Mordheim Sisters of Sigmar

Every core Mordheim warband is iconic in its own right, but the Sisters of Sigmar are iconic. This is the first warband I've made with so many members right from the start, and they absolutely deserve that attention in my opinion. Tons of detail pictures and process below the jump... 

I made this Sisters warband from mostly bits that I already had, and settled on a formula of solid upper body armour paired with a long skirt. And then deviating from that formula per model to add character. The armour breastplates are almost all sourced from spares I had from building the Deathrattle army box, and so is mostly very corroded and tattered. The skirts are also ragged looking. This is part of a theme for my Mordheim warbands overall - everyone is in pretty terrible shape in the City of the Damned.

Henchwomen 

The henchwomen are made up of two duos: the younger Novitiates, and the fully inducted Sisters.

The key parts for creating the Novitiates were the squire heads from the Bretonnian Blood Bowl team. This kit is full of great bits - as usual with Blood Bowl it's unafraid of getting sillier and more whimsical than the main line kits. These squire heads are young women with round, flat-topped helmets - totally perfect for Sisters. From there, they're made of Zombie skirts, spare breastplates from the Deathrattle Skeletons and Barrow Guard kits, and backs from the Lumineth archers.

Since the Novitiates are the youngest, freshest inductees to the Sisterhood, they start off with wooden mallets (practice hammers), and will get proper hammers when they're promoted to Sisterhood. Although with the current Mordheim crisis, perhaps the promotion process might be on hold for the time being...

The fully fledged Sisters get some more personalisation, as they grow into their own areas of specialism. The first uses the lower half of a 40k Chaos Cultist for a half-skirt with a layer of chainmail underneath. The Cultist also provided the spiked bracer. And, as with the others, a Deathrattle breastplate paired with a Lumineth back.

Her shield is also from the Bretonnian Blood Bowl kit. I love these - they appear to be the newer Bretonnian Foot Knight shields, scaled down. They need some careful cutting to remove, but they're so cool.

Her head and helmet was actually the most involved bit of the conversion, consisting of a Cities of Sigmar head,  a different Cities helmet, a little chapel piece from a Bretonnian Foot Knight helmet, a skull shaved down to fit inside that piece, and finally a twin-tailed comet on top.

The second Sister uses parts from the Luminark/Hurricanum set for her skirt and big comet placard. Her head is from the AoS Darkoath Marauders - a great source for characterful heads. Same breastplate/back combo, but this time her shoulderpads are skull masks from the Warcry Unmade kit.

 Where her colleague is posed fighting, this one is in a more classical "flat" pose, looking resolute.

Like the Novitiates, the Sisters have matching hammers. Since they're a step up from their little sisters, they get bona fide hammers from the Mordheim-contemporary Middenheim sprue. 

Heroes

The Sisters Superior and Matriarch are fully broken out of the conventional mold of their younger Sisters. Each is trusted to bear some form of bizarre holy relic, and their clothing adds more black over-robes. All three are designed to have bizarre silhouettes and evoke Sigmarite religious iconography.

First up, the reliquarist Sister Superior who carries an entire skeleton on her shoulders. The skeleton is from one of the Warcry scenery kits, and the reliquary case is the standard from the Bretonnian Foot Knights.

 As you might expect, it was a very fiddly process to get the skeleton posed correctly within the case - I'm so glad it fits exactly as I wanted. The Sister Superior's head pokes up into the hollow under the skeleton's rib cage. I expect a burden this heavy must have some sort of harness attached under the Sister's over-robes.

 

 This is the one model that still needs a little finishing - the skeleton was designed to attach by its back onto a wall, so its spine is a flat attachment point - I'll need to remodel this. Also the reliquary has several strings tied to it that trinkets are meant to dangle from. It was a nightmare to try and keep them in place while arranging the skeleton, so I'll revisit these some time to add things back where they should be.

The second Sister Superior carries the Sigmaricon - a most holy, hollow metal effigy of Sigmar with a mean spring-loaded hammer for smiting His enemies. The Sister operates this by pulling on the two chains attached to the effigy to reload or unleash the hammer. The effigy has a cloth skirt meant to conceal the operator, although like most things in Mordheim it is now in tatters.

This effigy came from the prow of the Empire ship in Dreadfleet. It's pretty much a 28mm model of Sigmar, albeit clearly a mechanical statue with visible joints. At one point I was considering making it 100% an free-roaming automaton with robot legs. But I like the weird silhouette it makes on top of another person. And the Sister's knee-high boots make a fun juxtaposition with the bearded Sigmar that reminded me of John Blanche's kinkier drawings.

The Sigmar statue was painted to look painted - this is harder than it sounds! His eyes are a little rough, his face is a bit crude with rosy cheeks, and paint has peeled away around the joints where the statue moves.

Last of all is the Matriarch herself. I honoured the tradition of making the Sisters Matriarch big and fat - she gets one of the bulky armoured torsos from the Cities of Sigmar, and a larger skirt from the Askurgan Trueblades (which I further padded out with green stuff).

Her entire helmet is a brazier of holy incense. I'm very pleased with the way the smoke curls around her. I focused on putting lots of rounded, dark metal armour around her shoulders and head, to communicate an appearance like a kettle.

Her hammer is a mix of several different parts, including a wheel roundel from the Hurricanum with the Sigmarite "S" on its face. I'm fond of her SIG / MAR thigh armour, made from two halves of a Cities of Sigmar icon plate.

I really dragged my feet on painting this group, and eventually pushed myself to do a straightforward colour scheme with no frills. Parchment white robes for the junior Sisters, with nun-black robes added for the seniors. Dark metal. A few splashes of unique colours on some. Done!

Thanks for reading. I am still on a Mordheim thing, so expect to see me revisiting some of my older warbands next. Plus at least one new brand new warband!

Hek