Mordheim... first games.

I mentioned in recent blog posts that we were getting ready to play a Mordheim league at the local club, after putting together my warband, I managed to get in a learning game, and the first two games as part of the league are done and dusted.

First off, I should talk a little about the game itself. Mordheim is a small scale skirmish game that focuses on a couple of warbands fighting over the ruins of the city, looking for treasure, particularly Warp Stone shards, which can be sold for gold pieces, which in turn can be used to expand and equip your warband.

The game engine itself is simple, and while there can be a few gray areas in play (like Line of Sight), the game functions remarkably well. With the core engine revolving around the roll of single 6-sided dice, the game can swing quite wildly, and a string of good or poor luck can significantly impact the game. In this respect the game shows it's age, a more modern design would, I think, feel more balanced internally, but by the same token, the swings of fortune also help to make the game cinematic.

Ahh, the cinema, this is where the game shines. While games only take about 40-60 minutes to play through, players could spend an equal amount of time outside the game table, buying new equipment for their force, rolling to see what happens to them after the battle, seeing how they develop and grow. This campaign aspect of the game is thoroughly excellent, and something no other game companies have quite managed to capture so succinctly and successfully since the glory days of Games Workshop. This game oozes story, with injured characters able to make a full recovery, go mad, suffer debilitating physical injuries, learn new skills, develop their statistics, get more equipment... and all of these have minor but useful impacts on the game.

Mordheim has some mechanical issues, that much is true, but the myriad of systems and elements combine to make the gestalt so much more than the sum of it's parts. It is truly wonderful game experience, best played as a campaign game. After a few games I rate Mordheim very highly, an engaging and immersive story based game that is oodles of fun to play.

The first learning game... My warband, the Scions of Erasmus, makes it's way toward an implacable Reikland foe...

The Reikland marksmen move up to dominate the table with their deadly crossbows.

A short archery battle ensues, my archers trying to clear some space for my soldiers to move forward.

With bow fire having limited success, my men decide to rush the enemy...

Charge!

This learning game was brutal. Both warbands lost significant amounts of men, including both Captains. Luckily it was only a learning game!

First game of the league...

The enemy is bottled inside the Inn. Good fields of fire make every approach deadly.

Moving up under cover, getting close enough for an archery battle.

All archers are exchanging heavy fire!

This first learning game was tough. I had to move up and try and dislodge the enemy from a heavily defended building. I was just starting to make headway too, but my force failed a Bottle roll and decided that caution was the better part of valour!

Various tables at the club

The second game was gruelling, I was facing a Dward force - tough opposition and hard to remove. I retreated slowly across the battlefield, eventually holing up in the second story building on the right. With a good view, the Dwarfs had to advance under heavy fire, but I couldn't roll to save myself. The dwarfs managed to get far too close before my lads AGAIN failed a Bottle roll and fled. They seem to be developing a habit...

With those games out of the way, I have had some time to add to my warband, two marksmen and another Moutainguard. I had to modify some spearmen to be archers, but I think they turned out well.

I cut away the spears, then used a candle to heat the plastic of some old sprues and 'pulled' them apart. Cutting these pieces up I glued them top and bottom on the hands of my archers. I think they look pretty good all told.

My new Mountainguard

Lastly, I have managed to get some painting in. He's not finished yet, but getting close.

My sergeant. An experiment as much as anything else, to see how the colour scheme ties together, and to have a go at painting yellow. Turns out my yellow paint is thin as water, and can barely cover white. I shall have to rectify.

Back to basics...

A recent order arrived with the wrong sized bases. Curses. Rather than 20mm squares the bases I received were 40mm, and with time pressing due to the start of our local Mordheim league in a couple of days, I needed to find another solution. Casting about for alternatives, I rested in the end on some small ceramic tiles. These are about 19mm square, heavy (good for the light plastic miniatures), and cheap. I got a square of what appears to be a billion for about $5.

Starting soon, our league will have 7 or so players and a good mix of warbands. I am looking forward to it immensely.

Perry Miniatures... very nice!

The wrong bases! Curse you Chaos Gods! The men of Averland will not put up with such things!

These are the tiles. While not exactly 20mm (and quite thick), they are at least, about the right size.

A gajillion for a small number of copper coins at the local Hardware Shoppe

With one side a high gloss, I was worried about the ability of PVA to hold basing material to it. I opted to glue the miniature to the underside of the tile instead...

All based up and no-where to go.

Using a metal toolbox for transport, I wanted to be able to store these in a similar fashion to my other miniatures. I sliced a fridge magnet into 20mm squares and super-glued them to the glossy underside of each base. Once the glue had dried, I roughly beveled the edges of the magnet.

I have to admit I thought the ceramic tiles may be too heavy for a humble fridge magnet, but strength can be found in the most unlikely places - Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee taught me that.

You would never know that hiding beneath that base is a magnet!

Roughly sliced back, nearly lost a finger doing this.

The plastic molded base gets a light dusting of sand...

