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Mordheim - turn-based tactics in the Warhammer universe
- Thread starter ColCol
- Start date
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2006
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- 1,386
The console to PC port of a game that was never actually released on console is finally here. Not a huge amount has changed since the last build.
Ultimately, it's a diamond in the rough.
It's no The Witcher 3 in the looks department, but the atmosphere and presentation captures the Warhammer spirit. I used to hate the camera system, and now I'm not sure if they've incrementally improved it, or if I just developed Stockholm Syndrome.
For a free movement style system, it manages to capture the essence of a grid-based tactical game. Positioning is absolutely vital. The tactical synergy between free movement, overwatch, ambush (melee overwatch), and charge (ambush interrupt) works as well as any grid based system when considering the importance of formation and deployment. The only slight downside is the lack of overlays to display the relevant positional data: missile range, charge range, ambush zone of control, and so forth.
They toned down the injury system so it's no longer as problematic and triggering. The tension is still there, but having five or six guys knocked out no longer results in five or six cripples 'n' corpses. Bad shit still happens, just not to everyone all the time. I find myself risk taking more than I did in earlier builds, which is good. Overall I like it. It's like playing X-COM ironman.
The random mission objectives still fail to provide much motivation though. Wyrdstone Rush (gather x% of wyrdstone) is fine, and the only secondary objective realistically achievable by proactive action on the player's part. I find myself carefully considering my deployment options on those maps. Marked for Death (kill named characters and collect their tokens) is achievable, but primarily by blind chance. It's not simply enough to kill the targets before the rest of the warband routs; their tokens have to be collected which can be difficult as their corpses are often stuck in someone else's zone of control preventing the active character from looting it. And Crush their Will (bring their flag to your cart) is simply pointless. Both warbands are fully engaged in melee by the time the enemy cart is in sight meaning a rout is just around the corner, and actually picking up the enemy flag reduces their moral which ensures the rout occurs even sooner. Basically, Wyrdstone Rush is the only random mission type worth choosing. That's a shame, because the random missions are the most enjoyable part of the game and having more tactical considerations than pick up wyrdstone and kill the other guys would have added a lot.
The story missions are meh. On a first playthrough they tend towards frustrating as it's often difficult to locate the objectives, and on a second playthrough, once the map is familiar, they're merely dull as the warband shuffles from point A to B to C. I tend to ignore them until my warband has overleveled their difficulty so I can steamroll through them as fast as possible.
Codexer's will be disappointed to learn that it's not a fully featured RPG because there's no NPC dialogue trees, C&C, or opportunities to romance your warband companions. However, it does feature lesser known, and unfashionable, aspects of RPG games such as an xp-base leveling system, stats, skills, and equipment like in all those dorky '80s and '90s games. I feel they went way too broad with the skill system though. There are dozens upon dozens of both passive and active skills (plus spells) and I've used maybe six of them. A smaller range of focused skills trees, rather than a huge range of flat skills may have suited the game better.
Ultimately, it's a diamond in the rough.
It's no The Witcher 3 in the looks department, but the atmosphere and presentation captures the Warhammer spirit. I used to hate the camera system, and now I'm not sure if they've incrementally improved it, or if I just developed Stockholm Syndrome.
For a free movement style system, it manages to capture the essence of a grid-based tactical game. Positioning is absolutely vital. The tactical synergy between free movement, overwatch, ambush (melee overwatch), and charge (ambush interrupt) works as well as any grid based system when considering the importance of formation and deployment. The only slight downside is the lack of overlays to display the relevant positional data: missile range, charge range, ambush zone of control, and so forth.
They toned down the injury system so it's no longer as problematic and triggering. The tension is still there, but having five or six guys knocked out no longer results in five or six cripples 'n' corpses. Bad shit still happens, just not to everyone all the time. I find myself risk taking more than I did in earlier builds, which is good. Overall I like it. It's like playing X-COM ironman.
