Mordheim Mercenaries – Ostlanders

Being in a good place with Mordheim, I swung for one last warband: Ostlanders. One of the more characterful teams under the umbrella of Human Mercenaries. A cool thing about the Mordheim setting is how it teases out the cultural differences in regions of the Empire (R.I.P. The Old World).

Roster for this as yet nameless gang below the jump:



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So I built this warband from the excellent Empire Archers kit, which is becoming difficult to get ahold of in the Age of Sigmar. It's got some great bits, the faces are really varied, and there's a selection of empty hands! Not something you get in many Warhammer kits. One quibble is that many of the bodies are posed crouching or hunched uncomfortably. I worked with this by giving the hunched bodies to the Elder (he's old), the Ruffian (he's drunk), and the Jaeger (he's in an aiming pose on a piece of Mordheim masonry).

I only used a handful of pieces from outside the Archers kit: a zweihander and some bucklers from the Mordheim mercenaries kit, an old round shield from who-knows-where, the Ruffian's axe is from a Lord of the Rings Rohirrim (much more realistically-sized!) and a real kit-bash of gun bits for the Jaeger's double-barrelled pistol. I also took the time to string the bows using fine jewelery wire, double-twisted. This was very fiddly but the result looks great (and I only had three bows to do).
There's a lot of touch-up work with green stuff, mostly fixing some of the Archers' weird postures, but also a lot of scratch-building to give the Priest some priestly robes. The bases still need completing. My process for all my Mordheim projects has been the same: roughed-up Milliput, covered with debris and offcuts and sealed with Vallejo liquid putty. The same terrain paint job on each base keeps all the warbands looking like they're in the same Cursed City.

The range of different-aged faces in the Archers kit meant I could have the characters as senior uncles and the henchmen are assorted nephews. The leader is the aged family patriarch. The two Blood Brothers (a small typo in the Mordheim Annual reveals they were originally listed as "Uncles"!) are made to look like ex-Empire State Troops, retaining some of their gear and nice weapons. The third "uncle" is the Ruffian, considered by the family something of a disappointment in comparison.

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Roster

Elder 80g
Grandfather Nicefor
Bow

Blood Brother 70g
Uncle Zbigniew
Double-handed sword

Blood Brother 60g
Uncle Oleg
Sword, shield

Priest of Taal 45g
Kwiatoslaw
Dagger

1x Ruffian 50g
Uncle Dobrogost
Axe

2x Kin 70g
Wojcik, Kasper
Bows

2x Kin 70g
Witold, Pafnucy
Swords, bucklers

1x Jaeger 55g
Tytomeusz
Double-barrelled pistol

Total 500g

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Hek