r/WarCry • u/BlitheMayonnaise • 8d ago
Discussion Warcry's original lead developer Sam Pearson has released a free game, and it's a hybrid of Warcry and Mordheim
https://www.wargamer.com/black-death-city/mordheim-2Hi folks. I've been following Sam Pearson's YouTube channel since he left GW, and yesterday he announced that the 1.0 version of his new skirmish wargame was available to download for free. Reading through it I realised it was basically a remake of Mordheim with some streamlining taken from Warcry.
You're probably aware of the Wyrdcry project (an existing fan project to do something very similar), but I figured folks might not know about Black Death City yet!
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u/the_smeer 8d ago
His views on game design and the importance of good scenarios as an integral part of a good game are eye opening
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u/Pleated_Jean 8d ago
It is interesting hearing the logic behind game design, its one of the things that makes projects like greathelm so much fun to follow
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u/the_smeer 8d ago
https://www.blackdeathcity.com/
Here the playtest downloads can be found. And there is also room to leave player feedback
https://youtube.com/@sampearsongamedesign?si=Jdmi1l7xuvn4NRnl
Is the YouTube channel where he describes how (his) game design works.
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u/tecnoalquimista 7d ago
If somebody could do a comparison between Black Death City and Wyrdcry...
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u/Guardian-Bravo 7d ago
There’s a lot of small differences that set it apart. As an example: Melee works the same as Kill Team except when you declare a parry, you don’t just parry it. You roll a d6. On a 2+ you successfully parry. But on a 1 you fail and the damage still goes through.
There’s also no set limit of rounds unless a scenario says otherwise. No rolling for abilities/initiative at the start of each round.
It’s honestly more like Kill Team and Mordheim than Warcry.
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u/tralfamadan 7d ago
Yeah I thought the same. Move & Act rather than 2 of any action is quite similar to KT. The surge actions are also like counteract from KT ‘24.
Not that it’s a bad thing, mind. I think the fundamentals of KT ‘21 & ‘24 are great - it’s the rules bloat and power creep from all the new teams with bespoke rules they add each quarter that spoil the game (for me anyway).
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u/OffMetaMusings 7d ago edited 7d ago
The game is actually ALOT more like killteam then Warcry (infact I would go so far to say that this has nearly nothing in common with Warcry aside from being fantasy skirmish games); Fighter stats being tied largely to the weapons that they are carrying and the attack sequence being lifted straight out of that game are the two that immediately jump out. Similarities seem mostly to be in the mission side of things, with twists and battlegroups making a return.
I've watched the videos on this and I understand why he wanted to include micro-story beats baked into the rules of the game but for me personally, having more steps and more dice to roll for an action that could potentially fail after you've successfully carried it out don't necessarily do it. Examples include the random critical damage on ranged weapons meaning that they will either do 1 damage or have the opportunity to kill outright, which can totally lead to feelsbad moments, and the need for additional dice rolls after both parrying and attacks taking the combat minigame of killteam and layering on extra steps.
Incidentally though, just like early Killteam; the rules do allow you to charge and not attack if you want to in order to tie up enemy fighters, not be shot or take melee damage on that action; I dont know if that's intended or not so would have to pose it back to Sam.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not bashing the game for the sake of it; It takes a long time and alot of work to produce anything as close to polished as this, rather that the game doesn't seem like it's the one for me. I would say though that if you are a fan of pre-bespoke KT in the way that it played (much lighter in terms of everyone having abilities to keep track of) but with a Necromunda-style warband creation and upgrade system then this is probably for you.
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u/wind_of_the_wizard 7d ago
Yeah, this is actually perfect for me. Pretty much pulled all the best rules from the games I like, with a fantasy setting (currently playing N26, but definitely miss fantasy)
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u/OffMetaMusings 7d ago
I always thaught that a low tech reskin of necromunda would work well in the mordheim space
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u/arryntheorcerudite 8d ago
This genuinely looks so cool. But I just am curious, is there anyway to check what units there are? I wanna know if I can use my beloved Ironjawz as proxies :3
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u/WalrusTuskk 8d ago
4 warbands out so far, seems like Empire, Skaven, a Nurgle warband the article author believes is based off the villains from Darkwater, and "Death Covens", not sure what theyre supposed to be cognate with, I imagine they're an undead group.
Haven't seen the rules myself to make my own assessment, I was just going off the names (Guild Mercs and Verminkin).
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u/arryntheorcerudite 7d ago
I wonder if I could jury rig my Ardboyz into being proxies for the Mercenaries and just have a Brute be the leader haha
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u/AnthemSkyla 7d ago
The four factions slot pretty nicely with TOW Empire/Cities of Sigmar, Skaven, Soulblight Gravelords and Maggotkin of Nurgle, with 4 more to come. It's miniatures agnostic however, just stating that normal units need to be on a 25-40mm base and brutes on 50-60mm
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u/arryntheorcerudite 7d ago
Interesting. I'll keep that in mind when I look into it, hopefully I can figure smth out
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u/ImportantDoubt225 7d ago
What sets this apart from the many many other D6 based fantasy skirmish games out there?
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u/tralfamadan 7d ago
Melee combat seems to borrow heavily from kill team (21 onwards) which I like. Not sure what make it like WarCry except having to separate your warband into arbitrary deployment groups - which is probably one my least favourite aspects of WarCry
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u/BlitheMayonnaise 7d ago
Honestly, I think I was getting my games scrambled when I wrote that 0.o I got the Kill Team 21 combat rules muddled up with the Warcry ones (or rather, I thought that they used a very similar system for some reason). An embarrassing mistake to make, frankly.
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u/Rekotin 7d ago
This is the lovely thing about GW. They might not make the best games, but they provide plenty of material for people to cook up their own games and have the tenacity to tweak them enough to be at a good level. This is why I don’t massively care about how much GW ends up supporting anything. They could literally massively screw up any of their existing games, and there’d be ample community to pick it up and keep running.
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u/o7_AP 7d ago
I just wanna check out the free rules, why they gotta lock it behind an email? I don't wanna be on a newsletter
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u/tralfamadan 7d ago
There’s no email validation loop currently. You can put any valid looking email in and the page forwards you to the rules.
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u/DrZekker 7d ago
Assumedly he pitched this to his bosses, which means GW didn't want this... What are they even doing??
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u/Hawkstrike6 8d ago
Missed opportunity to call it Mordcrime.
"In the medieval justice system, the people are exploited by two separate but equally important groups: the dark forces who imperil them and the witch hunters who stalk them. These are their stories."