I've had an eye on this one for a while now and have been a bit surprised not to see a thread or even any posts about it here on OO. It's apparently going to be coming to early access soon on Steam.
The Mordheim Twitter account has Tweeted with news of an imminent early access stint, which is interesting news to those of us that have been saying for ages that Games Workshop's overlooked tabletop game deserves a digital incarnation in the XCOM turn-based strategy mould. You can sign up to their email newsletter if you want to know the very moment it pops up on Steam.
Mordheim is a game about skirmishing warbands in a city destroyed by a magical asteroid. Disparate hopefuls from every corner of the Warhammer universe visit to loot the city or battle its demon infestation.
The best thing about it is your squad. Good performances can see your footsoldiers promoted, but if you take a battering your men can lose limbs, gain scars that inspire fear in enemies, or just lose their minds entirely. We'll hopefully see a few similar mechanics in Rogue Factor's take, which is certainly starting to look the part if their screenshots are anything to go by.
"This game is best played with a warm cup of Folger's coffee in your hands, so you can actually smell the oppression while you relive the greatest period of all time. The period when white people discovered the world, and decided they didn't like it." - EUIV Steam user review
ColdSteel wrote:I've had an eye on this one for a while now and have been a bit surprised not to see a thread or even any posts about it here on OO. It's apparently going to be coming to early access soon on Steam.
The Mordheim Twitter account has Tweeted with news of an imminent early access stint, which is interesting news to those of us that have been saying for ages that Games Workshop's overlooked tabletop game deserves a digital incarnation in the XCOM turn-based strategy mould. You can sign up to their email newsletter if you want to know the very moment it pops up on Steam.
Mordheim is a game about skirmishing warbands in a city destroyed by a magical asteroid. Disparate hopefuls from every corner of the Warhammer universe visit to loot the city or battle its demon infestation.
The best thing about it is your squad. Good performances can see your footsoldiers promoted, but if you take a battering your men can lose limbs, gain scars that inspire fear in enemies, or just lose their minds entirely. We'll hopefully see a few similar mechanics in Rogue Factor's take, which is certainly starting to look the part if their screenshots are anything to go by.
Wow. I knew nothing about this. Mordheim is probably my favorite GW game. I'll be checking this one out. Thanks for the heads up!
EDIT: Woo! Sisters of Battle! They were my unit in Mordheim! Never won a single game!
Last edited by hentzau on Wed Nov 05, 2014 10:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
“We can never allow Murania to become desecrated by the presence of surface people. Our lives are serene, our minds are superior, our accomplishments greater. Gene Autry must be captured!!!” - Queen Tika, The Phantom Empire
I know basically nothing about anything Games Workshop, but mentions of XCOM and character development have me intrigued. I'll skip early access though.
That said, it is a bit like Warhammer XCOM with peglegs. Characters are hired, equipped and levelled up as they survive missions. Anyone ‘knocked down’ during a mission is out for the duration but their ultimate fate isn’t decided until the battle is won or lost. The roll of a die decides whether they live or die, and if they DO survive, a table of results provides them with a permanent injury. This can involve decreased stats due to broken bones or scarring, which is all well and good, but it’s the eye and limb loss that is of particular interest.
Yes, it’s horribly morbid, but the characters are chunky Warhammer characters with more than a hint of strange comedy around them. And if they do lose a leg, you can always pop a wooden one on. Nothing too complicated but it adds such character – the ultimate sign of a veteran warrior, dragging his false limb across a blood-stained battlefield. Or maybe the mark of a hapless fool, walking on wood because he walked into an ambush during his first day on the job. Such details as eyepatches and peglegs can be the making of a man.
"This game is best played with a warm cup of Folger's coffee in your hands, so you can actually smell the oppression while you relive the greatest period of all time. The period when white people discovered the world, and decided they didn't like it." - EUIV Steam user review
I like that. It overcomes the X-Com problem of people reloading a save every time someone gets killed. Besides, it fits the Warhammer flavor, where any particular character is less likely to die outright than he is to wander off crippled, disfigured, and insane.
Blackhawk wrote:I like that. It overcomes the X-Com problem of people reloading a save every time someone gets killed.
I hate that. It eliminated the X-Com option of people reloading a save every time someone gets killed.
OK, I don't really feel that way, it just seemed like the right response.
I have to play XCOM on Hardcore to prevent myself from reloading constantly. Then in a panic I discovered I could Alt-F4 and it resets to the start of the player turn when the game is loaded.
Always having the characters getting hurt sucks, but I never played the table top version, but I did follow it fora while.