The random mission objectives still fail to provide much motivation though. Wyrdstone Rush (gather x% of wyrdstone) is fine, and the only secondary objective realistically achievable by proactive action on the player's part. I find myself carefully considering my deployment options on those maps. Marked for Death (kill named characters and collect their tokens) is achievable, but primarily by blind chance. It's not simply enough to kill the targets before the rest of the warband routs; their tokens have to be collected which can be difficult as their corpses are often stuck in someone else's zone of control preventing the active character from looting it. And Crush their Will (bring their flag to your cart) is simply pointless. Both warbands are fully engaged in melee by the time the enemy cart is in sight meaning a rout is just around the corner, and actually picking up the enemy flag reduces their moral which ensures the rout occurs even sooner. Basically, Wyrdstone Rush is the only random mission type worth choosing. That's a shame, because the random missions are the most enjoyable part of the game and having more tactical considerations than pick up wyrdstone and kill the other guys would have added a lot.
The story missions are meh. On a first playthrough they tend towards frustrating as it's often difficult to locate the objectives, and on a second playthrough, once the map is familiar, they're merely dull as the warband shuffles from point A to B to C. I tend to ignore them until my warband has overleveled their difficulty so I can steamroll through them as fast as possible.
Codexer's will be disappointed to learn that it's not a fully featured RPG because there's no NPC dialogue trees, C&C, or opportunities to romance your warband companions. However, it does feature lesser known, and unfashionable, aspects of RPG games such as an xp-base leveling system, stats, skills, and equipment like in all those dorky '80s and '90s games. I feel they went way too broad with the skill system though. There are dozens upon dozens of both passive and active skills (plus spells) and I've used maybe six of them. A smaller range of focused skills trees, rather than a huge range of flat skills may have suited the game better.
Another game to my always growing list...
LizardWizard
Prophet
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2014
- Messages
- 1,014
Holy shit, the interface/camera is a fucking horror show.
Have it installed on a SSD and the load times for story missions are ridiculous.
Have it installed on a SSD and the load times for story missions are ridiculous.
vonAchdorf
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2014
- Messages
- 13,465
I haven't played that much, but for now, it seems that it almost never makes sense to split your party. Local superiority earns bonuses, so risking inferiority in numbers in a duel is rarely balanced by the rewards roaming warpstone / chest collectors might yield, especially with the small backpacks.
Rellin
Novice
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2012
- Messages
- 32
I have no issues with the camera myself. The load time of 3 minutes per map is annoying, but is not ruining the game for me in anyway. I have to deal with it once per battle which is every 30 or 45 minutes. I go grab a beer, take a piss, and pack a bowl right while loading. The gameplay itself is fun, managing and growing my warband is fun. I am sure this is not for everyone, but I would not write it off out of hand.
LizardWizard
Prophet
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2014
- Messages
- 1,014
Haven't given multiplay (and I potentially see the appeal there with leagues and stuff) a shot as the price point for this pile is quite silly before they even released the 10-20 dollar warband DLCs. But there is no unfucking that abomination console-tardy UI/camera.
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2006
- Messages
- 1,386
Yeah. I find the core issue is lack of mission objectives that are both achievable and actually worth the effort of achieving in the first place. If the only thing to do on a map is rout the enemy then grouping your warband into one giant blob ASAP is the always winning strategy. I'd like to see more special locations on the random maps. Abandoned blacksmiths that contain quality gear, or merchant houses with gold. Anything that incentivises exploration.
I've put together some info for anyone looking for an outline of the mechanics (warning: image heavy).
Overview:
Tremble foolish man-things before the Horned Rat's chosen! A new warband can recruit three henchmen, one hero, and starts with a leader. As it gains experience, the active roster of a warband can expand up to ten members (or nine members if an 'impressive' unit is recruited). There's a reserve pool for resting wounded units, assuming you haven't fired their crippled asses. The level cap for both the warband as a whole and its individual members is ten. Warband experience earned is based on overall mission performance. Warband member experience is earned for KOing units, surviving missions, completing optional objectives, and being the most valuable member on the team.
It's always worth checking out the shop at every rotation. I got lucky here as the first rotation contains some actually useful starting equipment for Skaven. You can sell unwanted items also, and every scrap of gold is vital.
