Marienburgers

Messers Greifswald and Schleck Proprietors

This warband changed several times over the course of its inception. Originally it was planned as a noble’s quest to earn enough gold to revive the realm of Solland (only recently destroyed when Mordheim was set). The noble was some descendant of the last Elector, and he’d finally built up the courage to search Mordheim for the funds to set himself up in Solland. There were certain elements of this that I couldn’t nail down sufficiently, so the warband evolved into its current form.

The main elements I wanted in there were feathers and hats, and pride in the uniform. These are grizzled fighters, but they are grizzled fighters who look fashionable doing it.

They are fervently anti-circus, for such a rampant display of uncouth and downright dirty performers should not be allowed to earn a living with uncivilised and vulgar displays. These traveling infestations appeal to the lowest common denominator and overshadow the works of greater artists.

So I introduce the Messers Greifswald & Schleck Proprietors, a Marienburger warband led by Otto Greifswald and his business partner Gottfried Schleck.

Greifswald is a pompous, arrogant man, not a dandy by any means, but still very particular in how he is received by others, whereas Schleck is a canny ex-soldier turned merchant, happy to let Greifswald be the face of the company. They and a small retinue of guards were in Mordheim prior to its destruction on work purposes. Greifswald saw the chaos and mayhem that followed as an opportunity to build a reputation as an heroic figure holding to the ideals of the empire, while also increasing his wealth. At the time of the catastrophe that befell the city, Greifswald had his children with him, they now stay with the warband lending their help where they can. Sveltan is young and strong and sees in himself a great warrior, Clara and Eben, twins barely 8 summers old are argumentative and mischievous. As a father, Greifswald is outwardly cold and distant with his children, everything is a lesson, and both Clara and Eben will have ‘built a lot of character’ by the end of their travels.

The starting warband consists of:

Captain – Otto Greifswald (dueling pistol, sword and helmet)

Champion - Gottfried Schleck (brace of pistols)

Champion - Luthor von Jaunt (sword and pistol)

Youngblood - Clara and Eben Greifswald (spear)

Youngblood - Sveltan “Not Valten” Greifswald (2x hammers)

Warriors (2) - Greifswald House Guard, Rudi and Gaert (halberd)

Warrior (1) - Sparring partner, and tutor, Stonespine Strauss (great hammer)

Marksmen (2) - Dubrek’s Sureshots, Starn and Emil (crossbow)

The plan is to let Sveltan and Clara & Eben grow quickly and earn some cool skills. Youngbloods are so great in campaigns, they learn quickly and can easily outshine the rest of the warband. Seeing two young children sprinting, diving charging, pulling off amazing trick shots, or Sveltan clobbering people and taking a tonne of punishment, would be awesome.

For the rest, they support and protect Clara & Eben – providing the fatherly care that is somewhat lacking, and look good doing it. I’ve got the engineer with long rifle model ready to go, so hopefully one of my marksmen can get ‘Lads got talent.’

I’ve never really played more than 5 or so games with a warband, so I’m keen to watch this one grow and change over 14 plus scenarios. I love the post game side of mordheim and how characters evolve with both skills and injuries. I’m keen to try and model injuries for this warband, and by the end I’ll take a before and after shot. I also had a rather ambitious plan to model small vignettes for each character's death scene, these will then be grouped together in a diorama showing the story of my warband.

Just quietly, I’m quite impressed with this warband. I’ve had many, many warbands over the years, but none have been painted to completion (with extra models ready for expansion), plus white and yellow was a pain to paint!

So, Messers Greifswald & Schleck Proprietors are 9 campaign scenarios and 3 side-battles in, and things don’t look too grand… For one, the company should now be called Schleck Proprietors, since the entire Greifswald line has ended.

From my original warband, I have lost all but one starting character including a lad with talent from game 2, Gaert. All except Gottfried Schleck, the wily weasel. His leadership (of 7, making route tests difficult) has seen the warband limp from battle to battle. As it stands I sit on a warband rating of 185, some 70 or so behind each of the pro-circus warbands.

But things were starting to look up.

While Jamie and I were only winning the odd game here or there, I had stopped losing characters, and spending all my earnings trying to bring them back. I had an ogre, who died in his first battle, and I hired the flamboyant Luca Dondalo, duelist supreme of Tilea, who died in his first battle, his death however served a purpose, slaying the foul goat beast that killed Otto. I have since hired a wizard, and Gotfried Schleck has forbidden anyone to discuss the fate of other hired swords.

