NOTE: if you consider yourself as strictly casual player please read the last paragraphs and better pass on this one.

This game should seriously be named City Of Slaanesh cause playing it feels like constantly cutting your wrists, or being kicked in the balls... but for some weird reason you quite enjoy that and want more.
It's hard, it does not forgive mistakes but it actually feels really good when you acheve something.

And don't look at all these posts complaining about the RNG (random number generator)... well, its random! Clue is in the name.

There are few things that made me love Mordheim:

+ Great warhammer feel, no knights in shining armours or single characters chopping hordes of your enemies in one strike. The world is grim, sad and constantly you lose something - your warriors became decapitated, weakend or start loosing their mind. Dark fantasy done right.
+ As for almost every warhammer game I've encountered so far audio is superb! Especially for skavens, but the narrator's voice - can't stand this guy.
+ Amazing customization, tons of skills and attributes to choose from, which gives lots of possibilities in developing warband members to your specific needs.
+ Mordheim as a battleground has been created perfectly. It certainly gives good WH feel and offers various tactical advantages/disadvantages, traps, random loot etc. Sadly that most of the time you cannot fully use it because AI will blindly rush you head on.
+DLC's came out after a while and are not ripped away parts of an original game, or some overpowered aspects for multiplayer which seems to be rarity in these days, lol. It's just the additional content for players that like the game and want to have something extra - nothing fancy, nothing too bad.

Although all i just said I can understand many people disliking the game, here are the reasons why:

- AI is terrible, but on the other hand I understand that you cannot simply create challenging AI for a game like this (which highly depend on tactical gameplay) without giving it some advantages. Yet still it sometimes makes me flip the table when your opponent is simply rushing you straight forward, when there's whole crapload of wyrdstone winking at you... bloody irritating.
- There's no save button, one huge mistake or series of bad luck can sometimes cost you the whole game (imagine spending 40+ hrs on a single warband).
- It will cost you many warbands to actually learn how to properly play the came and counter your enemies, but when you do it becomes fairly easy, if RNG wont strike you in the face that is.

All that said, there's one big issue I have with the game and that's your progress in the single player campaign. The thing is, if you consider yourself as a casual player you wont even probably make it through chapter one. Why? Mordheim is reaaaaaaaly time consuming, and without any way to somehow secure your progress an unfortunate stike of RNG can end your journey easly. If you want to play this game from time to time, to kill boredom and chill out please, please run away and never look back. I'm pretty damn stoic when it gets to videogames but this one... oh, it made me scream, belive me.
In my opinion there should be an option for strictly casual players to have their ONLY single player restricted warband that you can save ... dunno... at least every at chapter you go through. Not having that simply takes away a lot of potential customers from the game, so why not allowing them to enjoy it and give the devs sum more $$?

Thanks for reading :)

love the premise love the fact the game is unforgiving and hard, which based on lore it is supposed to be.

however what is not acceptable is how ♥♥♥♥ing dumb it is that winning feels still feels like losing becuase you lost out on all the valuable stuff that was just lying next to your guys when the final blow was struck.

i found a fairly nice crossbow, the guy carrying it got K.O'ed turn before victory. He was next to 4 of his own forces so youd think they might have picked it up when they left victorious. but nah that ♥♥♥♥ ait worth the time. neither is apparntly looting the area when the entire objective of your little possy turning up was to loot the area but nah, we killed some dudes lets go home without picking up any of the ♥♥♥♥.

it is a point of bad game design when you have to rely on arbitary loot mechanics to make the game harder. there is no reason to leave items be it warpstone or crossbows ever given. nor can i think of any practical reason. it forces you to make dumb decisions like prolonging fights just to loot stuff: it just feels so detached and it compleatly ♥♥♥♥s with immersion.

which is a shame becuase if not for thouse aspects the game would be extrodinarly fun and rewarding to play. instead it just feels like it slaps you in the face if you win or lose.

I recommend this game but ONLY if you can live with:

-> Ironman Mode(Hardcore + no voluntary saves)
-> RNG Infestation
-> Moderate+ difficulty(it starts very high and drops from there)

It has:

-> Beautiful artwork(not to be confused with graphics which are just passable)
-> Fun gameplay(if you are into xcom type games{I'm not})
-> Nice character building
-> One of the best IPs around(Warhammer Fantasy)
-> Awesome devs(things they do put AAA devs to shame)

Unfortunately, I can't play this because it causes nervous breakdown(plus I'm not into this kind of game and care only about WHFB part of it), but that doesn't mean I'll be unfair and not recommend it. Because, after all, this game truly is a gem in the rough.