Units have a helmet/talisman slot, an armor slot, a primary weapon set slot, a secondary weapon set slot, and an inventory for consumables. With the exception of healing items/luck trinkets, consumables are virtually useless. They take up valuable inventory space, offer quite feeble bonuses, and often inflict maluses. Equipment and consumables come in three tiers of quality: white, blue, and purple. Better quality gear can be found in chests on the battle maps (if you're lucky), or appear randomly in the shop rotation (again, if you're lucky).
Action points, primary stats, derived stats, and skills?! I remember when RPGs used to contain stuff like this. Mordheim's action points are split into two pools: offense and strategy. Offense is obviously expended by attacking, and strategy is used to move, but some actions use a combination of the two. For example, aimed shots use both offense and strategy, as does disengaging from combat. There are nine primary stats. Each stat has one set of active skills and one set of passive skills associated with it. Each set contains six skills. That's one hundred and eight skills, plus three skills specific to each faction. Each skill also has basic level and a mastery level. Only heroes can improve skills to mastery level. None of the stats are 'dump stats' in my experience, although some are earlier development priorities.
There's also a set of magic spells for each faction, but magic is hilariously bad in Mordheim for reasons I'll go into later.
This is the campaign map. Both randomly generated and story missions appear here, and the vast majority of the game is spent in the random missions. Each random mission has a difficult level, a secondary objective type (the primary objective is always to rout the enemy), a wyrdstone quality level, a loot quality level, and a deployment type. Normal difficulty (the lowest difficulty) is scaled to your warband's level, so you'll always be facing a enemy warband of at least equal level to your own. Story mission are the only missions that have a static level. Here I've chosen a normal difficult Wyrdstone Rush mission as a) I don't want to die, and b) Wyrdstone Rush is the only secondary objective that isn't shit. Play careful attention to the deployment type, it greatly effects actual difficulty and the number of men you'll want to bring. Being stuck with a full warband on a "randomly scattered" deployment is bad. Being stuck on an ambush deployment is worse, but there's nothing you can do about that one.
In mission:
Loading a mission. Tech tip: If Mordhiem is loading slowly there may be lint trapped in your tape deck. Insert a cleaning cassette and cycle it through rewind/fast-forward for a couple of minutes.
Deployment. Shit, even on the strategic display the camera won't zoom out enough to show everything. Units can only be deployed on designated spots on the map. This often forces you to split your units. As they're the slowest, I've grouped my henchmen together near the largest cluster of wyrdstone in the east. My leader and hero are are over to the west where I can use their superior speed to collect the more loosely scattered stones before grouping up with the henchmen. The only place I know for certain that some enemy units will be deployed is around their cart in the southeast.
This is my single hero, Krispee, deployed near the warband's cart. Note the two sets of action points listed below his name. With six strategy points, and the extra points his class gives for climbing and jumping, he's my most mobile unit so I going to be sending him to collect the wyrdstone furthest from the main body of my warband.
On his way to link up with the henchmen, our glorious leader just collected some wyrdstone. One down, nine to go to win the secondary objective and get bonus xp. Every stone collected gives a random chance for a buff/debuff. Here the effect is +1 offense point cost to spellcasting. He's not a spellcaster, so no worries.
Unfortunately two members of the enemy warband have emerged from the mist near by, and one of them is a hero. Brave, loyal-loyal Krispee is far to the south, and the henchmen are some distance off the the west. Our leader is looking very isolated ...
When outnumbered, it's best to take advantage of the terrain where possible. I've used my unit's few remaining strategy points to place him between some wreckage. Hopefully the front is now narrow enough so that only one of those two cultists coming in from the north can engage him in melee. I've also got the problem that I'm out of strategy points which means he can't go into a defensive stance. Either I can set him to ambush, which means he'll dash out of his merger cover to engage the approaching cultists on their turn and maybe get a surprise attack, or I can just set him simply to end his turn in which case he'll remain in position but is otherwise defenseless. Tough choice.
