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First Impressions of Mordheim

As a miniature wargamer, Mordheim is one of those games that you hear about quite often. It's like that popular movie from the 80s that everyone seems to have seen except you. What little I knew about Mordhiem before last week amounted to this:

  1. It's a fantasy skirmish game
  2. It's based on Games Workshop's mass battle fantasy game Warhammer Fantasy Battles (you can see how they really stretched for a name on that one...)
  3. It's yet another game that people seemed to love that GW no longer supports
Like some of the other specialist GW games, the rules took on a life of their own and were, for a brief time, available for free download from their website. I was given a copy of the rules and built a warband. I fully admit that I only skimmed through the book until I found the undead section, where I set about building a team based on figures I actually owned.

We played a three player game last night.




After only one game my overall thoughts on the game are as follows:
  • most undead (zombies!) are tremendously slow
  • the undead have terrible ranged ability
  • there are a lot of tables and modifiers to dice rolls, which for the most part still end up with you rolling one or maybe two dice at a time, and you generally need 4 or better
  • the game itself feels pretty slow
Of course I have only played one game, so this isn't a review so much as a first impression. We went through the post-game stuff as though it was a campaign game, so I may be coerced/convinced to play a follow up.

In retrospect I sort of feel like you could get almost the same game experience using the Kulten rules from UMW, but of course you'd miss out on being able to play as rangers, elves, skaven and the like. If we play a few more games I might eventually write a full review. Or I might not.
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Comments

Christopher Sheets said…
So it's a resounding "meh." That sounds fair. I haven't played Mordheim since I was a frothing GW fan, but your well-written assessment seems to jibe dead-on with my memories.
10:05 AM
PMMDJ said…
A lot of the praise for Modrheim (and its spiritual predecessor, Necromunda) come from the campaign rules. One-off games are boring, but as figs fight on, they each advance differently, and thusly after time, your forces grow and change in unexpected ways, driven by the battles you fight.
10:41 AM
Obsidian3D said…
Thanks. I maybe sound more critical than I intended. The game was fun but my warband was certainly outmatched against two range heavy opponents in dark elves and rangers. Move, get shot, repeat.
4:35 PM
Obsidian3D said…
I would agree with you. I think playing a campaign is ofte. A great way to get invested in your figure profiles. Watching the grow and succeed or fail and die makes the overall experience mich more satisfying.
4:37 PM
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