Good hunting in Mordheim! Have fun!

Excellent game, makes time fly away and makes you think "one last map" and then it's over, you're in the morning and spent the night playing :)

Pros:
- Beautiful
- Interesting character development, with items, levels, skills and spells to play with
- Not so bad solo content, even if repetitive after some time
- Offers a decent challenge, and is very rewarding if you spent some time optimizing your "skill builds", as you'll feel the power of your warband skyrocket

Cons:
- AI is somewhat lackluster (characters can get stuck into pathing issues, giving you a one man advantage -happens more with impressives, which is even more than a one man advantage when it happens-)
- Can be a little tricky to learn, but the log parser makes it a lot easier to understand what happens
- As stated earlier, can become repetitive once your warband is strong enough to steamroll almost all opposition, but that's why there are "Brutal" and "Deadly" missions, to keep you challenged in the later stages of your campaign
- A bit rng dependant, especially with random character positionning, can lead you into a VERY hard game

TLDR:
Excellent game if you like turn based strategy games, even more so if like me, you can literally spend hours optimizing your warband skills and stats. If you like Games Workshop universe and design, you won't be disappointed either.
Pass if you are the all-in, impatient kind of gamer, as this game can (and will) punish you for that.

There's a lot to like about Mordheim, but not enough to recommend it. The visuals are solid: graphics are good, aesthetic customization is satisfyingly deep, and the ruined city, forgive the expression, comes alive. Though some have criticized the gameplay, I really liked the combat system, and had a lot of fun in the actual fights.

However:

The campaign becomes extremely unfun pretty quickly because of how the game compensatses for the poor fighting skills of the AI, namely, massive, massive bonuses. You can see it in the description of the difficulty of a given mission, but what isn't clear is how the game "balances" the strength of your warband as you level up. Enemy warbands will have a rating similar to yours, but will have /all/ their members leveled. In addition to this, they'll have a composition similar to yours, so if you have six members, they have six members. If you have one of your special heroes, they'll have one of their special heroes. One of the biggest frustrations I experienced was leveling up my Cult warband until I could, FINALLY, hire the Possessed. Once I fielded him, though, I found myself up against a fully leveled and upgraded Augur that handed his ♥♥♥ to him. Read some guides, found out that people that Possessed heroes were underpowered, so I ditched him, and started leveling up for the Spawn. Got the Spawn, and then faced a fully leveled and upgraded Rat Ogre. That was when I stopped playing.

Maybe I'd like it better in multiplayer, but the campaign became just incredinly unfun to play after a while. The only way to win those kinds of match is to get lucky in the set up, and then exploit the very poor AI strategy. Which, by the way, is to just run straight at you along whatever road is closest. I have never seen the AI go after objectives, which also makes it hard, bordering on impossible, for you to do the same. Unless you get REALLY lucky, expect most skirmishes to devolve into a scrum, which is why the best and only strategy is to keep your whole warband together at all times.

But it on sale, maybe, but I'd give it a pass. It's more frustrating than fun.

Despite thoroughly enjoying Mordheim, I'm finding myself cautious about recommending it. The reason for this is simple - Mordheim is not a game that will appeal to everyone. It is not casual, it is not forgiving, and it is not polished to the standards of a AAA game. That being said, what you do get is a very solid turn-based strategy with RPG character development. Its gameplay is well thought through, and once you get into it, it is very hard to stop playing. The four starting races are reasonably well balanced, and differ enough to give each a unique feel (I struggle with the Skaven, but their play style doesn't really suit me).

At the core of the love/hate reactions is the fact that Mordheim is a sadistic mistress. It is mercilessly difficult, especially at first, but even once you get familiar with it then a single moment of carelessness, cockiness or overconfidence will end horribly. Maastering the game relies on absolute concentration, and contingencies for every possibility. If you don't master the steep learning curve, you will die. If you're too cautious, you'll run out of money and die. If you're too greedy, you'll die. If you don't prepare in advance for the deaths of your best heroes, you will die. You get the idea. The game autosaves after every action - no do-overs or loading after a disaster. Your fallen warriors will suffer persistant injuries or perma-death, and a single mis-step can mean the end for even the most veteran of warriors. Some complain about that the RNG is stacked against them, but I've generally found it fair - if you're leaving your plan in the hands of luck then it's not a very good plan!

