15 July 2020

Mordheim Five-a-Side Challenge


One of the less consequential knock-on effects of a pandemic, is that I have been playing “Mordheim: City of the Damned” on PS4 with a few friends.  The fun that we had with that led me to dig up some unloved Mordheim figures, add a few more and get stuck in to a long overdue project.

Rather than keep this enthusiasm to myself, I twisted some notoriously rubber arms and decided to make a voluntary group project out of it, criteria as follows:

COMPLETE A MINIMUM OF FIVE FIGURES, APPROPRIATE FOR USE IN MORDHEIM GAMES AS PART OF THE SAME WARBAND.




The goal was to create a format that encouraged people to tackle things that they had been planning to work on anyway, with the added fun that comes from sharing elements of the process with friends.  We all have different approaches, techniques and resources available, so the idea was to be as inclusive as possible, so that anyone who wanted to take part would be likely to do so with what they already had to hand.

Five figures isn’t enough for a game of tabletop Mordheim (requirements are more like 8 - 16 or so), but 5 is the number of members in a starting video game Mordheim warband, which allowed people to recreate their starting video game warbands in miniature if they wanted to.  Five figures is also a lot easier task to complete than a full warband, so we decided to go with that.  We might follow this up at a later date with another push to round out the warbands, as I think that people enjoyed themselves.


CITADEL GUARD (Axiom)

‘Paint up a Mordheim warband,’ says cheetor. ‘Well, half a warband perhaps’.  Five models for use in Mordheim?  I could definitely get on board with that.  The Mordheim Challenge was the perfect catalyst to actually paint up some models from a project that’s been on slow burn for well over 12 months.  And so I present to you the Citadel Guard.


 Quite why a detachment of the Citadel Guard have been sent to Mordheim is a complete mystery.  They are a disciplined, well trained and well-armed group, quite unlike most of the treasure hunters and bandits the City of the Damned usually attracts.  Their polished armour and blue and gold livery hardly blends in.  Although other mercenary bands jeeringly refer to the Guard as Yellow Backs (after their mustard-yellow cloaks), it would be a brave leader who decides that his warband should tangle with the veteran soldiers.


This small group of Citadel Guard will absolutely be the springboard for a full Mordheim warband.  The group is made up of an unmodified Citadel Guard Captain (mace/shield) and Guardsman (halberd) from Citadels 1984 pre-slotta Lone Wolf range.  


The Guardsman nonchalantly resting his mace on his shoulder is a simple weapon swap, whilst the crossbowman comes from Citadel’s feudal/Bretonnian range.  The Commander is converted from Felix Jaegar – the star of the Felix and Gotrek series of Warhammer novels.


MARIENBURGERS (Captain Crooks)

Greetings Creepers!  The game of Mordheim is one of my enduring loves, and in these dark lockdown times a number of us Scale Creeps have been indulging in some online Mordheim gaming, which rekindled my interest in my Marienburgers for the tabletop game.



I knew from fairly early on that I wanted a number of expensive handgunners to give me ultimate bragging rights on the battlefield, and Marienburgers have the starting coin to make this happen.



Marienburg Marksmen aren't as good out the gate as their Reikland rivals, but they pack quite a punch all the same so I've painted up a trio to bring the black powder pain.  These minis are old Empire handgunners sculpted by one of the Perry twins in the early 90s.



Next up is one of the original Marienburger champions from the Mordheim range, a one-eyed one-legged screaming lunatic with a flail.  He has taken the brunt of all that Mordheim can offer but is still ready to rumble - 'Quit while you've a head' his mother told him, but nuts to you ma!  I've got wyrdstone to hoard!  He might even have a new eye carved out of the glowy green stuff, what could possibly go wrong?



Last up is this spry lass, a Hasslefree miniatures zweihander that is charging into trouble.  The details on her are quite fine but I managed to cope with the tiny puff 'n' slash with a fine brush, steady hand and holding my breath for long periods.

