Return to Mordheim, Part 1

It's been a very long time since I played tabletop wargames. This year, I finally made it back.

My oldest memory of Warhammer was my primary school friends splitting a box of Warhammer Fantasy Battles 6th Edition. I wasn't interested in Bretonnians or Lizardmen. I wanted goblins. Lots of goblins. 

Night Goblins specifically. It was something about their creepy little cloaks, the caves they lived in, and all those mushrooms. I thought the Fanatic was awesome, with their ball and chain that was bigger than them. I just fielded unit after unit of Night Goblin spearmen and archers with Fanatics. I would lose every game. But I didn't care. I played Night Goblins because I loved the freaky little guys, not because I expected to win games. 

A friend and I used to play Necromunda with his older brother's boxed set. I knew there was something different about Necromunda. It felt just a bit more mature. Grittier. Almost like we were too young to be playing it, like it deserved an age restriction.

Rolling Injury Charts at the end of your game. Having one of your Champions die or get maimed. The stakes were higher. These weren't just mobs of interchangeable Night Goblins. When Sturm the Orlock Heavy rolled an eye injury... It felt like the decisions I made in the game had weight. Like the dice were creating their own narrative.

A game like Mordheim was built for someone like me. The rulebook dripped with grimness, death, and depravity. The marginalia full of freaky little guys. I'd never seen anything like it. It felt more forbidden than Necromunda, like every game was an occult ritual. I was hooked.

An Angel Leading A Soul Into Hell, Hieronymus Bosch

I fell out of tabletop wargames around 2004, and I think Mordheim had a lot to do with it. The manager of our local Games Workshop put a lot of effort into a board (with sewers and gate towers) and a campaign. The most memorable games of my childhood were played there. With every new issue of Town Cryer we would test out the new rules and scenarios. It was a dynamic, fan-driven game, that naturally lent itself towards narrative play, storytelling, and intense in-game rivalries.

It also lent itself towards creating a feeling or a guiding narrative for a warband, rather than just optimising it. We all wanted our warbands to say something, to feel like something. This was very attractive to someone who was more than willing to lose game after game of Warhammer Fantasy becuase the vibe of Night Goblins just clicked.

Nothing else Games Workshop supported at the time was anything like it. They were making more money updating Codices and releasing new models for 40,000. So, when they inevitably stopped supporting Mordheim, I fell out of the hobby. Mordheim was just too good to be followed up with those other games.

I dabbled in tabletop roleplaying games but could never really put together a group. It wasn't until a co-worker at university got me into Call of Cthulhu that I started making my way back into games. I've been playing or running Cthulhu, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, or any number of small weird little games since then. I never stopped loving the miniatures, so when I got into OSR, it was a no-brainer to start collecting and playing with miniatures again. From there, it was only a short step back into Mordheim.

Watching what the In Rust We Trust crew is up to from afar, I thought: why not? I was going to start a Mordheim campaign, even if I needed to build it from the ground up.

Living in a small town in a very sparsely populated region, I need to make the game appeal to players who play contemporary Game Workshop games. Let's be honest here: despite the disgusting profits Games Workshop makes from hobbyists, their near-monopoly on miniature wargaming means that it is one of the easiest games to get into. My local newsagent and electronics shops sell GW stuff; they don't sell Perry or Wargames Atlantic.

So I knew that a long-term campaign would need to appeal to contemporary players. I felt the rules needed to be brought into the 21st century. I love the jankiness of Mordheim, but even I get frustrated with its pitfalls and swinginess. 

This series of posts will include the house rules I have written for Mordheim. My goal is to balance the game and modernise it, without having to totally rewrite the rulebook (although who knows where I will be 5 posts from now). I still want Mordheim to feel like something, to say something. 

I want Mordheim to play like a modern tabletop skirmish game with the soul of a quarter century old game that is firmly ensconced as a classic.

Come along for the journey.