Misadventures in Mordheim & Marienburg

Ahoy there, my Foldio arrived in the post recently so I thought I'd be as well to start this log at the same time as I tested it. To begin I'll put my standard disclaimer in place; I make no guarantees of frequent updates

Aye, so, some of you might have seen in the Rules forum that, with some helpful advice from a few members here, I've put together warband rules for Clan Moulder Skaven, and I enjoyed the process so much I put aside my other projects and began working on actual models for them. Early days yet, but I have a couple of pics to show;



Three of my first five Giant Rats. They're based on Otherworld Miniatures Dungeon Vermin models, which are lovely sculpts and the casts were pretty decent(there were a couple of spots where it was hard to tell flash from details, but nothing to make me unhappy I bought them), but I did a bit of converting to fit with the Moulder theme; one has two heads(they sent me 6 rats total rather than 5, so one underwent a bit of surgery), one has an assortment of spines growing out of its back, and the third just has a couple of wee festering sores. The remaining couple will get six limbs and three tails, respectively. They're on 25mm square bases by the way, in case anyone thought they looked a bit small - IMO 20mm squares are fine for when you need to rank up big units for WHFB, but I like bigger bases for smaller size games, so 25mm will be the smallest size of base I use for any of my projects.



My two Rat Ogres, still at a fairly early stage. Clan Moulder can take a pair of the big beasties and they must each buy a single Mutation when hired, obviously I've decided to go with a Tentacle on one, the other will likely get an "invisible" mutation like Blackblood. I'm considering reworking the tip of the tentacle into a Lamprey-esque mouth, but we'll have to see if my sculpting is up to it or not, heh. I'd initially planned to just swap the heads from the two IoB models around, but I had some weird random twitch/spasm in my hand while trying to glue on the second head and I've still not figured out where the hell it flew off too, hah. I subbed in one from my FW Wolf Rats kit instead.

The initial plan is to build a full 20-rat warband consisting of Packmaster, two Stormvermin, two Apprentices, five Clanrats, five Giant Rats, three Wolf Rats, and two Rat Ogres. Eventually I want to bulk out my Clanrat and Giant Rat numbers to 10 apiece to give me more options, but the priority is to get a playable band ready first so I can try and find opportunities to actually test the rules.

Also on the desk/drawing board at various stages of acquisition or modelling are; Dwarf Treasure Hunters, Averlanders, Chaos Dwarfs, Low Kings, Fimir, and various Hired Swords, pictures to come when they get unpacked next time I work on them.

You've made a FINE start on what looks to be a cool War Band. Have FUN with it all!  

I look forward to seeing your low kings and fimir!

So, a fortuitous acquisition of Ethrac from a mate(just about the only thing to come out of the End Times debacle that doesn't make me want to boak, which I suppose is irony since it's a Nurgle model   ) has sparked a wee diversion in the form of a Cult of the Possessed warband. I've been looking for an excuse to do these guys for ages now, chiefly so I can finally use two of my favourite models; Nightmaw from Forgeworld and Goliath by Stephane Simon(great sculptor, did a lot of Rackham's Confrontation models and these days is behind a lot of Mierce's cool stuff). But I could never find anything to use as the Magister and Brethren that worked for me. Ethrac solved the first problem, the solution to the second didn't strike me until I decided to arm my first couple of Brethren with bows and dug out an old Archers/Huntsmen box.

The Brethren and Magister required the most work, but the most challenging was actually Goliath since I had to try and avoid my amateur-hour grasp of anatomy ruining the lovely base model(the original is armed with a giant two-handed axe-thing, but I wanted to make him properly gribbly and try to call out to the Possessed designs in the recent Mordheim computer game, which appeal to me more than the original GW sculpts tbh). The Beastmen are just stock models, a finecast Beastlord and two plastic Gors. I greyscaled the images to make them easier to see:
















My other projects are ongoing, but next up I'll be finishing off the two Mutants for this warband and putting together a second group of Brethren(this time armed with spears and shields). A Darksoul or two may follow later.

Good to see you, Yodhrin! The new Chaos Crew has an abundance of UBERCOOL possibilities. Have FUN with them all!  

Your magister and the big guy are both really cool. But I think I like the simple brethren best. Did you elongate the empire-archers' coats with greenstuff? It's not that easy to see. Anyways, a great looking warband you got yourself there!

Fantastic conversions!

Cheers guys

Grimscull; Aye, I elongated their coats and closed them at the front to better resemble the original metal Brethren's robes, added the hooded cowl etc. Here's the colour version of the first pic:

You got quite some GS-skills there!

Jap, he has!

Grimscull wrote:

You got quite some GS-skills there!

floedebolle wrote:

Fantastic conversions!

I agree...they are not so much conversions as a transformation. BEAUTIFUL WORK!  

excellent green stuff work, i really like your stuff. I'm interested to see your packmaster

Jolly good idea to convert imperial archers into cultists! Very well done.

Great Conversions.

Very cool! I never cared much for the Possessed models but your brethren and magister are very nice.

woah! cool stuff

Astonishingly good conversions.

Wow, eh, thanks guys

I'm pretty much done with the modelling stage of the warband for now, save for some tidying work on the bases. I still have two Darksouls to make, but none of the stuff in my current bitz mountain is really jumping out at me, so I'm a bit stuck there until I figure out a base model to use.

I made a couple more changes to the Magister to de-Ethrac him a touch more, removing the various clusters of three spikes lingering about his person and veeeery carefully sawing off the top of his staff(which is too nice not to keep for future use) and replacing it with a Chaos Warriors banner top:



I finally figured out my two Mutants. The tall chappie with spindly legs will likely start out with Cloven Hooves and will be taken in an offensive direction with his advances, hopefully getting to put his arm mutation to use with a Scorpion Tail if I manage to roll well on the Rewards of the Shadowlord table. The stunted guy will go a different direction; having watched a few of the folk who'll hopefully be playing in an upcoming campaign fight, I noticed they have a predilection for trying to kill warband leaders. Not so good for Possessed warbands, since you lose access to a magic user with Academic skills if your Magister goes down. The second Mutant will start out with Hideous, and thereafter focus exclusively on defensive skill advances, with his job essentially being to bodyguard the Magister, moving to Intercept incoming enemies:





Lastly I put together another henchman group of Brethren, this time armed with Spears and Shields. Same Archer base as last time, but with Flagellant arms and Clanrat weapons:





And here's a wee greyscaled shot of the whole warband as it stands right now(apologies for blur, crappy old phone camera):



Not sure what I'll be working on next, both my Dwarfs and Skaven deserve some attention, but a combination of reading the Matthias Thulmann anthology and playing Darkest Dungeon has given me a Witch Hunter-related itch, so we'll see what happens, heh.

It is an ATTRACTIVE War Band despite being composed of warp, twisted deviants. You do have a flair for kit-bashing & green stuffing. GREAT WORK!  

The warband looks great in gray. Looking forward to seeing some paint.

Absolutely splendid!

That warband is going to be awesome (once it's going to be painted).

Fantastic greenskillz senor, again you created some of th best kit bash-green combos i´ve seen on this forum for long time, i bow to thé!

Really hideous magister, in the best possible way. Very cool cult!

Ahoy! So, I've finally joined the late 20th century and started a blog; seemed rational given the number of forums I frequent to consolidate. The latest post details my recent Mordheim works, here's a wee selection;