Tips for New and Returning Players

A guide for players new to Mordheim, or who played a few years back and want a recap on the essentials. This provides a quick run-down of key game mechanics, unit skills, strategies, statistics, and bug work-arounds.

Brief Introduction

Mordheim: City of the Damned is a turn-based tactics game in which you fight an enemy warband of equal size and strength while trying to collect resources. This guide is focused exclusively on the single-player game.

On each mission, your warband's strength, calculated from the stats, skills, and gear of all units sent into the city, will be matched point for point. To beat the AI, you need to design better units and use them more effectively in the field. When starting a new warband, your level 0 units will tend to get clobbered, being at the mercy of a decidedly unmerciful random number generator. As the game progresses the AI's poorly-specialized units and clumsy tactics become easier to defeat.

There are a large number of stats and skills, and after being away from the game for a while it's easy to forget which ones are useful. I've gathered general build advice and a few other things into one place for easy reference. I don't cover any of the specialized builds or tactics here.

This guide assumes you're somewhat familiar with the game, e.g. have played through the tutorials and understand the basic mechanics, or maybe played heavily 5 years back and are returning. A good guide to the basics is here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=586833847
New players should start with Mercenaries or Sisters. Sisters are straightforward to play, and their healing allows them to move easily through the story missions, but Mercenaries offer a bit more variety.

Unit Builds - Foundation

As units level up, they receive points that can be allocated to stats in Physical, Mental, and Martial categories. The key factor in deciding where to allocate them isn't usually the increases to dependent stats that they provide, which tend to be small, but rather the skills that they allow. For example, increasing strength from 11 to 12 increases melee damage by 3%, which isn't much, but also enables the unit to learn Armor Proficient Mastery. (Exception: Agility increases dodge chance by 5% per point, making it immediately useful.)

Each skill has a base level and a master level. All units can learn the base-level skills once they meet the relevant stat requirement, but henchmen aren't allowed to master them. Base skills cost two skill points, mastery costs an additional four skill points, and the relevant stat must be 6 points higher for mastery. Skill points are awarded as the unit levels up, with henchmen receiving a total of 14 though level 10, heroes and leaders receiving 30, and impressives a whopping 38. (Math: there are 5 active and 5 passive skill slots, but one is always filled with the unit's special ability, leaving 9 free. Henchmen can fill 7 slots with basic skills, heroes can fill all 9 and raise 3 to master level. A Tome of Abilities grants 2 skill points, allowing a hero to fill 8 slots and raise 4 to master level. The mutating Cult units get fewer skill points: 24 for heroes, 30 for Spawn.)

Preparing for Combat

When building your units, your primary concern is to keep them from going "out of action" (OOA), as doing so can lead to death or permanent injuries that render the unit useless, e.g. a dedicated archer who loses an arm. There are three basic defensive strategies:

1. Don't get hit
   
2. Dodge
   
3. Parry

Every physical attack rolls against melee resistance or ranged resistance. If the defender is parrying or dodging, successful melee attacks make a second roll against the parry or dodge skill. It's difficult to get melee resistance high enough to consistently avoid attacks, so having parry and dodge as a second line of defense is essential. The basic parry/dodge skill only applies to the first successful melee attack each round, but advanced skills allow defending two or three attacks.

Successful physical attacks also check for a critical hit, by rolling against the crit resist. With around 20-25% crit resist the unit will become impervious to critical hits from basic attacks. This is important, because critical hits (melee or ranged) have a chance to stun the target, if they fail a roll against their stun resist. Critical hits ignore armor when calculating damage, and cause Open Wounds, which reduce the affected unit's to-hit chance until treated with a Poultice or a day of rest.

Many units can choose to specialize in either parry or dodge. In some cases the choice is strongly indicated by character bonuses and limitations. For example, a Sister Superior can't raise Agility above 10, making it a poor candidate for dodging. Novices can raise Agility to 15 and get a bonus to dodge chance whenever they hit, making dodge specialization ideal. Trying to be good at both parrying and dodging isn't really useful, and requires spending a lot of skill points.

In combat, the unit's dodge / parry chance is capped at 95%. However, getting it above 95% can still be useful, because of stats, skills, debuffs, and weapon traits that allow the attacker to bypass some of the dodge / parry chance.

Option #1: Don't get hit

A non-dodge, non-parry character makes sense in certain situations, e.g. the Sisters of Sigmar impressive, which can wear heavy armor but can't wield a sword. They could parry if they wore a shield, but they give up significant offensive ability if they aren't using both hands for weapons.

Simply keeping the character off the front lines can be viable for spell casters and ranged units, but isn't always possible with certain deployments (e.g. ambushed).

