Mordheim: City of the Damned

Mordheim is a classic fantasy skirmish tabletop miniatures game by Games Workshop, set in the grimdark world of Warhammer Fantasy. Players control small, custom-built mercenary warbands battling in the ruined “City of the Damned” for precious shards of a magical material called wyrdstone. The game is renowned for its immersive narrative, brutal gameplay, and deep role-playing elements within a campaign system.

Gameplay and Mechanics

Skirmish Scale: Unlike the large-scale battles of Warhammer Fantasy, Mordheim focuses on small, individual units, typically a warband of 5 to 15 models. Each model is a unique character with specific stats, skills, and equipment.
Campaign System: The heart of Mordheim is its persistent campaign system. After each game, surviving warriors gain experience, improve their characteristics, and acquire new skills, while players can use accumulated gold and wyrdstone to buy new equipment and hire mercenaries.
Brutal Consequences: A key feature is the brutal and permanent nature of injuries and death. Models that go “out of action” can suffer lasting effects, such as losing an arm or an eye, going mad, or dying permanently, which adds a layer of risk and narrative depth to every encounter.
Terrain and Tactics: Battles take place in a dense, vertical urban environment, emphasizing tactical positioning, climbing, and using cover.
Narrative Focus: The game prioritizes storytelling and emergent narratives over perfect balance, with random events and dice rolls leading to unique and memorable moments for each player’s warband.

Setting

The game is set during a civil war in the Empire, after a twin-tailed comet struck and destroyed the city of Mordheim. The comet scattered wyrdstone, a material with potent magical properties that can heal, resurrect, or create immense wealth, attracting desperate warbands from across the Warhammer world to risk life and limb for fortune.

Genre: Fantasy

Scale: 28 mm

Average Models per Side: 10 to 20

Number of Players: 2

Miniatures: Dedicated

Availability: Out of Print

Publisher: Games Workshop

Designers: Alessio Cavatore, Tuomas Pirinen, Rick Priestley

Year Released: 1999

Additional Information:

While Mordheim is out of print it still has a dedicated group of players who keep the game alive.