Mordheim: City of the Damned

Frustration and inaccessibility. The first impressions of Mordheim: City of the Damned, a game that recently left Steam Early Access, are not positive ones. Based on a board game released in 1999 and set in Games Workshop's wonderfully dark universe of Warhammer, Mordheim takes no prisoners and you'll need a couple of rounds to get into the swing of things, even if you're well versed in strategy games. If you've played the board game, however, you're likely to be more adept from the start, even if the video game isn't a straight port.

And while there are three playable tutorials and a bunch of slideshow-esque instructions on the deeper systems, there's no better way to learn the game than by actually playing round after round. Losing some at first, and then adapting your tactics and (perhaps most importantly) learning the nuances of your chosen Warband.

The Warband is really at the core of the experience. Yes, there's a basic story in the campaign, but the important narrative here is the one that forms around your troops. How they evolve, what injuries they suffer (rather than permadeath, units that are taken out of action will suffer injuries), and how you invest in them. In many ways Mordheim tells the story of the harsh realities of a band of mercenaries in the comet-stricken and wyrdstone rich city. Your troops will wear their scars as testimonies of your mistakes. At times you may not have the gold to pay your troops fully, or perhaps you'll be forced to send a rookie into a battle he'll barely survive, unless you baby him at the risk of other more valuable members.

There are four factions from which you can create a Warband - Sisters of Sigmar, Cult of the Possessed, Mercenaries and Skaven. We found the latter two the easiest to get into as beginners, and we particularly enjoyed playing as the Skaven. Not the least thanks to the lovely language they use and their brilliant names (Murderlord Snikkit, for example). The Skaven were also particularly well suited to our first, most basic strategy - namely sticking together and moving as a unit, hoping to overwhelm and outnumber the first enemy we came across and thus gain an advantage from the offset. It works well against the AI, particularly because the AI is a bit set in its ways and at times also doesn't handle obstacles very cleverly on the map.

Against human opposition, where you take your Warband online for skirmishes, you'll have to do more to maximise your band. It can get rough as there are plenty of veterans out there, many of them with a year of experience from the Early Access to draw from - but the idea is that Warbands of similar strength will face off.

The mission encounters or skirmishes themselves take place in a mix of both smaller and larger maps, all decorated with the sort of makeshift architecture you'd expect from Warhammer. There are lots of nooks and crannies, secrets, and dead ends. Importantly they are layered with as many as four levels, and it is with superior map knowledge that ranged units can really make a difference. As you'd expect you can put them in overwatch mode and so on. However, relying solely on ranged units is a recipe for disaster. Switching weapons, reloading, or fleeing from a melee encounter comes at a heavy cost so you'll need melee troops to ensure your ranged units aren't preyed upon. It should also be noted that any attempt to climb or jump down from one level to another comes with a risk of suffering damage, as does the collection of wyrdstones.

You don't necessarily need to decimate the other team completely as you'll also win if they fail a rout test. Typically you'll need to take out about half of the opposing team. There are also various other objectives: kill particular enemies (it's all very personal, they have names), gather a certain amount of wyrdstones, collect specific resources, and so on and so forth. At the end of the day, keeping your crew alive and meeting your quotas of Wyrdstone deliveries while keeping your Murderlord (or equivalent) happy is what the game is about. There isn't much there in terms of narrative or plot, but between the four faction campaigns there is a lot of lore to take in.

You would think that a game that has spent a year in Early Access would have trimmed away most of the rough edges, but sadly that is not entirely the case with Mordheim. The loading times are pretty atrocious and we also encountered strange glitches in the user interface. Following the latest patch we had a weird session where we couldn't see certain in-game menus - a reboot later and the problem disappeared.

Said update did make the start of a campaign a bit less painful (those extra 50 gold sure came in handy), and we also expect the Veteran system to aid future campaign efforts (bonuses that carry over to each Warband on an account level). Ultimately honing your skills, building your Warband is a great deal of fun, even if there are pitfalls you will fall into along the way. Hopefully you'll learn something that you can apply next time. And losing isn't necessarily the end, even if the crippling effects can make you want to start over with a new Warband.

We mentioned the loading screens; a result of the game, unlike most turn-based strategy offerings you'll see on the market, being played in a fully envisioned 3D world where there is also some procedural generation in play. This is something that it took some getting used to. Sure this does add a level of immersion as you'll need to keep your eyes about you for environmental traps, but it also means that you'll be able to craft clever tactics for your ranged units. It does help with "the fog of war" (if you will) as only enemies that can be seen by your units are marked on your overview map. It's an interesting design decision, and one that's at the core of the game, but ultimately we feel that this sort of game is better played from a top down perspective. Sure, there's the overview map, but as you can't issue commands there - only plan your moves and set markers - there really isn't a choice. After a while it's not something that you think too much about, as their system certainly works, but ultimately we reckon we would have enjoyed the game more had it been played from a different perspective, like, say, Xcom.

Chaos is central to what goes on. You can play the percentages, but ultimately luck will always play some part in the outcome. If that 28% parry chance succeeds it can make all the difference. And as it turns out chaos goes two ways. Mordheim is the sort of game that isn't easily balanced and if given some additional love and care from the developer it may one day be a smoother experience. Hopefully the end of the Early Access period isn't the end of frequent updates. There's great strategic depth here, a brilliant concept that offers its own brand of turn-based strategy, and naturally deep lore to pull from. It's a game we'll continue to play as it is very addictive in nature, even though our relationship got off to a rocky start.