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Who do you think?

The obvious answer for best is Shadow Elves as they are soo overpowered but this shouldn't be an issue as anyone choosing them will naturally be dragged out back and thrashed.

For me though of the rest mostly balanced warband: Undead for both.

Most undead troops are obviously pants so it's a hero driven warband, so if they don't develop or get unlucky with injuries then they can be a real difficult prospect to turn around. Damaged heroes is a problem for any warband but it's particularly a problem for the Undead.

The flip side of this of course is If you can get the Vampire a few battles in without injury they will have enough xp to go from scary to terrifying (a vampire with sprint and evade is the funniest thing ever!). More difficult is getting the Necromancer experienced, ditto the dregs.

If you can get a Necromancer with a extra spells in the bank he can start to drive the otherwise static zombies on and make the warband more than just about the Vampire. If you can get both of these things going then they can overwhelm most opponents.

Shadow Warriors start out a little rough everything is so expensive and each loss hurts badly. But, after getting some skills, equipment and money in the stash, I never had a problem against any similarly experienced warbands oreven higher ranked ones.

I did always find the Dark Elves to be particularly brutal in a campaign though.

A good case has been made for undead. I put forth Ogre Maneaters. Yes they are horrifying, they also, on average, will only have 4 models on the board when they start and any amount of range will cause them serious problems. I mean i've seen a Marenburg warband shoot them right off the table after 2 turns, and thats because of their lousy leadership. However once they get going they are near impossible to stop.

Skaven are super broken. I am a horrible list builder in 40k and WFB and lose probably 8 out of 10 games in them (I play all-comers lists and once my army is built I tend to stick with it so people know what I'm bringing) even when I've got kibitzing coaches trying to help.

I used to crush my fellow Mordheim buddies using Skaven though. In nearly every case, opponents can't take out your giant rat spam fast enough to stop them.

 Grimmor wrote:
A good case has been made for undead. I put forth Ogre Maneaters. Yes they are horrifying, they also, on average, will only have 4 models on the board when they start and any amount of range will cause them serious problems. I mean i've seen a Marenburg warband shoot them right off the table after 2 turns, and thats because of their lousy leadership. However once they get going they are near impossible to stop.

I've never seen Ogres played but they sound like they could be a intimidating to confront.

Now what i didn't mention is that unlike to add an Ogre Merc to my undead warband. Ogres are pretty meh compared to most hired swords out there but have an M6 vampire and Ogre with their combined combat skills is one of the most scary things in a starting warband I can think of. Synergy as some would call it.

Well, I'm going to give somewhat of a minority opinion and say that while Skaven start off very strong, other warbands can gain ground on them over the course of a campaign as they develop better tools for dealing with them. The biggest one is effective long-range shooting.

Also somewhat of a minority opinion, but we found that human mercs -- while maybe not "the strongest" -- tend to be very underrated. They're extremely flexible with a great equipment list, and someone who's skilled with warband development can really put that to use.

Witch Hunters are probably the weakest of the rulebook warbands to start, but they can become formidable with time and careful advancement. I wrote some tactica stuff for them here years ago.

Among the expansion warbands (and leaving out the Lustria stuff, which tends to be OP), I found O&G to be very difficult to run. Their animosity rule will burn you badly at all the worst times. Dwarf Treasure Hunters are also a standout because they borderline on breaking the game in some respects, but then can struggle mightily in any scenario that demands that they actually move. I ran Averlanders and found them to be quite good. Lots of shooters combined with a very good henchman type (Mountainguard).

 notprop wrote:
The obvious answer for best is Shadow Elves as they are soo overpowered but this shouldn't be an issue as anyone choosing them will naturally be dragged out back and thrashed.

As a Shadow Warriors player, I take offense to this!

Shadow Warriors can become pretty absurd in terms of power, but it all comes down to the player itself. If he's TFG and can't contain himself, please take him outside and shoot him in the head.
There are ways to play Shadow Warriors without being OP, but the player must accept that he is going to nerf himself.