I will most likely buy the game if the buzz is good, but I am a little gun shy on the GW video games, they are sometimes good, a lot of the time bad.
But I am cautiously optimistic that this one will be good.
Difficulties mastered are opportunities won. - Winston Churchill
Sheesh, this is one small box. Thankfully, everything's packed in nicely this time. Not too tight nor too loose (someone's sig in 3, 2, ...). - Hepcat
RMC wrote:but I am a little gun shy on the GW video games
With very good reason. Most of them have been a horrible waste of good gaming IP. Good turn based GW games are even rarer than that. Here's hoping this one bucks the trend.
"This game is best played with a warm cup of Folger's coffee in your hands, so you can actually smell the oppression while you relive the greatest period of all time. The period when white people discovered the world, and decided they didn't like it." - EUIV Steam user review
It looks like it could be genuine turn-based goodness, although the small unit count on each side gives me concern. Maybe that's just for demonstration purposes.
I would have preferred a Necromunda game but this looks good. I'll be waiting for reviews & impressions though since as RMC already pointed out, some are good some are bad.
Holman wrote:Mordheim early access is on Steam Midweek Madness for $22 (33% off).
The discussion on Steam suggests that they're on the right track but that it isn't very fully fleshed out yet. Anyone played it?
I've only played a bit so far... been waiting for them to get more done. The actual battles are I think really fun, but when I played it last none of the campaign (or even warband design) infrastructure was there.
Not sure about saving. I might give this another spin sometime to check out the new patch and I'll see if you can save it.
I thought the gameplay vid was interesting but I couldn't figure out why you'd scatter your troops across the battlefield. Seems to me like, as always, you'd want to keep your troops together. focus on killing one enemy at a time to take them out. In the video though it seems like for the most part, they scattered their troops hither and yon, until towards the very end. Unless someone has an AOE weapon/spell, seems like keeping your troops together is the better tactic.
Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions. – G.K. Chesterton
I played a little more of this last night. The battles I think are really solid... they pretty much use a slightly more complicated version of the combat mechanics from Valkeria Chronicles, but it really works well and visually looks amazing. I especially like that each piece of equipment changes how your characters look.
I was playing Skaven in a quick game, and I think the best moment was when I rushed up my sorcerer to zap one of my opponents heavy infantry units with a spell, only to have him fail to cast the spell and then get blasted by a chaos god and die.
Right now it's just fighting one off skirmishes and you can customize your warband between battles, but I feel like I'm going to get lost in this game once the campaign and roleplaying aspects where your warband gains experience with each battle and you can find rare loot to equip are in.
Last edited by Sepiche on Fri Feb 06, 2015 1:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Sepiche wrote:they pretty much use a slightly more complicated version of the combat mechanics from Valkeria Chronicles, but it really works well and visually looks amazing.
I want to play this but am going to wait for the stuff Sepiche mentioned to go in first.
"This game is best played with a warm cup of Folger's coffee in your hands, so you can actually smell the oppression while you relive the greatest period of all time. The period when white people discovered the world, and decided they didn't like it." - EUIV Steam user review
tgb wrote:Apparently you can't save mid-battle, so that makes it a non-starter. Unless that changes at some point.
I know that's one of your pet peeves, but battles in this are pretty short in my experience. 10 - 15 minutes and it's all turn based, so no penalty for stepping away for a bit.
Yep, I have this as well. And I am apparently stalking Hepcat, but that's fine as he is one sexy man. I am waiting for a few more patches.
I think I am finishing up wasteland 2 tonight.
Difficulties mastered are opportunities won. - Winston Churchill
Sheesh, this is one small box. Thankfully, everything's packed in nicely this time. Not too tight nor too loose (someone's sig in 3, 2, ...). - Hepcat
I did not buy it, but have it on the watch list, and I'm sure I'm going to jump once it gets a little further along. Almost bit at the sale price, but was able to hold off. This time.
And... going to wait until it is baked quite a bit more before going back in. Got through the first tutorial and decided to continue once 'complete'. More battles then had a loot sack show up once I defeated an enemy. The action it showed was something like "##Action_Name_Loot" but went onwards, when I tried to take the contents (with more placeholder / default text) I was rewarded with something I haven't seen in a LONG time - a full hard lock of my PC. Yay.
Just went to check in on this and see how things were coming only to see it looks like they just put out the elusive progression update today. No idea how well it works yet, but if I get some time tonight I'll give it a try and report back.
Patch notes here:
Updates
Our eighth content update is 0.22.4.1 and it provides the following new features:
- Single Player Campaign Mode: Act 1 (Mission 1 to 4) for all 4 warbands is available, offering a new dimension to the game.