I've decided to move two of the henchmen north in support of my beleaguered leader. However, it'll be another turn before they can get in range. The remaining henchman I sent south to collect nearby wrydstone. Assuming he isn't ambushed and brutally murdered, he should be able to join his two colleagues a couple of turns from now. Note the glowing blue circles. Those are movement nodes. representing the path your currently selected unit has taken. It's possible to retrace your steps along those nodes at any point during the unit's turn as long as they haven't interacted with anything (loot, traps, getting shot at, and so on).
Here's the current game plan. The two cultist in the north failed to reach glorious leader on their turn, and he's now free to withdraw to a wyrdstone filled building just south of a small square. On the same turn two of my henchmen are moving into defensive position in front of the same building. Meanwhile Krispee will grab the three wrydstones to the southwest and should be able to regroup with glorious leader in two turns. It's the final henchman in south center I'm worried about. Just to his east is the mostly likely position of the remainder of the enemy warband. If he's caught on his own now he's a dead rat.
Glorious leader ran straight into a trap on his way to the wyrdstone filled building. It's a nasty one too. -25% to defensive stances. His dodge chance has just been halved. This being Mordheim, and Mordheim being all goofy RNG as possible, traps can actually buff as well as debuff/damage, making perception checks a complete waste of strategy points.
Having collected the wyrdstone in the building, and gaining a nice 20% armour bonus in the process, our leader places himself in the skaven position of honour: in the rear where he
Note the blue circles. Like any good console aRPG, climbing/jumping can only be executed at specific points.
1. Krispee finished collecting all the stones in his area and is in a position to reach the coming battle in the square next turn.
2. The third henchman has also collected his fill of wyrdstone but is now out of strategy points and the enemy leader (4) has just appeared to the south. He's in trouble.
3. The remaining henchmen are free to move and I'm facing a hard choice. Do I move them both north so I have local superiority against the two chaos cultists up there? Or do I move one south to support the isolated henchman against the enemy leader?
4. There are two enemy warband units as yet unaccounted for. I've a feeling they're in the south, and so decided to abandon the southmost henchman to his faith.
Having moved two henchmen up to support their leader and placed them in ambush stance one of them manages to get the drop on an approaching cultist. Being armed only with a spear he hasn't done much damage, but a successful ambush strike does apply the debuff status effect "Surprised" which gives a penalty to hit.
My second henchman moves in to support. A unit which finds itself outnumbered and alone is normally forced to take an "All Alone" leadership test. Failure either results in the unit breaking from combat and suffering attacks of opportunity, or, if there's no room to flee, the unit is unable to take any offensive actions. This particular unit type, being insane, is immune to "All Alone" checks. Skaven, on the other hand, have terrible leadership stats and will squirt the musk of fear in the face of uneven odds.
lolz magic suxorz. The enemy leader caught up with my third henchmen and gave him a nasty beating. He then tried to cast a spell to buff his weapon (completely pointless as he had already attacked, the AI needs work), which backfired and KOed him. The ruinous powers of RNG were angry. So the enemy leader is down through no action of my own, two of the enemy unit have yet to make an appearance, and it looks like this mission is in the bag. Magic is really, really terrible in this game. Most of the spells are situationally useful at best, the offensive ones are underpowered, and casting them comes with an unacceptably high chance of being cursed, the nastiest of which happened to the enemy leader here: being hit for 6666 damage.
Brave-brave Krispee (1) has reached the melee. The enemy hero (2) is in ambush stance, so rather than approach directly I set Krispee to charge which breaks ambush stance and, if successful, inflicts the "Surprised" debuff.
Krispee's charge fails, and he gets successfully counter attacked for his trouble. Still, the odds are in my favour and ...
... tip even further in my favour as my third henchman finally arrives. There is still no sign of the remaining two enemy henchmen. Note the zones of control around both my own and the enemy's unit. No unit can take action if they are standing on another unit's zone of control and not already engaged in melee. Nor can units move out if melee if moving out would place them in another unit's zone of control. In this case the two enemy units are now completely boxed in an unable to disengage, but ...
... neither does my leader unit have any space to move in and joint the melee. I switch over to his secondary ranged weapons instead.
