If it does not hew to the rules, it is essentially the old theme plus a new gameplay system, yes? Is the rules system transparent? That is one thing I like about board games like this*, I can have a perfect understanding of what’s happening. How’s the AI?
*ok, ok, I know there’s no board as such.
I’ve been hovering my mouse over this since it’s a third off. I might pull the trigger tonight, even though I tell myself it’s smarter to wait until full-up release.
Yeah, strangely something is telling me this isn’t quite there yet, even for an Early Access game.
Its definitely not there yet. I played a bit last night after buying in at that $22 price. It seems like it has about a year to go. Great potential though.
I’m a weak, gutless man and also pulled the trigger. I’ve only played the tutorial so far, but I agree it seems to have a lot of potential. It looks pretty great, and I really like the “rings” that they project to show how far you can move for one action point.
The entire thing seems designed with a controller in mind - and I have no problem with that - but I’d like to see more mouse/keyboard functionality.
The tutorial only laid out the bare-bones actions, and if I were not familiar with the tabletop game (as well as Necromunda) I might be disheartened… but I know that there must be a lot more I haven’t seen yet.
OK, so I was wrong – I had not played the tutorial, I had merely played the first of four or five tutorials. Now that I have actually played the entire tutorial, I am actually really excited for this game’s future: all the skills, spells, progression and blatant looting of other player’s hard-earned stuff over the course of months seems to be well-staged. In theory.
I say in theory because as far as I can tell, the actual progression isn’t in the game yet: you only have the ability to skirmish your vanilla warband vs. someone else’s vanilla warband. That’s fine of course - It’s early access.
I hooked up my controller, and I find that - as predicted - the game is a heck of a lot easier to play with the analog sticks than the mouse/keyboard. That’s good in that the experience is better, but bad in that I really think their mouse implementation leaves a lot to be desired and a lot of the buddies I want to drag into the game don’t have controllers hooked to their PCs.
That said, I was pretty impressed with the control presentation (at least in the tutorials). Between all the skills, weapon-types, spells and whatnot, there are a huge number of options for each character… I can easily imagine some vital piece of equipment or effect getting lost in the shuffle. But the display seems to do a decent job of presenting all your available actions to you and it appears to have some vague smarts built in where it will present you with your most effective option by default.
For example, if you’ve got a lone action point left and you’re in combat, you might be able to change your stance to either “dodge” or “parry”. The game seems to present whichever is more advantageous to that particular character first… the second option is there too, but you have to scroll to it. The same thing seems to happen for attacks/skills: it will present you with the most damaging option first. Pretty cool.
Is there a long term plan for a single player campaign, or is it designed as a multiplayer only title?
There is an (unimplemented) menu item for “Campaign” which I presume means single-player.
How’s the game now? It is 40% off at $20 and tempting.
It looks like it will be amazing, but it’s not nearly finished
Ok, will likely give it another sale and see if it goes cheaper or the amount of content goes up in the meantime. Does look like it could be amazing, once they get some of the more campaign / RPG elements in.
All my Verminslaying gave me an itch for more turnbased Warhammer goodness, and I fired this up, this time doing more than just looking at it.
The abovementioned campaign is there now. Its a series of random maps/quests, where you (As far as I’ve seen) face off against other warbands, with different tasks each , and some sidequests. The goal is Wyrdstone, which your sponsor wants in exchange for special quests.
The warband customization is supercool and very detailed. Both in stats, but also in colors, and armor type, head types and so on - all the stuff that I love personally.
You can hire heroes and henchmen as well
And this is the screen where you ship of shipments of Wyrdstone to your sponsor, or any of the other two potential powers you can help out.
Im really enjoying my time in this - its basically a mercenary simulator, set in Warhammer, which in itself is pretty damn awesome.
The battles themselves I will get back to you on, once I’ve gotten some more experience, but they are fun, and not too long, which is a plus in my book, since its just part of the game. There is a lot of time and risk manement involved in them, since you can decide to actively hunt your enemy, or spend your time salvaging or wyrdstone hunting, thus leaving you more vulnarble. The battle ends, once the enemy either routs or is completely defeated, or the same happens to you, and then you don’t get all the stuff on the map. I cant decide whether thats a good or bad thing yet, but its fun so far, and l
This one is definitely on my list as I loved tabletop Mordheim years ago. It seems like core features are just now coming online. I will probably grab it on the next sale window.
Like every other game in the universe, this has a release date sometime in November.
