My beastmen and Hired Swords for Mordheim

[Kanto]

Another of my warbands doomed to be forever wip. Trying to get any decent photos of these was a struggle and I was in two minds whether to post these at all. At the time of painting these I wanted to go with extremely grimdark look and took the easiest route possible; using lots and lots of very watered-down black and brown paints as washes. As a result, besides being extremely dark they also have terrible shine to them. I'm not normally fond of using black backdrop when photographing my minis but this time I had no choice - just couldn't get any passable results at all with white backdrop.








Beastmen don't get all that many hired swords but my main warband, dwarfs, do. I wanted to have each of these mercenaries from core rulebook, annual and some from Town Cryers as well.
Thought it would be fun to have a dwarf version of each to go with my dearest warband (ogre would have caused problems but I never got that far. Probably for the best...). There's a dwarf warlock, dwarf tilean marksman and a dwarf merchant & his bodyguard, meant to be played as Arabyan merchant but had to settle with these minis since my search of finding suitably arabyan looking dwarfs was unfruitful at the time.

[Citizen Sade]

Great stuff. Loving the Oldhammer hired swords. The Citadel AD&D figure is perfect for an Imperial assassin.

I must get around to recruiting and painting an exclusively Oldhammer warband for Mordheim at some point. Maybe for BOYL 2025. Oldheim deserves to be a thing.

[Malamute]

lovely brushwork

[BeneathALeadMountain]

Kanto they look great. If it’s any help I’d say hit the Beastmen with a spray of Matt varnish to make them look more natural/less shiny. If you can get it I highly recommend testors dulcote - it’s amazing stuff. I love the Halflings - I’m a big fan of the striped trouser!

Andrew
BeneathALeadMountain

[Hobgoblin]

They all look splendid! Where's the beastman leader from? Is he Citadel/GW?

Great idea to have dwarf versions of the hired swords. I'm actually painting up a figure at the moment that makes quite a good "dwarf" ogre bodyguard; I'll post a picture of him soon.

[Elk101]

I like those a lot. Lovely work.

[Kanto]

Thanks for the positive comments all.

I must get around to recruiting and painting an exclusively Oldhammer warband for Mordheim at some point. Maybe for BOYL 2025. Oldheim deserves to be a thing.

Absolutely agree and oldhammer warband sounds like an excellent plan! Though I might be a bit biased here as most of my mordheim dwarfs are oldhammer minis...
My main inspiration for dwarf hired swords came from all those 80s Citadel dwarf adventurers; they are such a motley crew and there are some nice possibilities for Mordheim. Depending on how strictly Wysiwyg -rule would be followed might cause a problem, though.
Besides those I posted here I got sorted dwarf versions for freelancer, "halfling" cook, (another) tilean marksman and imperial assassin.

If it’s any help I’d say hit the Beastmen with a spray of Matt varnish to make them look more natural/less shiny. If you can get it I highly recommend testors dulcote - it’s amazing stuff. I love the Halflings - I’m a big fan of the striped trouser!

Matt or even satin varnish would definitely help and be the sensible thing to do... but as I'm no longer playing and these miniatures just sit in a cupboard never being used, it would feel a bit pointless to spend more time working on them.

Glad to hear striped pants were noticed, I remember spending a good long while painting them! Those miniatures are tiny - 14mm and 15mm from bottom of feet to eyes and details like those pants took time and patience. Luckily I had got practice of painting striped pants when working on my historical pirates before.

Where's the beastman leader from? Is he Citadel/GW?

Yes, that's Khazrak One-eye from GW, the updated version from 00s with a different head than the original had, to be precise. For gaming purposes I changed his whip to mace borrowed from dogs of war special character Borgio the Besieger and blade of original sword (it broke right off and seemed impossible to pin back on) to wheel scythe of old chaos chariot.
Quite happy how the conversion turned out, especially the sword with no cross-guard looks unusual, a bit oriental mayhaps.

I'm actually painting up a figure at the moment that makes quite a good "dwarf" ogre bodyguard; I'll post a picture of him soon.

Ooh, sounds intriguing.

[MysteryMachine]

Your beastmen are awesome! I’d love to get results like that. Brilliant miniatures - which manufacturers are they from?

