MORDHEIM, CONTRAST AND SPACE MARINES

July saw an meet-up of epic proportions when twenty or so hobbyists clashed in Helsinki in a celebration of Mordheim's 20th birthday. It was an absolute blast and the terrain and miniatures on display had to be seen to be belived. Huge thanks to Alexander Winberg for arranging this crazy endeavour, and to Mordheim's daddies Toumas Pirinen and John Blanche for participating.

I managed to play two and half games over the day and my nefarious vampire Graf Sugismund did rather well for himself (though he lost an eye in the proceedings). The last game turned into more of a moody photoshoot than a proper game when Kari, of Iron Sleet fame, brought along his nifty smoke machine. And then we had to break for dinner and beers. Lots and lots of beers.

Here's a few of my cruddy pictures from the event, but there's many more and better ones at that, at various other blogs:

Head over to Echoes of Imperium to have a look at all the participating warbands: echoesofimperium

Greg Weir has a brilliant recap of our first game over at Between the Bolter and Me: mordheim-2019-witch-hunter-games and Eric does a more general recap of the event at the same site: mordheim-2019-recap

Tammy covers our last game, among other things, over at Tears of Envy

After event I needed to do something completely different, so back I went to the good old 41st millennium. I picked up a box of Intercessor space marines and started testing various colour schemes using the contrast paints. Here's two of them:

The process is rather simple. After spraying the model black and then with either grey seer or wraithbone, I sponge the model with dark brown to add texture and battle damage. Then I drybrush the whole miniature with pure white to provide highlights. After this the contrast colour is applied (in this case gryph-charger grey). This approach works for basically any colour scheme and due to the contrast paint's translucency the drybrushed highlight is subtly visible through the basecoat.

Just painting for it's own sake was a lot of fun, but after a few random marines like these I decided to go back to my beloved Metatron marines and see if I could replicate the colour scheme using contrast paints. It turned out I could.

Contrast painted Metratron to the left, original colour scheme to the right

As there's lots of new marine stuff coming out I'll try to turn these guys into a proper army, by adding more Intercessors, a few hellblasters, a dreadnought or two and perhaps some vanguard - so there's plenty of hobbying to do.

And then we haven't even mentioned Warcry...

THE DOOM THAT CAME TO MORDHEIM

In just a few days a huge group of hobby enthusiasts will meet up in Helsinki to celebrate the seminal GW game Mordheim and it's 20th birthday. Among them some of the very same people who created the game all those years ago.

I'm way too busy prepping the last of the terrain and finish up the last figures to write something exhaustive right now, but at least here's a bunch of pics of the undead warband and it's leader, the nefarious vampire Graf Sugismund Molossus - Knight of The Order of The Black Wing, Scourge of Parravon, Sorrow of Swartzhafen. He's joined by the vile necromancer Macrotus the Soiled, mysterious swordsman Myotis the Blade, dregs Guano the Great and Artibeus the Rank and a unit of ghastly wraiths (who I field using the dire-wolf rules).

As you can see I've created quite a lot of terrain as well, but more on that, and more on the warband after this weekend. If you want to read up on the MORDHEIM MMXIX project and check out all the other warbands go to Echoes of Imperium and have a look.

THE ROAD TO MORDHEIM MMXIX

Mordheim MMXIX logo by Tammy Nicholls

This summer a bunch of enthusiastic hobbyists (including some of the very same madmen who concocted the original game) will meet up in Helsinki for what promises to be a truly spectacular Mordheim campaign. Celebrating the game's 20th anniversary, Mordheim MMXIX (or Mordheim 2019) will be set 20 years after the events of the original game in the apocalyptic, breughellian, ruins of the City of the Damned.

The architect behind the campaign is none other than my buddy Alexander Winberg, and you can read all about it on his blog Echoes of Imperium: MORDHEIM MMXIX

My plan is to field an undead warband, led by a sinister vampire. So far I've finished a lowly dreg, and converted an even lowlier zombie.

GHOSTHAMMER PART II - HELLRAISERS

Boo! Seems like ghosts was what was needed for me to get out of my hobby slump!

I've been painting away the last couple of days and have managed to finish off five more chainrasps including the Dreadwarden champion, one reaper and the Spirit torment. Not speedpainting these guys either, though I do the chainrasps four at a time, so I think that's a pretty good haul for four days work.

Here's the chainrasps. Only a few more model needed for a minimum sized unit - I'm aiming for 15 to start with and keep the rest for conversions.

Here's what the Dreadwarden looks like just after he's recieved the undercoats.

There's three of them: I begin with a standard chaos black undercoat, then a lighter Zandri dust one on top of that that and finally a zenithal light white spray. After that I bring out the toothbrush and spatter the model with watered down mix of black and rhinox hide and then the washing and drybrushing commences.

And here's the first Grimghast Reaper:

Really pleased with how this one turned out. Its slightly converted by adding some spikes/nails hammered into his/its back, but apart from that its pretty much out of the box. These guys are just insane amounts of fun to paint.

Last but not least we have the Spirit Torment. Now this is one cool miniature but I felt there were a few things I wanted to adjust. To begin with I added a tombstone from the old zombie kit that connects with one of the tendrils of cloth to stabilise him somewhat. The original model only attaches to the base with one long thin strand of cloth which made the model sort of wobbly and springy. Any small movement made it vibrate which: A) makes it hard to paint and B) doesn't look very cool on the battlefield (I prefer my models static thank you very much). 

I also added some spikes and replaced the lock with some hooks from an old marauder.  I felt dragging victims screaming back to Hell using flesh-hooks was a tad grimmer than whacking them over the head with an oversized padlock. What I like about the Nighthaunt faction (apart from the miniatures) is that they're basically an army from Hell, so I want to play up the tormented cenobite angle whenever possible.

Then I painted it. It came out alright but there was something off...

I decided to repaint the carapace as I simply didn’t like the brass parts - rusty iron and steel seems to work best on these guys. Here's a crappy pic of what that looks like - I'm going to get some better pics of the final model.

Stay tuned! There's plenty more spooky stuff coming up!

GHOSTHAMMER

A few days ago I caved in and bought the new edition of AoS. Those new Nighthaunt models are just so ghoulishly delicious I couldn't resist.

It does seem Age of Sigmar has come of...well, age. In the three years it's been out there's been some really interesting armies released (apart from the constant barrage of rather uninspired stormcasts) and the new rule book itself is a hell of a lot sexier than the lacklustre first edition. 

There's still something off with the writing - its ponderous and humourless and just...off. Sometimes its almost as if they're using some sort of word generator that just throws out adjectives at random and there's so much aimless Michael Baystyle epic epicness about you start to skim the text after a while. Sometimes it's pretty good - it becomes pretty apparent after a while that there's many different writers involved. In any case the book is a lot better than the first outing and at least tries to create a setting of sorts. 

Like I said previously the Nighthaunt minis are, as many others have stated, absolutely stunning. GW knocked it out of the park with these guys and as for AoS in general it certainly seems like it's here to stay. If you want to take stroll down memory lane here's a pice I wrote about the new game and the death of the Old World just as AoS came out in the summer of 2015. Three years certainly is a long time in the hobby world - especially considering GWs current relentless release schedule...
http://convertorum.blogspot.com/2015/07/warhammer-is-dead-long-live-warhammer.html

So without further ado, here's my first two ghosties. The plan is to finish up a vanguard size army (1000pts) and then see what happens. I won't convert the spooks that much other than minor details. For instance I'll probably add some nails and spikes to the characters and wraiths to make theme even grimmer, taking some cues from my old mhorrigot stuff, and remove some of the wispy smoke effects where possible.