Gameplay mechanics

Mordheim: City of the Damned is a squad based strategy game based on the Games Workshop tabletop game 'Mordheim'. In Mordheim: City of the Damned, you will lead a small but skilled warband of warriors in battles on the streets of Mordheim against other warbands, Daemons and other monstrosities from the Warhammer Fantasy universe. You will grow your warband in number and experience until your warband can face the toughest challenges the game has to offer in battleground missions, through a story campaign and even against other players online should you choose to.

The premise of the game is simple: your warband has been sent to Mordheim by a higher power in search of Wyrdstone - precious yet mysterious stones which litter the streets after the comet fell. To gain Wyrdstone, you warband must take it from deposits on the streets or out of the hands of other warbands, tasked with the same purpose. As the days pass, your warband will be asked to send shipments of this Wyrdstone to your Lord's faction and you will need to return to the streets of Mordheim to collect more and more of these precious stones. Soon, you warband will be tasked with special missions in order to gain favour with your Lord, but these missions will be challenging and you will need to have built up a strong warband in order to complete these tasks.

The game of Mordheim: City of the Damned is a 'hardcore' experience - all choices you make for your warband and all effects these incur are permanent and cannot be reversed. Most players will find their first few battles incredibly challenging; success requires careful planning and a good knowledge of the game mechanics and, most importantly, experience of the challenges and trials the game has to offer. Not all warbands succeed every time, nor do all survive to reach the highest Ranks - sometimes starting a fresh warband is the right course of action.



Dice Rolls
Mordheim: City of the Damned is primarily a game of strategy but many actions rely on the roll of virtual dice. Almost all actions your warriors can perform are rolled from 1 to 100 - for example, you may have a 50% chance to hit or a 95% chance to Dodge an attack. These actions will require you to succeed a roll (roll a number below or equal to the requirement) in order to perform the action. When you select an action which has a variable chance of success, the game will roll for you and you will see whether the action succeeds or fails. For example, if you have a 65% chance to perform an action, rolling 64 will succeed, whereas rolling 66 will fail.

As with all dice rolls, you may be lucky (hitting an enemy with a Critical hit with a 3% chance of success) or you may be extremely unlucky (failing to hit an enemy with a 95% chance to hit 3 times in a row). Such is the brutal nature of life in Mordheim - there is always a chance that the worst will happen, even if the odds are in your favour. Many actions (such as rolls to hit with attacks, cast spells or use skills) are capped at 95%, meaning there is always a 5% chance of failure, no matter what modifiers are currently working in favour of the action succeeding. Some rolls are not capped at 95% (such as All Alone Tests) and having a 100% chance of success will mean just that: a guaranteed success - unless the roll is negatively modified by enemy skills, spells or environmental effects.

Wyrdstone Shipment Requests
Periodically, you will be asked to collect a certain amount of Wyrdstone and deliver it to your Lord. These Shipment Requests require you to collect increasing amounts of Wyrdstone in a set number of days. If you cannot manage to gather enough Wyrdstone in the time frame, your Lord will be displeased and expect you to work harder.

Should you fail to complete Wyrdstone Shipment Requests 4 times in total this will end your mission in Mordheim and you will no longer be able to progress in the single player campaign! Your warband will be locked from gaining experience and only be usable in Skirmishes against other players. It is critical to your warband's success that you fulfil these shipment requests as often as possible!

Rating
All opponents in battles in Mordheim are matched to your warband by using you warband's Rating. This is a measure of how strong your warband is. Individual warriors gain rating points by equipping higher quality weapons and armour, learning new skills and spells and increasing their statistics. The combined total of all of your active warriors' ratings is used to calculate your warband rating. This value is then used to calculate the rating of the enemy warband and their statistics, equipment and abilities. The different difficulty levels will take your warband's rating into account before adding a modifier to the rating of the enemy warband.

Your warband's rating is a good indicator of how strong your warband is and can be used to match again online opponents of a similar rating in Skirmish mode. However, a high-rating warband is not necessarily a well-made warband...

General Tips
When starting out in Mordheim: City of the Damned you may find yourself overwhelmed, making the game far more difficult than it should be. For a better experience:
 * Complete all the tutorial missions: These missions will help you understand the way the game plays and allow you to see how the game works.
 * Read this gameplay mechanics tutorial: This tutorial covers more of the gameplay mechanics that you may not yet have come across in the game.
 * Use this wiki: This wiki is full of information that can help you to plan ahead or better understand your enemies or your own warband.
 * Visit the Official Mordheim: City of the Damned Forum: There are many helpful players at the Official Mordheim: City of the Damned Forum.
 * Visit the Mordheim: City of the Damned Steam Hub: Players have contributed some excellent guides to the Mordheim: City of the Damned Steam Hub.
 * Practice, Practice, Practice!: The more you fight, the more you will understand the game, learning how to overcome challenges that may have previously seemed impossible!

Continue this tutorial with the Warcamp Introduction