The year 1994, from out of space comes a runaway planet...

Or maybe it's 1999 and it's a runaway wyrdstone meteor plowing into the town of Mordheim.
Oh no! Giant Mutant Rats!
Or that could be Lucy, my hamster.We set my girl Lucy loose on the Mordheim table last week and she seemed to enjoy running around checking out the trenches, buildings, trees and sniffing all the models. My fiancee's hamster, Tatsu, had fun too, but tried to carry off one of her skaven. The Horned Rat cometh apparently.
     Kudos to anyone who got the Thundarr the Barbarian reference there, and kudos to those who play Specialist Games. For the uninitiated, Specialist Games is GW's dumping grounds for the games they produce that aren't 40k and Fantasy. It supports such games as Mordheim, Necromunda, BFG, Blood Bowl, Epic, Inquisitor and Warmaster. By support I mean they sell the models and books still. I'm not sure how much active support these lines have received in recent years that isn't fan based.
     The focus of today's post is Mordheim. This is the miniature RPG game basically. Your gang of intrepid swordsmen, or ravenous ratmen, or even saucy sisters wander through a blighted ruined landscape searching for fortune at the risk of life and limb. As they progress they become tougher and more skilled as well as developing useful talents to aid in their search or the defense of their finds.
     Mordheim is my miniature game of choice. I prefer the skirmish level games over the large army ones. Not only does Mordheim work on that level, but it provides a progression track for your warband through experience and skill acquisition. Not to mention the possibility of loss due to the injury chart for models that were taken out of combat. Loss referring to loss of limb, eye, gear, money or even life. The chance that a hero will die is lower than that of a henchman, but is still a very real possibility.
     I like the conversion possibilities that Mordheim allows. You want to model up a Dwarf engineer dual-wielding pistols, but don't really have a place for him in your Warhammer army? That's okay as he's perfect for a mordheim gang. Since pistols require you to reload for a round after firing, having 2 allows you to fire 1 every turn. Or wait, if you give him the skill pistolier, he can fire both in 1 turn and duck behind cover to reload in his next turn.
     The best part about the system is that the rules are all available free currently via pdf-download at the Mordheim section of the specialist games area on the GW site here. The book is split into 3 section, rules, warbands and campaign info. Also provided are the Dwarf Treasure Hunter warband, the Beastmen and Carnival of Chaos warbands (in the Empire in Flames supplement) and some documents to help get you started. A quick search on the web should provide you with a plethora of official and unofficial supplements and warbands for Mordheim as the game was quite popular at its release and still is in some circles to this day.
     So, try out a new (old) game sometime and see what you or your group thinks of it. Happy Wargaming!