Active skills:

• Defensive Stance (+10%/+20% melee resist)

Passive skills:

• Awareness (+5%/+10% melee resist)
  
• Resilient (+10%/+20% crit resist)

Option #2: Dodge

Dodging requires a high Agility stat, and works best without armor. Dodge chance maxes out at 95%, allowing the unit to totally avoid incoming melee damage unless the RNG gets feisty, but this only works when actively dodging. If the character is stunned or uses up all their movement, they will be vulnerable, and dodging does not help avoid ranged attacks.

Because most physical stat points will be put into agility rather than toughness, they can be more vulnerable to critical hits and stuns. Crit resist is still recommended, but stun resist can be substituted.

Characters that rely on dodging can safely use two-handed weapons, but get a 10% bonus when using a single-handed weapon with an empty off hand. Shields provide boosts to melee and ranged resistance, so scout units that draw overwatch fire may want to carry one.

Active skills:

• Sidestep (+1/+2 dodge attempts)

Passive skills:

• Avoid (+10%/+20% dodge)
  
• Force of Will (+20%/+45% stun resist)

(Note: master-level Avoid and Sidestep require 15 Agility.)

Option #3: Parry

Parry chance is determined by the Weapon Skill stat, the equipped shield, and certain skills. A successful parry allows a cheap counter-attack. Parrying works very well against most opponents, but anything that fights without a weapon (i.e. has claws or wears armbands) will totally ignore parry. Unlike dodging, parry chance is not reduced by armor, so units that dress in heavy armor will generally want to parry.

Shields provide a substantial parry bonus, but offense-focused units can dual-wield with a sword or use a halberd.

Active skills:

• Web of Steel (+1/+2 parry attempts)

Passive skills:

• Flash Parry (+10%/+20% parry chance)
  
• Shield Specialist (+5%/+10% melee resist and parry chance)
  
• Resilient (+10%/+20% crit resist)
  
• Armor Proficient (+1/+2 speed in heavy armor)

(Note: master-level Web of Steel requires 15 Weapon Skill.)

Unit Builds - Specifics

Units have different roles. Specialization is important. The general idea is to figure out which skills you want and then allocate stat points to allow those skills.

Melee Fighters

Fighters have to be able to take a few hits. These units should be fully specialized into parry or dodge.

Single-handed weapons require two OP per swing. Two-handed and dual-wielded weapons increase the OP each time they're swung, so you need 2+3=5 OP for two swings, and 2+3+4=9 OP for three swings. Henchmen should start two-handed, then switch to single-handed + shield when they get 4 OP. (Dodge units can omit the shield, trading 5% melee resist for 10% dodge chance.) At 5 OP you can either go back to a two-hander, or add in a special attack like Strong Blow. Hero units start with 5 OP, and should carry a two-hander until they get 6 OP.

Combat skills that use strategy points, like Insult, can be used without decreasing your offensive output. Striking skills that increase damage require more offence points, but can increase overall damage output when you have an odd number of OP. (Strong Blow can be useful for max-level impressives with two-handed weapons, because 3 strong blows do more than 4 normal blows, especially when considering the per-swing damage reduction.)

Useful active skills:

• Insult (target -10%/-20% melee resist)
  
• Kidney Strike (target -15%/-30% melee resist on hit)
  
• Strong Blow (+50% damage, target -20%/-50% parry chance)
  
• Onslaught (ambush + parry) or Prowl (ambush + dodge)

Useful passive skills (lower priority than general defensive skills):

• Nerves of Steel (+20%/+40% Fear and Terror tests)
  
• Demoralize (target -5%/-10% to All Alone test per hit)
  
• Quick Incision (target -3%/-6% melee resistance per hit)
  
• Knowledge: Tactics (+5%/+15% dodge/parry chance)

Somewhat dubious:

• Mighty Charge - big alpha strike with a big to-hit penalty; could be worthwhile if you master it and wield a two-handed weapon (Swift Charge is better in general)
  
• Overpower - one strike for the price of two, with low odds of hitting but potential to stun; useful if you have melee resist reduction skills, high weapon skill, and are fighting heavily-armored enemies that take a long time to knock down
  
• Vital Strike - increased crit chance; useful if mastered and combined with other crit enhancers

Stats:

• Physical: Agility for dodgers, Toughness for parry, Strength for all
  
• Mental: Leadership (fear/terror checks), then Alertness (initiative, ranged resist)
  
• Martial: Weapon Skill, then Accuracy

Ranged Fighters

Ranged fighters need melee defense for emergencies, but not otherwise. Reloading weapons consumes strategy points, so they won't always be able to dodge after firing. Light armor is therefore recommended for dodgers, and having a melee weapon in the secondary slot is prudent if you get into a fight you can't disengage from.

No ranged weapons allow the unit to parry, so dodging is preferred. Raising the Agility stat also improves climb/leap chance, which ranged fighters will often use to get to high ground.

