It’s all fun in games in the PC version of classic Warhammer tabletop game Mordheim until somebody loses a limb—or their life.
In Mordheim: City of the Damned, players create a war band and then pray they stay alive through enough missions to grow powerful and prosperous.
It’s not an easy task, maintaining a group of human mercenaries, Skaven, Sisters of Sigmar or Cult of the Possessed. Within each randomly-generated mission lies the potential for life-threatening injury or even death. The slightest mistake or miscalculation in the middle of a turn-based tactics battle could cost the player a key asset, and even if they do everything right, the virtual dice used to calculate failures and successes might not fall in their favor.
Developer Rogue Factor officially released its take on the delightful small-scale sliver of the Warhammer miniatures game last week, and players that don’t mind being brutally assaulted by random number generation (and incredibly long loading times) are eating it up. The presentation is top-notch, the gameplay style familiar to players of games like Valkyria Chronicles or X-COM, and the grief of losing a member of your war band is quite real, as is the relief when a fallen warrior recuperates.
In the video below I create a new Skaven war band and take them on their first mission.
One of my band falls, but by the grace of random gods he fully recuperates instead of having to spend several days healing or worse—succumbing to his wounds.
If you are interested in playing and think you can handle a little (or lot) of punishment, Mordheim: City of the Damned is now available on Steam, on sale for 33 percent off ($26.79) until December 1.
Contact the author, a friend of all Skaven, at fahey@kotaku.com or follow him on Twitter at @bunnyspatial