project-sigmarheim

[project-sigmarheim]

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Project Sigmarheim devlog Nº6: The project is not dead!

Quite on the contrary, in fact!

Hi everyone, sorry for not uploading anything in a while, life has been busy!

But that doesn't mean that I'm not working on Project Sigmarheim anymore, in fact this game continues to be the project that I've put more hours in by far! Let me make a short version of all the things we have been doing lately.

Playtesting: A lot of it, we're over ten games in, trying out different warbands, team comps, old scenarios, new scenarios, and overall having fun. We are very pleased with the feel of the game and how it plays, the games are short, never lasting longer than two hours, and we haven't had any insanely broken situations or rules so far (with some close calls that were hotfixed).

Rules changes: This inevitably comes with playtesting, we have been changing a lot of rules from normal mordheim, for example how Fear works, changes to charging, rout checks, implementing common house rules as a baseline for the game (like limiting ranged weapons to 50% and making armor cheaper). A lot of things and we keep changing things each playtest, the next devlog that i do will be talking about all of these.

More factions: Remember when the base game was going to start out with four factions? Well thanks to the powers of neurodivergency and vacation days Gallvanos and I have been writing a couple more factions. How many? Uhhh... 13. We do not have a problem, thanks for asking (we still have like another 12 to go, our work is never done)

New Scenarios and cool things for Campaigns: This we will talk about in another devlog.

So yeah, we have been working on this a bit, I'll try to get a compendium/document with all the info in one pdf and then I will start shilling this project on the usual social media platforms (Reddit, the official Mordheim discord, etc...) I'll end up making a Discord server for anyone interested and I might even make some battle reports on youtube if I have the time, but for now that is all for today, do not cry my Sigmarheim stans, this project is not going anywhere.

Thanks for sticking along for this long, let's hope the next devlog doesn't take me a month to post 🤞

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Project Sigmarheim warband preview: Kruleboyz Klaw

The foul stench of the swamp fills the air, a green mist disorients you, you hear the laughs and warcries in the distance, and before you know it, a poisoned dagger stabs deep into your side. The Kruleboyz Klaw has found you, and they ain't playing fair!

Okay people! Huge day today, the last of the four flagship warbands is here, and oh boy is it a good one!

The Kruleboyz are very fun to design, because they come with lots of unique equipment and weapons you can give your favorite green and orange guys and each unit has their own special ability they can do, making each unit feel all that more powerful.

Balancing the units is a bit tricky, because the Dirty Trick makes up for a big portion of each unit's power budget, but now that we have everything ready for the first playtest, it's time to find out what works, what doesn't, what needs some rules clarifications, etc...

Tomorrow my good friend @gallvanos and I are gonna do the first ever official Project Sigmarheim Playtest™, and I cannot be more excited. I'll post a mini battle report here and any notes that come up during the playtest

As always, if you try Project Sigmarheim with friends or by yourselves, let me know how it goes, I'm very interested in hearing what you think!

Until next time!

P.D: I know that this warband has less unit options than the other ones, the range of the Kruleboyz is kinda small. I've been thinking about adding other Kruleboyz units like the Bolt Thrower or Dobby the House Elf but maybe that'll come in the future

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Hey guys I started a new job this week so sorry if the last warband preview takes a bit longer to come out I don't have as much free time nowadays

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Project Sigmarheim warband preview: Blood Legion

The night falls on the Mortal Realms and the shambling hordes of the undead fall on the living to consume their flesh and bring their souls back to Nagash, the Unliving Tyrant.

Warband preview time!!! This time for a very cool and customizable one, the Soulblight Gravelords' Blood Legion.

I have to admit something, I am an undead fan through and through, I've always loved playing as undead on everything since a kid, and even though my two favorite factions (Nighthaunt and FEC) are not part of the four big ones for the alpha version, I am very excited for what we have done for this faction.

There is a lot to talk about but I'm gonna keep it down to two things, the Vampiric Dynasties and the Nadirite Shards.