Useful active skills:

• Hand Shot (-10%/-20% hit chance on hit)
  
• Crippling Shot (target -1/-2 offence points on hit)
  
• Entrenched (overwatch + dodge)

Useful passive skills:

• Quick Reload (-1/-2 strategy points needed for Reload)
  
• Trick Shooter (bypass 5%/10% ranged resistance)
  
• Bullseye (+10% to hit with Aim skill / -1 SP for Aim)

Somewhat dubious:

• Head Shot - chance to stun target, but -30% hit chance makes it chiefly of use when the target is not engaged; useful vs. approaching units, especially with Exploit Positioning, but unreliable otherwise and needs 15 acc for mastery

Stats:

• Physical: Agility (dodging and climbing), then Toughness
  
• Mental: Alertness (initiative, ranged resist)
  
• Martial: Ballistic Skill, then Accuracy

Ranged heroes with Quick Reload Mastery could benefit from Introspection, which converts 3 SP to 1 or 2 OP, when armed with fast-reload weapons like bows or shurikens. The basic skill requires 9 Intelligence, however.

Casters

Casting spells involves multiple rolls. First the caster rolls to cast the spell successfully (max 95%), then enemy units get a chance to nullify the spell effects with their magic resistance. Whether or not the spell succeeds, the caster must roll again to see if they will be hit with a curse (Tzeentch Curse or Divine Wrath), which can be mild or extremely unpleasant. When picking skills for casters, the primary concern is to reduce the curse/wrath chance. Every spell cast attempt increases the blowback chance by 15% for that round, so getting the base chance to a negative value is helpful.

Casters are limited in their choice of gear. Arcane casters can't wear armor or helmets without reducing their casting success chance (exception: masterwork light armour). Divine casters can wear armor, but need to wield weapons that reduce the blowback odds. Look for gear enchantments that improve casting, e.g. Helm of Piety for Sisters.

Most arcane casters can be trained as ranged units, which is helpful given their poor defenses and the high risk of casting at low levels. The Quick Reload skill is always helpful for shooters, but save the other passive slots for casting skills.

Useful passive skills:

• Devotion / Channeling (reduce blowback chance by 5%/15%)
  
• Improved Prayer / Improved Casting (bypass 5%/15% magic resist)
  
• Piety / Expert Casting (increase range by 5m/10m)

Stats: raise Intelligence to boost damage spells, then allocate as appropriate for combat strategy. Casters start with one spell, and will receive 16 spell points by level 10.

Leaders

Leaders will generally be built as one of the above categories, but they have some leader-only skills available to them. Note that one hero type in each faction can become a leader with the Born Leader skill, allowing for a little flexibility.

Useful active skills:

• Order (nearby ally attacks again)
  
• War Cry (all nearby allies get +10%/+20% melee damage)

Stats: Leadership, for the leader-only skills, then allocate as appropriate for type.

Impressives

The job of the impressive is to hit things until they fall down. They should be using two-handed or dual-wield melee weapons, because they can swing them without the +1 OP penalty. Some can parry (with a sword), some can wear armor, so the defensive situation is a little different for each of them, but since these will be your daemon-killer units it's best to specialize for dodge.

Two-handed weapons do 15% less damage per hit, while dual-wielded weapons are consistently penalized 25%. Three hits from a two-hander do more damage than three hits from dual-wielded weapons with equivalent stats, so ordinary units will generally prefer two-handers (especially when charging). Impressives with 8 or 9 OP can swing 4x, which breaks even, but a leader can use Order to instigate up to two additional attacks (three with Battle Tongue). (Math: 4 swings with a 100-point two-hander would do 100+85+70+55=310, 4 swings with dual-wield would do 75+75+75+75=300. Unless you miss the first swing, in which case damage is 0+85+70+55=210 and 0+75+75+75=225. Dual-wield weapons are more consistent.)

Impressives are immune to fear/terror/all-alone, so they get less direct benefit from Leadership than other units do.

Skills like Daredevil (+75%/+125% damage, various penalties) and Frenzy (+15%/+30% damage, no stances) can be absolutely devastating on an impressive, even more so when the leader uses Order to cause additional attacks.

Unit Builds - Stat Points

There are 9 primary statistics, broken down into three groups of three. As units gain experience, they receive points that can be assigned to any of the three stats within a specific group. The previous section made some suggestions on which stats to emphasize for each type of unit. This section digs a little deeper into the reasons why, and discusses which stats to raise first.

The recommendations that follow put an emphasis on defense and survival, and can be applied to both heroes and henchmen. There are many other ways to build units, especially when faction-specific skills are taken into account, so don't take what you see here as the best or only way. Experiment to figure out what works best for your play style.

The initial stats for each unit, as well as the total number of points gained by level 10, can be found in this guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=547654982

Physical Stats

• Strength: each point increases melee damage by 3%, and parry bypass by 2%. Every 3 points grants an additional inventory slot.
  
• Toughness: each point increases wounds (health) by 2%, ranged and critical resistance by 1%, and poison resistance by 3%.
  
• Agility: each point increases dodge chance by 5%, melee resistance by 1%, and climb/leap chance by 3%.