If any of the above put you off, then Mordheim is probably not the game for you. If you're still reading then you can probably buy with confidence. The game is pretty well made for the ambitious scope and small developer, though a few minor niggles leave it feeling a little rough around the edges. Customisation options are a little limited, so you'll probably be stuck with some very similar looking troops in larger warbands, but at least equipment shows up on the character. The AI pathfinding is sometimes a little wonky, but you'll be glad for every time the computer gets their Rat Ogre stuck in a doorway. Occasionally a piece of terrain will unexpectedly be a little bigger than it appears and block a shot or charge, but you're given considerable freedom to undo and redo your movement until you're happy with it. Very small complaints in the grand scheme of things.

So, a qualified recommendation for a game I personally greatly enjoyed. If you like turn-based strategy and aren't put off by a challenge (or by your favourite hero getting wiped out by a tiny miscalculation) then you'll likely find Mordheim a fun and rewarding experience. If not, well, probably best to give it a miss.

I want to love this game.

I like it, but I want to love it. It's just not quite there yet. The good news is the dev. team seems to be very, very active and also receptive to some player suggestions. The DLC is not too expensive, but for what it offers I'm waiting on a sale.

I think that some of the detail in the graphic design is amazing in some instances, and only so-so in others. Overall, it's fairly good. But graphics aren't everything. The setting is interesting but levels sometimes feel a bit repetitive. I's turn based strategy and that's a bonus for me.

The buildings are well detailed and generally the characters are also quite detailed. Where the graphics fall short is repetitiveness. Everything eventually starts to look like everything else. Sometimes there's just too much going on in the scenery and I find that takes away from the game. It may improve as I progress, I hope it does.

The inventory system is odd. Not what you wield or wear but what you can pick up during a mission. It's completely dependant on strength, but makes no sense. Wyrdstone orders from your "boss" come with a weight requirement, and each of the three sizes of wyrdstone weigh a different amount. Herer's the part that makes no sense to me. You can carry one piece of any size in one inventory "slot". The weight doesn't matter. Say your strength is high enough for 3 inventory slots. You can carry 3 of anything. 3 shields, plus the one you're wielding in your off hand. Or 3 small potion vials. Or 3 pieces of wyrdstone of any size. It's still workable, though, and you can take quite a few characters on a mission and most will have 2 or 3 inventory slots, or more, so it's not that bad.

Maybe I find it odd that inventory is so simplified because there are so. Many. Stats. So many options, so many skills. But an over-simplified inventory system while actually playing levels. And you can't drop anything. The only option to drop something, really, is to go back to your cart and put things in the chest. This, my friends, is ridiculous. If I can pick up something, I can put it back down. Come on now. I know, I know, it's something to do with the table-top game it's based on. But it's not a table top game, so.... Well, enough about that. It's not that big of a deal, just make sure you remember who picked stuff up because there's no easy way to check who's carrying what. I can't usually tell and I still haven't found a way to check.

The depth in the stats and level system is deeper than most games. The characters are interesting enough, and can be customized to some degree by carrying different gear or wearing different items. Despite that, one Skaven assassin looks like the next to me, and the same goes for the humans, they all start to look the same pretty quick.

Here's where you start to really customize. Stats can be upgraded as you gain experience in battles. They are not just strength and toughnes and intelligence, like your standard RPGs, but also your combat related abilities like parrying a blow, dodging and accuracy. These points are earned through missions and skill training and they do not come quickly. I think the slower progression is good because you place more value on the gains when they do come.

There are a *LOT* of skills. You can build characters to perform in a very wide variety of ways. You can make them fast and nimble, climibing around with ease and dodging almost any attack. You can make them hard-hitting brutes, tough as nails but maybe not as nimble as their counterparts. You can focus on melee, or range, or a mixture, or magic, or simply not focus at all and be a generalist. Which can, actually, work because sometimes you come up against a foe that can counter your main focus, so if you haven't got a backup plan, you might find yourself in a spot of bother.

