Mordheim: City of the Damned

[NickAragua]

Yeah, not only is it unforgiving, it's also extremely cheap at times. Other than my early failures, which were due to my tactical mistakes, most of my casualties now come from UI errors when I accidentally invoke 'end turn' or run over the wrong pixel.

That being said, I've had a 15-game victory streak now (in my opinion) because I mercilessly abuse the AI's unwillingness to focus its forces in one spot. I still occasionally lose one or two guys, but when you bring eight guys to a fight while the opponent only brings four, it's hard to lose completely. Also, the AI doesn't cycle its wounded guys out of combat, is really bad at using ranged guys, etc. Plus, the pathfinding isn't too hot so the big guys tend to "hump the wall" (as do, occasionally, the normal guys).

[GreenGoo]

Ah, that's a shame. The game gives you a good run for your money at 4-6 sized warbands.

And...I just "fired" my chaos hero somehow despite hitting the "B" button on my controller (B is the cancel action button). So somehow I managed to choose "fire" which shouldn't even have been an option on the screen I was on, instead of cancelling the action I confirmed it by hitting "B".

If it wasn't right after my first match with this warband I would be way more upset about it. As it is, I'll just toss the whole warband and start over.

I'm not sure what I'll do when it becomes easier to milk the poor ai. Maybe focus more on secondary objectives with scouts and runners so that my main combat group is never at 100%.

I must admit the poor ai is disheartening to hear about.

[ColdSteel]

Be aware that the fewer the units you bring into a battle the better the rewards and experience you get are. It's also fewer units you need to pay. It makes the battles tougher but you get rewarded for it.

[NickAragua]

Yeah, the enemy warbands scale with what you bring to the fight. So, if you bring a 4-rat squad, you're going to fight something of similar size. If you bring a big guy, you'll be seeing a big guy as well. The only things that don't scale are the fixed campaign missions, so, for those, bring everything you've got. I briefly toyed with the idea of camping out in one and running up the score by killing the trickle of reinforcements, but it's still a little risky - I'd rather not lose the mission or take casualties because a guy with a halberd rolled a 0 charging one of my guys.

I've also started sending one or two guys away from my main fighting group to gather up extra wyrdstone and loot. Completing those secondary objectives nets everyone a very good chunk of XP, not to mention the money and loot.

Don't get me wrong, it's still challenging. It's not like I can walk my guys around by themselves gathering wyrdstone and chopping down swarms of enemies. I still need to be careful of traps and positioning, avoid overextending my formation, etc. But now that I've got the hang of the basic game mechanics and tactics involved, I don't have to rely on the RNG as much. Also it helps that my guys have leveled up from "incompetent scrub" to "scrub". Well, they're still incompetent sometimes, I mean, what kind of moron misses a 90% climb roll and KOs himself, anyway?

[GreenGoo]

Just exploited the crap out of some high ground and wonky ai. I feel a little bad but things go wrong so often that I did it anyway just to have a hugely successful mission for once.

Now I've got a henchman who could train a skill but 100 gold is a little rich this early in the game. My leader had already eaten 100g for his own training.

I've opened up another hero slot in my active band. Bringing another hero would get him started on xp but would also bring another enemy hero. I've also opened up the second hero type and while I really want one, I already have 2 because my first is recovering from having his leg cut off. Interestingly he's still viable. He's a little slower and can't climb, but he's just as strong in combat as he ever was, having reached rank 1. The clairvoyance mutation is a nice perk, making a rarely used ability (perception) now 100% and 0 strategy points.

So do most people earn their gold through selling wyrdstone? Gear seems a poor way, as it sells for so little. Any other ways that I might be missing?

[NickAragua]

Yep, wyrdstone.

I'm a little OCD, so I tend to let guys with really severe injuries (stuff like "-10% melee hit chance") either die or fire them gracefully (but expensively). As I mentioned before, these warbands apparently have workers unions, so if a guy gets his legs cut off you can't just kick him to the curb, you have to pay for medical treatments AND salary before cutting him loose. But it's ok to just let him die (although he does eat up a reserve slot while doing so).

I would suggest adding the second hero type anyway. It'll add some good variety to your party. Also, having more guys on your team means you have more opportunity to dogpile individual enemies 2, 3 or even 4 on 1 to take them out quickly.

[GreenGoo]

Yeah, that exploitative match I had 4 guys surrounding a single enemy, with everyone playing defense. That wasn't the exploitive part, at least imo.

Just had a leader lose his left arm. I was building him as a parry king but that went out the window. I was going to replace him but he gained +20% dodge so I guess he's going to be a dodge master now.

In that match I collected and wagon'd the secondary objective but lost the battle. Except for the arm thing it worked out better than winning the fight and missing the secondary objective.

I too will let severely injured guys die or leave unpaid, although I haven't played enough days in a single campaign for them to leave/die yet.