If your unit will be defending by dodging: put all Physical points into Agility, until you reach 15 or the unit's maximum. That provides 75% dodge chance and allows Sidestep and Avoid mastery for heroes. Once Agility is at maximum, put points into Toughness until you reach 9 so you can learn Resilient. After that, put points into Strength.

If your unit will be defending by parrying: put Physical points into Toughness until it's at 9, so you can learn Resilient, then put all points into Strength. Units wearing heavy armor will want Armor Proficient, which requires 12 points for mastery.

All units benefit from a high Strength. It doesn't improve the combat abilities of ranged units, but it does allow them to carry more stuff.

Mental Stats

• Leadership: each point improves psychology tests (all alone, fear, terror) by 3%, and adds 2 to the unit's morale value.
  
• Intelligence: each point increases spell damage by 3%, magic resistance by 1%, stun resistance by 2%, and Mental Condition tests (e.g. stupidity) by 3%.
  
• Alertness: each point increases initiative by 2, ranged resistance by 1%, and Perception test success by 3%.

For spell casters, you generally want to invest in Intelligence to at least 15, to get access to spell masteries in the late game.

For leaders, put the points into Leadership, at least to 9. This gets access to some very useful skills, such as Order and War Cry.

For other units, the choice is less definite.

Investing in Leadership is very useful for melee units that will have to fight enemies that cause fear or terror, such as daemons, undead, and some impressives. (Ideally your tactics will prevent having to take a lot of All Alone tests, so those are less of a concern.) The Nerves of Steel skill requires 6 leadership. Units that are immune to psychology can generally ignore Leadership, but there are some useful skills, such as Hold Ground and Insult.

Investing in Intelligence provides a bit of stun resistance, and makes the Knowledge skills available. Knowledge: Tactics improves dodge/parry chance, and Knowledge: Mordheim boosts movement range. Promoting a henchman to a hero with Lad's Got Talent requires 9 Intelligence for mastery.

Investing heavily in Alertness is generally less useful than the other two, but there are advantages to a high Initiative.

Pick the skills you want to get, and allocate points appropriately.

Martial Stats

• Weapon Skill: each point increases parry chance by 4%, melee hit chance by 2%, and melee resistance by 1%.
  
• Ballistic Skill: each point increases ranged damage by 3%, and ranged hit chance by 2%.
  
• Accuracy: each point increases critical hit chance and damage by 1%, and dodge bypass by 2%.

This one is pretty straightforward, as each point provides a fairly significant direct benefit. Melee units should put all their points into Weapon Skill, while ranged units should put them all into Ballistic Skill. Once those reach their limit, put the rest into Accuracy.

Never put points into both Weapon Skill and Ballistic skill. Units don't receive enough points to be good at both.

Specialized builds that focus on causing critical hits will put a greater emphasis on Accuracy. This can be risky with units that parry, since Weapon Skill is the primary determinant of parry chance.

Mission Tips - Deployment

The golden rule of Mordheim: keep everyone together, keep everyone alive.

Always try to fight at least 2-on-1. Most units will have to pass an All Alone check, which can cause them to freeze up or flee. Units that can parry or dodge can only do so for a limited number of attacks, so making a large number of attacks per round is essential for hurting strong defensive units. Furthermore, the AI will often split attacks between the adjacent units, spreading the damage and allowing you to make the most of your own limited dodge / parry attempts.

If your scouts don't find a mission with a favorable deployment type and difficulty, take a pass and try again the next day.

When the warband is new, don't worry too much about chasing down wyrdstone. You'll get a decent amount of the uncollected stuff, and the fast-moving enemies that pick up wyrdstone in the first couple of rounds tend to be the ones that you kill / loot first. Once you have strong armor and defenses, you can have some of your units tie up the enemies while the rest gather wyrdstone and items.

Deployment Type

The deployment type can have a huge impact on the number of body bags that get filled. The deployments that divide you into 3 teams generally have a set of 4 near the wagon and two sets of three. Bringing only 4 or 7 units can make this much safer, because either they all start together or they're in two groups that can move directly toward each other. Be sure to click "Launch and Deploy", not "Launch", so you can place your units.

Deployments in rough order of risk:

• Rivals in the Ruins - both warbands start very near wagon. Straightforward.
  
• A Walk in the Fog - both warbands start a bit spread out from wagon. Straightforward.
  
• Scavengers - one warband near wagon, the other in buildings. Deploy everybody on the first floor, then move them together.
  
• Pillagers - one warband in buildings, one warband in 3 teams. Multiple teams can be somewhat risky with a slow warband.
  
• Hunters and Prey - both warbands in 3 teams.
  
• The Cache - one warband near wagon, one in 3 teams. The positioning can make it hard for the split team to join up before the wagon team engages.
  
• Vision of Dread - one warband near wagon, one scattered.
  
