Originally published March 2016

Mordheim: City of the Damned is an asshole. You might be saying, "How can a video game be a literal or figurative asshole?" Please, please allow me to enlighten you.

Mordheim is the worst type of good video game. It's a game that can be immensely satisfying due to the skill and strategy required, and it has enough to keep tempting you back. Yet when it decides to up the difficulty on the player, it feels like the game is being emotionally and psychologically abusive.

Playing Mordheim is like signing up for a dysfunctional relationship. You might forgive the first few fights that you lose because it's most likely your fault anyway for not understanding Mordheim enough. After some time together, though, you'll think you have a better understanding of it and after those orgasmic victories, it will feel like you've turned a corner in this relationship. You and Mordheim will be a happy couple, capable of hours of fun and success without miscommunication. Then comes the inevitable fight when it just screams "Fuck you" in your face for the first time. What brought this on? Why did this happen? Was it your fault? Was it something you said or did? Or is it just being unfairly aggressive? You might try to understand Mordheim more by going to a couples counselor, but it will just convince the counselor that you're trying to play the victim and that you just aren't doing enough for Mordheim. It's your fault that you keep losing and disappointing Mordheim. If you just accept its bad behavior and move on, you'll have a better relationship.

But enough of that metaphor. If you didn't catch what I was hinting at, what I was actually saying was: Mordheim's a fun game, but man do I hate it sometimes. Here are some reasons why.

Urge to Kill Rising...

This game is hard. It's the most difficult and unforgiving game I've played since Darkest Dungeon, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and Dark Souls. All three of those games I thoroughly enjoy, partially for their unforgiving nature that motivates me to not only win but to win well. Victory achieved in those games is satisfying because you know the stakes and the obstacles involved. Winning against insurmountable odds through luck can be entertaining, but winning because of my skill and strategy is much more exciting and satisfying. Mordheim gives you the same sort of odds as the rest, then it stacks a few more against you.

I enjoy a challenge and I even enjoy it when a game takes a challenge and ups the ante a little bit to give the challenge a daunting nature. It's something that Dark Souls did very well. It's something that when you overcome it, the satisfaction of victory is near-unmatched. However, Dark Souls does not require you to account for a particular gameplay mechanic that games like Mordheim, XCOM, and Darkest Dungeon do. In those games, you are at the mercy of the invisible dice roll. It's a very common mechanic to have when the gameplay isn't action-based, so it comes with the territory of a turn-based strategy or RPG. Yet, it is probably THE mechanic that manages to make my blood boil the most when it is working as intended.

All three of those turn-based strategy games have elicited similar rage-induced tantrums or bitter outbursts for how I felt a victory or just a decent outcome was robbed from me due to a bad dice roll. It's actually quite difficult to decide which game has managed to piss me off more as they each have had their moments—XCOM has been codenamed "Broadside of a Barn" between me and my girlfriend for how often I would complain about my soldiers being such terrible shots that I would use the familiar idiom. After my last experience with Mordheim though, I feel that an overt nickname along the lines of "masochistic torture" is appropriate.

Considerable Planning Required

Due to the difficulty of Mordheim and the invisible dice rolls that often do not go in your favor, you have to take a lot into account. You have to plan out which soldiers to use, how to position each of them, or just which mission makes the most sense to attempt. Every "day" that passes in the game gives you the opportunity to attempt new missions that are available, each mission has its own sets of objectives and rewards, as well as the rewards that are available to scavenge on the battlefield. Those missions also tell you up-front the difficulty to expect from the enemy forces; rarely is the difficulty anything less than Hard.

As the commander of your scavenging warband trying to make ends meet in this dilapidated city of opposing forces, you have to decide which mission has the best chances for success and what is worth the lives of your soldiers. To force players to continue to go out on dangerous missions rather than just sitting it out for a few days, waiting for better options, or waiting for new items to hit the storefront, the game has a system in place that requires players to deliver a resource, called Wyrdstone, to their noble lord who is funding your whole excursion into the hell-hole town. Failure to deliver the necessary amount of Wyrdstone within the time limit causes an increased demand for the resource, which then leads to Game Over if that demand is not met. You're not allowed to play it safe.