That's it for now, I'll be sure to update my personal blog with pics of the whole warband in due time.  See you when the next challenge drops! CHALLENGE ME!


MIDDENHEIMERS (The Bazpaz)

Led by Baron Ronald the Red and his greatsword Drachenstahl, this rag-tag Middenheim warband are more interested in seeking glory for their blades than gold. 


The one eyed, blond maned Wolf Priest, Mickel Mickelson, wields his massive axe to devastating effect.  Jacobim the Forester, and his trusty warhound, provides long range support with his bow. 


Harald the Bold prefers up close fighting and wields his sword and axe in the name of Ulric and Middenheim.  Last is Rickard Robertus the Swift. Not famed for his intelligence,  this young blood searches for his father. All he knows is that he is a noble of Middenheim, fallen on hard times ….. 


A nice project and a nice mix of original Mordheim , Foundry, Frostgrave and Black Scorpion figures



BOGLUD’S BUZZARDS (Spevna)

I grabbed some lovely old orcs with the intention of using them for LOTR Battle Companies, painted up 5 of them, but never got round to putting them on the table.



Cheetor then suggested a Mordheim painting challenge which gave me the push I needed to get the next 6 done 🙂


So, now I have the beginnings of a nice little warband with these 11 lads done.  


There are several others languishing in the lead pile, but they can wait for a bit as there are a couple of upcoming painting challenges that have grabbed my attention already!



WILD WITCH HUNTERS (Sean)

Somehow Mordheim is one of the games that completely passed me buy as I pursued my academic and then professional career and fell away from hobby things in the early to mid 90’s.

Flash forward to Kublacon in 2017 and 2018 and I got to play in and watch some truly spectacular games of Mordheim put on by Tyler.  So I had been looking at painting up a warband since at least 2017.  Sadly, actual Mordheim models are very expensive, if you can find them.  So I set about assembling a proxy warband, and then promptly “forgot” all about it as I got caught up in other projects.

Then suddenly Cheetor suggested that we should encourage each other to paint a small warband each.  He had been playing Mordheim on the PS4 and doing small bands for other games and this project seemed to tick a lot of boxes, so here we are.

My Proxy Witch Hunter Warband:



If you’re going to have a Witch Hunter war band it has to be lead by a Witch Hunter, duh!  I chose the Reaper Bones Black version of Jakob Knochengard 44013, sculpted by Bobby Jackson.  Currently out of stock on their site, I would do the metal version if I had to do it over.  I will say Bones Black is an improvement over regular bones.  The mold lines are still a right pain to deal with though.



Any self respecting band of intolerant religious fanatics needs an ordained man of the cloth.  I bought this Cleric Adventurer from Dragon Bait a few years ago and he seemed to fit the bill nicely.  He shall be called Father Joachim Pumpernickel, Warrior Priest.


Finally we needed to round out the war band with mooks.  The great thing about Witch Hunters is that they have access to Flagellants.  Who doesn’t want to field a bunch of crazed mendicants. 


I give you Klaus, Horst and Berchtwald.  These guys are later edition Warhammer models.  I wanted to use some Marauder Flagellants, but I couldn’t find them.  These may have fit better with the style of the other two figures anyway.  


I had a little trouble writing the slogans on their boards, I ended up using a Le Pen 0.05 marker.


There you have it, another fun project in the books.  Thanks to Cheetor and the others for the inspiration.

On to the next project.


BOOMTOWN RODENTS (Cheetor)

Mordheim is a lush and evocative setting, full of all sorts of interestingly peculiar, grim fairy tale sorts of Northern European style horror potential.  Despite all of that, the thing that primarily grabbed my attention back in 1999 was ninja ratmen.


Reading the lovely Mordheim rulebook back in the last century and imagining dojo trained assassins - the sneakiest killers in an entire species of sneaky Starscream type opportunistic killers – clambering across the toxic ruins of a radioactive comet-struck city meant that Clan Eshin skaven just had to be my number one choice for Mordheim.  I enthusiastically glued a few Eshin together in 1999, then other stuff happened, and then in 2020 I painted them.