• Horrors of Mordheim - one warband in 3 teams, one scattered.
  
• The Haunter in the Darkness - both scattered.

Scattered deployments often lead to fatalities.

At Brutal / Deadly difficulty, the deployment has a 10% chance of turning into a "Sneak Attack" ambush. This puts one warband in buildings or near the wagon, with the other surrounding them. The ambushed side has a first-round combat penalty to OP and melee hit chance, but starts the mission in dodge stance.

Mission Difficulty

A mission's difficulty level determines the bonuses awarded to the AI's units: they have more health, do more damage, and get a bonus to their rating that allows them to out-match the skills and gear of your units. Higher difficulties also award additional XP and a higher percentage of unclaimed wyrdstone and items. Brutal and Deadly missions have the possibility of Ambush scenarios, as well as a 20% chance of a visitation from daemons once units hit level 6 (on either side).

Difficulty	Damage	Wounds	Rating	XP	Loot
Normal	+5%	+10%	+0-5%	+0	4% / unit
Hard	+15%	+20%	+0-10%	+1	5% / unit
Brutal	+30%	+30%	+0-10%	+2	6% / unit
Deadly	+45%	+40%	+0-10%	+3	7% / unit

This does not apply to the story missions, which have a fixed difficulty. Low-level warbands should do strictly Normal missions, but Hard is doable at an early stage.

Remember that the AI's warband strength will match yours, based on the rating of each deployed unit and their equipment. Don't give units two sets of weapons and an enchanted helm unless they need them. On the other hand, experienced warbands hoping to scavenge high-level weapons from fallen opponents may want to artificially inflate their rating by equipping additional weapons and bringing consumables in the item slots. (The extra items can be unloaded into the wagon at the start of the mission.)

Go Big or... Go Small

There's nothing wrong with leaving unit slots empty when deploying. Sorties with fewer units are faster and can be more fun. The primary drawback to doing so is that the amount of unclaimed loot you get at the end is based on the number of surviving units and the difficulty. For example, if you have 4 units survive a Hard mission you will get 4 * 5% = 20% of the unclaimed wyrdstone and items from search points. On the other hand, it's wise to deploy a larger crew if you bring an impressive, or for Brutal/Deadly missions where a daemon might appear.

For late-game wyrdstone gathering, you can do well with 5 units: leader, one hero with the ability to disengage, and three henchmen kitted out for defense. Kill the enemy leader+hero and tie up the enemy henchman one-on-one with your own. Use Web of Steel and Sidestep, using retaliation strikes to whittle them down without killing them, then just defend while your leader and hero scour the map. (Three henchman is about the right number to avoid a morale check when the leader and hero are killed.)

Mission Tips - Strategy vs. AI

At the start of the encounter, the AI units will head toward the wyrdstone, using different paths. As soon as they catch sight of you, they come straight at you with everything they have. Mostly. Sometimes they get hung up, sometimes their ranged units get obsessed with overwatch, sometimes they just decide they can't get there from here and wander aimlessly. The AI cheats a little here: once one of your units is spotted, all of your units are permanently visible (you can't really use stealth in PvE).

When they do manage to come at you, they will target the most vulnerable unit. If you have a line of level 10 melee fighters in heavy armor with a level 5 Warlock in the back, the enemy unit will run around and between fighters to get to that Warlock. This is especially dangerous when impressives are present, as the gank potential is very high.

An easy way to exploit this is to position vulnerable units behind a line with gaps that allows the enemy unit an open path but doesn't allow them a straight line for a charge. A second back-line unit is set to ambush. When the enemy unit tries to run through, it gets ambushed right in the middle of your troops.

Consider a setup in a mansion. The first screenshot shows setting up a nice squishy cloth-wearing Purifier on a staircase, standing behind a tank with a pair of ambushers off to the sides at the bottom of the stairs. You can see the incoming enemy's feet at the top of the screen.
The second image shows the state of the enemy unit late the next turn. The entire mission was fought here.

Here's a setup on a fountain, with enemies approaching from the southeast. The henchmen form a defensive wall, backed by ranged units in Overwatch mode. Note that the back side is wide open. The melee heroes sit behind the line at the edges in ambush mode. Here, a Ghoul attempted a run around the east side.
The Ghoul was slowed by overwatch and then severely injured with arrows the next round. When it tried to run around the end, a Doomweaver caught it and finished it off.

One common mistake is to put all units into ambush mode at the end of the turn. While putting an ambush on a doorway can set up a 2-on-1 and force other enemies to take a longer route, open-field ambushes can result in your unit getting separated and surrounded. Carefully consider where ambushing units will engage the enemy.

Charging an enemy can do heavy damage, but every subsequent strike will cause retaliation until the target runs out of offence points. It can be better to defend immediately after charging, especially when attacking hero units, so that the target's attacks have to get past your parry/dodge.