The best you can do is plan out your missions and soldiers effectively. This means constantly reviewing your soldiers and their inventory to make sure they have the weapons and armor that best suit their class. This also requires that you level up your soldiers accordingly, and Mordheim is not a game that allows for generalists. Whatever your guy's highest starting stats, are the only things you should be improving in the early game. You don't gain many stat points before the game ramps up the challenge. Plus, in order to use any special skills or to even see much of a difference in their success on the battlefield, you are much better off making each soldier a specialist and min-maxing your statistics.

This, of course, means that you may run into problems if any of your guys are injured in a battle. If any soldier falls in battle, more invisible dice rolls are happening to determine what will happen to them at the end of the match. Most of the time, the warrior returns from the battlefield undamaged, with no side effects. Sometimes the soldier will return with injuries, though, which can range from minor to serious in terms of how much it affects the character. Some side effects are basic stat deductions, while others completely debilitate the character so they can no longer traverse the map because they lost a leg. Or they can't see anything to their left or right because they lost an eye, which is rendered to their person in gruesome detail with a scarred face and blank eye. It's a nice touch, but with the seriousness of their debuffs, I'd almost prefer they just die on the battlefield. Maybe I'm just a heartless commander.

Know Your Enemy

It's not too often I play a game that feels so incredibly unbalanced. I don't envy developers who are responsible for balancing out the teams in a game, as there is a ton of math involved and probably a lot of trial and error to figure out how to balance out the strengths and weaknesses of the different armies. Still, it's a necessary part of the development process, and when a game that requires balancing goes unbalanced, players notice quickly.

I think that in terms of the movement and combat mechanics involved in completing missions is fine. It gets a little weird when you try to navigate up and down stairs, or the geometry gets in the way of an attack. The game is not without its bugs, but it works, for the most part. The balancing issue comes from the strengths and weaknesses of the armies involved.

I have never, NEVER, up to this point, won a match against the Skaven. The Skaven, for those who don't know, are horrible rat-people of the Warhammer universe. They're considered to be nasty foes, but not unstoppable. They're the primary antagonists in the other Warhammer PC game that came out last year: Warhammer The End Times: Vermintide. There, where you mow them down like weeds with your weapons. Yet, in Mordheim, they are easily recognized as the army with the most advantages.

They start out with strong, poison-tipped weapons. Their weakest characters can move the farthest across the map in a single turn. I even had an instance where they crossed the map and got to my starting point before I was able to move a character. This makes them a huge threat. They can also hit more times than most other characters. Not to mention, they hit hard. The only disadvantage I've seen is that they're supposed (SUPPOSED) to fail their mental checks more than anyone else because they're supposed to be (SUPPOSED TO BE) cowards. They aren't though, so they win most of the time.

Of the other three armies I'd say, the rest feel a little closer in strength to one another with their own distinct strategies. The Mercenaries are the jack-of-all-trades group with strength in diversity. Their guys can specialize in ranged and close combat and are suitable for almost any situation. They're also the ones I recommend using when trying to learn Mordheim's mechanics. The mercenaries are simple and straightforward, they can use a variety of weapons, giving you a good view into how the game works as you play it.

Chaos is weird with a lot of risk placed on the use of magic buffs. Of all the armies, I'd say they're the last one someone should try, simply because of how so much of the victory rides on your ability to understand the spells and the effects they cause. They're a bit of a glass cannon since they're a somewhat fragile group, while still capable of delivering a fair amount of damage. I've won against them a majority of the time, though still suffered a few narrow defeats. Against them, it's just a good idea to distract their big guy and take out all the buffers around him quickly.

Finally, the Sisters of Sigmar are the tanks, restricted to only melee combat. They are slow and not capable of moving very far through the map, so you're not going to return from battle with many treasures using them. They're capable of dishing out the damage, but their slowness and interest in the heavy weapons make them miss a lot. Despite the fact that they might be able to take out one of your guys in a single hit, they often don't due to their accuracy. Usually, they can be peppered from a distance by the other armies that have ranged capabilities, so that when they finally get up close, they're already close to dead. If you're cautious against them, you shouldn't have much trouble.

An Underdog Story

Originally, wasn't going to write anything about Mordheim. It's a complicated game with a lot of different mechanics at work that are difficult to describe in print to give a real sense of the game. Plus, I haven't even progressed far enough in the campaign to feel like I have that much to say about it. I'm still very early in the "story" of the campaign and it seemed unfair to form too many judgments before I saw more of what the game had to offer. Nonetheless, I've sunk some time into it and have already started over a few times to try to get a better understanding of the game (and improve my chances).

