Fancy Fighters For Mordheim

 

Back to Mordheim now, as I've been painting some more humans to explore the ruins. After the bulk painting of the termagants, I felt like something a bit more detailed. I decided to paint some very bright and fancy humans, perhaps from the wealthy city of Marienburg. White and orange seemed like good colours, and of course they're so easy to paint, too.

I used orange contrast paint for the orange parts, and then highlighted with yellow. Here are a couple of lowly types: a swordsman and a crossbowman. Both are based on some Empire cannon crew that I had lying around, with Mordheim and Empire arms.

This chap is slightly more senior. Perhaps he leads a group of swordsmen. He's a mixture of Mordheim and Empire Pistoleer parts, with a shield from a random historical model. I like his fancy plumed hat. It's hard to see, but I painted his cloak as scuffled leather. I'm not sure what it would actually be made from, but it looks nice. Painting his face was difficult: I think some of the Empire rank-and-file don't have very detailed faces.

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This week, GW announced that it is phasing out a large number of older Space Marine kits, including all the plastic scout models, the marine bikes and the land speeders. Some of these models are ancient and not very good - the Space Marine bikes are about as old as I am and they look even worse, the land speeder is a dull, dated kit and the scouts have those silly square-jawed heads that always look better replaced. (And charging £27 for the old bikes or £25 for a land speeder is outrageous.) However, some good models will be going, including a super librarian model.

It seems clear that the old space marines are being phased out. Nothing can stop the primaris gravy train. The old models are from a different era and - the most important thing about Space Marines - they're not big enough. Personally, I find none of the bigmarine kits very exciting (although the new bikes rock), and some of them seem like worse designs than what they replaced, especially the hover-tanks and the weird flying autocannon men.

Anyhow, I bought a scout land speeder. I've always quite liked this kit, which is as much a little diorama as a model, as the riders are doing interesting things. With different heads, it could look really cool. I shall continue collecting little marines for my force of space knights.