Scary Things

One of the easiest ways to lose a young warband is to fight an Undead opponent. The Vampire leader causes Terror, which reduces Offence and Strategy points by 3, effectively neutralizing any low-level henchman it comes in contact with. Ranged units could be helpful, but in practice low-level Marksmen struggle to damage an engaged opponent.

There's a full guide for dealing with this on the wiki[mordheim-city-of-the-damned-archive.fandom.com]. The short version is: only attack with leader/hero units that have enough offence points to be able to do damage when terrorized. Let the henchmen take care of everything else until the Vampire goes down.

The situation can also occur when fighting daemons and certain impressives. This happens later in the game, so it's not so bad: you have your own impressive, which is immune to fear/terror, and your units will have higher Leadership and total OP/SP by that point. Investing skill points into Nerves of Steel can help your heavy tanks reliably pass the fear/terror check.

Impressive or Not?

Impressives can chew up low-level and lightly-armored units very quickly. They're straightforward to deal with if you see them coming, but until you know where they are, the potential for getting ganked is very high. If you want to collect lots of wyrdstone or items, leaving the impressive at home can be wise, because it allows your units to spread out without fear of getting shredded before help can arrive.

Story Mission Tips

Story missions are assigned to the player after a certain amount of time has elapsed. The missions are optional, but provide an interesting challenge. Each faction has 8 missions, divided into two "acts", that take place on the same set of 8 maps but with different objectives.

The difficulty level for each mission is fixed, making it possible (and prudent) to out-level the enemies. You should bring a full set of units, including an impressive, and your best gear. Some levels feature infinite reinforcements, so unless you have a way to heal you need to make steady progress.

Some bug workarounds and notes on confusing things (no spoilers):

• Various maps have ground hazards (boiling blood, acid, poison, raging fire). They're supposed to do damage when you move into them or stand in them, but sometimes the debuff sticks, doing damage every turn indefinitely. You can usually remove this by running through a different pool of the same type. Running through the same one twice doesn't help.
  
• Temple of Sigmar (large wooden church, with fountains outdoors). Sometimes people have trouble finding the bell; it's at the top of the front of the church. The last step requires climbing a wall.
  
• Great Library (teleportation maze). The teleporters go to a single destination, but there may be more than one destination in a given color zone. So just because you've been through one orange teleporter doesn't mean you're done with orange.
  
• Count Steinhardt's Palace (home of the Alluress). Some missions require collecting a number of purple wyrdstones. There are two independent objective triggers: one for moving near the stone, one for collecting it. You may need to run around the stone a little to trigger the former. If you already picked the stone up, don't worry, you can still hit the trigger by moving around the place where the stone was. If you pick up a stone but the mission summary doesn't show it, put the stone in a box and pull it back out again.
  
• Statue of Count Gotthardt (large horseback statue inside a ring of buildings). The objectives may tell you to do something to monoliths "in order". In practice, you can only affect one monolith at a given time, so it's impossible to do them out of order.
  
• In general: be wary of putting mission objective items in your wagon. If you save your game and quit, they may not be there when you return (e.g. Desecrated Skulls in Sisters II-II).

Specific tips (spoilers):

• Fighting the Alluress. Short version: kill the Alluress, collect all of the purple stones, then kill her again. Initially she is usually locked in place on a ledge, and is limited to using nuisance abilities like Hypnotic Allure, so you can ignore her until you've cleared the rest of the map. (If she's running loose from the outset, you should strongly consider getting your DP killed off and retrying.) After being killed she will reappear in the central room and engage in melee combat. Until the purple stones are collected, she will resurrect at full health after dying. You can make your life easier by leaving a henchman by the places where the stones appear -- they look like purple mist spots -- so you can collect all five stones in one round.
  
• Fighting the Manticore. The Manticore will fly in, use ranged abilities and melee attacks, then fly away for a round. Spread melee units out to avoid AoE effects, and make sure you have spells or skills that boost hit chance to counteract the Landing Dust debuff (-35%). Use buildings for shelter, especially for units tying up reinforcements, but leave at least one unit in the open to bait the landing. Special attacks appear to count as spells, so two-turn speech suppression abilities (master-level Sinful Speech, Strangling Globe, etc.) will prevent the Manticore from using its abilities. There is a bug where the Manticore disappears if you save/load while it's flying; if you encounter this, it'll be hiding in one of the four corners of the map, and will reactivate when spotted.
  
• Fighting Merga. Merga appears in the Statue of Count Gotthardt map. If she's at the center of a ritual, she will have some significant buffs and be very difficult to kill until you disrupt the proceedings. Fortunately, she will ignore you until she is the target of an action. Unfortunately, being buffed by an ally counts, so if you engage a nearby spell caster you risk facing Merga the following round. She gets buffs from the monoliths, notably +8% armor for each one that's active, so it's best to disable them all before attacking her. If that doesn't work out, you'll need weapons with armor penetration (axes, flails, fighting claws, rune/mark of Perforation) to do noticeable damage. Also worth mentioning: if there's an Unstable Aethyr debuff disrupting your spell casting, you can clear it by cracking the first monolith.
  
