Saturday, February 13, 2010

Mordheim-ery



This past Thursday we fired up a game that we haven't played in, well... a long time. Mordheim! the crazy skirmish game where what happens after the game is half the fun, right Greg?

Seriously, though, I had been on a recent kick of painting figures I've owned for over 25 years and it's been kinda fun. I posted some pics of the Citadel two-headed troll a couple weeks ago. A set of Grenadier's Orcs of the Severed Hand arrived last week, an eBay purchase to replace the originals I had when I was a young teenager playing D&D (and which might have been bought at Sullivan's Hobbies? Hobby Hunter? or maybe even Keystone Hobbies in Winnipeg?)

Anyway, I digest... so once these oddball figures are painted, what to do with them? The answer, obviously, is a Mordheim warband, especially since an Orc warband can bring a Troll buddy along...

So I built a warband and challenged Greg to build a 600gc Empire warband for a challenge smackdown. It's easy - the rules are even all online for free at http://www.games-workshop.com/.

So Greg put together a gang (thankfully leaving the Hochland long rifle at home) and we set up for a game of "Find the Wyrdstone":



(That's my orcs at the centre, and Greg's Empire dudes at upper centre - my orcs have just grabbed one shard and the Troll is standing stupidly around).


Fighting in the ruined house -- I think this was the Greatswordsman you threatened to melt down, wasn't it, Greg??



Reinforcements approach, to no avail as the Orcs were unstoppable! Two-handed weapons hit hard but with their low I the Orcs were sloooowwww... it's a good thing for me that Greg's Empire troops had... "special needs".


And speaking of special needs... "Troll-tard" was a bit of a disappointment, taking only one Empire trooper out of action all game. He stood up to three of them at a time, though, so that was good. The Orc boss left him on his own, thinking that even a developmentally-delayed Troll would know enough to defend himself if charged in close combat, but noooooo... he failed his Stupidity test and just stood there in his turn, getting beat on by Greg's guys.




The end result was an overwhelming victory for the non-GW figures ;-) After that game, we threw down with a Sisters of Sigmar warband (run by Greg) against my Undead. The scenario was "Treasure Hunt" where you have to search buildings for a treasure chest. Stupid thing is always in the last place you look ;-)



Anyway this gives a deceptive picture of the game. A few zombies and Dire Wolves got put out of action but two Sisters out of 10 were down also. My Vampire leader had just made it into CC and some zombies were carting off the treasure chest, all seemed to be well in hand when... Rout test at the start of the turn for me, and the warband bottled out :-( Win for Greg.

Conclusion: Mordheim is fun. We'll do it again soon, perhaps I can convince some of the others to bring out warbands.


2 comments:

Curt said...

Fun! I really like those retro-orcs with the classic late-70s snouts. Its good that they showed the new models the 'what for'!

DaveV said...

Very cool looking game.

Thanks for the link. Having the rules as PDFs is great. This is another good resource:
http://www.mordheimer.com/index.htm

I took a quick look at my painted fantasy figures and whipped up a 500gc Middenheim mercenary warband, including some Hired Swords incluiding a strolling Bard to keep up the lads' morale!