25 years ago,Mordheimwas released. Or at least, that’s what the internet tells me. I was four years old in October 1999 and didn’t pick up the hobby for another five years. Even then, I spent years only assemblingLord of the Rings SBGminiatures before I ventured into the41st millennium. I played a littleBlood Bowlas a teenager, and Space Hulk captured my imagination to the point that I started a Blood Angels force, but Mordheim just wasn’t talked about in my circles.
It feels like there’s been a fairly recent resurgence in love for Mordheim, but I could also attribute that to the YouTube algorithm acknowledging that I watched a man build Mordheim houses for ten hours one workday. But over the past five years or so, I’ve noticed more people in my gaming circles become aware of, start building warbands for, and play campaigns of Mordheim.
Video essayists will proclaim it as the best thing Games Workshop has ever produced. Players will build entire boards of ruined medieval cities that can only be used for this game. People will convert all manner of creative creatures to use as their forces. But is Mordheim, a skirmish game that turns 25 years old today, any good, and how did it achieve cult status in the wargaming community?
What Makes Mordheim Good?
To answer the first question, Mordheim is a good game. That’s why people don’t stop going on about it. It’s good. Great even. I’ve played a few rounds, never a full campaign (yet, there’s still time), but its rules are simple yet effective. Some interactions don’t sit quite right for the wargaming landscape of 2024, but we’ve got house rules for them. And the simplicity of the ruleset means it’s so easy to create those house rules!
Any one Mordheim campaign is subtly different from any other thanks to who’s running it and the tastes of the players. But what other ‘90s wargames gave us the chance to push people off buildings Baldur’s Gate 3 style, horribly maiming them in the process?
Progression is also important. After you’ve built each character in your warband, you equip them with armour and weapons. Both are costly. The result is a ragtag bunch of underequipped soldiers who could barely win a fight against a wet paper towel, let alone a group of angry Skaven vying for the same warpstone cache in the forgotten city.
But you grow to love each member of your force. Because you spend so long building each character, because their equipment is entirely individual and the rules so granular, every soldier is indispensable. That’s why it’s so devastating when John McSword takes a grievous wound. No other tabletop game gives you that XCOM feeling of being genuinely gutted when your soldier is downed. These aren’t elite fighters, they’re plucky opportunists. They’reyourplucky opportunists.
As they each level up and you amass more gold, each veteran becomes more invaluable and each loss more brutal.
There’s one more factor to consider: John Blanche. The artist is a titan of Warhammer, and painted myriad classic artworks that have adorned the covers of box sets and books for time immemorial. His iconic oils and sepia tones helped shape the tone of Warhammer itself, and Mordheim feels like a culmination of his work.
Blanche’s input is something that modern Warhammer sorely misses. It’s less stylised, more generic. We need more of that Blanchian weirdness, and Mordheim gives that Blanchitsu approach space to breathe.
The Community Keeps Mordheim Alive
However, Games Workshop hasn’t supported Mordheim for years now. Using small warbands of specialised, unique miniatures isn’t how a company makes moolah, which is why it focuses on games like Warhammer 40K. Enormous battles comprising of hundreds of pounds worth of models? It’s surprising Workshop hasn’t tried to bring Apocalypse back.
But, like Blood Bowl, the community has kept Mordheim alive. Whether that’s through semi-official rulebooks or YouTube campaigns, people are still playing, loving, and preaching the gospel of Mordheim. In some ways, this is better than official support.
While it would be cool to have official support and brand new models to take to the dilapidated table, fan support is more creative and more fulfilling. There’s less pressure to adhere to official rulesets or trying to push the next expensive thing, and there’s more opportunities for converting the coolest models out of any bits you can find – including borrowing liberally from third-party companies likeVae Victis– to create entirely unique warbands.
I doubt the community spirit would have permeated the Mordheim scene to this extent if Games Workshop fully supported the system (although the thriving Middle-earth tournament rotation may have something to say about that), and it’s this community spirit that has kept the game alive for 25 years.
Will Mordheim Officially Return?
This is the question on everybody’s lips. Necromunda returned, so why not Mordheim? When the Necromunda models look as good as they do, people are clamouring for official support for its fantasy spin-off. If Games Workshop was planning to wait four years after Necromunda to reboot its successor, just like in the ‘90s, then it’s four years too late. If it wanted to celebrate the 25th anniversary of one of its most iconic games then, well, today’s the day.
I think Mordheim will return at some point. I think Warcry might have potentially been aimed to tide over Mordheim players with cool units (the Corvus Cabal in the damned city, anyone?), but who knows what Workshop’s plan for that is now? I think there’s space for an official Mordheim ruleset alongside the current roster, maybe to act as a gateway to The Old World much as Kill Team is to 40K?
The phrase ‘be careful what you wish for’ springs to mind. An official Mordheim ruleset may not be exactly what you want. What if it tries to modernise and loses that beloved clunkiness? What if it’s poorly balanced and your battles get one-sided? What if it doesn’t get ongoing support, like the Middle-earth range? What if, worst of all, it gets the atmosphere all wrong?
Mordheim has survived for 25 years thanks to the grit, determination, and passion of its loyal players. People who are happy using a decades-old rule system, people who will build their own terrain tables and custom units, people who love the game for what it is and the stories they can tell, not for what it could be with better support. This is what makes Mordheim so magical. Well, that and a healthy dose of Warpstone.