• Fighting special Chaos Ogres. Some missions have a Chaos Ogre with the Dark Blessing buff, which negates 50 points of damage received. The effect is nullified by "constant fire", which means you need to throw oil bombs at it while you're fighting it. The game hints at the solution by having "craft an oil bomb" in the objectives.
  
• Fighting the Curator. The Curator can be found in the Great Library. He can cast Chromatic Ward on himself, which reduces melee hit chance to 1% for one round. If he does, you will need either ranged attacks or damaging spells to hurt him. Alternatively, you can try to prevent him from casting it (e.g. Jaw Strike, Sinful Speech), or just wait until he decides not to cast it or flubs the cast.
  
• Great Library, generally. This is a long, difficult mission that will be confusing at first. There is no enemy warband, just daemons and special units like Curator Waldemar. Reinforcements are disabled, so you can advance slowly. Ranged units are very handy in a few places. Remember that you can stash bonus items like wyrdstone and the Grimoires in your wagon, which in this case is just a chest near the start point. Clear out the areas reached from the early orange/pink/green teleporters, then use the blue portal at the top of the ramp to get to the main floor. Walk the room clockwise, exploring every portal destination thoroughly, and you should hit all of the objectives. Everything can be reached from a portal in the red (starting) or blue zones; no multi-hop trickery is required. Be aware that some daemons can use portals to teleport once they've been awakened, so maintain a defensive posture while daemons are active.
  
• Handling infinite reinforcements. There will be 3-5 units, with the unit type selected randomly. When you kill one, another appears, so kill the heroes but just tie up the henchmen.

If the mission requires you to kill an NPC and grab their weapon, make sure you pick it up before the end of the round, or it will vanish (primarily an issue for Witch Hunters).

All story missions have an emergency eject feature, in the form of a "Dramatis Personae" unit added to your roster. If this unit goes out of action, the mission is aborted, with no penalties. If a mission is going poorly, or there's a bug you can't get past (e.g. an important mission item vanished), just get the DP killed. You will receive some experience but no items.

Each DP has two sets of weapons, one of which may be ranged (e.g. Mercenaries and Skaven).
If you're worried about them getting killed and scrubbing the mission, switch to their ranged weapon and keep them in the back.

If you want a video walkthrough, Burntpinz Gaming has videos for all story missions for all six factions.

Warband Management Tips

Don't go crazy hiring a full warband right away. The enemy will always match your unit count one-for-one, and it can be easier to manage a smaller group. Being able to tuck all but 4 units into reserve slots will allow you to do any of the 3-team deployments safely.

Wait until your units reach level 3 before buying skills or spells for them. They're far too fragile up to that point. It's best to buy skills and spells at the end of the day, as that effectively reduces the number of days your units are out of commission by one day.

Ranged and spell-caster units are nearly useless at low levels. Ranged units should be equipped as dodge-defense melee fighters until they have Quick Reload, a few points in Ballistic Skill, and can shoot their weapon twice per round. Low-level spell casters have few spells and a significant risk of spell blowback, so unless you want to carry them as mediocre fighters for a while it's better to wait for them to appear as level 4+ hirelings (just remember to check for injuries before recruiting them).

If you build all units of a given type the same way, it's easier to keep track of who does what. For example, if all your melee heroes have Insult, you can pair any hero with henchmen when ganging up on an enemy. You may want to have some units focus on offensive skills while others double-down on defense, but remember that you can also influence that with gear choice, e.g. a parry unit can wield axe + shield for strong defense, or axe + sword or halberd for heavier damage.

Don't forget about faction-specific skills. There are some useful unique abilities in each. (In some cases they're faction-defining, e.g. a Skaven Night Runner with Warp Poison Mastery and a shuriken can neutralize multiple enemy henchmen.)

Some skills and spells will stack if you have the normal and mastered versions on different units. For example, using base-level Insult a second time won't improve your hit chances, but if one unit uses the base version and another unit uses the master version, you can reduce an enemy's melee resistance by 30%.

Early on, buy helmets whenever you see them in the store. They're surprisingly rare.

As you play the game you will receive Veteran points, which can be used to buy Veteran Skills for your warbands. The most useful are:

• Negotiator - increases time between wyrdstone requests. Running out of time won't normally be an issue, but the mandatory deliveries earn you less money, so making them less frequent means more cash for you.
  
• Scholar - reduces cost of training skills and spells. Skill training is where most of your money goes, so this can save a lot of gold.
  
• Renowned - reduces cost of hiring new warriors. Somewhat handy early on when you're broke, very useful later on when hiring high-level units.
  
• Explorer - reduces costs of scouts, and improves the chances of finding juicy missions.
  
