Mordheim

Mordheim

The Mordheim rulebook
Players	2 or more
Setup time	10 minutes
Playing time	45 minutes - 1.5 hours
Random chance	High
Skill(s) required	Strategy, Arithmetic

Mordheim is a tabletop game published by Games Workshop in 1999. It is a skirmish variant of the company's Warhammer Fantasy game but set on a warband or "skirmish" scale. Mordheim was designed by Alessio Cavatore, Tuomas Pirinen and Rick Priestley. Besides being a typical miniature skirmish game, Mordheim also features a campaign system. Warbands gain experience and equipment as the campaign progresses, in a similar nature to role-playing games.

The game is set in the Empire city of Mordheim, from Imperial Year 1999, some 500 years before the present day in the Warhammer Fantasy time line. The game is set during a time of chaos and civil war in the Empire after a comet struck the city of Mordheim destroying it and scattering a gem called wyrdstone throughout the ruins. Mercenary warbands from all over the warhammer world battle with one another for the wyrdstone.

Since Games Workshop stopped supporting the game in 2004, all further development has been left in the hands of fans.Border Town Burning is the biggest post 2004 development in Mordheim. It contains detailed expansion rules for campaigns in the Cathayan borderlands, detailing the merchant travels along the "Silk Road" from Cathay to the Old World. Relics of the Crusades (refer to external links below) is another expansion set, this time set in Araby during the Crusades. The setting is very detailed and was originally published through official channels and so can be said to be semi-official. The Coreheim rules modification that streamlines and balances the original Mordheim rules so that play progresses faster and more weapons options are viable. The name 'Coreheim' is a play on words which signifies that the designers thought that the setting, featuring only a handful of warbands, had been diluted by the introduction of so many later warbands.

As a Games Workshop "Specialist Game" Mordheim receives only very limited official support regarding both gaming products (such as models) and rules tweaks/updates. Preliminary suggestions for official rules were last released in 2006 though official moves in support of the game have been non-existent for even longer. Mordheim continues to enjoy a cult following. In February 2008 Games Workshop amended their mail-order indexes, removing numerous Mordheim models from their online store. In February 2010 Games Workshop stopped supplying the basic Mordheim rulebook for purchase as a physical book. In April 2014 the previously available digital downloads of rulebooks and other materials were removed from the Games Workshop website along with any other remnants of the old Specialist Games.