Lots of PVA and more sand later I filled around the plastic base... they look pretty reasonable in person, even if my daughters cereal doesn't.

Well, they are based. I am waiting now on my halfling miniatures, and will proxy some figures in the meantime. Overall I am pretty happy with the bases, they should come up nicely with some paint (if I manage to get to it)!

Rome wasn't built in a day...

Finally! Why did I wait so long? Oh, where am I going to put everything now?

The rollercoaster of emotion is a see-saw of extremes for today's miniature gamers. I was thrilled to have finally put together the terrain packs that had been stuffed into a box somewhere. Flushed with the sense of accomplishment and victory I wondered why I had put it off so long. Then I went to put it away. Hmm. Time for creative solutions, my first idea, to create a Dark Age diorama as a centerpiece for our dining table, was a thought quickly taken out behind the chemical sheds and executed by my dear wife. So too my follow up plans of hiding the model buildings on various shelves and tables on display, all followed the diorama idea into what was becoming a mass-grave of creative storage concepts. Don't get me wrong, I am thrilled to have finally got it all together, it's just now I have to deal with it assembled. I didn't think that far ahead.

These are the terrain sets that come with the two-player starter set for Dystopian Legions: Iron Scorpion. Nice, easy to put together and offering a lot of options in terms of layout. They were a bunch of flat laser cut boards, now they appear to take up more space. These will be used in our upcoming Mordheim campaign!

15mm Scale Dark Age huts from 4Ground. They are very nice. Strong, detailed, prepainted, and cleverly designed. 4Ground make some of the absolute best MDF terrain I have seen. Great stuff.

A couple of their buildings (I prepared these earlier) during a game of Song of Blades and Heroes. They look great on the table.

Well. Glad to have finally knocked that job off my 'Hobby-to-do' list, especially the Spartan stuff, which we'll be using for some Mordheim terrain... But now I have to figure out where it all goes. If this isn't a first world problem of magnitude, I don't know what is (another first world problem of magnitude).

***
I finished off the evening with a quick game of Perry Rhodan: The Cosmic League with my lad. It's a pretty simple two-player pick up and deliver game, where players try and score the most points delivering goods and passengers around a solar system. Good fun...

Getting ready to plunder Mordheim...

We recently wrapped up an Infinity slow-grow tournament/league at the local club... well I say we wrapped it up, with circumstance playing the way it did I didn't get to participate as much as I would have liked, but from what little I did, I had a lot of fun.

Flushed with success from the Infinity event, for which we had a good number of participants, the organiser (Quinton), set upon the task of discerning what sort of event he would like to run next. A discussion was held between various club members, and the two most popular choices were between a Dystopian Wars campaign and a Mordheim campaign.

In the end we opted for Mordheim, a campaign based skirmish game spun off the success of GW's Necromunda and set in the Old World, the dark and gritty setting of Warhammer Fantasy Battles (Dystopian will probably be next).

I've never played Mordheim, but I have played a fair bit of Necromunda, which I regard to be one of Games Workshop's finest games. Given my appreciation for Necromunda (which I admit may be tinged with nostalgia), I'm looking forward to Mordheim, and that's despite not having played anything from GW for nearly 20 years. The element that I love most about these games is the story, Necromunda managed to create a narrative around your gang, and as many things of interest took place outside the game table and on it. Your gang grew and developed with experience, and gained new items and equipment as their prospects waxed and waned. I am very much looking forward to charting the same experience with my Mordheim Warband!

Speaking of which... in the end I decided to run with a warband of Averlanders, because, well mainly because they get Halflings. I sold off or gave away all my GW stuff years ago, so casting about for some suitable miniatures I fell upon the Perry brother's line of plastics. I opted for a box of 1450-1500AD European Mercenaries, and wow, are they nice models. Although in retrospect I may have gone with a different box (more archers and swordsmen, fewer spears), I am really happy with the quality of the miniatures, with separate heads, arms and weapons, the miniatures present a lot of different options, certainly enough for me to pull together a Warband with men to spare...

While not terribly clear in these photos, the detail and quality of these plastics is excellent, and although (as I said above), had I known I would be running an Averlander Warband, I may have chosen a different box, I am very happy with these. They are well proportioned, and have great expression. A little bit of plastic glue and they go together with no worries. 

With some sage advice from more experienced players (read: people who have read the rules), I ended up creating a warband of the following:

• Captain with sword, shield and dagger.
• Sergeant with sword, shield and dagger.
• 2x Bergjaeger's with Longbow (crossbows on the miniatures) and dagger.
• Youngblood with sword, shield and dagger.
• 3x Mountainguard with swords, shields and daggers.
• 3x Halflings with bows and daggers.

I'm still waiting on the Halflings to arrive, but the rest of the warband are assembled and ready for action!

Captain and Sergeant

Fierce... and ready to go a-hunting warpstone...

I have some 20mm square bases on the way, and while I would love to paint these guys, I am reasonably confident that they will stay a rather innocuous gray tone for all eternity. We shall see...

Now, I need to read the rules and get in a practice game before the campaign kicks off!