I was torn on wether I wanted to put down a negative or positive recommendation. It's still kinda sad there's no neutral variant.

The game has a solid foundation, and nails the atmosphere / Design a Warhammer Game like this should have. Also, to the Developers Credit, the game has gotten very far from the days back when it was just a Tutorial and some skirmishing (I bought it a long time ago in Early Access). The Warbands are varied, and developing characters and building your Warband is interesting. I wanted to get this stuff out of the way first, beefore I go into the bad traits.

What holds Mordheim back massively in my opinion, and the main reason I cant reccomend it, is the sheer number of rough edges and weird design decisions, a lot of them taken not long before release. Let's start with the major ones:

The Difficulty. A lot of people say the game is hard, unforgiving, challenging. In truth, it just has a steep learning curve, before turning into a failry easy game with some major random spikes in difficulty. Let's not mince words, the AI is stupid. Really, really stupid. This by itself would not be an issue, it's incredibly hard to design even a half decent AI for a system like this. The problem is the way the Dev's are trying to compensate for it. The game basically works with a handicap system. Enemy Ai Warbands will ALLWAYS be superior to yours. More hp, higher Stats etc. The Difficulty of a mission decides how high the difference in strength will be. So in Normal they are just a bit stronger, while in Deadly you are clearly fighting a superior foe, who will absolutely ruin your day in a fair fight.

While this sounds unwinnable on paper, in practice, it's actually childishly easy to just set up fight at chokepoints, in buildings or just on Elevation, and then slowly drop the enemy one by one. As your Warband raises in Level, this becomes progressively easier, since your Guys actually become more and more decent at the specific thing you build them for. While the AI stays it's usual, dumb self. You will reach a point where everything but Brutal or Deadly seems like a waste of time. And even those are, as I said, just slightly harder as long as you play it safe.

In short, the game will seem hard at first. Unfair even. But as soon as you get even a basic grasp of the mechanics, the AI and building your guys, it falls apart and becomes almost too easy.

That is until you get hit by the RNG of course. There are quite a few mechanics implemented solely for the purpose of ruining your day, showering the AI with even more advantages, and reinforcing the "Hardcore" feeling the game likes so much.
Firstly, there are ambushes. There is a chance (10% last I checked) on taking each mission, that you get an ambush Event. Basically the one doing the ambushing starts out with all his guys in a offensive Stance (Ambush for Melee, Overwatch for Ranged), while the one that got ambushed get's quite a few penalties (Less chance to hit, for example). As if that wasnt enough, the Deyploment is usualy set up in a way where the ambushers are set up very near or outright next to their enemies.
It's completely possible, if your Warband is not built for high Initative, to get ambushed by a highspeed Skaven Warband and loose 1-3 guy before you even get to act ONCE.

There is no strategy to this. There is no way for you to properly react to it when you get ambushed, beyond praying to Nuffle that you'll get lucky in that first turn. On the other hand, getting to ambush the AI basically means a free win, which feels cheap and unsatisfying.

Then we have Demons. To give the game credit, they do not appear in early game and only on Brutal or above. But they add another, unnecessary, easily abused factor to the game. They are very strong. Having a ton of hp, a lot of attacks, and high damage. They usually home in on the first guy they see. So usually, it's actually fairly easy to wait for the AI to just run into them and then enjoy your free win. Ironically, they cannot climb. So just hiding up in a building and waiting until the victory screen pops up is a frequent thing. On the other hand, if you get unlucky in deyploment, running into one is almost certainly a death sentence. Don't get me wrong, you CAN kill them. But you will NOT be in shape for another fight, especially on Deadly.

Next, we have the different Warbands, and how they're built. Chaos Warbands are nigh unplayable right now, due to random mutations. Imagine you buying a mutant. Imagine you get lucky and you get a blue bow early on. Great, I wanna build a ranged guy! Cool, he got clawed Feet on Level 1! Now he's faster! Then you hit Level 5. And his arm mutates. He can not use ranged weapons now. Oh you invested all his points into Ballistic Skill? Well too bad. Throw him out. Then you have melee guys who get a thousand eyes. Now they cant wear armor anymore! You built him for tanking? Well up yours and your silly tactics! Buy a new one!

It's arbitary, there is no system to it, and it will frustrate you to the point where after the sixth time you had to throw out a high level guy, you're just not gonna play them anymore.

Finally, and probably the "least" offensive, is the UI, loading screens, and bugs. Some of the information is hidden behind 3 different windows, and there is NO way to customize any of it. Everytime you wanna look up something, calculate your next move or just flat out inform yourself about the guys you're fighting, it involves annoying clicks, searching through 4 different menus until you finally find what you're looking for. Deployment does not allow you to jsut click on the spot on the map, you have to cycle trough each deployment point manually. Some maps have what feels like 50 deyploment points. Imagine how fun it is to cycle trough each with EACH of your guys. 10 man Warbands? The fun is here!

There was also an announcer added with the release. The general announcer sounds like a random dude, let's call him Jeff, they pulled out of an office to announce EVERY BLODDY THING you do. Gotta collect 10 Wyrdstones? Don't worry, he will "update" you on it EVERYTIME you pick up one! The voice is not even cool, it's not a cool evil voice like you'd have in Dungeon Keeper, or War for the Overworld. It's just a boring, regular guy. You got the atmosphere down on the other stuff, why suddenly slack off here?

Bugwise, it's a lot better than it was in earlier versions. But there are still random things that should not be acceptable in a full release. The ai will sometimes randomly engage and diesengage people it isn't supposed or get stuck (Usually on staircases). Some doorways and holes cant be entered from one side, but from the other side they can. The game feels like having rough edges, that should definetely have been fixed in EA before coming out proper.


Now, if the above is looked at, changed, or adjusted, this game will get a big fat blue thumb from me RIGHT AWAY. The foundation is there, the game can and will be fun for you, if you can get past all that. But IF they fix it, it's gonna be even better. Fantastic even.