Warbands In Mordheim

Painting up my first Orc and Goblin warband in Mordheim...

I dug up my old Orcs and Goblins Brigade box set and will be sourcing most of mine warband from it.

Got my first four members done!



Musashi is a Big 'Uns hero - I'm think of building him as a swordy Orc. I thought I could give him a buckler but just found out that Orcs can't take bucklers... Oh well it's a very small shield then.

Dr. Doom is going to be my Shaman.

Kung and Pow are the first of my Orc Boyz henchmen. In retrospect I should have probably given them the same weapons since the rules state that all henchmen must be armed the same. I should really read the rules before I start modeling and painting lol...

Good thing that we're not going to enforce WYSIWYG.

Hopefully I'll keep this updated as I progress along.

Comments and feedback welcome.

Nice job with the greenies!

Quote :

Kung and Pow are the first of my Orc Boyz henchmen. In retrospect I should have probably given them the same weapons since the rules state that all henchmen must be armed the same. I should really read the rules before I start modeling and painting lol...

Henchmen that are in the same group must be armed the same. You are playing orcs. You DO NOT WANT your henchmen to be in the same group at the start, since you want to roll a Lad's Got Talent result as soon as you can.

The Green Lads are LOOKIN' GOOD...some SPLENDID brushwork there. GREAT WORK!  

I believe the Henchmen thing is that all the members of a Henchman Group have to be armed the same. Just put them in different groups...one mini groups are allowed.  

Von Kurst wrote:

Nice job with the greenies!

Quote :

Kung and Pow are the first of my Orc Boyz henchmen. In retrospect I should have probably given them the same weapons since the rules state that all henchmen must be armed the same. I should really read the rules before I start modeling and painting lol...

Henchmen that are in the same group must be armed the same.  You are playing orcs.  You DO NOT WANT your henchmen to be in the same group at the start, since you want to roll a Lad's Got Talent result as soon as you can.

Hmmmm... that's a good point... Except I've already maxed out my heroes limit of four. I don't think there's anyways of increasing the hero cap? Because rolling 4v6 dice on the exploration charts over say a campaign of 15 games can lead to a big difference!

DeafNala wrote:

The Green Lads are LOOKIN' GOOD...some SPLENDID brushwork there. GREAT WORK!  

I believe the Henchmen thing is that all the members of a Henchman Group have to be armed the same. Just put them in different groups...one mini groups are allowed.  

Thanks mate - will try to keep this thread updated as I make more progress.

Quote :

Hmmmm... that's a good point... Except I've already maxed out my heroes limit of four. I don't think there's anyways of increasing the hero cap? Because rolling 4v6 dice on the exploration charts over say a campaign of 15 games can lead to a big difference!

Yes it can and you can take advantage of this.  Really!  Not kidding. It even says so in the rule book.  Look under the section on Starting a warband,  the paragraph about other heroes (Mordheim Rulebook, 1999, p.64).  You said this was your first warband so I'm just tying to help.

Some warbands like the Skaven start with six heroes.  They do not need to worry about rolling a Lads Got Talent advance with their henchmen unless they lose a hero or would like to replace one.  Most warbands start with a leader and four other heroes, but orcs and dwarfs and some other races start with only a leader and three other heroes.  Those are the only heroes you can START with, but your henchmen can BECOME heroes if they roll a Lads got Talent result on the henchmen advance chart, which, believe me, is what YOU want to do for the reason you mentioned above:  6 dice are so much better than 4!

And it could be that I jumped the gun offering advice about campaigns, because some folks don't use the campaign system. But if you aren't using the campaign rules, why would you roll on the exploration chart?

Von Kurst wrote:

Yes it can and you can take advantage of this.  Really!  Not kidding. It even says so in the rule book.  Look under the section on Starting a warband,  the paragraph about other heroes (Mordheim Rulebook, 1999, p.64).  You said this was your first warband so I'm just tying to help.

Wow... you're absolutely right

It's definitely good advice then to split up the henchmen in order to maximise "The Lads Got Talent."

But... if that's the case is there anything in the rules stopping me from buying another two heroes straight away after my first game (GC permitting)? Or do I have to wait until I get it through the Lads Got Talent advances through my henchmen level ups?

So basically given how important heroes are (especially in post battle exploration) maybe the aim is to smush them at all cost - especially weak ones like the Young Bloods when running a Campaign.

Apologies for all the noob questions and thanks in advance for all your help

Quote :

But... if that's the case is there anything in the rules stopping me from buying another two heroes straight away after my first game (GC permitting)? Or do I have to wait until I get it through the Lads Got Talent advances through my henchmen level ups?

Well, of course there is something in the rules preventing you from buying more heroes. (Otherwise there would be no need for a Lads got talent rule.) All heroes have a limit to the number you can EVER have in the warband.  In this case you may have 2 Big uns, one shaman and one leader.  If a Big Un is killed or retired, you may hire another, but you may never have more than two on your roster.  Look under the section on Starting a warband,  the paragraph about other heroes (Mordheim Rulebook, 1999, p.64) and in your warband's rules for the number of heroes.

Quote :

Apologies for all the noob questions and thanks in advance for all your help

No apology necessary, we are all noobs sometime.  And you are most welcome.

WIP of my mob boss... few more tweaks and he should be good to go.

Might have gone a bit overboard with the blue lol... maybe a bit too clean for Mordheim?

Also does anyone have any insight into painting NNM chainmail?

