Back to Mordheim

 "Repent! Repent, ye sinners, for the black banner is raised, and it shall not be lowered in our lifetimes! Behold, the things of the warp are warping things, and great lamentation shall fall upon those who are destined to be fallen upon! That which was shall not be, and that yet to be shall yet not be, except for that not to be which is destined to be, as it has always been! 

"Also, heresy."

                                                                       The third or fourth prophesy of Gustavus the Vague.

Mordheim (aka "fantasy Necromunda") is Games Workshop's skirmish game set in a ruined city, in which small warbands fight over magical warpstone in an ongoing campaign, somewhat like Necromunda (aka "Mordheim in space"). It is utterly miserable, even by Warhammer standards, and makes A Game of Thrones look like Mary Poppins. The artwork seems to involve a lot of dead bodies, rats,  flagellants shouting "Heresy" and angry men waving fish around. It's as though John Blanche was locked in a plague house for forty days, with only a keg of absinthe and a book about scurvy for company.

Which makes it highly entertaining. Whether or not GW found it sort-of-amusing, I certainly do. For one thing, Mordheim looks a lot like Terry Gilliam's Jabberwocky. Anyhow, it's a good excuse to listen to metal, stick some random model parts together and claim that this is normal among the Chaos Cult of the Brandished Fish.

Thus inspired, I dug out a conversion that I'd started about 15 years ago. For reasons now forgotten, I'd combined a Dark Elf corsair upper body (together with its cool cloak) with some legs from one of those crappy plastic Dark Eldar warriors from about 1995. I'd also cut the front off the model's feet. 

I gave the model a masked head from a Stormcast Sigmarine. I thought that the spikes around the head reflected the spikes on the cloak's collar, and the rather impractical spikes coming out of the model's legs. The arms were from the ever-excellent  Frostgrave female wizards set, which work well for smaller, older models.

It seemed only right to paint an outfit like that a dark red. The mask was painted brass, in order to stand out. The exposed flesh got an unhealthy grey/pink shade, with a purple glaze for added nastiness. And I painted the end of the wand to look like a chunk of warpstone (although it looks rather like a torch). I attempted some object source lighting, but as usual I'm not entirely happy with it.

That's enough Mordheim for now. I've got another model in the works, but more of that next time.