- Veteran System: Perform tasks to gain Veteran Ranks which unlock unique out of combat abilities. This progression is kept and shared for all Warbands.
- Warband and Warriors Progression: Warbands must be started from Rank 0 and all saves, from previous Early Access updates, will be deleted. Warband and Warriors will be able to progress up to Rank 5
- Time System: Only one battle per (in-game) day can be performed. If a Warrior is learning a new spell/skill, is treated after an injury, or is waiting for its upkeep, it won't be available for missions.
- Smuggler System: Gather wyrdstones during your mission, ship them and increase your reputation, with factions, to unlock rewards. Beware, if you're too late on a shipment.
- Permadeath and Injuries: Fighting within the streets of Mordheim won't be without consequences anymore. Warriors might lose limb or worse.
- Fully accessible Hideout and revamp of the Main Menu: You will be guided by a tutorial through a now complete and fully accessible Hideout. Oh, and we change the Main Menu screen as well, hope you'll like it!
- Graphic Options: You will now be able to tweak the visual of Mordheim yourself directly from the Options Menu.
Well I was planning on just checking this out for a bit and then getting some Bloodbowl in, but I ended up spending most of the night playing Mordheim. I'll just say that with a few caveats the campaign mode is exceptionally fun and I couldn't stop playing just one more skirmish until way too late last night.
So first the campaign mode... you start by creating a warband by choosing one of 4 factions: chaos cultists, skaven, imperial mercenaries, or sisters of battle. Each has a unique stable of units and weapons available. You begin with only a handful of gold and have to recruit a starting warband with 1 leader, 1 hero, and up to 3 henchmen (plus reserves if desired). No big guys to start out with... you have only a limited selection of units at first, and will unlock more units and slots for them as your warband itself levels up. Your goal in Mordheim is to explore the city looking for warpstone to send back to your patron, or sell for money to local smugglers. Each day of the campaign you can fight one random skirmish with varying goals, usually to rout the enemy warband along with side objectives like gathering warpstone, killing certain enemies, etc. The reward for fighting is generally experience, equipment, money, and/or warpstone.
The characters have a variety of stats effecting their chances to hit, dodge, parry, morale, movement, damage, etc. and they seem to get points to spend on these skills independent of leveling. Progression in the game starts pretty slow as well... after 5 or 6 skirmishes only my leader and a couple other units had graduated to level 1 (you start at 0). In addition to stats each class has an assortment of skills both active and passive, although they are expensive to train up and take time to train as well. Next is equipment... each unit has different weapons it is skilled in using and you equip your warband with gear scavenged during battles and from a very limited assortment of items from the local store. The warbands start very lightly equipped with minimal armor and weapons, but part of the fun of progression is that early on even finding some light armor or a helmet is cause to celebrate. Also each of the items you equip from necklaces to helmets to armor all show up on each character, so you can actually see how a unit is kitted out just by examining them closely during combat which is a nice touch. There are also quite a few customization options for each character... most classes have a variety of different body parts and colors that can be independently chosen.
Now the battles... the arenas are randomly generated from different tilesets based around the different regions of Mordheim: the noble quarter, the docks, etc. The deployment is also random with your warband sometimes deploying together near your wagon, spread out searching building, etc. and the same goes for the enemy warband. This can sometimes mean you are a bit screwed by having a team spread across the map while your enemies are in a tight formation from the start, but like any good rogue-like part of the game is dealing with bad situations and possible defeat. Units that lose all their hit points in battle aren't automatically dead, but instead are out of action for the rest of the battle and as part of the aftermath have a random chance of dying or making it back to camp, sometimes unscathed and with all their equipment, sometimes severely injured and with nothing left.
The strategy mainly consists of finding the enemy warband while exploring the area and trying to get as much warpstone and loot as you can. If you are defeated you don't gain any of the resources left on the battlefield, but any items on units that escape are kept, so there is potentially an advantage to avoiding conflict, getting warpstone, and getting out. Each unit moves in initiative order one by one. When a unit you control comes up you switch to a third person view of that unit and can move them around at will in a small circle that represents one movement point. Once you move outside that circle you get charged with another movement point until you have no more to spend and end your turn. Each unit has a small zone of control around it that no other units can end their turn in, and combat happens when your unit walks into the edge of an enemies zone of control, locking them into melee until one unit goes down, routs, or one of the units disengages. Once you are in contact with the enemy you use attack points to make attacks. Farther into the game I believe there are special attacks and skills that you can unlock, but early on it's mainly just charge (which rushes you a short distance forward and into contact) and a basic attack. I should also point out that, despite controlling the units in real time, all of the combat is turn based, very similar to Valkyria Chronicles for those who have played that.
