Age of Sigmar

[JT-Y]

A 40mm pitch...

That model is on a 30mm base.

[Blammaham]

A 40mm pitch...

The BEST kind of pitch! S.

[axia]

I agree with mattdakka, mordheim is with bb the best game of gw... a lot of customizations, few models and infinite combo for funny games! I'veplayed it for an entire year with my room mates and we finished the year with a lot of stories and our heroes with full exp... minimum 3 plays per week!

[Digger Goreman]

On that note, an old memory gamer advised me that Mordheim was totally dominated by Skaven.... That this wrecked the game.... However a cursory look, in the past, shows fans tinkering with the rules.... What, iyo, is the best downloadable Mordheim ruleset?

[Darkson]

The last set endorsed by GW (I think it was called the Mordheim LRB) by the Mordheim's Rule Committee. NOt sure where it's available from now though, would need to have a search. [Edit] See my reply to JT-Y below.

Skaven weren't that good though, a top tier undoubtedly, but not the best. They did reward good play though. Shadow Warriors were the worst.

[Shteve0]

Yep, pics have been showing up already. They look pretty decent, will have to see what costs are and what you get on the spruces.

Apparently 5 for £30 and come with 'an embarrisment of swords and hammers'.

Lol, NZ pre-order is now up. They want $100 (more than £43 right now, usually about £50!) for five models. Yeah... Nah.

[Digger Goreman]

It's called fleecing the kiwis!

C'mon, your corporate masters demand it....

[rolo]

I agree with mattdakka, mordheim is with bb the best game of gw... a lot of customizations, few models and infinite combo for funny games! I'veplayed it for an entire year with my room mates and we finished the year with a lot of stories and our heroes with full exp... minimum 3 plays per week!

The best game by GW was Talisman.

Man o War was probably a terrible game, but it was my first tabletop strategy game, so I have a soft sport for it, and miss it.

[JT-Y]

Mordheim LRB wasn't tinkered with in the same way as BB, all it did was fix typos and small things like that, and updates to text to reflect FAQ's.
If you can get the original rulebook, play using that. The only fix you need is to give everything in the game a natural armour save of 6+ This improves the quality of armour to better reflect the later WFB 6th ed rules, something that was missing when Mordheim was penned. Strength too easily negates armour in Mordheim, this was fixed in WFB 6th by adding +1 to armour saves if equipped with hand weapon and shield, but that doesn't work in Mordheim due to weapon complexity. And you're adding too many words. Simpler then to give everything a natural 6+ save, which in turn can negate the bias towards certain warbands and even the field.
Play with dense (and I do mean dense) terrain and the game balances well enough as shooting fails to dominate and long, easy charges from fast warbands don't dominate either, but don't look for perfect balance because it's a narrative campaign game and that comes first.
Addons can be found everywhere, Lustria and Karak Azgal are the best alternative settings, but you really want the Empire In Flames official supplement.

I don't know where you can easily download the rules today, but I have a wealth of docs. I'm willing to share via email if anyone wants to PM me.

[Darkson]

but don't look for perfect balance because it's a narrative campaign game and that comes first.

This - 100% agree, and still one of my favourite games.

I don't know where you can easily download the rules today, but I have a wealth of docs. I'm willing to share via email if anyone wants to PM me.

Check out Yaktribe (http://gaming.yaktribe.org/community/va ... rdheim.12/). Although primarily a Necromunda site, they have most, if not all, the official Mordheim stuff and a lot of fan-made articles to. Also good if you play GorkaMorka and especially Necromunda (as you can also host your gang(s) there).

[Darkson]

On the subject of Mordheim:

Mordheim Design Notes -15 Years Later

Ask and you shall be given: over the years I've received so much feedback and fan mail for Mordheim that I've been meaning to write my own reflections on the game. The people have been really curious about the birth of the game and what led to creation of a product that was quite unusual for the GW product line-up at that time.