Comments and feedback welcome.

He is a COOL looking Gang Leader, maybe a tad on the over armed & armored side, but COOL nonetheless. GREAT WORK!  

Newest addition to the gang:



Trying to get the total time from plastic sprues to table top in less than 6hrs per mini. This guy took about 8hrs... got bogged down around the facial features.

Just curious how many hours do you guys spend painting the average grunt? 8hrs for me is about a whole week in terms of calendar days. So best case that's 52 models a year or 3 complete warbands...

So it'll take around 5 years if I wanna pull a Pokemon gotta collect them all

The Green Lad turned out SPLENDIDLY...GREAT WORK!  
As a one off miniature, an Orc like yours would take me about five or six hours. If I was doing a few similar miniatures at the same time it would probably take an extra hour or a little less for each additional miniature...mass production isn't as much fun, but it cuts down on the time.  

Woot! Glad you are adding to the thread as I had forgotten what a great painter you are. I lost interest in NNM (what does that even mean?) around thirty years ago, because metallic paints rock.

I am also not the most efficient person in the world, so 'takes me several days' was probably not the answer you were looking for...

Thanks guys - glad you're enjoying it

Von Kurst wrote:

Woot! Glad you are adding to the thread as I had forgotten what a great painter you are.  I lost interest in NNM (what does that even mean?) around thirty years ago, because metallic paints rock.

I am also not the most efficient person in the world, so 'takes me several days' was probably not the answer you were looking for...

I just can't seem to paint well with metallics to save my life! I found shading and highlighting to be extremely difficult... I think painting well with metallics is definitely a harder skill than NMM.

Scratching building a few trees in the meantime to take a break from painting.

Watered down PVA, and twigs collected from the local park and lots of toilet paper.



Mob boss and lad chilling under a W.I.P tree - hopefully it'll turn out okay.

LOOKIN' GOOD! I hadn't thought of using tissue paper for the bark. It will be interesting to see how it turns out. Have FUN with it!  

Quote :

I just can't seem to paint well with metallics to save my life! I found shading and highlighting to be extremely difficult... I think painting well with metallics is definitely a harder skill than NMM.

Well you are certainly good at NMM.

I recommend using newspaper for the basic shape of the tree to cut down on the need for lots of tissue paper.

Got a bit bored of doing orcs - thought I'd start on the little runts!



Always been a big fan of the night goblins models that GW produced and pretty pleased at how he turned out.



Could have been a bit neater in terms of brushwork and basing but meh... I'm firmly sticking to a maximum limit of 6hrs per mini.

Of which 5 hours went into the spearpoint, half an hour into the face and shield, half an hour into everything else?

He is a COOL little Rogue as only a Goblin can be. I do admit to liking the earlier plastics better based solely on their silly faces. HOWEVER, your newer & nastier looking Goblin painted up BEAUTIFULLY...the spear head is particularly striking. VERY WELL DONE!  

Grimscull wrote:

Of which 5 hours went into the spearpoint, half an hour into the face and shield, half an hour into everything else?

Hahaha very true... the key I think is to use a wet palette which speeds up things remarkably when it comes to NMM blending. You're not there constantly remixing paint that's dried too fast. Usually I try to give one "party piece" to each mini which helps him stand out just a little bit.

DeafNala wrote:

He is a COOL little Rogue as only a Goblin can be. I do admit to liking the earlier plastics better based solely on their silly faces. HOWEVER, your newer & nastier looking Goblin painted up BEAUTIFULLY...the spear head is particularly striking. VERY WELL DONE!  

Yeah I know what you mean - those early 90s goblins had quite comical appearance to them whereas they went a bit grimdark with their next batch. And now the current AoS orcs are all decked out in mega armour which doesn't mesh so well with Mordheim.

Should have a few more done in the next few days.

More goblins...



Still need to add some flock to the bases but pretty much done.

Overall pretty pleased at how they turned out. The robes could probably have used more intensive highlighting and contrast but yeah trying to force myself not to go too overboard.

That's about it in terms of goblins. Next up will be some Squigs and finally a Pit Fighter to round out my starting gang.

Two nice additions. On all three, there are still sandgrains on the sides of the bases. Spoils the look imo.

Grimscull wrote:

Two nice additions. On all three, there are still sandgrains on the sides of the bases. Spoils the look imo.

Yep that's me getting lazy/sloppy. Fortunately it's not too noticeable on the tabletop.

The new Little Lads in Green look as TERRIFIC as the first one. VERY WELL DONE!  

2704ENG wrote:

Yep that's me getting lazy/sloppy. Fortunately it's not too noticeable on the tabletop.

...or you could grab your hobby knife do a scrap off of the sand, & a touch up of the color. In a couple of minutes, they'll look good from any distance.  

Great work on the gobbos. Man they look sweet!

Some more additions... yes it's been a while but at some point I do intend to finally finish this warband!

Some additional squigs - 15pts for S4 grunts a steal!



Some work in progress of the new Hero and Shaman:





Both above are from the Avatars of War range. Been trying to get my painting time down and doing a bit of experimenting with extreme highlighting on the last two minis. There are some areas of glaring transitions which will need some patching over but meh... trades offs with speed v quality.  So far digging the the result as soft blending just takes too long.

Have spent around 2.5hrs on the Shaman so far - want to keep it under 5hrs and see what result I end up with.

Will start on my pit fighter when these boys are done and that should be the war band!