"Question about WH FB3rd edition to who may remember..." Topic

When I was playing third edition I was back home in Argentina and of course we had no way of asking questions about rules and typos. Recently we were talking with my friends and a long forgotten doubt came up.

My first warhammer 3rd edition was the very initial print run ( with the original QRS ). In that early print undead horsemen were shown to have 2 wounds and 1 attack. We realized that 1 attack was a typo and was meant to be 2 attacks since the special rules explained that..

The 2 wounds seemed reasonable since undead heroes mounted on undead mounts gained +4 mov, +1 attack and +1 wound clearly stipulatde in the special rules.

So it always seemed reasonable that undead horsemen would have 2 wounds for us. We played like that for a long time..

Then WH Army List came out and there was some confusion there, the army list indicated undead horsemen with 1 w, the ally contingent showed them with 2 wounds ( but the hero with 1, so maybe that was the typo ), while the necromancer in the ally contingent once again indicated that he gains 1 wound if mounted..

The next copy of the main rule book we bough, because as we know they were prone to coming apart, was a second print run that had changed the QRS to the improved version in the Warhammer Armies and now the undead horsemen had 1 wound and 2 attacks.. But by then it was so incorporated in our gaming that none of us questioned the 2 wounds for undead horsmen.. warhorses are 6 points so the extra 4 of the undead horse had to account for the wound and the ethereal qualities..

Does anyone here, remember this issue coming up, being discussed or corrected, or is it forever lost in the collective knowledge that we lost in the 80 due to lack of internet :)

Were regular rank and file undead horsemen in 3rd edition that costed 10 points each supposed to have 1 w or 2 ?

This curiosity was awaken on my due to the recent conversation on WFB magic :)

cheers
Francisco

You may want to check out this website:

wfb3ed.bofthebb.com

Collected Q&A's, articles, and corrections that appeared in White Dwarf.

Maybe we could ask Mr. Priestly to do a WFB 3rd Edition Q&A Finale?

I just looked in my 3rd edition and the undead horseman costs 20 points, has 1 wound and 2 attacks (one of those is the stomp attack from the mount and the other from the rider)

The profile reads 8-2-2-3-3-1-2-2-5-5-5-5-20

That is what I have in one of my books and in the other it has 2 wounds and if you look at the rules for characters when you mount them on undead mounts it is +10 points and they gain +4 mov, +1 W and +1 attack…

Even in the Warhammer Armies the stats are different in the army list and in the ally contingent :)

hence my question regarding anyone that might remember this issue from the past :)

@Ping Pong, Thanks, I'll have a look…

When the army lists came out horses, even undead ones, did not provide an extra wound to the rider. This is discussed in the front of the army book on page 5, column 2. But undead horses appear to add rather than have their own stat line. Other horses either have their own wounds (chaos steeds) or shared their rider's wounds (most others).

The undead horsemen entries in the Rulebook and Main Army List have different W totals than the Allied Army List, 1 and 2, respectively. All three entries seem to indicate the +1 A uses the same WS and S as the rider, unlike other horses.

Based on that, I'd say the undead horse adding +1W for the Necromancer and the horsemen in the Ally list is incorrect. I'd say the undead horse makes the Necromancer's profile 8 5 3 4 4 3 4 2 9+2 9+2 9+2 9+2.

Surely +4M and +1A (at the rider's WS and S) and the horse's ability to ignore most terrain is worth 10 points?

I've played this game for 30 years and never caught that before. Good one!

oh, i'm pretty sure that the necromancer is right, look at page 260 of the warhammer fantasy rulebook paragraph 6

The undead horse was a strange thing, it also granted the rider the ability to be ethereal ! The thing is that in the bestiary it was only available to undead heroes, the army list made it available to other characters like the necromancer… so now because the flesh and bone necromancer was on the undead horse he could go through walls :)

As I mentioned ,a nyone with that first print run of the rulebook will see the undead horsmen with the two wounds and that is why for the over 20 years we played 3rd our undead horsemen had two wounds !

Isn't the third edition book one of the most beautiful ones ?

thanks for engaging on this :) isn't it kind of fun?… I'm starting to think that Buenos Aires Undead horsemen were the onlyones that enjoyed 2w in the 80s :)

But sure someone must at least remember that heroes did get the +1 wound from being mounted on an undead mount right ?

If you think about it warhorses costed 6ps and undead horses 10 while their attack being a ws2 attack, we always assumed the extra 4 points were for the wound and ethereal ability :) , for the heroes it was a better deal due to the attack thing you mention, that it seems strange that the +1w would only apply to heroes but it would appaer so… we played many games with our original 3rd edition :) I can post the picture of the stat line :)… I'll look for it

For what its worth I just checked The Citadel Journal, which introduced both the Skaven and Undead horse, as well as a fourth Lichemaster scenario (good issue!).

In this book the undead mounts follow the same scheme as other mounts. Plus 1 A but no change to wounds.

EDIT the plus one attack uses the rider's stats and riders cause fear, suffer from instability and move through terrain. The mount confers these benefits on its rider so presumably any non-skeleton riding one would suffer/benefit the same. When the rider is killed the mount fades away. There are no riderless undead mounts.

Bob

Interesting to see that the special cases that even the authors couldn't keep straight started so early…

Cavalry has also changed in some way in nearly every subsequent edition, both in general and in army specifics, so later material isn't going to be all that useful either.

well, not so much couldn't keep straight, 3rd edition was a great book and all army lists came in one compendium sonthere was really much more consistency… this is just an issue with a probable typo and the particular rules concerning undead mounts and how they worked with undead heroes.. the undead horseman was creature by itself..

the 3edition bestiary was really cool…

I think this was probably GW finest moments… in a world with internet this issue would have been solved instantly.. something like "yes it is a typo, and yes undead mounts are different whenpurchased for undead heroes as shown by page 260"

but for our gaming group in Argentina we couldn't get too many answers back from that island :)

I remeber calling once for a mail orde… customer support was fantastic..

I called from US too. It was a great company to deal with then.

There was always something silly about to be released. Couldn't wait to see what would be next.