The Vampiric Dynasties are a fun option to make your Blood Legion unique, giving your vampires unique buffs and playstyles, with a little extra oomph for your Vampire Lord. In the future each Dynasty will also come with one or two Dynasty Powers you will be able to take instead of a skill for your heroes.

The Nadirite Shards are a special equipment for your heroes that turns them into a Wizard for only 20 aqua ghyranis. You can only take a maximum of three but it still opens a lot of options, with the faction ability giving every wizard in your warband the spell Deathly Invocation for free, you can make sure your warband's arcane might is unmatched. (If you choose the Legion of Blood as your Vampiric Dynasty all your vampires are wizards for free, but you can have up to eight wizards in your warband this way if you get some lucky advancement rolls on your henchmen)

Anyways this post is waaay to long for a faction preview but yeah, enjoy, share with your friends enemies and all that, until the next time where we will take a look at the Kruleboyz Klaw and their different dirty trickz.

See ya!

P.D.: It's possible to run an all skeleton army for all you freaks out there, I made sure of it. Shoutout to all my Wight Kings, you dropped this👑

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Project Sigmarheim warband preview: Despoiler Host

The ground shakes, the thunder roars, the mountains boil with lava, the signs are here, The Slaves to Darkness' Despoiler Host is coming and it is on a warpath through the Mortal Realms.

Once again, we have a preview of the second of our four flagship warbands, this time the chaotic one. It was hard choosing the different units, because there are A LOT to go through. Also you can finally see the five Eye of the Gods tables, and what each bring to the table as your champions grow stronger with the power of the Dark Gods

As last time, there is a couple of things still to make, the special skills and the miscellaneous equipment, they're two things I wanna focus on after I make the four warbands, because to me getting them table ready and playtestable is more important. Once I'm done with the four, I'll start thinking about those things.

If you want to playtest these warbands with your friends, please let me know how it went, I'm very excited to recieve feedback from anyone who tries them out.

The next warband will be the Blood Legion from the Soulblight Gravelords, so stay tuned for everyone's favorite undead horde

See ya!

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Project Sigmarheim warband preview: Storm Host Chamber

Today is a very very special day, because we are finally taking a look at one of the four warbands avaliable on the alpha playtest of Project Sigmarheim.

Everyone say hi to everyone's favorite golden sigmarines, the Stormcast Eternals' Storm Host Chamber

As always, keep in mind this is an early build but they are ready to start playtesting and figuring out all the weird kinks.

The only thing that's missing are the unique skills, I'm planning on making only maybe 4 per faction, but who knows, we'll see

Oh, and also, some clarifications on the equipment page, yes I am using the house rule to make hammers/maces cost the same as axes and swords, and the one to make armor cost half as much, because paying 50 gc for a 5+ save is a ripoff imo.

If you have any ideas, comments or critiques please make sure to send them my way

The next warband coming is the Despoiler Horde of the Slaves to Darkness, so keep your eyes peeled for that, make sure to tell all your friends, all those things.

See ya!

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Project Sigmarheim devlog Nº5: Fine, let's talk about alternate activations.

Ummmm, I put this devlog on my other blog so ignore this if you've already read this, just reposting it in the right place

So, the Mordheim activation system.

It's very much a product of it's time. Back when skirmish wargames weren't a thing, we lived in a world where you did your whole turn, and your opponent waited fo you to finish without being able to react, and then it was their turn, and they did their whole turn, and you waited for them to finish without being able to react, and then the round ended and you did all of this again.

Now I'm not saying this is bad and unfun game design (it is) but there are many reasons why every skirmish wargame does alternate activations nowadays. In no order in particular, here are some of them

It let's you react to your opponent's gameplan and creates a more tactical experience

Reduces the time between waiting and doing nothing and playing and doing things

Keeps both players more engaged since you cannot just space out for 30 minutes while your opponent moves miniatures

Makes rolls to go first not be as brutal

etc...

Anyways, now that we have explained the reasons to use an alternating activation system on our new and improved Sigmarheim, let's answer a big question.

How should an activation work?