My last game had me trying desperately to gain enough wyrdstones to pay my sponsor and get some money to pay for my warband. Unfortunately, my captain got a serious leg injury, meaning he was out of business for 6 days, and we had to make the delivery in 5 days. Warband over!
Its kinda like Darkest Dungeon in that respect, that its rather hardcore in its experience - at least for beginners.
As for features - there is full warband levelling both online and offline, so its full-on PVP if you wish it. It also included skirmish and exhibition matches though.
Haven’t looked at this one in awhile, glad to hear it’s shaping up well. Can you just use an empire warband or does it let you pick from the various other types as well?
There are 4 different warbands, and potentially more after release. Empire (Which are really human mercenaries), Skaven (Some specific clan whose name escapes me), Sisters of…Sigmar I think, and Cult of the Possessed, whom I gather is Chaos.
More First Impressions
Mordheim is nearing release, so I’ve taken another look. I haven’t played enough yet to comment on the campaign or the AI, so this is mostly about the state of the skirmish gameplay.
Its NOT the Games Workshop Ruleset
The rules are very different to the boardgame, both for the skirmish rules and the campaign. It tries (and mostly succeeds) to capture the feel of the boardgame. City of the Damned is more complicated. Each warriors stat sheet looks more like a DnD character sheet than the more streamlined boardgame. Strangely, all those intricate stats seem to add up to tactics and gameplay that are very similar to the boardgame. I’m not sure what all the extra rules achieved other than making the game harder to learn and giving you lots more dials to fiddle with.
The designers are clearly fans of the boardgame
Theres lots of Morheim lore. The campaign is focused on the persistent squad, with warriors gaining skills, injuries and dying. Theres a strong economic aspect to the campaign and the skirmish objectives, so you are clearly playing scavengers and mercenaries, not soldiers. Morale, wyrdstone, and the perils of magic are all present and correct.
Nice character models, primitive animations
All the models look terrific. You can customise the cosmetic appearance of each warrior, changing the sleeves, pants, hair etc. The customisation is limited compared to modern rpgs, but its alot better than Bloodbowl in that respect. Everything has the scrappy vibe of Mordheim, with rusty, patched and piecemeal armour. The models only look great standing still though. Animations are very basic and repetitive, but they do the job.
Not polished
Long load times. Basic tutorial. Awkward UI. It feels like alot of love has gone into the ruleset, but the production values feel cheap and clunky in a way that won’t be fixed by patches. The developers assume that Games Workshop fans will endure rough edges to get to the tactical goodness underneath. The good news is that the developers have focused all their effort on the skirmish battles and procedurally generated campaign. They haven’t tried to shoehorn in pointless cutscenes, bad voice acting, embarrassing story beats or shudder a realtime mode.
Disorienting
The skirmish battles are played from an over-the-shoulder third person camera. You’re down at street level. Theres the option to flick to an overhead map, but its directly top-down only, theres no “isometric” angle like XCOM. Add to that: fog-of-war. You can’t see any enemies until they enter the line-of-sight of one of your warband. The end result is incredibly disorienting. Remember the first time you played multiplayer Call of Duty? That feeling of not knowing which way is north, where the bad guys are, or what the level looks like? I craved the ability to just pull the camera back a bit and explore the empty battlefield, so that I could formulate some kind of tactical plan. Like FPS games, you’ll just need to wing it until you become familiar with the maps.
Intimidating learning curve
If you want to understand the ruleset, you’ll need to spend your first session reading combat logs and alt-tabbing out to google. Theres a nice toggle that shows all the modifiers being applied to each character, and that helps alot. I think I’ll soon have the entire ruleset internalised, because its not that complicated. But it does make your first gameplay session pretty rough. With the camera and UI issues mentioned above, it doesn’t give a great first impression. Two nice Steam Guides here and here.
Traps are dumb
Maps contain invisible traps, to simulate the dangerous environment. The traps feel arbitrary and unfun. There are ways of working around them, but I can’t see what they add to the game, and I imagine they will be modded out very quickly. Maybe my opinion will change over time.
I want to play more
The persistent squad and procedural campaign is a fantastic foundation for a strategy game. I can’t yet tell if Mordheim has legs, but I know I want to see many turn based games copy the basic campaign structure of the Mordheim and Necromunda boardgames. Its terrific.
The traps and the hard to see camera are my only negatives so far. Loving the game, the progression and the difficulty.
Definitely interested in this one.
Ohhhh, procedural campaign. Nice.
