever watched any of Miniwargaming's videos about the game you've probably noticed it too - while boards do have terrain on them they typically are pushed off to the sides, often leaving a long corridor in the middle of the board which warbands walk along while shooting. These corridors have, at best, a few crates in the way to block line of sight but leave vast swathes of the game (such as diving charges, detecting enemies around corners, the Hiding mechanic) etcetera largely untouched.

I commonly see comments about the tabletop game proclaiming Skaven Slingers to be overpowered, and I suspect it is for much the same reason - without the penalties to cover or the need to move around the board there just aren't enough shooting penalties to stop the Slings from being oppressive. When the board is extremely dense in vertical terrain however these weapons suddenly become much less useful, as the likelihood of even having line of sight to an enemy 16" away is slim.

It is these circumstances the Dwarfs struggle in. When the table is open and they can bunker up in a single building then they are at their happiest - much in the same way as the Warhammer Fantasy Battles tabletop - but in a dense cityscape the combination of poor Initiative and poor Movement simply isn't ever going to be balanced out by making them tankier. A Dwarf that doesn't get to participate in the game because everyone's already killed the monsters, hoovered up the wyrdstone, or escorted the Lost Prince isn't going to feel better about the game because "welp at least all my Heroes survived so now I have loads of money" - indeed Dwarfs play at such low risk due to the Thick Skull rule that your optimal income strategy is to do nothing and wait for the game to end.

I adore the racial fantasy of Dwarfs, which is a large reason why I've been so motivated to design a warband that makes players keen to play them - but I feel that their racial attributes simply don't work well for the setting. They can still be slow, and inept at climbing, but deployment advantages or ways to alter the battlefield terrain seem to me to be the best way of encouraging Dwarfen participation while keeping that fantasy alive. They will still be tough as nails with T4 and cheap armour options, but having all the extra stuff like only being put OOA on an injury roll of 6 and being immune to clubs is excessive. If gunlines are something a player enjoys for some mad reason then that is, and should, still be an option - but I am adamant that no warband should be as constrained by a single strategy as the vanilla Treasure Hunters are to bunkering.

[Willow Sidewise Gerrard]

give dwarf big leg

[marcusdire]

Maybe some kind of war machine option? Like the Deathroller from Bloodbowl or something? I don't have any specific ideas, but I wanted to throw this out there. I always loved my Dwarves back in the day, but they were quite frustrating to play in Mordheim (especially against my Skaven opponents)

[shadowsouls12]

i played this tabletop about 15 years ago. played dwarves but forget most of it.

[Super Cosmic Space Magnet]

Originally posted by marcusdire:

Maybe some kind of war machine option? Like the Deathroller from Bloodbowl or something? I don't have any specific ideas, but I wanted to throw this out there. I always loved my Dwarves back in the day, but they were quite frustrating to play in Mordheim (especially against my Skaven opponents)

I am so glad you said that, that's exactly what I did :D https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/HycBFYqjQ