New Rules
This chapter introduces new rules for playing Border Town Burning campaigns. The new environment rules, random happenings and specific equipment bring this new Mordheim setting to life. They replace or enhance the respective chapters from the Mordheim rulebook.
alternate mordheim setting
The Border Town Burning supplement describes a new setting for Mordheim. Instead of playing games in the ruins of the City of the Damned your warbands will be travelling through the territories surrounding the fabled Silk Road and exploring regions of the Northern Wastes. There may be no warpstone tainted ruins or collapsed buildings but due to the proximity of the Chaos Wastes this is no pleasant scene either! The icy wastes are intolerable for any lesser men than the abnormally developed muscle-bound barbarians. Eerie forests in the borderlands are haunted by beastmen and other hideous creatures tainted by Chaotic influences. Ogres ambush daring merchant caravans trespassing across the slopes. Hobgoblin wolf riders remain the scourge of the wide steppes.
In this setting the brave and the foolish risk their lives and their sanity seeking fortune and notoriety. Be it by travelling to the mystic borderlands of Grand Cathay or by testing faith and fighting prowess when facing indescribable horrors in the Shadowlands. Amidst these dangers there will be parties who have precise aims like finding the lost Chaos artefacts and those aiming to prevent their discovery.
The following chapters describe everything that will be required to take your battles East of the World’s Edge Mountains.
mounts
Unlike in the comet smitten City of the Damned warbands are not restricted to having one horse only when playing Border Town Burning campaigns. The complete “Blazing Saddles” article from the 2002 Mordheim Annual (page 65) or the “Mounted Warriors” article from the Empire in Flames supplement (page 24) respectively should always be applied. In the latest Mordheim Rules Review all mounted warriors have the large target special rule meaning every mount should increase your warband rating by +20 points.
wagons
The Border Town Burning setting makes great use of the wagon rules described in the “Vehicles of the Empire” article from the Empire in Flames supplement (page 30). The book is available for free as two downloadable PDF files from the Specialist Games section of the Games Workshop website.
If you are making regular use of carts, wagons and coaches in your Mordheim battles, you might like to have a look at the advanced rules section at the end of this supplement. There we have collected a few clarifications and included additional house rules to improve on the wagon driving experience.
serious injuries
In the Heroes’ Serious Injures Chart replace the event of “65 Sold to the Pits” with the following.
65 GET IN THE RING
Left for dead, the warrior has been picked up by a passing horde of Chaos. The captive has been given 'the mark' by a seer from one of the tribes and must enter the dreaded barbarian ring to fight for his life against a Warrior of Chaos. See the Bestiary section for full rules for Warriors of Chaos.
Roll to see which side charges, and fight the battle as normal. If the warrior loses, roll to see if he is dead or injured (i.e. a D66 roll of 11-35). If he is not dead, he is thrown out of the barbarian ring without his armour and weapons and may rejoin his warband.
If the warrior wins he gains the attention of the ruinous powers and receives their favour. He gains the mutation blackblood (see Possessed warband), +2 Experience, +1 campaign point and evades detection to rejoin his warband with all his weapons and equipment.
new skills
Due to features in the campaign system which include supporting the use of the wagons and vehicles, there are a few new skills introduced in the Border Town Burning supplement. They are added to the existing skill lists and every Hero who has access to the respective list may also learn these skills.
Strength skills
Handyman: The warrior is skilled in fixing minor damage on the wagon. If the wagon is stationary and has not moved during the last turn then if the warrior is in contact with the wagon, he may repair one previously damaged wheel. The Hero may do nothing else that turn and the wagon may not be moved. He can even set in a new wheel if it flew off. A wagon cannot be repaired if an enemy model is in contact with the handyman or the wagon, as the situation is far too dangerous to focus on the cart.
Beastmaster: The Hero is able to communicate on a primal level with any beast he encounters. If the model confronts an animal (not mount!) in hand-tohand combat, then before combat is fought he may take a Leadership test. If the test is failed combat proceeds as normal. If the test is successful the animal falls under his command. Place the models 1” apart from each other. The player may now control the animal model. However, the beastmaster must pass a Leadership test at the beginning of his turn otherwise control over the animal is lost. The animal must always remain within 6” of the Hero or control is lost immediately. No more than one animal can be controlled this way.
Academic skills
Driver: A wagon driven by a Hero with this skill may re-roll results on the Out of Control chart. The second result must be accepted even if it is worse.
Strategist: The Hero has great strategic skills. Before each battle a Hero with this skill may decide to develop plans that further the tactical ambitions of the warband. Choosing to have this model voluntarily miss the next battle due to the Hero’s pondering means the warband gains +1 campaign point after the battle.
The Hero does count for calculating warband rating as normal and determining the prices for selling wyrdstone/treasure. However, he does not count as part of the warband when taking Rout tests. Initial warband size is considered to be one model less during the battle. The Hero does not gain +1 Experience for surviving a battle since he did not take part in the fight.
Scholar: Only warriors capable of casting spells or using prayers may pick this skill. Whenever the warrior may learn a new spell or prayer through an advance, he may choose which one he learns instead of determining at random, or he may decrease the difficulty of any one spell or prayer he already knows by –1 permanently.
“Wilhelm, you gotta nail?”
Wilhelm sighed. When he had signed up for this adventure, he had expected to see strange sights, fight unfamiliar foes and perform heroic deeds. He did not expect to wind up spending half his time pounding nails into dilapidated carts just to keep them from spilling their load and the other half shoring up cartwheels. He’d been born the son of a wheelwright, but after Beastmen had attacked the village in his eleventh year, Wilhelm took the hammer from his slain father’s workshop to seek vengeance. Five years later, he fought by the sword in the glorious name of Sigmar. In the years that followed he had travelled around breaking heads, sometimes for survival, sometimes for coin.
This latest journey had brought him on that damned caravan, because he owed some bad people a lot of money and there were few places where he could hide from them and earn enough through his carpentry skill to pay them back. Following the road to Cathay was the best plan. The Silk Road was far away from any debtors. Wilhelm had expected to be paid enough as a bodyguard protecting the load to put his feet up for a year. Enough to settle his debts and enough to avoid having some black hearted scum from stamping his head into the ground.
The wheelwright’s son never imagined doing mundane repairs and fixing miscellaneous breakages on the caravan. It had been the first week out in these wastes when one of the miserable spokes had broken, threatening the wheel. It had been Wilhelm who had fixed the problem. Ever since his 'heroic' deed, each time something broke they’d yell his name. He was getting sick of it, but he was good at repairing the wagon. Too good! They were shoddy carts to start with. Now he’d spruced them up, patched up any damage and he kept them rolling through the most difficult terrain he’d ever seen.
There were times though when he daydreamed they’d come across a horde of hobgoblins, a tribe of marauders, or anything! He hoped the whole caravan would just get wiped out, saving him from any more laborious carpentry. Wilhelm thought that with his luck, he’d be the only survivor and could fix up a cart to return home.
“Gotta bag of ‘em Captain, what you broke this time?”