So, I wasn't going to write anything, until I played the first story mission. Suddenly, after that experience, I was compelled. This was the single event that made me bitter and angry on a level that I hadn't felt while playing a game in quite some time. The mission managed to convince me into hoping and believing I might have actually had a chance at winning before stripping it away in a quick and ruthless fashion that further cemented in my mind how unfair Mordheim can be.

Allow me to spin you the tale.

It's the first story mission of the game. I had never played a story mission before, so a tutorial appeared at the beginning informing me of how the mechanics are different for this one, and how they're not in my favor. For every other mission up to this point, victory was achieved by eliminating enough of the other team to drive down their morale enough to force them to route from the battle. The same, of course, applies to the player when it comes to failure. When morale reaches a low enough level, a morale check is made with an invisible dice roll. If it fails, the team routes. In the rare instances when it succeeds, the team stays on the battlefield. I thought that a morale check was made for every round, but the Skaven proved that wasn't the case when they, of course, beat the dice roll and stayed long enough to whoop my ass in a previous battle.

Anyways, this story mission was not going to include the morale-check mechanic, for the other team anyway. It still applied to me. This time, I was going to face enemies who wouldn't route and who would replenish with reinforcements as I killed them off and continued to be reinforced until I completed my objectives. My objectives were to find explosives and place them at particular points. So, I pretty much had a time limit to get the job done considering the fact that their guys would just chip away at the health of mine until my guys were dead, and their numbers would never fall too.

The only thing that improved my odds in this battle was an extra character they gave me who had boosted stats and abilities. However, he was also a liability because he could not be allowed to fall in battle, or the mission would fail. I already didn't like the odds and figured that this guy would either make or break the match. The only thing I had left to learn was who I would be facing.

Immediately within the first round of the battle, the Skaven rushed in and got a bunch of quick hits on one of my guys, driving his health down to a single point. This meant that if he so much as tripped trying to climb a wall, he would die. Fortunately for me, he was a ranged character, so he could survive and still be useful in a fight by staying back. I eliminated the immediate threat and collected the explosives with my toughest guys to make sure I could rely on them lasting long enough to deliver the goods.

I made it to the drop points, through the sewers, and through forces of Skaven that managed to shave off the health of my men. Reinforcements had slowly been spawning above us in the streets, but I had managed to avoid any more than what was in the sewers once we made our way inside. Finally, I saw the last spot where I needed to place the explosive. I cautiously marched my soldier down to the end, looked around the corner, and saw their horrible rat-beast tank thing. Suddenly a new objective appeared, demanding I kill this thing now too. Nice.

I had spent about 30 minutes getting to this point, trying to find the path it wanted me to take and trying to survive against the Skaven warriors. All of my guys were beaten up rather badly, and now I had to face off against the strongest type of enemy the Skaven had. My only advantage was that there were 6 of us and 1 of him. But with each high-ranking guy having less health and a high chance of dropping dead, the morale would be teetering on the brink before long.

I surrounded the beast, positioned the last explosive, and made all my guys attack at once. In two rounds, we managed to pick away at his health and he had less than a third left. He had managed to knock out two of my high-ranking guys, though. I could not lose one more person, regardless of their rank. It was now or never. I got all my guys lined up and opened fire. His health was down enough to be taken out by my commander once it got to his turn. I just needed the rat beast to not kill any of my guys. A stupidity check for the beast is rolled. It fails. The thing doesn't move.

Fortune favors the bold! The creature cannot do a damn thing for another round and I can tear into him with my remaining guys. I start wailing on him. Only one more round was needed and victory would be mine. Suddenly, a Skaven drops down from the streets above at the far end of the sewers. In one turn, he moves alllllllllll the way up and hits my archer who had been limping with 1 point of health the whole time. A morale check is forced. I lose.

More to Come?

I may provide a review for Mordheim if and when I finish it. That is a major "if" though. I may not finish it with more experiences like that, where I invest an hour only to get stomped at the last second. I'll likely have a stroke if that keeps happening.

Mordheim is a good game for those who want the masochistic torture it offers, despite its clearly imbalanced nature. It can be immensely satisfying when victory is achieved and you come home with your pockets lined with Wyrdstone. It can also be bitterly frustrating in the moments when victory is stripped away from you. I've had a lot of fun with it, I'm just not sure how much torture I can take.