So far the missions are repetitive, but I find they're usually fun. Some levels are difficult to navigate with tonnes of jumps and winding streets. Others are more open. This is a good thing because it gives some variety, despite the repetitive nature of the game I've seen thus far. It forces you to modify your tactics accordingly and you don't know what the maps will look like until you actually get in them. You can't stack your team for range attacks only because you might be in tight quarters. You don't want to go too heavy on melee, because if there's alot of open ground and vantage points, you'll get picked apart. If the win-some lose-some AI is having a good day, that is. I've had alot of luck with Skaven melee fighters since they cover a lot of ground fairly quickly.

In addition to straight up fighting face to face - you can set ambushes, or stumble into them. You can lure people into traps that you nealy bumbled into yourself, if you set yourself up in the right place and wait. There are a lot of combat options, but I find it odd that certain warbands can only equip certain weapons. Why can't a certain character figure out which end of an axe to hold on to, yet can easily swing a polearm that also has the pointy-sharpy end and holdy-dull end, but just a tad shorter? Probably a game balance thing. Same reason you can't take four "leaders' and six "heroes" into a fight. Starting off you get a leader, a hero or two and a few henchmen. As you play more your warband "levels up"allowing you to bring a few more along on a mission.

You keep what you pick up on each mission, plus a percentage of other loot. It seems to be based on a percentage per character you bring in to a mission, so the more the merrier - but beware, each time you go on a mission your warband expects pay. The more you take out, the more you pay when you come back. You don't pay 'em until the job is done, but they won't work for you again until you pay them. Run out of coin and you'll have to sell gear, or wyrdstone, to pay them. You also pay to treat their wounds.

Speaking of wounds, they take days to heal, so your fighters can be out of the game for a while. Luckily you can have backup waiting in the wings. Hiring costs coin, but if they don't go fight, they don't get paid, so once you have them they don't cost upkeep if they're not going on missions. Training also takes days, usually a few, plus a lot of coin to learn new skills. There's no explanation why it costs money and training tokens (or points, whatever you want to call them), but it does. Keeps you poor, too... most training starts at 90 coins and goes way up from there. Luckily wyrdstone sells for a good amount of coin. I two small batches to two separate factoins and earned over 300 coins on the transaction.

... and if you're wondering why your warband is fighting, it's for wyrdstone. You get "orders' for the stuff from your boss, basically, and have to send a certain weight of wyrdstone in a certain amount of time. I don't know what happens if you don't, because I have not yet failed to send the required amount. You get paid for those orders, but at what seems like a reduced rate. You can, however, eventually bring it up to a better rate. The other sales seem to fetch full value, but be warned, sell too much to one party usually means they start to pay less. Supply and demand, you know.

I can't really get into all the nuances of the game. I'd be writing for hours. Suffice to say it's decent, and if you like turn based strategy, it's worth a look. Be warned, however, the AI is wonky. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's just plain stupid. Which is fine by me, my Skaven love it when enemy archers get a bit too close-near. Which doesn't have to be all that close because the Skaven are pretty fast-quick. (Skaven double talk-speak a lot-much.)

So, despite some negatives, I like the game. Take a peek, watch some gameplay videos and, maybe give it a try.

I think i would like this game more if they cleaned up the UI. The game play is fun but the control is counter intitivie and clunky, I have a hard time not liking the game but it really just needs to be cleaned up and made more fluid. The interface is simlar to a excel worksheet overlayed over a very unique and pretty game. I bought this game the second it came out and that was my complaint then, i figured; "oh it will take a few patches to smooth that out" Nope. i was wrong nothing was ever done about it.

Behind the wall of shortcomings resides a tactical and thrilling gameplay so addictive that it kept me hooked for hours, even after my dragged on failed attempt with my first warband. As an enthusiast of Warhammer 40k, I've never fully realized how much I enjoy the Fantasy setting and Mordheim helped me see this.
For all the hours I've put into this game I’m still not sure if I can recommend it. Its price tag is getting dangerously close to that of AAA titles, but without the high production value that comes with this type of game. Mordheim is visibly crippled by its lack of production value at every step. It’s clunky, lacking unique content and in desperate need of an AI that can keep up. Overcoming all these issues can be hard. In return it can easily offer dozens of hours of challenging battles, tactical ingenuity and detailed characters development. Factoring in the multiplayer which provides the most intense experience and the replay value that comes with this type of games and there is already a lot of value in Mordheim: City of the Damned.
For the fans of the tabletop games it is great to see a new game in their favorite universe. The fans of tactical turn based games will find it as a good distraction until XCOM 2 comes out. And for the rest of the players it is probably safer to wait for a sale. As for me, it’s an enjoyable game with extremely high potential delivered in a tin crackling shell that constantly undermines Mordheim's best qualities.