[GreenGoo]

Hmmm, seems I'm rotating through 4 warbands, one for each type. It does help illustrate the differences between the units, and knowing what your opponent can do can really help in a tactical setting.

I'm slightly confused about when to ship wyrdstone, what the ramifications are in terms of gold and influence when and where I ship the extra wyrdstone, and if there are more/less efficient ways of doing things in the smuggler's den. I've been suffering paralysis in this area because I don't want to make a mistake and gain less benefit from my limited wyrdstone supply than I could have achieved.

Opinions?

[NickAragua]

From the looks of it, you're going to get a shipment request once every 10 or so days (+ whatever bonuses you have that allow you to delay said shipments) regardless of how long it takes you to fulfill the request. So, once you gather enough wyrdstone to fulfill a request, feel free to dump the rest into side factions. You need the money to train skills, pay your guys, hire replacements, etc, so don't hoard it. Generally, ten days is more than enough time to gather up the loose chunks of wyrdstone you need. One thing to note is that once your reputation level goes up with a particular faction, it will drop the amount it pays for subsequent shipments while the others will start paying more, so it pays to spread it around.

One trick I read about recently that I might consider if I'm really hard up for wyrdstone is to go hide in a building somewhere and wait for the other team to grab all the wyrdstone then go beat them up.

I tried to tackle the third Skaven campaign mission last night, and man if that stupid-ass Fylch Sharptail hadn't gotten himself killed by a random scrub, I'd have won hands down. More like Fylch Dulltail if you ask me. That mission had everything going right at first, including the enemy "impressive" trying to cast a spell but failing so hard that she got a "smite" effect, which killed her instantly. Then, as I'm mopping up and trying to find the last doodad, some random scrub ambushes Fylch and gets two attacks in a row on him, scoring a kill and a warband rout. At least nobody else got injured, so the only thing that really happened was my guys getting a bunch of attribute points. We'll try again, this time with a higher warband rating.

[GreenGoo]

My filthy skaven assure me that Fylch is someone to be feared and/or grovelled to.

So you're saying give the main faction the delivery (but no more), then give some to a secondary faction until you level with them, then give the rest to the 3rd faction?

I see how that would maximize the gold income (and possibly influence). Do you give up anything significant by not focusing on a single faction to level it up faster?

[NickAragua]

My filthy skaven assure me that Fylch is someone to be feared and/or grovelled to.

So you're saying give the main faction the delivery (but no more), then give some to a secondary faction until you level with them, then give the rest to the 3rd faction?

I see how that would maximize the gold income (and possibly influence). Do you give up anything significant by not focusing on a single faction to level it up faster?

Yeah, he's pretty good and can take out most enemy scrubs by himself in one turn, but the Skaven don't really have any meaningful healing capability (I misread "black rage" and thought it healed you - nope, does 30 damage instead), so if a fight goes on long enough, he's going to be hurting and at high risk just like any other rat dude. I don't know if the other guys have any kind of healing capability, but I haven't seen it yet.

Once you complete the delivery for the main faction, they effectively become like one of the other factions - so you can include them in your "sell to the highest bidder" rotation. Also of note, they do pay you some money for the shipment, but it's something like 50% of the market rate. If you rotate, the higher tier rewards come a bit slower, but you get more money. I haven't gone past level one for any of them and I can't say that I see any of those rewards as being critical. The higher-tier ones seem nice but not game-breaking (like attribute/skill training books, discounts on skill training, small amounts of consumables).

[GreenGoo]

Yeah I was just referring to the skaven warband intro that talks about fylch.

I shipped my first shipment, then shipped some more to the smuggler's den. I didn't reach tier one in either faction but I did get enough cash to train a couple of guys at low end passive skills.

So your comments broke my paralysis, so that was awesome.

[GreenGoo]

Walked through a break in a wall with a darksoul and thwhack, he takes an arrow to the head. It's sticking through his eye and out the back of his head. He leans into his 2-h axe swing and does some damage to the archer, who proceeds to run off and remove himself as a threat.

Back at warband central, turns out the darksoul lost an eye. No duh. How he's even alive is a mystery of the warp. I'm keeping him even with his -10% to hit. He's almost level 3 and it might be interesting to see where he ends up.

[NickAragua]

... aand looks like I ran through all the luck that these useless Skaven had. You know how I was complaining about the AI not being able to bunch up? I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. They do. Good god. I can't even get through a goddamn mission without half my useless warband dying like a bunch of morons. Think I'm going to take a little break from this game, it's getting me a little too worked up. The good part is that I finally got all my PC upgrade parts so once I get that rebuilt, I can go replay X-Com 2 and at least be able to load if one of my guys dies from a cheap shot 10% charge but can't hit an 80% shot three times in a row (and forget about making a 65% dodge).