Then in the recent game I had three characters all suffer injuries that cause them to miss the next game (or next three in Dubrek’s case). So there goes the exploration for a while.

So the Greifswald line has ended, Gotfried Schleck has taken control of the business and made a few changes. He has promoted Dubrek to the position of champion and hired some swordsmen, going for quality over quantity. I’ve found swordsmen to be worth their weight, re-roll attacks on the charge is handy, double parry with sword and buckler helps keep them alive a little longer and they have received a WS and Attack upgrade, taking them to WS5. To top it all off, one of their number has been recognised for his prowess and become a hero. So Mathias the Broad Swordsman joins the board of directors at Greifswald and Schleck Proprietors. I’m hoping Mathias will build up his skills in the combat sphere with a view to creating a strong and dynamic young swordsman.

So after Scenario 9, the warband now looks like this:

Mordheim is a cruel, cruel mistress. What warbands it doesn’t swallow whole, it chews them up with its warpstone teeth and spits them out as a ragged, dripping mess.

I’m sorry Jamie, we were so close to shutting down this vile display of public indecency and clownery. Despite the knocks we (I) took along the way, we (you) clawed our way back, and we (you) almost brought a fiery end to the Circus. It would have been the upset of the century considering we only won a handful of games. The love story of our hired warlocks doing nothing but flying arm in arm around the city was probably the highlight, showing that even in dark and scary mordheim, love can find a way.

So what does my warband look like at the conclusion of the campaign? It is unrecognisable. The feathers are broken and limp, the armour is dulled and dented, and the clean white and yellow uniforms are ripped, bloodied and muddied. Of the brave 10 that arrived in Mordheim wishing to earn their fortunes, only 1 survives. Tough, gnarled, old Gotfried Schleck, the once partner, now sole director of Messers Greifswald and Schleck Proprietors. I’m not sure how long he’s going to keep the business running once he returns to Marienburg, but I feel like he’s definitely earnt a long and comfortable retirement.

Gotfried Schleck finishes the campaign with:

• 41 exp

• Leader, Pistolier, Eagle Eyes, Hunter

• Hardened

• Hand injury

• Nurgle’s rot

• Robbed

• Deep wound

• 5 Stat upgrades

I’ve never played the same warband this long, so I’m glad I’ve got one warband member still around. perhaps I’ll work out a cost for him and bring him in as a hired sword/dramatis personae in future campaigns. Maybe he’s decided to stay in Mordheim?

As mentioned in a previous article, the Greifswald line (Otto, Sveltan, Clara and Eben) were all dead by game 4 or 5. Their halberdier guards weren’t far behind. I hired a whole heap of other youngbloods and champions to join them, each hanging around for a couple of games before they too joined the dead littering the streets. I managed to keep most of my henchmen groups around in one form or another for large portions of the campaign, so they ended up quite strong by the end, and young Ulf Froschtock found a home with the warband and learnt a lot.

I had such high hopes for Ulf. The young scamp we found on the streets, scratching out a living was more than happy to join the warband as a youngblood. Gotfried put a lot of effort into teaching him how to shoot, and bought him a longbow with hunting arrows. Young Ulf learnt the following skills Quick shot, trick shooter, eagle eyes, weapon training (missile), but despite all this hard work, Ulf remained at BS2 and didn’t record a kill from 8 or so games.

At the end of the campaign my warband finished with a rating of 238, we had 2 gold crowns in the bank (though we didn’t do exploration after the final game), and there were 13 models (6 heroes), with 10 injuries between them.

Over the 19 games, my heroes experienced 4 leg injuries, 1 hand injury, 1 arm injury, 2 missing eyes, 1 nervous condition, 3 deep wounds (resulting in 8 missed games), 2 sets of horrible scars, 2 were afflicted with Nurgle’s Rot while two warriors became hardened. There were 9 hero deaths, 139 experience earned and 18 skills.

I had an absolute blast with this campaign, the ongoing narrative added just enough to the feel of it to make it fun without bogging it down. Some excellent rivalries were established and some great characters rose and fell.

Final Words

So it's all done and dusted. The crowds have drifted home, the performers are packing up and the bunting is blowing lazily in the wind. The Circus came to Mordheim, despite our best efforts to stop it. Jamie and I put up a damn good fight against a couple of scary warbands. You couldn’t break cover in the city without Cross-Eyed Clement putting a couple of crossbow bolts into you, nor could you assume the streets were quiet as enraged Ferret-kin would burst from cover and overwhelm you. But amidst all this chaos, and misplaced excitement for jugglers and clowns, was a shining pinnacle of goodness and early bedtimes.

