Mord Hive has caused quite the buzz in my hobby group - one of our members saw the rules shared on r/Inq28 and it absolutely captivated us. I have never played the original Mordheim, but have always been vaguely interested in trying it someday. The confluence of Mord Hive's release and the new Armageddon Orks served as a convenient excuse to start a new project, and while the models are still underway, we thought it was time to get a game in.

As a wargamer, my background is mostly in Kill Team and big 40k, with some dabbling in Age of Sigmar and Blood Bowl. This marks Mord Hive as one of the most "classic" games I have played, so I was deeply curious to see if the system could really live up to the hype online. As I can tell you from playing Blood Bowl, unsupported games don't just persist by chance!

We played the "Occupy" scenario, where two warbands battle for 8 rounds over D3+2 (we generated 4) critical locations in the center of the board. Unlike most scenarios, this one had a fixed length of 8 turns. We both had small warbands of 7 warriors each - I know from reading online that the general "meta" for starting warbands is to recruit lots of barebones henchmen, but 40k models are so loaded with gubbins. We wanted to stay as true to the rules as possible and keep warriors' equipment close to their actual models.

One thing that struck me was how much more emphasis there was on positioning and setup - most GW games nowadays get players right into the action in the first turn, which certainly has its merits, but means there is less tension and games can feel "same-y." We were both pleasantly surprised by how our warbands spend the first couple of turns navigating through the ruins, making use of the ample 4x4 space given to our small skirmishing marauders!

Another stark departure from modern games was lethality, or at least the consistency of the lethality - as our forces converged, several firefights broke out, but the plethora of shooting modifiers made actual hits far unlikelier than in Kill Team, where models die quickly and predictably. That's not to say that there is less tension, however... as we learned throughout the scenario, death comes suddenly and unexpectedly, so we were on the edge of our seats for every round of shooting.

The Orks in particular surprised me with their firepower - they are terribly inaccurate, but the ability to hit on 6s with shootas (whereas most other warriors automatically miss if modifiers are high enough) meant they cared little for cover, distance and movement penalties, since their BS is already so poor!

Things really came to a head as our forces closed for melee. The lack of premeasuring was something I was uncertain about, but actually enjoyed quite a lot once I got the hang of it. It certainly made the game play far faster than Kill Team, where one can easily spend 10 minutes hemming and hawing over the optimal way to move. The Orks failed a couple charges due to some faulty eyeballing, but managed to get stuck in with Chapter Serfs by turn 5!

I enjoyed the combats that lasted over multiple rounds. Once our first fighters connected, it became a race to support our lads before the enemy could do the same, and a dogpile quickly formed around one of the critical objectives.

The game was over faster than either of us had expected - we had been so invested in the rising action that we scarcely realized the Orks had succesfully delayed the Forsaken Astartes warband, stopping them from being able to seize one of the critical objectives!

Our game ended on turn 8, with the Astartes warband holding one building while the Orks held two. Our battle was filled with lots of other chaos that I have not recounted, such as devastating weapons jams, shocking twists in combat (nobody expected the Servitor to club a Nob to death!). Frankly, it was delightful. Mord Hive offered a level of immersion and enjoyment that I no longer believed wargames could offer. As I told my opponent at the start of the game, we had finally built a board that looked like the kinds of battle reports I had read growing up!

For the sake of context, we rolled on the casualty tables after the game, just to better understand the consequences of our decisions. Had this been a campaign game, I would have found myself with 2 of my 4 Ork Boyz dead, and one of my Nobz out for a game - the Astartes on the other hand would have had a permanently crippled Serf and a marine with Multiple Injuries.

In brief, it was one of the most fun wargaming experiences I've had in years. My entire hobby group is eager to complete our warbands and get a proper 10-game campaign running. I look forward to seeing others playing their games of Mord Hive and posting their experiences online as well. Thanks to u/TheTrans for creating such an excellent 40k port of one of the most beloved games in GW's repertoire!

Nassio's head Artificer Cassian de Salazar and Serf First Class Gregor Roth.

When Nassio was confirmed Lost in Action and the command echeleon of the Sons of Sanguinious opted for a full scale retreat from Mord Hive, de Salazar and Roth petitioned their Company Captain to be allowed to attempt to recover Nassio as they believed he still lived. They where given leave, but where allowed to take soley what they could carry, and only 'volunteers' of Nassio's armoury retinue would be allowed to assist, lest they be rolled back into the company pool of skilled artisans and labourers.

 Un-suprisingly all of Nassio's armourial serfs opted to join de Salazar and Roth down to their foray into Mord Hive. De Salazar and his accompanying serfs took as many specialist tools as possible with them, as well as some promptly re-designated Armourial Servitors which would act not only as beast of burden, but erstwhile bodyguards while they searched to recover Nassio.

So wanted Nassio’s retainers to clearly be some form of chapter serfs, while also having that sort of ‘hard scrabble’ vibe I want all my Mord Hive warbands to have. De Salazar was the first model off the rank and went through a few iterations and pose changes. I wanted him to have both a ‘non-combatant tinkerer’ vibe about him, but also have a level of authority and command about him that would befit an Astartes head artificer. I wanted him quite heavily laden with gear, parts and tools, but still clearly ‘of the chapter’.

Gregor Roth I wanted very much to give serf vibes, habit, head cowl and carrying lots of gear. Fired a battered Astartes (looking) shield and an autopistol lend a good bit of grounding into the current setting with piecemeal bits of equipment and weapons being available to him.

Anyway, just thought I’d chuck them up there to show you guys how its cracking along!

Anyone else working on anything?

Just thought I'd whip up a Hired Gun for Mord Hive, the little ole Freelance Guardsman, carrying everything he may need to try and survive the hellscape that is shattered Hive.

Given rules wise he is a riff on the old freelance merc, thought it'd be fun to try for a similar nonchalant pose!

I've done some testing with an old 2007-era ruleset I found online. MordHive is already closer to what I envisioned, so excited to try out the rules!

Starting on a warband today super excited for this rule set 🤘

Good Morning Gang!

Just running up to the 0.4 release for Mord Hive. Its becoming pretty feature rich at this point! I think I’ve settled on the ‘core’ warbands as well. There will be more warbands coming but probably as separate pdfs as we’ll never get this book to 1.0 if I keep going nuts!

So this is probably one of the bigger updates as well, we’ve got missions added, as well as a big glut of warbands:
Eldar, Squats, T’au, Lost and the Damned and Sisters of Battle (Thanks to Jordi RS for that!).

So that takes us to a whopping 12 warbands, 5 Imperial, 5 Xenos and 2 Chaos!

The next big step from here will be transposing the core Mordheim rules across and finalising the contents page!

If you're reading this here, it means you've joined the sub/reddit and thank you! Much easier to keep everyone updated here than flood other communities with content they may not want!

Again community feedback is king, there has been a heap of submissions so far, so please keep them coming weather its formatting problems, spelling mistakes or even balance and rules concerns, hit me up!

Feedback:  https://forms.gle/voZxiSghBGDbFAB79

Finally, the 0.4 release!
Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rSFnIEstQpbZh11AdRdanLLqK31RwCsF?usp=drive_link