[Kanto]

Thanks MysteryMachine!
They are all from GW: Centigor is from Mordheim line (long since out of production, sadly), Khazrak is old special character from WHFB and shaman is an older metal miniature from WHFB as well (both also oop, but perhaps getting rereleased when beastmen hit the Old World).
The rest are plastic miniatures from beastmen gor and ungor herds, I did however quite a bit converting on them; re-positioning arms, green stuffing hair and using bits from several other warhammer boxes. I found especially chaos marauders as most useful kit for this project as their arms fit perfectly with beastmen torsos and I only had to make fur from green stuff on shoulders and forearms for them to look convincing. I think from these beastmen only centigor has not been converted in any way.

I absolutely love converting and kitbashing miniatures in general. There's something very satisfying when you get several parts from different sets, possibly from several manufacturers, too, to blend together seamlessly.
Here are photos of some of the conversions I did for Mordheim. As you can see from what was supposed to be my Averlander captain, I really like sword and hammer combo for my leader - sword for parrying and hammer for bashing skulls is an undefeated combo. This figure also shows my OCD when it comes to miniature scale with those minor extensions on ankles to make it just that tiny bit taller...



And since I assume not many of you are all that interested in seeing just unpainted conversions, here are some more painted minis.
These were meant to be just generic mercenary warband and I went with very bright colours to really make them stand out in midst of the ruined city. These three are the full extent of this warband... Always too many projects going on and never enough patience to finish any of them.



Everything I've shown here so far are old paint jobs from years ago, and since then I've improved as a painter and my painting style has evolved into more sophisticated (or so I'd like to think at least!) way of approaching grim and gritty look without just smudging everything with washes.
I'll make a thread at some point for my generic fantasy miniatures that I've been concentrating for the past years and was going to post this Mordheim freelancer there, but since it keeps to the theme of this thread there's no reason to save it for later. This is more recently painted, only 4 years ago (which might seem like a long time ago but is nothing when compared to beastmen and most of the hired swords).

[Elbows]

Nice work on that guy.  He's my favourite Mordheim miniature ever (and one I myself painted a few years back). Great job.

[beefcake]

Very nice conversion work. Looks great. I like that last mordheim miniature too. I have him on my painting table to add to my undead army as a empire vampire. If it ends up looking terrible I'll just repaint the skin tones.

[OSHIROmodels]

Nicely done

[Kanto]

Thanks guys. Mordheim freelancer is one of my favourite miniatures of all time, definitely in top five.
Its sculpt beatifully captures this noble down on his luck with dented sword and in tattered clothes (snapped feather on hat tops it all) and tells a story of this individual. Storytelling through sculpt at its best, something I immensely appreciate and sometimes try to add to with my painting. I also prefer that kind of 'posing for camera' -look better than more dynamic action poses of 'in midst of fight'.
For a long time now I have had this gripe about lack of expressive faces on miniatures; they all seem to be either neutral, angry and shouting or just plain angry. This makes a lot of sense as miniatures are generally meant to be playing pieces, but I'd love to see variety of emotions being shown - laughing, sad, frightened, smirking etc. Frostgrave wizards II box has an excellent head that could be interpreted as surprised or shocked and I've come up with multiple ways to use that one. Would love to see more like it.

I like that last mordheim miniature too. I have him on my painting table to add to my undead army as a empire vampire. If it ends up looking terrible I'll just repaint the skin tones.

I've seen this mini used as a vampire a few times and it always looks great.

[Citizen Sade]

It’s a great sculpt. Brian Nelson, IIRC. I think his Aenur miniature for Mordheim is also special.

I like the Don Quixote vibe and think it’s a pity GW never did a Sancho Panza miniature to go with it.

Your painting adds a lot of character to it. The face and the eyes are the highlights for me.

[Kanto]

Cheers, Citizen Sade.
Oh, Aenur is absolutely a classic and the mini I immediately associate with Mordheim. Perhaps since it was given as freebie in WD when Mordheim was launched. Happy days indeed when you would get a metal miniature with WD instead of stickers with colour names to add on your paint pot lids or something similarly "useful".

It's crazy to think what skilled sculptors like Brian Nelson, Perrys and many, many others were able to do back then - those sculpts are a quarter of a century old and still, not just hold up, but actually look amazing. Mordheim miniatures are IMHO among best miniatures GW ever released. Btw, hopefully one day I'll get around putting some paint on those reiklander youngbloods you traded to me over at Oldhammer forum.

Regarding freelancer, while I'm not into scifi I do love how Brian Nelson made sort of a twin of freelancer for 40k in form of Cadian commander.