Volpe, first of his name, hammerer of tents. Not a game went past when there wasn’t some excitement/fear attached to him.

This is the stuff that makes Mordheim so great, the lasting memories of amazing moments, heroic and nefarious deeds or just hilarious ineptitude.

The campaign was great fun to play. Despite feeling as though we were on the back foot most of the time, we almost managed to sneak a win from it all, and end the circus. My partner in quietness and respectable entertainment, Jamie, has the broadest shoulders, for he carried me and my warband for the whole campaign. Many a game ended with my warband, bloodied and bruised, cheering on Jamie as he took on both warbands at once.

I’m not entirely sure what to put that down to, I definitely was outplayed on many occasions. Suffering early losses to key heroes meant combat wasn’t a great place for me to be, and with that, human shooting isn’t enough to carry the day - compounding that is my dislike of hanging back and waiting. While the Marienburgers were fun to use, I feel they didn’t provide much ongoing benefit throughout a long campaign. That early 10% extra gc at the start was very quickly forgotten and the +1 to find rare items rarely reared its head as I was busy buying warriors not weapons.

Having played many Mordheim campaigns in my time, the restriction on human only warbands was incredibly refreshing. It brought the game back to an enjoyable choice of direction since we all had pretty much the same starting point. There were no super vampires, or resilient and armoured dwarfs/orcs/tomb kings that no one could kill. No scrambling skaven you couldn’t catch, or sharp eyed elves to shoot you down at a hundred paces. Don’t get me wrong, I love the variety in Mordheim, and the ability to play any style of warband. But just this once, it was great fun to see humans be the stars.

Memoriam

In remembrance of the fallen, below is my honour board of slain characters and hired swords, There were several more heroes that only fought a single game that weren't worthy of remembrance.

Luthor Von Jaunt (Champion)

Died fighting alcoholism (ran a drunkard through as he was clubbed with tankard)

- 3 kills
- 17 Exp
- Horrible Scars
- Strike to Injure

Sveltan (Youngblood)

last words - "Zeese hammers, zey do nussing" shortly before he was ripped apart by a wild tree

- 2 kills (both 'bludgeoned')
- 8 Exp
- Blinded in one eye
- Strike to Injure, Expert Hammerer, Jump Up

Luca Dondalo the Tilean Blade (Hired Duelist)

Was known to boast that he was the favoured son of Tilea, and were he to die, Tilea would hold a week of mourning. I guess someone better write to Tilea...

- 1 Battle fought
- 2 Kills (one being that murderous goat)
- no injuries
- no extra skills

Otto 'Oxfoot' Greifswald (Captain)

Gored to death by rapid goat. Leader and father. He leaves behind his two children, Clara and Eben, who already hate Ostlanders, now they hate goats too.

- 6 battles fought
- 33 Exp
- 4 times "Full recovery" Fifth time wasn't so lucky
- Trick Shooter

Clara & Eben Greifswald (youngbloods)

Children of Otto, the previous leader. Became a thorn in the side of pro carnival folk.

Moment of death: charged in to save wounded ally, knocked combatant down then was charged by a captain and second hero. The captain knocked the twins down before the hero brought the butt of his staff down on their skulls, killing them.

- 7 battles fought
- 4 kills
- 12 experience
- hatred of Ostlanders
- weapons expert

Most notable moment: charged the spawn that took their father out of action and ran it through, killing it in one round of combat.

Urrg Feather-head (Ogre mercenary)

Surrounded by spearmen and suffered death by 1000 pokes

- 1 battle fought
- 1 kills
- 0 experience

Gaert the once nimble (Promoted Warrior)

As he prepares his diving charge against the unsuspecting ruffian below his peg leg slips on the loose shingles, pitching him to the floor of the building, killing him cold.

- 9 battles fought (7 as a hero)
- 4 kills
- 20 experience
- Scale sheer surfaces, acrobat, sprint, leap
- nervous condition, blind in one eye, leg wound (a leg wound and nervous condition don’t make climbing easy)

Dubrek

• 21 Exp

• Smashed leg

• Leg wound

• Miss 3 games

• Nurgles rot

• Eagle eye

• Hunter