Since Mordheim wasn't made with these modern mechanics in mind, we have to figure outdoes activating a model work, and many different games take different approaches, but the two options that I thought about were the following

Make each unit able to take up to two actions when they are activated (This is what Necromunda uses and it works fine, it also lets me balance actions and skills around simple and double actions)

Make each unit go through a mini mordheim turn when activated, so when you activate a unit, the unit tried to recover from fleeing, gets up if knocked down or becomes knocked down if they were stunned, they move, they cast spells if able, they shoot missile weapons if able and then they fight in melee if able

I chose the second option in the end, partially because Mordheim already works like this and I didn't want to take away from the Mordheim gameplay, also I don't feel like it's gonna slow down play very much, it's basically splitting the normal Mordheim turn you were going to have anyways into smaller alternating parts.

As a lot of things with this project, everything is subject to change, but playtesting must be done before we start changing things around

And I think this is it for this devlog. Bit of a shorter one, but I just wanted to get these ideas out there. I know I've been posting one of these a day, but my next posts are gonna be the alpha versions of the four warbands, so it might take a day or two more to come out, there's lots of stuff to write and think about.

Until next time!

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Project Sigmarheim devlog Nº4: Warband-specific abilities and sauce

Something that the Blood and Spectacles blog talks about in their Wargame Design series (totally recommend reading it for people interested in this hobby) is the "chrome". Those little things your game has that makes it stand apart from other games. I would like to add to that with the concept of "sauce". In the context of faction/class-based games (so most wargames), sauce is what makes each faction different to the other ones, be it flavor, looks, mechanics or just overall feel. What makes playing and collecting Space Marines different than Tyranids? Or what makes someone choose to play a Paladin over a Barbarian in their DnD campaign? That's the sauce.

The thing is, a lot of Mordheim warbands do not have sauce. Or if they do, they don't have a lot of it. Mechanically speaking, the gameplay of a lot of factions is very similar, and that only makes the ones that do have it stand out that more (looking at you, Cult of the Possessed and Undead). You see it a lot when taking a look at warbands outside the 1a class. Most of the weirder warbands have special rules/equipment/magic schools/etc... that make not only playing them different, but make the vibes they have stand out from among a sea of Reiklanders and Middeheimers. The people beg for the sauce, and like the chefs that we are, we shall deliver it to them.

Aesthetics-wise and flavor-wise, the different Age of Sigmar factions require no change. They are all varied and unique in their own way, and I wanted to give them abilities that either enabled a unique playstyle, or evoked a feel you couldn't get anywhere else.

So, after tooting my own horn for two paragraphs, let's see what I came up with for our four flagship warbands.

(On the image descriptions there's a little ramble about my thoughts on each ability if you want to hear my reasoning/ideas behind them)

Stormcast Eternals - Scions of the Storm

Slaves to Darkness - Eye of the Gods

Soulblight Gravelords - Deathly Invocations

Kruleboyz - Dirty Trickz

And I think that's enough for today, if you have any feedback I'd love to hear what you think and if you have any ideas for your favorite faction please let me hear them because they're probably really cool, I'll be sure to give you a shoutout.

See ya next time when we talk about the action economy and turns and activations and all that stuff everyone loves to theorize about!

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Project Sigmarheim devlog Nº3: Species, Stats, and Tables

Fun fact, over 75% of wargaming design is just pouring over excel tables and rereading and rewriting statblocks.

It's true, don't look it up!

Okay, so the first thing I did for this project when i got some time to sit down and write was to prepare several tables to have a starting point for most factions statblocks. Mordheim usually follows the same overall stats for each species, separated into the Leader, Champion and Henchmen stats

The good thing is, most factions in AoS have their equivalent in Mordheim

These are just a couple of examples, but you get the idea

For our initial four factions, we'll just need the human, orruk (with some modifications), grot and undead tables, plus a nonexistent Stormcast Eternal statblock that we have to come up with

And... voilà!

This is gonna make creating the units of the warbands much much easier, since I can just reference these tables. The cost in gold crowns is also important to keep in mind, but there are no written laws on how much a unit is supposed to cost, so we'll just have to guesstimate taking into account the costs of other similarly statted units.