The modular Night Runner ninja models are showing their age a bit now, but I still like them a lot.  I’m fully aware that my like of these figures is at the very least partly nostalgia driven, but I’m ok with that.  I like the goofy little guys and their 1990’s style TMNT action figure aesthetic.  Plus until some more modular plastic ratman ninja show up, these guys have it covered, albeit in a Saturday morning cartoon villain henchman style.

On the other hand the rat ogre is from the “Island of Blood” Warhammer eighth edition starter set released in 2010.  Subsequently re-released for Age of Sigmar in late 2016 in the “Spire of Dawn” set, it is the best rat ogre sculpt that Citadel has made to date I think: a great pose, full of dim-witted menace.  With the newer take on the rat ogre/ogor designs heading in an even beefier and vastly more steampunk and bionic direction, this guy might end up being the definitive “classic” rat ogre forever.

L to R: Akirat the Quick, Kurasawrat the Schemer, Ziggurat, Toshirat the Pugnacious, Gordonzola the Fragrant
I painted these primarily with Contrast paints over an off white base coat, followed by some fairly rough highlighting, toned back with washes and Contrast where necessary.  Low precision work and definitely not anywhere near competition level, but I enjoyed every minute of the painting process, which counts for a lot.


UNDEAD (Whiskey Priest)

This is a start of a Mordheim warband using only old Citadel figures, in fact I'm pretty sure all these figures actually predate Mordheim by some way, probably at least a decade.  If you want to go research, feel free, I don't have the time cos I'm under the cosh


Anyway, we have a big scary transforming bat-vamp who seems to be emerging from smoke or darkness.  Keeping him alive with delicately served morsels of human flesh (and the odd rat when he's not paying attention) is the Necromancer from Talisman.  He's a lovely little Morrison sculpt with a proper gurning face and lovely curvy shoulder pads like a proper baddie.



Backing them up are 3 dregs from various Empire militia ranges (or possibly Thieves) which gives the proper look of humans who are at their lowest ebb having to throw their lot in with an undead lord.  


To finish up the warband I'll need to get myself some zombies, a ghoul or two and maybe some wolves.  That should be a fairly easy job to do if I ever get round to having a game!
Enough of this twaddle Cheetor is looking at his watch....see you next challenge!


BEASTMEN (TheOttoVonBismark)

When this challenge came up I was having fun working on some Beasts of Chaos miniatures for building up a Warhammer force, so it was natural to pivot to working on some of the nice Beastman models in my collection suitable for a small skirmish force.


I have chosen to paint them using a speedy approach which relies heavily on Citadel contrast paints.  


There are some minor conversions in a few places and the Minotaur is based on a Mark Copplestone Barbarian Giant.


I plan to use these in lots of systems potentially, Warcry, Mordheim or Frostgrave most likely. I need to add a couple of chaos hounds to this lot.


The most fun model to paint in this lot was the Chaos Centaur (Centigor).  Gotta love those old Citadel centaurs, I am certainly looking forward to an excuse to paint up some more.


CULT OF THE POSSESSED (Bulldog Lopez)


Hi!  I'm definitely Bulldog Lopez, not an editor pretending to be Bulldog Lopez, and I'm away from my desk right now.


I don't really go in for excuses much, but I really do have a good one for not being available to write this piece of text.


Which is a shame really, as I did an amazing job on these creepy old Citadel cultists.


I mean, check out this guy!  He looks like he leapt straight out of a Frazetta painting.


And look at these two seedy characters.  I feel like they represent me in so many ways.  I wish that I was more like them in real life.


Thanks to Cheetor for running this.  He is my favourite guy in the entire world, I wish he was my dad.

Yours sincerely, Totally Bulldog Lopez (not an impersonator).



2 comments:

  1. Excellent miniatures all round. You guys are really banging on all cylinders with these challenges.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Superb warbands, wish I had seen this challenge earlier as I would have really liked to take part. Maybe next time?

    Cheers, Ross

    ReplyDelete