Men at Arms / Mercenaries

[Bareheaded Warrior]

Yes, apologies I wasn't intending to reopen the whole can of worms that is the line of sight rules, that is another topic for another day when I am suffering from an excess of energy!

My point was under the North American Frozen Horror rules the only differentiation between a mercenary armed with crossbow and one armed with halberd*, is the squares that they can target. The halberd* can target figures in orthogonally adjacent and diagonally adjacent squares ONLY whereas the crossbow can target squares that have a clear line of sight and are NOT orthogonally adjacent (and, depending on your interpretation possibly NOT diagonally adjacent either). The fact that both these mercenaries cost the same is consistent as both the weapons cost the same!

*The Halberd is one of the things that offends me deeply about mercenaries in both the EA and NA editions (perhaps even more so in the NA edition). Surely the following would have been less inconsistent and functionally equivalent.

• The Scout - Move 9, Attack 2, Defend 2, BP 2, MP 2 wields a shortsword
• The Crossbowman - Move 6 Attack 3 Defend 3 BP 2 MP 2 wields crossbow (and broadsword)
• The Swordsman - Move 6, Attack 3, Defend 3, BP 2, MP 2 wields longsword
• The Axeman - Move 5, Attack 4, Defend 5, BP 2, MP 2 wields a battle axe

And just to continue the rant, why does their imagery and sculpts suggest that they are all wearing the same 14th century armour, (and daft regimental plumes, in a dungeon, really!) when their stats don't support this (except possibly the Axeman, and who could resist hiring the "axeman" with a title like that) and the choice of these uniforms and depictions of equipment that seems completely out of place when compared with the same Equipment images in the armoury and the imagery and sculpts in the rest of HeroQuest. I'm not suggested that a fantasy game has to be a hotbed of historical realism, but this discrepancy is entirely unnecessary, especially when the North American edition already comes with an identical weapon in the form of a Longsword. Are they supposed to be time-travelling mercenaries?

EDIT: And HispaZargon you have just reminded me that you never did reply to my reply in that other topic on LOS that you mentioned...tut tut

[cornixt]

Are they supposed to be time-travelling mercenaries?

What time period do you interpret the rest of the game to be set? European-style people in Warhammer have always been spread with influences from the early middle ages to the very late.

[Bareheaded Warrior]

It is a difficult question to answer, particularly as I am no Warhammer expert.

Warhammer does appear to be set in a time that correlates loosely to the Early Renaissance / Late Middle Ages ~15th Century, although as Warhammer has developed from its early days the setting does seem to have aged, by which I mean the latter versions appear to have been set in a later timeline that the earlier versions and as presumably HQ was influenced by earlier versions, I assume it was set in an earlier period. Wikipedia tells me current Warhammer Fantasy is set in the year 2522 (Empire calendar) and one of my aging books tells me that WF is set in a period equivalent to our own Early Renaissance (14th-15th century)

Mordheim is set ~500 years in the Warhammer past and still features black powder weapons, which HQ doesn't, so my assumption is that HQ is earlier than that which points more towards an Early Middle Ages / Dark Ages

But the age of Warhammer isn't the whole question here, what we are really talking about is the age of HeroQuest.

There are two distinct streams of influence on HQ, the first original is the Sword and Sorcery, Conan (and other Howard works), Tolkien, Moorcock and others (which also influenced DnD and everything else) which are loosely equivalent to Early Middle Ages / Dark Ages, featuring no gunpowder, presumably to allow a technology "gap" that magic can plug.

And you can see this in much of the earlier HQ artwork, the Broadsword, Helmet (with horns) and Battle Axe (double winged) are all classic sword and sorcery, pseudo-Viking tropes and the Barbarian could not be more Conan! Even the Plate armour looks more like a Greco-Roman muscle cuirass that a full suit of 14th century plate.

The second stream of influence is Warhammer, presumably when GW were brought in to build on the original concept. Naturally their influence would have been to push HQ into a later time period, the Warhammer one, to better align on miniature production, and you can clearly see this with the Mercenaries as they are a complete "lift and shift" into a Warhammer Empire Infantry Unit setting, complete with those bloody plumes and armed with halberds to combat against those mounted knights (as opposed to the functionally equivalent HQ longsword) and the swordsman has a Greatsword (from Warhammer) rather than the HQ Battle Axe.

The two streams of influence, in my mind weren't really fused and you can clearly see the seams (a common feature of Warhammer), so my preference is towards the original concept.

[gootchute]

And then there is Morkar the Uniter, first Everchosen of Chaos, slain by Sigmar in the first year of the Imperial Calendar. Does this tell us when HeroQuest is suppyto take place?

https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Morkar

Is Morcar supposed to be Morkar? Does this mean that HeroQuest happens before the founding of the Empire? Can't be, because there would either be no Emperor, or was it would be Sigmar himself and all of HeroQuest must happen in under a year.

Was the name just reused or is it just a coincidence? The background of Morcar/Zargon does not align with a Norsican tribesman, and there does not seem to be an analogue to Mentor at all in that story. Clearly Morkar and Morcar are not the same.

Looking at the sources of the wiki article, the God King novel is from 2011. The 4th edition Chaos Army book would have been early 90s, after HeroQuest. The White Dwarf article appears to be the 2014 issue #74, and not the 1986 issue #74. It's hard to get exact dates when GW keeps restarting their issue count...

Anyways, this whole train of thought has been interesting yet pointless.

[Zenithfleet]

I recently had the chance to finally (finally!) try out the Men-at-Arms from Wizards of Morcar. We used them for Quest 2 of Against the Ogre Horde, because we were a bit under-equipped and because hey, why not!

We only took one MaA each, and each of us hired a different type, to see how they did. Only the Crossbowman survived to the end of the quest, having finished off not one but two Ogres with precision shots to their posteriors

Generally I thought they were fun to use, although with 1 BP each they tended to die quickly if sent out on their own or caught off guard.

My main concern is that hiring lots of them will overcrowd the board and slow the game down. If I remember right, each player can hire up to four, so if every player maxed out his MaA, there could be sixteen heroic figures on the board at once... It could also become difficult to remember which figure belongs to which hero, unless the undersides of the bases are numbered or something like that.

I'll probably use a rule to limit the mercenaries available (as suggested upthread).

It's also annoying that the Scout's card doesn't state that he can search for and disarm traps - it's only mentioned in the quest book. And it's odd that there's one fewer Halberdier card than the other MaA, presumably because the set could only include a certain number of cards for printing purposes and they needed one for a treasure or spell card.

(I had also thought I had foolishly glued the Men-at-Arms' weapons onto the models years ago, and was overjoyed to discover that I hadn't. Or maybe I had but the glue didn't take.)

[Aki]

Why, in the new edition, there are red and purple mercenaries?

[Vorimir]

To distinguish them more easily on the board? In case they accompany one hero or another..

[manaknight14]

Why, in the new edition, there are red and purple mercenaries?

Yeah it doesn’t officially mean anything, but it can be useful for distinguishing between individual mercs in situations like:

• Hired mercs vs. enemy mercs.
• Two heroes hired the same type of merc and are trying to keep track of whose is whose.
• You cast a spell like Courage or Rock Skin on one of your mercs and need to remember which one has the stat boost.