SIGMAR-A-LAGO
A city break inside MORDHEIM: CITY OF THE DAMNED
The Warhammer Fantasy world is a wretched place to live. Beastmen in the forests. Trolls in the rivers. Giant rats beneath you. And, if Mordheim is anything to go by, flaming comets in the skies above. Worse still, if you survive the impact event, roaming mercenaries or deranged cultists will probably finish you off.
That’s the setup for this PC adaptation of Games Workshop’s cult tabletop game. In some ways, Mordheim is the raucous city break of the Warhammer world. But instead of cologne-drenched white orcs on a stag weekend in Budapest, this features devout Sigmarite warrior priestesses and skittering bands of skaven on the hunt for precious wyrdstone. You start off with a weakling bunch of pre-grizzled adventurers, who gradually become more capable as they brave the city’s cursed streets. Because, as everyone knows, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Apart from Nurgle’s Rot and being smashed in the clavicle with a mace. It feels like a direct translation of the board game: traversing the world and performing attacks has a turn-based, randomized element, which makes it a staccato affair. This takes some of the edge off the combat, especially when feeble rat-men start shaking off multiple attacks that should be cleaving them in two. It’s also tough. Even the most basic foes take some punishment, and navigating Mordheim’s tumbling streets can be a challenge. It’s not helped by some dense, unintuitive tutorials that make a complex job explaining systems that should be simple. There are some compelling elements though.