Mordheim: City of the Damned adds Cult of the Possessed as a playable warband

Mordheim skaven

The second Early Access content update to Mordheim: City of the Damned hit Steam today, making a number of changes to the game and, more significantly, adding several new features as well. The Cult of the Possessed, a group of "degenerates and mutants" who seek the favor of the Shadow Lord, is now available as a playable Warband, and Warbands now have "reserves" that players can choose from before going into combat.

The trailer above covers the big changes in the update, but the narrator speaks pretty quickly and there's obviously an assumption that you already know what he's talking about, so you might want to nip over to the Steam page and take it in at more of a leisurely pace. The update also enables all actions that are described in the tutorial ("Search and pray are now possible during Missions," which presumably they weren't previously), there are new extra objectives, and time limits can now be set on unit turns.

Mordheim: City of the Damned is based on the Games Workshop tabletop game Mordheim, in which players lead small groups of fantasy archetypes into turn-based, tactical-level battles. It is perhaps not the best-known of Games Workshop's properties, certainly not up there with Warhammer 40K or Warhammer Fantasy, but as Tom Senior noted in its announcement last year, it's got bipedal rats packing dual flintlock pistols, and that alone makes it worth a second look.

As mentioned, Mordheim is out now on Steam Early Access. A full release date, at least as far as I can tell, has not been announced.

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.