• Contact: Librarian - adds a chance of receiving an enchantment recipe. There are a lot of these and they're pretty rare, so having them trickle in over time by themselves is a big help. As elsewhere in the game, formulas are picked at random, with duplicates converting to 35 gold.

Some others to consider:

• Contact: [armor] - getting the occasional bit of kit is handy. For example, Sisters could sign up for free Heavy Armor, since most of their units wear it. Others might want the helms + shields contact, because helms are rare. Getting armor is more useful than getting weapons because you can't strip armor from fallen enemy units.
  
• Merchant - sales occur more often.

Closing Notes

Here are some guides that delve more deeply into specific areas:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=463157178 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=534564400
The Settings menu has an "Accelerate AI Turn" option in the Gameplay section. Select this to speed things up a little.

If the game seems to get stuck, save it, quit, and reload. This usually un-sticks things, and can even work during the enemy turn. Note that hitting 'L' to expand the Actions Log to maximum size will freeze out most other inputs, making you feel like you're stuck when you actually aren't.

If the game is generally working but the enemy seems to be stuck in place, you may be able to fix it by running the "Verify Integrity of Game Files" feature in Steam (right-click game in library, Properties, Installed Files).

[Personal note: on my first playthrough, with Mercenaries, I had 48 units go out of action before I beat the final story mission. For my second playthrough, Sisters, the number went down to 24, and on my third playthrough with Skaven that went down to 7. My sixth playthrough, Undead, had only 4 units go OOA, all level 0 in the early game. (I credit Body Reconstruction for the low casualty rate... I think I took half a dozen critical hits in the entire run, mostly from Daemonettes in one story mission.) It's difficult to keep everyone alive early on, and bad RNG can cost you, but things go a lot more smoothly once you figure out all the stuff *not* to do.]

Have fun!

[VoidGrazer]

Some injuries wreck the unit, e.g. Megalomania on the caster/archer in the screen shot in the last section. I won't accept stupidity checks unless the unit already has high Intelligence and I can boost the odds with enchanted head gear. The rest is unit-specific, e.g. I have dodge-tank Ghouls who go one-handed anyway, so losing an arm isn't a disadvantage.

[Maroon Deck Wins]

Valid points. Part of it for me is that I'm also really greedy, so while I'm eventually putting points in Toughness for any unit that isn't going to be dodging, it's my second priority. That means I'm not getting to T9 until pretty late, so no Resilient.

Here's a question: What permanent injuries are you willing to tolerate on a unit? I won't accept anything relevant when I'm buying a unit with experience, but I'll generally tolerate the ones that don't cost a pill or lose a limb.

[VoidGrazer]

I tend to favor Leadership on units that are subject to fear/terror/all-alone, and Intelligence on those that aren't (and rarely if ever put points into Alertness). Leadership gives you 3% per point on psych tests, which isn't bad by itself, and having Nerves of Steel on daemon-fighting heroes can be helpful. Stun resistance is important, but the most common source of stuns is crits, and you can mitigate those with Toughness 9 and the Resilient skill.

I think you can make a case for either approach. Ultimately it depends on which skills you want to buy. K:M is pricey (9 Int), but the mobility boost is pretty strong.

I can add some notes to the guide. The Physical and Martial stat choices are self-evident for most builds, but the Mental stats are less clear-cut.

[Maroon Deck Wins]

A nice guide.

Here's something I wouldn't mind commentary on. I think Intelligence is the best mind skill for all units. My reasoning is that now that I know what I'm doing, it's very rare for me to lose a unit except when critical hits are involved. Intelligence increases stun resistance, and the other mental skills don't really help that much anyway. I don't value initiative very much, and Leadership is helpful but something of a two-edged sword. If things are going badly I would rather lose the mission than have more units go down.

I also put a pretty high premium on movement, so I generally go for Knowledge: Mordheim on every unit that can take it.

[Z.E.R.O.]

Such an overlooked game.
I think a lot of people are discouraged by the steep learning curve and difficulty.
This should help new players get a foothold.
Great guide!

[VoidGrazer]

@Fennrir42: good point about over-use of ambushes. I added a note to the "Strategy vs. AI" section. I agree about Mighty Charge... massive damage potential, but needs supporting skills to be reliable. I didn't really get into specialized builds based on tactics (like hit & run) or factions (Skaven poison, Cult mega-damage) for this guide. Thanks for the feedback!

[Fennrir42]

A very simple suggestion from watching a lot of newbies stream Mordheim: don't just default ambush to end every unit's turn. Most of the time you are better off planting the unit where they are safest and simply ending the turn. Ambush doorways to set up 2v1s, but otherwise just end your turn where you can be engaged by only one, max 2 enemy units. Your ambusher will run to his death if you set him in the open.

[Fennrir42]

Mighty Charge is great for end-game when you have a unit built around it, including the Strider passive and Hit and Run for disengages. But by then you can make a lot of fun damage builds work well. Agree it's a dubious choice for a low level band or a beginner.