First Look: Mordheim: City of the Damned

Even for those of us who are familiar with tabletop Warhammer it’s very possible that you haven’t even heard of Mordheim. Especially as official support for the game has long since stopped. The basic idea is a much smaller focus than standard Warhammer games focusing instead on smaller ‘Warbands’ instead of armies. Sounds like a great premise for a tactical RPG to me. And the guys at Rogue Factor took the time to show off some of their new game at Gamescom. And I’m so glad they did.

Despite the fact the build I saw was pre-alpha the game is already looking extremely promising. At it’s core City of the Damned is a tactical turn based combat game. You control a ‘Warband’ made up of various (clears throat) ‘heroes’ and mercenaries from Warhammer. With the lore and massive amount of characters available from the Warhammer universe there’s already clearly more than enough content for you to create a properly unique squad.

One of the best things that became apparent is that your Warband is actually going to feel like your Warband. There are loads of customization options, loads of equipment slots to fill with loot and RPG style level ups as well. Even with the handful of units I got to see there was a definite sense that each was an actual character and not just a ‘soldier’ or ‘medic’ or whatever. Each character has two weapon load outs and plenty more besides. You can even have heavy armour on one shoulder and light on the other which not only looks cool but also has actual tactical benefits.

For example one soldier repeatedly tried to climb a high wall but his heavy armour meant he kept failing the dice roll and falling rather sadly back to the ground. Meanwhile his opponent got into a good position for the inevitable fight. But had he been lucky he would’ve had the high ground. The glory of dice rolls!

Movement and positioning play a huge part in any turn based tactical game. Movement is handled in a very similar way to Valkyria Chronicles, which is undoubtedly one of the greatest turn based tactical games ever and one of my all time favourite games. And after me and the nice man from Rogue Factor had spent far too long talking about Valkyria and recommending it to a fellow journalist we managed to get back to City of the Damned. Like Valkyria Chronicles, City of the Damned avoids conventional tile based systems and uses orbs that represent energy. In City of the Damned you get 4 movement orbs, or at least this character did, which are each represented by a blue ring on the ground showing you how far you can move. The one thing me and strategy gamers around the world will love is that you can move back across a blue ring and not expend energy. No more knocking the controls and screwing up the entire game for a single mistake!

Combat is similar to the movement. Your character has a number of orbs they can use to attack. Any that are left over can be used for counter attacks. When you attack you can choose an ability and then ‘roll the dice’ and see what happens. It’s difficult to go into more detail because I only saw a handful of abilities but what I saw looked very good. An archer had a ‘knee shot’ (if you laughed you’re as sad as me) for example that aimed to cripple his target. The mage had several abilities one of which was very similar to rockets in Xcom: Enemy Unknown, friendly fire and all. Plus all spells have the chance of completely backfiring and even spawning hordes of chaos. There’s a huge risk reward to the mages which I can’t wait to either win the game for me or ignite my entire squad and call in hordes of chaos to eat their crispy faces.

After you defeat an enemy they are unable to move or act for the rest of the battle and you can, if you feel the need, even steal their weapons. And when I say steal I mean it. As in they lose it and you gain it. To keep. Forever. It’s sadistic and hardcore and it’s awesome. You going to risk running in with rare loot equipped now? That’s going to be a dilemma!

So after your squad gets beaten and your lying in ruins as your enemy sprints of with bags of your hard earned swag over their shoulder you get to find out what damage your crew took. They might be fine. They might be out of action for a number of games. They might die, and of course in this game that means they’re actually gone. Or, and if there is a single feature that will set this game apart this is it, they might take some damage to a limb. Their hand could be crippled and effect their accuracy. They might lose an arm and only be able to wield single handed weapons. Or they might lose a leg and you can choose to have a peg leg and keep your character with some penalties.

So when you go online and an enemy has a peg leg you know this guy has seen action and is probably powerful enough that his owner decided to keep him despite the damage. I don’t know why this hasn’t been done before but it’s ridiculously cool. When you see a damaged character it’s not just an aesthetic choice something happened to him and he’s got the scars to prove it. Chaos can supposedly even mutate extra limbs and the arm of the guy we saw had become an axe which meant he had an awesome axe but no hand so couldn’t change weapons.

There’s so much more to say about this game and I cannot wait to get on and play it. It’s already got procedural maps, which is impressive considering how dense and detailed the environments are. The permadeath, enemy looting and particularly the persistent damage is just plain cool. There’s PvP and PvE modes and plans to add entire factions as DLC in the future. The gameplay is basically Xcom: Enemy Unknown crossed with Valkyria Chronicles set in a Warhammer universe. They just happen to be two of my favourite games of all time which is useful.

City of the Damned is looking seriously good and I’ve only seen a small part of it. Easily one of the best games I saw at Gamescom this year and personally I just can’t wait to get on it. Mordheim: City of The Damned It’s due for early access late this year or early 2015 on Steam and there’s possibility of a PS4 version in the future although nothing is confirmed. This is the one to watch for any turn based tactical fan.