Mordheim/Tactics

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This will soon become a 'tactics' hub for Mordheim, the fun game of who-can-spam-the-most-slings - If you want to add to it, feel free to help out!

Mordheim is wellknown as the campaign Skirmish wargame, which has inspired many games like it, such as the Heralds of Ruin Kill Team system and the Malifaux universe. The game itself is set in the destroyed city of Mordheim, which was smashed to splinters by a comet of pure Wyrdstone (which is plain renamed Warpstone), which in turn attracts mercs, chaos and other wicked things like a raunchy story thread attracts fa/tg/uys on a friday night. You can read about it here.

General Tactics

In the game, you create a warband of assorted models, gear them out and go on a happy adventure within the cursed city of Mordheim, collecting Wyrdstone, unique weaponry and fighting the other warbands over the spoils. It's not particularly balanced, but it sure is fun, and can be fukken great with a good band of friends, which might be the most important thing to remember - While the game, and the tactics on this site can be focused on winning and doing the absolute best, don't forget that the game is a friendly game and can easily be broken, if you're not careful... And by being careful, we mean 'be careful not to buy twenty Clanrats with Slings', so it's not that hard to keep yourself from making your campaign into the most hatefilled war of attrition ever to grace your gaming boards.

That said, Mordheim is a game meant for fun and games and for making your own band of heroes to adventure with, while creating stories about how your warriors fought over a stash of Wyrdstone, or how a Youngblood slew a great Possessed, or how you miraculously found that Hochland Long Rifle within the ruins. Mordheim is a game that creates stories, both fun and FUN*.

Creating your Warband

Making a Mordheim Warband in this day and age can range from being very expensive relatively to the size of the warband to be something you can do with the bits you have left around for Warhammer Fantasy. For some factions you have no choice but to go for the original models (Sisters of Sigmar and to some extend the Cult of the Possessed), while others can be made easily with existing kits (Mercenaries in particular, but Dwarves, Skaven and Undead can also be made with existing models from the modern day plastics). No matter what though, you'll certainly be doing a lot of conversion, unless the weapons the models come with suit you perfectly - For complete WYSIWYG, many models need to be scratch build in a way that no other game requires of you - Orcs with shortbows, Sisters of Sigmar with slings, Skaven with a Blunderbuss, all can be seen in the Mordheim, and often it's better to not accept the static nature of the models given. Especially ranged weapons are important, and if you can, sculpt some bows or slings on as many models you can - You never know if you'll need to fell an Ogre at range, 'cause close combat with such a beast ain't no good!

When starting a campaign (and playing Mordheim out of campaign is not really the what the game's for, so you're making one for a campaign), you start out with 500 Gold Crowns (or whatever currency your faction uses), which you'll then need to buy new warriors, new gear, pay upkeeps for big units and so forth. Gold is also what'll keep the Warband hummin' along during the campaign, and it's smart to have a little bit of Gold in your Treasury at all times, since it will help you get new warriors, if a battle doesn't go in your favour. A Warband must start with a Leader, who is the most powerful warrior in the Warband, and can buy more warriors from there: Heroes, who can gain equipment and have special abilities, and Henchmen, who can only gain experience. During the course of the game, the different models can move around the roster - Henchmen can become Heroes and gain special equipment, while Heroes may become Leaders for a time, if the Warband's Leader bites the dust.

A few notes to remember about Mordheim:

• Combat is very dangerous and risky: While all tapletop battle games will make you remove models left and right, Mordheim isn't messing around - Few models have more than one wound and more than T 3, and armour is, as we'll cover later, both expensive and easy to negate. Therefore, you don't want to make your warriors too expensive, and you want dedicated models to go directly to combat - Anyone else should mostly stay at arrow-point and pepper the enemy for as long as possible. Most importantly though, your models are not necessarily made to withstand any hit, so expect your combat people to be as much at risk as those they charge. For this reason, many like to outfit regular dudes with little to no armour, maybe a helmet if they are important and two weapons, since it'll net an extra attack. Also remember that a downed model isn't necessarily out of the game, as they might just be stunned or crawling about instead. Still, that's not the best place to be, so try and keep your guys from falling over.
• Don't go overboard with equipment: This shit ain't 40k - There's no way to make your guys so heavily armoured or give him so large a gun that nothing might stop him - All you get is a guy with a big sword at best, and he's only marginally better at punching people than if he were completely naked. Regular Henchmen are usually glad with just a weapon or two, and maybe a ranged weapon if they can take one, while Heroes can take some better gear, since they have a harder time dying and can use a lot of gear better than Henchmen. They also tend to have special abilities that are better to focus on rather than their weapons. Just remember to rein in you desire to go wild at the market - That Hochland Long Rifle might look nice, but it's 200 gc. Thats 40% of a starting Warband. Just... Don't.
• Fear the Rout Test: When 25% of your Warband are down and counting, you'll need to roll a Rout Test on the Ld of your Leader, and if you fail the test, you lose the battle automatically. As we've already seen, losing models isn't hard, so this isn't just an unfortunate happening that comes around once in a while, it's the way the game is lost most of the time. This is the main reason why you don't want to risk models, unless you know you can force a Rout test on the enemy instead. For the Warband who wants to explore and survive, it can be quite easy to keep the Rout away, since a Mordheim board is very cover-heavy, but for those who want to see blood, be prepared to run for the hills.
• Don't be a doof - Flee: When things don't go your way, or a battle simply doesn't seem like it can be won, give up. Rout voluntarily. Don't risk healthy warriors for the right to search for treasure, when said warriors can lose their healthiness very quickly. Sometimes things just doesn't go your way, sometimes your luck turns on you, sometimes you are just weaker than your enemy, or the enemy has the bonus of being Super Effective against you, and when that happens, don't sweat it - Just walk away calmly. Do mind though, that while this won't damage your Warband, it will definitely damage your growth, so if it happens too often, you might have problems later in the campaign.
• Money is Everything!: Unlike many wargames, Mordheim isn't about winning battles and making the meanest mother-hubbard of a Warband - It's about makin' those sweet mons. Before EVERY action you take, ask yourself: "How is this going to benefit me?". Will it save an expensive model from dying, or maybe secure a piece of Wyrdstone? Well then, then it makes perfect sense for you to go do something about that wouldn't it! But don't stay in a battle that will cost you more in the long run to replenish from. If you want to have some fun and risk your high-Experience Troll Slayer against a Vampire or something that is fine, but always remember that every action in Mordheim can cost you; and for every thing you have to pay for, you get less gold to pay cool shit with.

And last, but not least...

• Mordheim is supposed to be both fun and FUN*: If you wanted to play a wargame where every choice must make 100% sense and be optimized, Mordheim isn't for you. Mordheim is about creativity, stories your models make through game after game and loads of fucking random bullshit that'll make just wanna laugh at how stupidly awesome it is! When your Goblin charges an enemy Rat Ogre randomly and is made into pinkish paste, when your entire Warband is addicted to Crimson Shade and race across the table like an even-more shambling and bloodthirsty cover of Michael Jackson's Thriller (I mean what the fuck Kasper), and when a random critical hit causes your favorite Hero to bite the dust and have his eye gouged out so he won't be any use to you even though you gave him a Rifle, that's Mordheim - and it's fantastic. However, if that sort of thing infuriates you, maybe Mordheim isn't for you. Take the game lightly and laugh a lot, and Mordheim is some of the greatest fun you can have on the tabletop.

Warbands

Official Warbands

• Mercenaries

• Witch Hunters

• Skaven

• Undead

• Possessed

• Averlanders

• Ostlanders

• Kislevites

• Dwarfs

• Orcs & Goblins

Unofficial Warbands

• Bretonnians

• Pit Fighters

• Shadow Warriors

Campaigns

{Work in Progress - Feel free to add things yourself}