Mordheim Ostlanders Warband – Complete

At long last, my final visit to Mordheim. The extended Kasprzyk family is complete and ready to represent the Old World Empire province of Ostland. Pics, background and family tree(!) below the jump.

Well this project took long enough! From the start I planned to build an entire Ostlanders Mordheim warband from the brilliant Empire Archers kit. I think the Ostlander list is one of the more interesting twists on the vanilla Mercenary list in Mordheim (introduced in Town Cryer #11 and updated in the Mordheim Annual). I like the concept of an extended peasant family "on tour", and units like the Priest of Taal and Ruffians add some unique character. In the Mordheim Annual Ostlanders list the original "Nouveau Rich" rule from Town Cryer is abandoned (for being too silly maybe – you must spend half your income between battles!). In both lists a typo calls Blood Brothers "Uncles" in the Skills Table, implying they were originally written as Uncles. I leaned into that and made all my Blood Brothers uncles of the extended Kasprzyk family. Talking of which here's a family tree:

Click to view full size. Gold squares are in the warband. Made at www.familyecho.com plus some photoshop!

You can find the roster for the warband in my last Ostlanders post. In short: 2x bowmen, 2x swordsmen, 1x ruffian, 1x jaeger, 1x priest, 2x uncles, 1x Elder. The captain, Grandfather Nicefor, is the family head, thrice-married, an accomplished archer, still hanging tough at 78. The Blood Brothers wear old Ostland military regalia, having served in the Empire army. The Ruffian is the third uncle, generally too drunk to have been in the military. The Priest and Jaeger are brothers too, cousins to the trio of uncles (via Nicefor's late brother, Great Uncle Anone, who died of plague). The four henchmen are the youngest lads, nephews and half-nephews of the Uncle Brothers and grandsons of Nicefor (the lads' mothers and fathers are employed elsewhere and not in the adventuring business).

Uncles Oleg (L) and Zbigniew (R), retired Empire troops

Retired infantryman Oleg

Retired Greatsword Zbigniew

Uncle Dobrogost, ne'er-do-well and warband Ruffian

Dobrogost isn't the happiest guy

Second cousin Tytomeusz (L) with a double-barrelled pistol, second cousin Kwiatoslaw (R), a priest of Taal

Tytomeusz lining up a shot from atop a Mordheim gargoyle

Kwiatoslaw, a priest of Taal, Tytomeusz's brother, cousin to Oleg, Dobrogost and Zbigniew

Cousins Witold (L) and Pafnucy (R), Nicefor's grandsons

Witold and Pafnucy's quivers

Cousins Kasper (L) and Wojciek (R), Nicefor's grandsons

Kasper is Pafnucy's brother

Wojciek is Kasper's cousin

Proud grandpa and warband leader, Grandfather Nicefor

Nicefor's reaching for an arrow. He's still a deadeye archer at 78

An iridescent blackbird wing in Nicefor's cap

These were my "main" Mordheim project for the last few months. I got distracted by several side projects even veering away into Warhammer 40,000 here and there. I guess once I got to the painting stage, leather brown just couldn't keep my attention. That said I learned a lot about painting faces while working on the Ostlanders. It's cool to take on normal humans as a painting project sometimes. For now this is my final Mordheim project. Goodbye Old World! I've got another one-off 40k scratchbuild in the works, in the same vein of my Aeldari builds, and then I'm fully on board with my Age of Sigmar Relic Lizardmen project.

Hek