So far combat tends to end once you've knocked out a few enemies and enough of them fail morale checks that the warband breaks combat and runs away. Given the random nature of combat and the fact that most battle are fairly even in terms of units this means you will almost inevitably get defeated sometimes, but so far the chance of completely losing a unit seems relatively low. I've fought about 6 battles and over the course of those was defeated twice and had units go down 6 or 7 times, but I've yet to have anyone die. I do have a number of henchmen unavailable for combat while recovering, and I lost my only throwing stars when my assassin was ambushed during one fight with chaos cultists, but all in all my band is relatively intact.
After battle you'll see a summary of each unit and how much experience they gained, what happened to them after they fell in battle, as well as any items you were able to get during and after the skirmish. Injured units will have to have their treatment paid for as well as a few days off to rest and recover, and before they become available to fight again you also have to pay all your units that took part in the fight. If you were victorious you will get a good amount of any loot and warpstone left laying on the battlefield, but if you are defeated you only get what you manage to take out on your characters.
So on to some of the more questionable bits of the game. The first thing you'll probably notice is the battle load times... they are LOOOOOONG. This is mostly because there is so much randomness with each battlefield it takes time to generate, and this will surely be improved as they get closer to release, but it's a good minute or two load at the start of each battle. Once the battlefield is loaded however they run great, look beautiful, and since battles generally take a bit anyway it's only a little annoying.
The next oddity is spotting. Unless I'm missing something there is very little warning that the unit you're moving just came into line of sight of an enemy. I've noticed the question marks on the initiative track will turn to the unit symbol if a unit spots it, but otherwise there are zero notifications that you just spotted an enemy, and even if you know you spotted someone you still have to carefully pan your view around looking for them. It's awkward enough I feel like I'm probably missing something obvious in the controls or the UI, but at the moment a good chunk of battles for me is carefully peering around the map looking for enemy heads in windows or hiding around corners. Related to this there's also no minimap. The maps can be good sized and it's very easy to get turned around and go the wrong way when you're trying to rush help to another unit. On the other hand this does make for some great immersion where you're carefully looking around the map for landmarks that can help you get to cut off units before they get overwhelmed or leaving unit in line of sight of eachother to help keep your bearing and make reinforcing easier.
Another potential issue right now is that... holy crap it's hard. I mentioned you will likely find yourself in situations where the best option is probably just to cut your loses and run, and even then sometimes a unit will start close to a pack of enemies and not have much chance to even get away. The combat is also very random and through no fault of your own you can find your units overmatched by enemies they should be able to handle. So far I've taken some licks in my campaign, but I've got enough warpstone and then some for my first shipment home, and I haven't had anyone die, so despite losing 2 out of 6 battles I'm still in good shape which is kind of nice to see.
I'm still also trying to get my head around the tactics. At lower levels my units lack a lot of flashy skills to use, so combat generally devolves into a large melee. I'm starting to see that using natural choke points as well as keeping your units together is a good strategy. With the way zones of control work only so many units can get into combat at once, so a couple of well positioned units in a doorway or alleyway can give a huge tactical advantage. The faction I'm playing (Skaven) in particular don't have access to spells initially and very limited access to ranged weapons, so this makes them a little less versatile than some of the other factions.
If anyone's been waiting for this to get a little closer to done I'd encourage you to take a look at it again. Despite some issues I was blown away by how well thought out and fun the new campaign mode is and I'm curious to hear others impressions.
Sepiche wrote:Well I was planning on just checking this out for a bit and then getting some Bloodbowl in, but I ended up spending most of the night playing Mordheim.
Really appreciate the detailed writeup Sepiche. I played it several releases ago -- maybe early-to-mid summer. They had just added an overhead view.
I really liked it. I did find it very difficult to get an overall sense of the battlefield though, even with the newly added overhead view, so I'm hoping that's something they improve upon.
Has there been any changes to the estimated release date? Last I heard it was "sometime by the end of 2015".
ydejin wrote:They had just added an overhead view.
Holy crap, I totally missed they added that until you said something. Helps me a ton in getting my bearings and figuring out where to go. I knew I was missing something.
ydejin wrote:Has there been any changes to the estimated release date? Last I heard it was "sometime by the end of 2015".
Haven't heard anything definite. There's still some polishing and bug fixing yet to do it looks like, but it feels pretty solid after about 25ish battles now.
I crank it up every now and then to see how it is coming along and then realize I really shouldn't start it until I have time to dedicate to learning it.SO much there to learn and get a handle on, especially (I would assume) coming in with no exposure to the source material. One of these days...
