"It's GW and it's free" Topic

to download.

So why isn't everyone playing Mordheim ?

I got as far as designing a warband (or whatever the "squad" is called – is it a faction ?) but never actually played.

It actually requires a bit of investment in time to play a rewarding campaign. You need to do up the stats and improvement between games, arrange for games between warbands, and of course the key to having an interesting game is terrain.

I think terrain is a big entry hurdle – the rules can be used for anywhere but it's "set" in a vast ruined city so it feels weird taking it out to the sunny pastures and forest laden tables that most historical gamers can set up.

I simply don't have the wherewithal to cover a small table in medieval/fantasy buildings – buildings that are in ruins too.

So why isn't everyone playing Mordheim ?

Because it's "dead" and "no longer supported". Least that's what some people say.

It's not entirely balanced. A vampire from a starting undead warband can run through the human warbands with ease, given some luck.

But given how nice the game looks with the right scenery, we still play every so often.

Flashman14 – the Empire In Flames supplement is a set of rules and scenarios for rural Mordheim that might meet your needs. Also Dreamholme make some very nice and relatively affordable buidlings.

Because it's "dead" and "no longer supported". Least that's what some people say.

There's still quite an active community of Mordheim players around. Some of them hang out here:

link

Great game if fantasy skirmish is your thing in my opinion. The campaign (development) mechanism gives it an RPG-lite feel.

I've played a few very enjoyable games. The first ones we used two shoe boxes that were ripped in halves and quarters for ruined buildings, with the ripped up lids making free standing walls and a garden. Piles of aquarium gravel and a few twigs and stones from the garden added colour for other ruined bits.

G.

It's not a terrible game but it shows its age (over ten years now) and GW's quirks. The Warhammer statline and hit/wound charts are needlessly restrictive and you don't see UGO-IGO turn sequences on modern small-skirmish games. Also has serious balance issues, although the worst offenders are the magazine stuff – which I'm not sure are available for download? Too lazy to look. The setting is also a bit specific (compared to something wide open like the Song games) and the game mechanics aren't quite good enough to make me want to try to move it beyond the city/ruin of Mordheim.

Still has a small following around here, though.

We played the hell out of the game for years, apart from Space Hulk it is probably the best thing to come from GW.

We used it for a couple of Egyptian campaigns as well which work well.

I agree with BattleWorksStudio, in comparison to the Songs of… series it now seems very limited in scope and difficult to create unusual bands. I still like the setting and the card stock scenery that came with the box set is superb.

So, great game but there are now better that do the same thing.

I look back fondly on my Mordheim days, and have downloaded all the available supplements.

Pedrobear nails the issue right off the bat. Similarly to Blood Bowl, there's a lot of accounting to be done before, during, and after the game. If someone likes Blood Bowl on PC or Console, but can't deal with the board game version, chances are they won't be able to handle Mordheim.

On the other side of that same coin, The things you are rolling/figuring after the game are a huge part of the story of your warband. Without those things, Mordheim wouldn't be half the game it is. Whenever someone wants to know why I have a peg legged Captain with a headwound as my warband leader, I don't have to justify Gimpy O'DizzyNeck's existance… I can point out where he got each of the injuries along the way.

Now that's entertainment!

We used to play it all the time…
I really don't remember why we stopped.

Mordheim came out after my local gaming group withered away, so I played with my children until they lost interest in toy soldiers. I'd love to play "OMH" if any of my current group was interested. Now I use the Mordheim rules for conventions & my too infrequent games with friends. I modified it from IGO-UGO to a phased turn sequence & I leave out the magic & the skills that aren't relevant to the scenario. So far, I've run a Renaissance Skirmish between Montagues & Capulets, Border Reivers, ECW Skirmish, & a Barsoom adventure, all using "My Modified Mordheim". I think it works very well for any genre with Heroes & Minions armed with Renaissance weapons & not a lot of armor.

Thanks for the link citizen sade.

We are supposed to start a Mordheim campaign this summer sometime. I need to get with Scott and see when and how we are going to start it!

Mordheim came after Necromunda but it is a de-evolution of that game. From Necromunda, I missed territories, 40K 2nd Ed. melee rules, and some other stuff.

Other key problems (independent of Necromunda comparisons):
abilities that should have been assigned to boxed-set armies were given to later ones

there was no good rationale for the addition of the later armies

there are two scenarios that are auto-win for the skaven (one only if they are the attacker)

the undead were the only ones allowed to replace their leader if he was lost -- they were required to do so as well

That being said, I enjoyed Mordheim quite a bit.

We will be playing either Mordheim or Necromunda soon. It is a great game (they both are) and the rules are free. No reason for us not to play it.

It's not entirely free…. GW gets a small piece of your soul.

We used to play, but we find it to be a little bit clunky now and often totally unbalanced. Its fun, but not so much when your warband gets smashed into the ground every time just because you've chosen one that is at a disadvantage.

A good game (mostly) with gang add-on issues because they were not very well play-tested. Plus I think it should have used a Necromunda "territory" aspect. Still, a good game. Not their best, but good.

For terrain, I can recommend some ruined cardstock buildings from Dave Graffam. His ruined bundle is currently on sale:

link

You get a LOT of buildings you can custom tailor (layered PDFs) so no two buildings will look alike. And you can print and build as many as you wish. Not a bad deal.

I have multiple sets of the original Mordheim buildings, but just recently purchased the DG buildings to add more to my table top.

Nice thing is, you don't need more than a 4' x 4' table filled with stuff, and you can get by with less area.

I really enjoyed Mordheim. I ran a campaign in a game store for a few months. Problems only arose when I allowed people to use optional warbands like Dwarves and Ogres. Big mistake :)

The vampire leader could be really nasty when he got multiple attacks and frenzy. If the vamp and necromancer died in the same game, the entire warband dissolved. I watched a guy tear up his roster in anger and nearly cry when that happened to him :)

Interested parties should take a look at the Brueghelburg series by Lead Adventure. They posted some previews of a line called 'Metal Militia' and they scream Mordheim.

We have played pretty steadily since it was originally released.

Streetline: "It's not entirely balanced. A vampire from a starting undead warband can run through the human warbands with ease, given some luck."

All of the warbands in the original rules were extremely well balanced, in my experience (based on scores of games). The vampire is the nastiest fellow in the rules… backed by the crappiest support troops, overall. There is a temptation for him to move ahead of his band in order to wreck havoc… as you say, if he is lucky, he may survive – but more likely he is a dead (re-dead?) vampire if he gets cocky.

Many of the add-on warbands were fairly well balanced as well, with minor tweaking. However, for GW's additional campaigns for Mordheim (the Cities of Gold/Lustria one and the Khemre one) the warbands for those campaigns were intended for those campaigns only and were balanced against the other bands for that campaign – but players promptly imported them into Mordheim, which did create some balance issues. Cities of Gold warbands are overpowered compared to Mordheim warbands, and Khemre warbands are under-powered compared to Mordheim warbands.

Shadow Elves are probably the most unbalanced warband published by GW.

I'm playing Undead right now for the first time and while my vampire kicks butt the rest of the warband is not so hot. Except for the dregs, necromancer, and ghoul nobody else gets experience.

So in the beginning I had a jump on everyone else but now that we are almost halfway though the current campaign I find myself getting underdog xp points in most battles because I'm now a bit under powered against the other warbands.