Pros:
+ Great setting
+ Complex character development
+ Tactical combat
+ Addictive
+ Unforgiving
+ Atmospheric
+ Stays true to the universe and lore
+ The multiple campaigns add up to the replay value

Cons:
- Average production value
- Mouse support isn’t fully implemented
- The battle UI is hard to navigate and has some issues
- Lacks visual variety
- Long loading screens (at launch)
- AI can be awkwardly dumb
- Various bugs

Read the full review at:
http://thegameslashers.blogspot.ro/2015/12/mordheim-city-of-damned-review.html

Whoever decided to allow free weekend access to Mordheim needs a good smack, because this seems to be specifically designed to make your first several hours' play as frustrating and annoying as possible. It may well be that once you get into hours 10-20 it gets really enjoyable, but that's unlikely to happen in one free weekend, and the only people who are likely to power through a dozen or so hours of screen-punching are people who have paid full price and are invested in the game. Anyone given a few hours to try it out is likely to come away with the impression that the last thing they want to do is play any more of that annoying nightmare.

It comes down to design, which has presumably been fixed in order to ramp up difficulty and make the game more "hard core". The trouble is, whilst most gamers enjoy a tough challenge, what really pisses us off are stupid/illogical game mechanics that have obviously been introduced simply to make success harder. Looting, mission objectives and combat mechanics all conspire to make it impossible to get a good result from a mission. Here's why:

You take control of a warband of your chosen faction, a bunch of 5 newbie toons who, in good RPG tradition, you expect to start levelling up and improving. The leader of your faction puts in an order for wyrdstones, and you need to get X stones within Y days or you'll fail: 4 fails and it's game over. You enter Mordheim seeking wyrdstones and other loot. So far, so good. At the start of a mission you see there are, for example, 20 wyrdstones and 15 scavenging points around the city, so you examine the map and think OK, I'll send a couple of guys this way, another couple over there, maybe one to hang back and guard our cart.

First off, movement is incredibly slow. It may take you 2 or 3 turns to reach that pile of wyrdstones. Secondly, your inventory is ridiculously tiny - 3 items total?? Forget about carrying potions or buffs! Of course, you can dump stuff in your cart then head back out, but that takes twice the time. And if you get to the stones and there are 4+, you're going to need 2 people (40% of your entire force) or 2 trips (4-6 turns, which is an eternity) to get them.

None of which would be a problem if time wasn't such a huge issue, but it is because of how combat works. Within 2 rounds, maybe 3 at most, you're going to run into the opposition. Now, being outnumbered is a real problem in Mordheim, because if you are you have to face an "All Alone" roll every turn, and if you fail you flee. And you can very easily get outnumbered because as soon as one of the opposing warband engages one of your guys, EVERY OTHER ENEMY RUSHES IN TO JOIN THE FIGHT. Fights aren't quick, one-shot affairs either, it'll take your newbs several turns to eliminate any enemy, and in those turns all his mates arrive. If you don't immediately start rushing all your own men to the fight, your guys are going to get overwhelmed and killed or forced to flee.

What this all boils down to is this: you may think you have a bit of time to explore, wander round collecting the stuff you need to not fail and end the game, but in actual fact what happens is that within about 2 turns a fight will start, and you then have to rush all your men to fight all the enemies and see who wins. No exploration, no gathering, no tactics, just a quick rush into an all-out brawl.

And even that wouldn't necessarily be too bad if you could then get back to collecting the very stones you'd come to collect (assuming you won the fight), but no! Once you've won the fight, it's mission over! What do you mean, you didn't explore any scavenge points? What do you mean you didn't go and pick up that pile of stones 20 yards away? It doesn't matter! The last enemy's dead, so poof, it's back to base IMMEDIATELY! And yes, leave all that gear and loot that's LITERALLY RIGHT AT YOUR FEET!

It's so frustrating, because you can see how this could have been such a great game, but sadly the devs have decided that they need to make this game "hard core", so they've just introduced really stupid and illogical mechanics to achieve that regardless of how much that pisses players off. I'd love to explore Mordheim, roaming around in what looks like a fascinating setting, but in reality all that happens is that you and the enemy locate each other pretty quickly, an all-in melee ensues, and at the end the mission's over. They may as well just have made this an arena brawler. Shame.