Actually, it's not entirely luck. The thing is, I'd gotten used to the action point arrangement: scrubs have three, which means they charge or make an attack. Heroes and Leaders have 5/6, which means they make two attacks, maybe three. I've gotten to the point where every enemy scrub suddenly has two attacks and the heroes/leaders have three guaranteed (even saw one guy hit with four!). Meanwhile my guys have not caught up, so whereas before, I'd easily win a 2 on 1 fight, I tend to lose a guy. And it's hard to find a 2 on 1 fight. Once I calm down and no longer feel like smashing the keyboard, I'm going to start camping out in buildings (assuming my warband doesn't die and/or quit from not being paid). Let's see the jackasses try to surround me when only one or two can get in at a time.

[GreenGoo]

My last couple of battles have been a tactical knife fight as both bands jockey for position to try to get alone checks on key units. Using the control areas around the base of each unit are used to open/close paths to wounded/vulnerable units too.

[GreenGoo]

Just had an undead band destroy my extremely strong chaos band through failed fear/terror rolls, overpowering attacks reducing parry chances by more than 1/2 and damage in the 40-50 range per strike.

Phew. I managed to kill their leader but that's it. Even with 2 dodge tanks that stayed up way, way longer than they had any right to expect, 5 of my 6 units were out of action at the end with them only losing one.

Rough, rough fight. That terror/fear mechanic certainly won it for them, so obviously I think it's too powerful.

[ColdSteel]

The way the AI works it that it will match it's troop levels to the average level of all the units you bring to the mission. I found a good strategy was to bring about 4/5 units, two or three of which were my best and highest leveled units and two of which were beginners. Then the AI average on its units will be about half of my best units level overall. Having high level units with better perks and whatnot usually allowed me to carry the weaker units with no problem and dominate the weaker AI units. A side benefit is that you are able to keep leveling troops for when you need them to replace someone when they get hurt. It's also good to get your best units to max level ASAP.

[GreenGoo]

That's good advice and I'll try leaning that way, in terms of lowering the average level of my warband. I can foresee some issues because I don't have much in the way of reserve slots open yet, and those are often filled with healing and/or training units, so there's not much room for new hires in the active slots if I can't swap out veterans into reserve slots.

[Sepiche]

Just read that the team that worked on this is now working on a similar Necromunda game!

Necromunda: Underhive Wars is a turn-based tactical RPG. Rival gangs of ruthless warriors are locked in an endless war for control of the Underhive, a gigantic warren of derelict factories, rusted metal husks, and forgotten technologies. Anarchy, violence, betrayal and death rule this hellish place, long forsaken by any semblance of civilization.

“Rogue Factor’s collaboration with Focus and Games Workshop is a story of trust, hard work, and true passion for the Warhammer Universe. Our adventure began by building the foundations of Mordheim: City of the Damned Early Access. Regarded as a highly successful and well-executed endeavour, the Early Access of Mordheim: City of the Damned gathered a vast number of passionate gamers that helped foster an amazing community and improved many aspects of the game. After a strong launch on PC and consoles, and an incredible experience with many lessons learned, the way was paved for our next step in conquering the tactical RPG genre: Necromunda: Underhive Wars.”
- Yves Bordeleau, General Manager at Rogue Factor.

[GreenGoo]

Mordheim has taken a back seat now that I've got xcom 2. I wouldn't have bought xcom 2 while I was playing mordheim but humble bundles made it so tempting...

One thing I think a game like Mordheim could really benefit from is a high quality animator. The game practically begs for interesting physical representations of the dice rolls. Sure, when my darksoul got an arrow in the eye he had an actual arrow in his eye and after the battle suffered from the loss of that eye (all of which is a nice touch) but I would love some more detail, in the same vein as Battle Chess or something like that. Obviously these are dark fantasy units and not ninjas, so no back flips followed by throwing stars in mid air, but something more entertaining that what's currently included would be nice.

The game is fun if you like tactical combat (not nearly as indepth as xcom 2, but still fun) and the warband metagame, but it could use some spicing up visually. This is purely a "nice to have" and a big drain on the budget, but I can still dream.

[Smoove_B]

Just finished the first group of tutorials...and this game is pretty insane. Lots going on, but I think I have the basics. I'll need to read through the thread but I'm liking what I'm seeing so far.

[hentzau]

Funny. I just found a box of my old Mordheim stuff...

[Smoove_B]

Wow. I was reading earlier this summer how those figures are great for a relatively new tabletop game called Frostgrave. I'm guessing they're referring to assembled figures that are sitting around gathering dust. Not the "more valuable than a 401K" NIB copies you have there.

[hentzau]

Yeah, we were pretty big into Nordheim for a while. We just talked about getting back into it. We have all of the figures painted and the terrain (cardboard terrain, admittedly. My fear is that if we started up again, I'd find myself buying some of the wrecked buildings from 4Ground.