IN THE BEGINNING...
Mordhem was started with a model of a burned-out, ruined city, made of Mighty Empire pieces and custom houses the Perry twins when brainstorming the history of the Old World. Rick Priestley (whose help in getting the game published was vital) and I had just had a good laugh at all the year 2000 religious cults that were prophesying the end of the world and we thought it would be really funny that in the Warhammer world the same thing happened -except all the portents of doom were real and something apocalyptic DID happen.

We looked at the history of the Old World and realized that year 2000 was perfect for a setting of the game: the Empire was fragmented, magic was illegal, and Chaos was ascendant. Thus the setting of Mordheim was born, and the twin-taled comet, the traditional symbol of Sigmar the patron god of the Empire became once again one of the prominent symbols of the Warhammer World, restored to its rightful place in the iconograhy of games industry.

THE PRE-PRODUCTION
The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Mordheim is how it sparked off the creativity at the HQ. The whole Studio was energized, especially the artists who (led by mighty John Blanche) really let it rip with Mordheim Art, blending the old Realms of Chaos spirit with the modern Warhammer look and feel.

People literally worked late hours against the wishes of the management: Gav Thorpe crafted some excellent stories that also became the basis of the Ulli and Marquand comics. Rick Priestley wrote absolutely cracking background to the Witch Hunters which still makes me chuckle when I read it today. Me and Alessio played countless matches and discussed how to blend skirmish wargaming with narrative. I worked with Alan Merret and others designing a way to create affordable and extremely flexible plastic sprues for the Warbands. We poured over dozens of history books detailing the end of the world prophecies and the times when the black plague devastated much of the Europe, to create the atmosphere for the game and its art.

We put enormous effort into the symbolism of the art and the writing -the fish that you see everywhere was not just a unifying visual element, but they also represented the souls of the people of Mordheim where the powers of Chaos and Sigmar vied for them.

THE RULES
I think most Warhammer fans remember me mainly for my efforts to balance the 6th edition of Warhammer and to bring back the importance of troops. This is because normally when I design game rules I start with the mechanics and establish the maximum and minimum values for all game parameters and then try to break them through external playtesting, writing some simple excel calculations and keep tweaking them so that the core rules are as balanced as possible. I also always enrolled the best tournament players I could find to read the rules like the Devil reads the Bible to find any loopholes and exploits.

But I did make a decision early on that Mordheim would be a fiction-driven game where the flavour and creativity would be given priority over strict game balance. I do not mean that I would throw away the game balance for nothing -but for example in the fiction of Mordhem armor was expensive, so I made it expensive in the game as well. This was intentional, and became more of a bragging right to the players rather than a common occurrence. At the Studio campaign a suit of armor became a bragging right and a source of many model conversions.

So instead of making the core rules first, in Mordheim I created the Warbands and their background first, and fleshed out the overarching history of Mordheim. Then we worked on the rules to bring those Warbands and their world alive on the tabletop, and create a rules framework from which the stories of those Warbands could arise.

Mordheim was never meant to be tournament game (though I've had an honor to judge several Mordheim tournaments and I thoroughly enjoyed them). I've gotten some criticism for that over the years, which is fine -players are entitled to decide which aspects of the game they appreciate, and I am a big boy, I can take constructive critcism. People have made their own versions of the game (such as Coreheim) to mould the game to their tastes, and I am fine with that: in fact I've always encouraged players to do so.

Mordheim was in many ways my attempt to blend tabletop RPGs with miniature gaming as seamlessly as I could. I've taken a plenty of flack for this approach over the years, but I do think that a designer has to stay true to his or her vision in order to create something memorable: you cannot serve two masters. Ultimately it is up to the players to decide if I succeeded, but I remain proud of Mordheim to this day: I believe I could write the rules better today, but I do think that by and large we managed to create what we set out to do.

