*Sigh* It looks like I may have to drop out of the Mordheim campaign for a while - of my three gangs two of them hold the top two positions in the league, and the third ranks fourth. (Skaven in #3 position, the only gang that beats me more often than not, but he has lost the last two times he has faced me.) Two players have never beaten me at all. Most folks are getting scared of facing my undead, even though my Rieklanders hold #1 - the undead have resulted in more permanent deaths. And if I beat the Skaven player a few more times I will hold all three top positions. Not good.

Or we may start over, with me being the over all winner for the campaign. I will then have to pick one warband to stick with... Or have players not warbands ranked, which is what I am plugging for, I like playing all three. (Undead, Reiklanders, and Witch Hunters.)

The Disgruntled Auld Grump

Yeah, I got home from the game last night and found an e-mail where one of the other players said that 'he had talked to the other players and they all agreed'. It turns out that yes, he did talk to the other players, and he was the only one who agreed... He is one of the ones who has never beaten me, but then he has never beaten any of the others either. And what he discussed with the other players wasn't even what he said he had talked about with them, when they talked he accused me of 'sandbagging' - that is letting people beat me early on to let them think that they had a chance.

The sandbagging comes in because I study the way people play their warbands, then create tactics that work against them. I am patient enough to lose my first few games against a given opponent, then start beating him. I am also willing to change tactics if the ones I use do not work. This was the problem player's biggest problem - he had a tactic that did not work, but he would not stop using it. He just forms a big block and charges as a single huge mob. Bow fire eats him alive, all you need to do is fall back and whittle him down as he advances. If you have units that can pick off stragglers then it is all over for him. His warband has been nibbled down so that the only original member is the Troll. (Orc warband.) I think that his tactic had worked once against his brother or something.

Mostly what he had wanted was me gone from the group, for some unknown reason he wanted to take over running the campaign. Even if I left that was not going to happen. Instead he is gone. Up until this point he has been a good player, if a lousy tactician. He was not the youngest player, his brother is, but he was by far the least mature. But everyone thought that he was having fun. His brother is still in the group, he is the other no-wins player, but without his brother 'helping him' I think that may change. (Bad tactical advice, and he would listen to his brother when others were making suggestions that really would have helped.) However his brother would not play him in the league, since he can play against him every day.

So, two things are happening, one is that it will be by player ranking, which is what I suggested to begin with, but the other two multi warband players shot down, and the problem player is being invited out of the group. He sent the e-mail to the entire group, not just me, so when I woke up this morning there were about two dozen other e-mails back and forth. I only read the first one last night. But it got fairly viscious toward the end, with him saying that they had all agreed and the others quoting the conversation completely differently.

I finally found a tactic that works against the Skaven, and have started beating him, but he is trying out new ways to get around my tactic, and I think that he will find one. My current tactic against Skaven with the Undead, cheap zombie bodyguards in a square around my Vampire, if he wants to shoot his slings twice at my vamp he has to be within charge range of the zombies. Meanwhile the vamp, his escort, and the zombies advance toward the objectives. When the vamp and his escorting Dire Wolves are in range they charge. Ghouls form a flanking unit, and go after enemy characters, while the Dregs take high ground and use bows on anybody in range.

The Auld Grump

As I said, up until this week everyone thought that he was having fun, and until now he hasn't tried anything like this. I am wondering if he is having problems outside of the game and for some reason let it get to him about the game. He is not a bad kid.

I think one of the things that may have ticked him off is that after he complained that his army could not win I allowed him to play my undead while I played his orcs in a game that would not count for the league. The point was to show him tactics that would work with his warband, not to show that I am a better general than he is - I am more than twice his age for goodness sake! And I had told him these techniques before showing him.

Outnumbered I beat him. I used his goblins with spears & bows as archers rather than puting them in the mob, and concentrated fire on the vampire until he went down, then the necromancer, then the ghouls etc. a tactic that works against undead fairly well.

The fact that I used exactly the same tactics that I always do against him may have been too bitter a pill. (Fall back & shoot, fall back & shoot, fall back & shoot, CHARGE!) But everyone uses that technique against him.

The other players seem to think he wanted to take over the group, but I don't really think so, he is both too young and too impatient for me to think that he would even try that.

On the other hand, after this I don't think that we can invite him back into the group. There are too many bad feelings, and I suspect that he feels betrayed that the other players didn't join him in his complaint. Though they claim that they never agreed with him to begin with.

The Confused Auld Grump