Mordheim Carnival of Chaos

Meet the Jolly Fellouws, a group of travelling players in the ruins of Mordheim.

I was initially a little cold on making a Carnival of Chaos warband, even though they're a fantastic idea and almost every version I've seen has been gold (check out Roberto Cuevas Guerrero's stellar version of the Carnival, for example). But I couldn't find an angle on them that I wanted to make. Then suddenly I was hit with the thought of making them as a procession of musical medieval fools. This style would fit better with the way I've been portraying Mordheim warbands so far.

From Three Fools at Carnival by Hendrik Hondius I

 

Luckily, I had most of the bits I needed to make some awful fools. My main goals were to make them look like they're dancing, and to give them all musical instruments of some sort.

The first one has the leaping legs from the Corvus Cabal (whose legs were also a big part of my Mordheim Pirate gang), and the torso from a Bretonnian command squad member (which features stripes and a zig-zag fringed cowl). His bugle is a mix of bits, mostly an Empire bugler. And his marotte is a Cities of Sigmar gargoyle ornament on the end of a short staff, with a fur tail from somewhere or other. He also has some bells and ribbons attached.

Notably, all of these fools have heads made from bits representing severed heads. It's hard to find a head in Warhammer that isn't scowling or looking mean. Severed head parts often have goofier expressions, and of course these guys are connected to Nurgle, so it's important they look at least a little run-down.

 The hoods are totally sculpted from green stuff. This one has asses' ears.

The next of the fellows doesn't have an instrument as such, but looks like he's singing. The base model is the poor man in the clutches of the giant's hand from the Gargant kit (the smaller one, not the Mega-Gargant). It's a lot of work to trim away the big hand that's holding him, but it results in a plainly-clad fellow in a bizarre pose, with one shoe missing. It's so perfect for a fool conversion that I already used the exact same model for a Bretonnian fool (who has been unfinished for a long time...)

Since so much of his body was obscured by a giant's hand, there's a fair bit of reconstruction to do with greenstuff. His hood and cowl are both completely scratch sculpted. His entire left arm and hand are replaced, so is his knife-bearing right hand. His unshod foot had a little bit of greenstuff work to make his bare stocking trail even more. He also has a frog tied to his belt - this came from the Hunters of Huanchi kit, which is a great source of trussed-up frogs if you can think of something to do with them.

 Next is a model taken wholly from one source: the homunculus from the Cities of Sigmar Soul Shepherd. This is one of GW's best character sculpts in ages in my opinion. It has the perfect look of a medieval skeleton from a woodcut.

 However, the original is posed sitting down on a tree stump, one leg resting on the other, and I wanted him to be joining in the festivities. It is an insanely delicate sculpt, which is cleverly supported by the stump in its original pose. Repositioning him involved cutting his bum away from the stump and adjusting the position of his stick-thin legs (a lot of pinning and green stuff repair). His right leg still contacts his left leg for stability, but it touches it a little lower than in the original, so his pose is more dancing than reposing. And so, his scarf needed extending to stretch down further, and I added a long part onto the end so that it would trail along the ground, giving him some much-needed stability. The resulting model is still very very delicate!

I intended the model to read as part of the dance party himself, and not the leader. This isn't meant to be a totentanz with Death leading the others - it's a party of equals. This model would count as one of the Carnival's Tainted Ones, with a mandatory mutation making him cause Fear. He's as much a fool as all the others are.

I painted his scarf like parchment with text, to resemble something out of a woodcut. The text reads "TU QUOQUE BALATRO ES" - YOU TOO ARE A FOOL. Something to think about.

Finally, a bagpiper. This fellouw has a lot of Bitzboxer DNA - Jacob is making some of the best Mordheim models out there right now, and his work always inspires me to push my conversions. I see we both also solved the same pose from the same pair of zombie legs too (the dragging leg gets rotated forwards, resulting in an outstretched leg with an elegantly turned ankle). 

The bagpipes were scratch built from a blob of green stuff, with Hunters of Huanchi blowpipes for the pipes and chanter. His playing hands are from the zombie hands that hold a scythe - the zombie has a loose grip on the haft that translates well into holding a flute. His head is of course one of the severed heads, and his hood is only party scratch sculpted, but mostly from the 40k Dark Commune.

This fellouw is apparently unarmed, but if you've ever been close to a bagpiper you know he doesn't need to be.

 Painting was a bit of trouble. I tried a few different colours before settling on this limited pallette of yellow and orange. Initially it was yellow and red, which stood out as too Big Top Circus style for my liking, and I pushed it more towards a sickly yellow colour to symbolise Nurgle. The red got toned down to orange, and all other colours got eliminated from the scheme. Painting the singer and the piper in motley checks helped a lot to cast the group as fools, rather than just eccentrics wearing hoods. The skin started off very dead looking, so I added much more warmth to it to make sure they read as living (if unhealthy) weirdos and not undead zombies.

This group is maybe my favourite I've done yet for Mordheim! I have at least one more fool in progress for the group. For now though I'm taking a bit of a break from the Cursed City to catch up on some of the other WIPs on my desk that need attention.

Thanks for reading
Hek