THE ROLE OF RANDOM
In many ways, the large number of random tables throughout the game became my greatest ally. I wanted everything in the game to be risky -that's why so many items, choices and weapons in Mordheim carry a large risk factor with them. I wanted the game to create epic, memorable stories for the players to recall fondly years later. In games where the game is very rigidly controlled by players with very little randomness, you can control the balance and create a very competitive and even game akin to chess. But maximizing randomness creates situations and choices for the player to react to which he never even dreamed of encountering, and the one to marshall all their resources and imagination to deal with the unforeseen situation. An a magician Warband leader suffering from Stupidity is a situation Mordheim can throw your way, or a Vampire who has immense strength but no Toughness to deal with incoming blows. Only a game with high random factor can create these challenges and allow player to rise to the occasion -and perhaps more importantly remember it for years to come.

In many ways Mordheim was meant to be playing the dice with the gods of Chaos: they would bend the rules, make your Warband leader lose both his eyes and legs, and then laugh at your face -or even better with you, as you did your best to salvage the situation the best you can.

IF I COULD TURN BACK TIME...
I think that because the playtesting and campaign I ran at the Design Studio was very story-driven, I missed some of the things such as Skaven being equipped with endless number of slings, and did not write some things like the rules for the Steel Whips as clearly as I could have. This would have never turned Mordheim into a primarily tournament game, but would have lessened some of frustrations of players: game can have a highly narrative drive, but in my opinion rules should always be as clear and easy to use as possible.

If there is one major addition to the game I think would enhance Mordheim it is a separate section and rules for a role of the game master who pushes the campaign forward and creates scenariors and long-term goals for the players. As I did this role myself during the initial Mordheim campaign, I honestly did not see how much a Games Master who creates special scenarios enhances the game. I think I should have taken all my special scenarios, notes on running the campaign and long-term aims and goals, and I would have spent a few months to make them something anyone can use to create their own campaigns for Mordheim.

THE FUTURE
To my delight despite all the challenges more niche games face today Mordheim lives on today on the tabletops of die-hard fans, on the bookshelves of the collectors, on PC thanks to computer games, and I'd like to think in the hearts and minds of the game fanatics like me.

I am very impressed with the work that Rogue Factory are doing with the PC version of Mordheim. I think they are true inheritors of the the spirit of Mordheim, and it is good to see its popularity on Steam. Many of the Old Guard fans or Mordheim are enjoying it which warms my heart.

But most of all, I still see daily how enthusiasts and fans create their own Warbands, terrain, conversions, rules and background. It was this passion I had had for old wrinkled Dragon magazines, Rolemaster RPG critical hit tables and long sessions of Warhammer that led into my own pursuit of games as a career, and I kind of hope that perhaps my efforts in their own small way have sparked an imagination of some young designer somewhere who will continue to carry the torch of the industry far into the future.

[Chris]

I believe the chaos chaps are on 32 and the sigmarines 40?

Nice Mordhiem memories, I wonder if people are equally enthused in the design studio for the current warhamster?

[JT-Y]

I believe the chaos chaps are on 32 and the sigmarines 40?

They are, you're right. But the model in the image I shared is not on a 40mm base. The Sigmarines look like a pea on a drum on a 40mm base, whereas the smaller base fits them well. So 30/32mm bases, fine for ST4 BB players.

And I don't believe anyone in the studio these days gets as enthused as in the old days. Sadly it just isn't the same sort of place any longer.

[Norse]

got my plastics in the mail this morning.. lovely stuff, but not the easiest conversions for reasons JTY indicated already..

I'll spend the afternoon cutting and greenstuffing and see if I can make a team I'm willing to show here..

if anyone wants the NOS Sigmarite dudes and rule book (still in shrink) drop me a PM or I'll hit up eBay

[Norse]

conversions going rather nicely. these minis are very strangely separated. one guy has both his arms attached to a chest piece, another has his face attached to his torso while the back of his head is a different piece. just plain weird.

I will say this is not a simple conversion set. I'm grateful to have a box full of avatars of war dwarf hands for instance. now I just need to putty about 30 knuckledusters and I'll be good to go..