Live Magazine June Issue 2017 June July Magazine Spiderman | Page 82

YOUR SAY
WARGAMING
THE CIRCUS
Ben: One day in late 2015, seem-
ingly out of nowhere, Sean had
started to build some terrain. No
that’s not true; he started building
some gorgeous terrain. The kind of
terrain that made me feel jealous,
and question whether I’d ever been
any good at building terrain! He’d
been inspired by Games Work-
shop’s skirmish miniatures game,
Mordheim. Not long afterwards,
as he tells it, then I got inspired
and suddenly produced a narrative
campaign structure for 15-ish sce-
narios strung together by a loose
story, and end-game impacts for
wins and losses, and the campaign
was born. But I don’t remember it
quite like that!
Sean: Like many weathered hobby-
ists my bookshelves are a holding
of venerable rules manuals, White
Dwarfs and magical artifacts which
Games Workshop in their infinite
wisdom chose to confine to the
dark corners of neck-bearded nos-
talgia. One relic in particular, the
Mordheim rulebook, has always had
the power to transport me back to
day I first picked through it. More
specifically there’s a photo in there
which evokes such a strange influx
of inspiration I’d almost consider it
my project muse. An Undead war-
band complete with a characterful
“Hunchback of Notredame”-esque
Dreg seemed to have a profound
impact on 13-year-old me and de-
fine much of how I imagined the
City of the Damned for the next 15
years. When, by chance, I stumbled
across that model (which I discov-
ered was “Luther the Hunchback”
from “Warhammer Quest: Cata-
combs of Terror”) on eBay in early
2015 it gave a place to release
much of that post-teen Mordheim
angst...
Ben: Sean and I worked together
at GW during Mordheim’s ‘golden
years’ when it was on the shelves.
Indeed I still have the White Dwarf
issues where the concept game
was published. We ran many cam-
paigns in-store, and played them at
home. We both amassed huge col-
lections of minis, terrain, rules, and
source material over the years, and
I think it’s fair to say that both of us
still look back at those days with
fond memories. I even have a ger-
man copy of Mordheim; Mortheim.
This was delivered one day to the
store in our weekly stock order. The
manager was amused, but thought
it wouldn’t sell. I bought it immedi-
ately. It gave me extra scenery (al-
ways good) and extra copies of the
minis (always hoard bitz). I speak
some conversational Deutsch, so
that was good too. Anyway, what
could be more atmospheric than
having a German language copy
of a game called Mordheim, set in
a city in the state of Ostermark,
where they speak Reikspiel, and
are lead (later on of course) by Karl
Franz? Nothing!
Sean: When I look back at our time
together in GW I don’t know if I’ll
ever be able to truly appreciate the