Fans of Mordheim, Frostgrave, and Trench Crusade, all need to look at Black Death City immediately. This free skirmish wargame is the first independent project from Sam Pearson, a former game developer at Games Workshop who lead design on both editions of Warcry and the excellent Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Spearhead, some of the most fun fantasy games to emerge from the Warhammer studio in the last decade.
Set in a fantasy city overrun by plague, in Black Death City players control warbands of mercenaries, cultists, or similar ne’er do wells, battling one another in the streets and ruins to claim treasure, territory, and glory. If that sounds like classic Warhammer spin-off Mordheim, that’s because hell yeah this is like Mordheim.
Had anyone else written this game I might call it “a love letter to Mordheim”, but considering Pearson’s pedigree, I think it might actually be “the Mordheim remake Games Workshop somehow didn’t make”. For long-time Mordheim fans, I can give you a pretty good sense of the game just by describing the key differences:
- Players alternate activating one model at a time, rather than moving their whole warband. Outnumbered warbands can activate their models a second time with “surge” activations, which give one instead of two actions.
- Most model stats are the same, but there are no Strength, Toughness, or Attacks values; more durable foes are represented with a higher Life total, more deadly weapons with higher Attacks, Damage, and Critical Damage numbers.
- When a model is wounded, there’s no rolling to see if it’s taken down, stunned, or out of action; instead, models on a single life point are ‘bloodied’, reduced to one action when they activate.
- Hand to hand combat is more interactive. Both players roll attack dice for their weapons; starting with the fighter who charged or won an initiative roll-off, players select whether to spend their hits on dealing damage, or attempting to parry the opponent’s hit.
Rules wise, two really key features of Mordheim return. Models can take an action to hide behind terrain, ducking down and becoming invisible to models without a clear line of sight until their next turn (or they run out into the open). And as well as rules for climbing from terrain and jumping across gaps, models that are injured while standing on a raised surface need to make an initiative test or fall off, possibly taking fall damage. I mentally insert a Wilhelm scream in any game where this occurs.
The four warbands in the rulebook so far are conspicuously Mordheimy, albeit with some twists; the Guild Mercenaries, Verminkin, and Death Covens will be very familiar to old heads, while The Blighted Cloister actually looks like it’s based on the villains from the Warhammer Quest: Darkwater box set.
Pearson has lavished attention onto the warbands. They can each choose from several unique origins that alter the force composition rules and provide a distinctive stronghold to operate from, have two spell lists, unique skills, unique equipment, and really expansive rosters of troops to recruit from.
What’s missing at the moment – and it’s a big omission – is the campaign system. Pearson says it’s coming. This is entirely a solo project, right down to the art which he’s drawing himself, and at the time of writing his priority is finding all the inevitable typos in the 134 page rulebook. If you want to get involved, you can download the free rules and sign up for updates on the Black Death City website, and there’s already a community for the game on Discord.
Person worked at the Warhammer studio from 2017 to 2025, initially as a game developer, before becoming the Product Development Manager for Warhammer 40k. He launched his YouTube channel shortly after leaving the studio – it’s a great resource for insight into game development and game design challenges – and announced his intention to make his own game. I’ve been eagerly awaiting the results, and I’m hoping to get it to the table soon enough! I’ll be sharing my thoughts in the Wargamer Discord Community as I test it.
If you like the idea of “Mordheim meets Warcry”, you should also check out the Wyrdcry project, which is still going strong.
Source: Wargamer