And that is enough for this devlog, join me next time when we discuss the different special abilities each warband will get.

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Project Sigmarheim devlog Nº2: Things I would change and design goals

Hey everyone! I'm back!

For this entry on the Project Sigmarheim devlog I just wanted to talk about all the different goals that I have in mind for this project, the mechanics I want to change from original Mordheim and the changes I have in mind to improve on the playing experience (in my opinion)

Design Goals

Bring the AOS factions to Mordheim (duh)

Modernize some of the older mechanics

Make every faction mechanically unique and interesting

Expand on the exploration and campaign rules

Mechanics I want to change and why

The hit roll tables and wound roll tables: My entry point to Warhammer was Warhammer Fantasy 8th, so I get the retro appeal, but it just slows down play. I'm gonna take a page out of Necromunda's book and change the WS and BS to 2+/3+/4+, etc... That being said, I like how the Strength and Toughness characteristics interact with each other, so instead of doing the AoS thing and giving each weapon a fixed To Wound stat, I'm just going to do the Necromunda thing and use the wound rules of 40k (A couple of mechanics I am gonna choose to borrow from Necromunda because in many ways Necromunda is just a more modern Mordheim set in our favorite hive city)

The "I go, you go" gameplay: Anyone who has played any modern skirmish wargame knows that alternating activations is better than you moving your whole warband while your oponent waits for you, and then switching. Not a lot to say here. There are some changes needed action-economy wise, and I am still thinking about the better way of doing it, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it (soon, it is kind of an important thing lol) The income system: Mordheim's economy is kind of weird. I wouldn't say it's bad, but it locks the players into specific choices when first creating their warbands. The fact that it is completely dependent on how many heroes you have kind of forces you to max your heroes at warband creation, and the randomness and dependence on warband size is... weird? I definetly want to change how it works, I just gotta work the math out.

A note on the uniqueness of the warbands

A lot of Mordheim's warbands aren't that different from each other. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I do feel like each warband could have a bit more of a mechanical difference apart from maybe one or two weapons or a couple unique skills. Ideally, every new warband will have a unique rule that changes how they play from the rest of them, and will also have different leader options to choose from. There will have to be a limit to how many heroes you can run, as my plan is to give players different choices so that they can customize which heroes they take instead of being forced into specific ones.

Aaaand I think that's everything for this devlog, the next one will go a bit more in depth into some lovely lovely tables and generic stat blocks for the different species that populate the Mortal Realms.

See ya next time!

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Project Sigmarheim devlog Nº1: Hi there everyone!

Hi, I'm Nico (he/they), known as FrayCebolla on the internet. I'm a ttrpg and wargame designer that loves lots of things, some of them being Warhammer and skirmish wargames.

What is Project Sigmarheim?

Project Sigmarheim is a hack of the beloved skirmish wargame Mordheim by GW, set in the universe of the somewhat less beloved epic fantasy wargame Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, designed by me :D

Why is Project Sigmarheim?

I love Mordheim. It's one of my favorite wargames to play next to Necromunda and Trench Crusade. Buuuuut it's not perfect. There are many things I would change about the game, and since you gotta be the change you want to see in the world, I've set to modernize some quirks that this 25 year old game has.

Also I like the setting of Age of Sigmar, and even though the original setting of Mordheim is fine, I would like to play with all the cool factions that don't exist in WHFB.

Wow, this sounds amazing! How can I know more about it?

I'll be posting about the whole process here on this blog, so if this sounds like something you would like to play, just follow along! My goals for an alpha playtest will be to have one warband each of the four Grand Alliances Order - Stormcast Eternals Chaos - Slaves to Darkness Death - Soulblight Gravelords Destruction - Kruleboyz After that I'll slowly but surely keep working on the rest of factions + all the other things I'd like to change for Project Sigmarheim (but that's for the next devlog anyways) If you have any questions/complaints/death threats feel free to leave them here on my blog or send them to my twitter/bluesky

Anyways that's all for today, have a lovely day and see you on the next one!