The blue and red bars in the top left represent your own and the enemy moral respectively. When it dips below a certain point, and every time it drops thereafter, the warband affected must make a moral check or rout. When moral hits zero the warband routs regardless of whether it has units left standing or not. I think a warband's total moral score is calculated based on the leadership scores of the warband's individual members. In anycase, the Sisters of Sigmar generally have the highest moral and are quite punishing to rout, whereas the Skaven have a low moral score and flee after relatively low casualties. High moral is not always a good thing. If the battle is going really badly it's usually better if your warband routs to prevent a bad situation getting even worse. It really hurts to be on the loosing side of a battle as the Sisters because it means most of the band will be KOed before it routs.
The enemy hero falls before the the combined might of my henchmen and Krispee, and his warband is forced to make a moral check which they promptly fail. Despite only loosing two units, those units were their leader and their hero which gutted their moral.
To the victor the meager spoils. Despite taking a few chances, and there being wyrdstone sitting in easy reach, I failed the optional objective by one damn wyrdstone because all my unengaged units' inventories were full. If the enemy had only held on for one more turn ...
Last edited:
anus_pounder
Arcane
Opened first spoiler. Saw Skaven. Brofisted. 
EDIT : Its actually a pretty good writeup to boot. :3
EDIT : Its actually a pretty good writeup to boot. :3
Last edited:
vonAchdorf
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 20, 2014
- Messages
- 13,465
I wonder if different primary goals other than routing the enemy warband could enhance the game. When people recommend to disengage fight, collect warpstone and re-engage locked down enemies (without attacking) to collect enough stones, it seems too be a quite silly mechanic. Well, for now, I only played like 10 missions or so, so I can't really judge the game yet, but there seem to be a few shortcomings currently.
MasterSmithFandango
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2008
- Messages
- 7,269
It's not perfect - but it has a lot going for it. Could use for more games like this with some cool mechanics and awesome STATS-based gameplay.
Bolded for emphasis.
- Joined
- May 18, 2015
- Messages
- 5,132
The loading times suck but I like the game overall. I like the whole "build your Warband" concept and I enjoy the tension of not knowing where and who will pop out at any time. The rules are cool also, never knew anything about Mordheim before.
Could certainly use some more variety in missions I guess
Could certainly use some more variety in missions I guess
anus_pounder
Arcane
Could use more factions. Namely orcs. I know nothing about Warhammer Fantasy and whether they'd fit into Mordheim, but I couldn't care less. Orcs and Orks <3
- Joined
- May 18, 2015
- Messages
- 5,132
They will add more....as DLC
Spent 50 hours in Early Access version but completely forgot about it until now.
But where are my dwarves damn it, I thought they promised new races throughout Early Access updates
But where are my dwarves damn it, I thought they promised new races throughout Early Access updates
LizardWizard
Prophet
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2014
- Messages
- 1,014
I have a skaven henchman with only one arm due to injury, which gives him a 20% dodge bonus but loses the ability to climb. He's good for scouting at least.
The deployment system is retarded on just about every level; why do I have cycle through the spots instead of just clicking where I want them on the strategic map.
The only time I lose horribly against the AI is when when I'm ambushed and the Sisters rape 1-2 of my skaven before they can even move otherwise the AI is completely shit at doing anything.
The deployment system is retarded on just about every level; why do I have cycle through the spots instead of just clicking where I want them on the strategic map.
The only time I lose horribly against the AI is when when I'm ambushed and the Sisters rape 1-2 of my skaven before they can even move otherwise the AI is completely shit at doing anything.
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2006
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Zeriel
Arcane
- Joined
- Jun 17, 2012
- Messages
- 14,097
I've never been given the option to select a deployment spot and I'm almost done with a complete playthrough. Am I just super dumb, or what the fuck?
Agree completely that the random nature of ambush/map type is a bit much, though. I love the idea of a game that enforces iron man, but encouraging the player to snipe certain map types and objectives is really bad. In general the singleplayer seems very half-assed and not thought through, if they didn't put much effort into that that is fine, but if this was them trying earnestly I don't even know what to say.
MasterSmithFandango
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2008
- Messages
- 7,269
Sorry - you kind of are.
You can select to place or you can select random placement (unless you get ambushed).
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