Hear Ye! Disturbance in the Dömplatz

Last weekend saw a frightful disturbance in the shattered ruins of the Dömplatz, in southern Mordheim. The cathedral square - already shattered by a multitude of meteorites from the Comet - was invaded by two warbands of nightmarish creatures, squabbling to secure the shattered square.

the Dömplatz

Long-since denuded of the obvious wyrdstone shards, the surviving buildings around the Dömplatz  were rumoured to hold stashes of the cursed rock. The great cathedral that once dominated the south-western corner had been obliterated by the Comet; the font still retained an eerie green glow that even the monstrous avoided. Instead, the warbands sought to secure the two towers in the north-west and west, the graveyard to the south-east, Shallya's abandoned shrine in the east, and the eerie tower of Morr that loomed in the north-east, the memento mori carved into its stonework now laced with terrible new meaning.

Servants of the True Emperor

Pijavic ‘the Impious’ von Carstein and his band of cretins, murderers and shambling horrors sought to secure at least the graveyard and the abandoned tower of Morr. The first would allow Jakob Karg new sources for his grotesque sorcery. The latter amused the vicious little sycophant.

The Crowgor's Herd

The Crowgor sought to despoil the places sacred to Man, to feast on the bones in vault and scrawl the nightmarish sigils of his people across the high vaults of the Mannish gods. Also, he bore grudges against the grey-limbed humans after last time.

Match Recap: Despite turmoil on the pitch, Uzkulak Udugs defeat Skälsbërg Skreechers 2-1

 UZKULAK, ZU. -- Even bringing a screeching owlbear mascot onto field isn't enough sometimes.

Luckily for the newest Chaos Dwarf team out of the Great Skull Land - a region producing a number of great teams this season, including the Uzkulak Juggernaughts - their coach had the tools to handle the flailing mass of teeth and claws.

This Sunday saw the Uzkulak Udugs take the field in their first home exhibition game against the newly-reformed Skälsbërg Skreechers, coached by the infamous LMW.

the two teams line up!

Project: Blood Bowl - Chaos Dwarfs

 I did actually buy Blood Bowl in the 90s. I might have even bought my favourite team; I don't remember. Like so many things, I gave away or sold these things as I moved to university, keeping only my Empire army and a few bits.

Luckily, Games Workshop reprinted them a couple years ago. I finally started painting them for the new ruleset and...

watch the sulphurous, vile avian!

..finished putting the finishing touches to the bull centaur blitzers last night, so the whole project is done! That's quite satisfying, even if did lead me to procrastinate from my Squats commitment until dangerously late in the month...

At any rate, below the cut for more photos of this tusked mob as well as some team name ideas!

After Action Report: The Crystal Fields of Kallix-7

 The seventh spheroid of the Kallix system - planet is too strong a word and dwarf planet implies that the system holds something larger than irregular rocks and swollen balls of unpleasant gasses - is a horrible little rock. It has managed a thin, dreadful atmosphere, a coating of the worst kind of lichen life, and is home to some of the better laser-focusing crystals in the Deep Periphery.

Crystal fields of Kallix-7
Note the caustic lochs created by crystal subduction

Today, it was also the home of a pitched fight between a company of the 1st Canopian Cuirassiers and the pirate company known as Lord Ethan's Exiles, a savage sometime-mercenary brigade that operated in deep space.

some of Lord Ethan's Exiles

A surprisingly well-equipped force, the pirates came with the equivalent of a reinforced company including an entire lance of heavy tanks and aerospace support.

1st Canopian Cuirassiers

The Cuirassiers had only the one company, but they were hardened veterans, and including cutting edge Magistcracy 'Mechs such as an Eyleuka EYL-45A and an Anubis ABS-3MC, both piloted by veteran pilots.

mortem tyrannis: against death

Justice shall be delivered, and doom shall stalk a thousand worlds.

Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Naaman and his squad

Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Joab and his six brothers-in-hell

Aspiring Champion-Sergeant Gehazi and six Once-Men

The final part of the Death Guard showcase, the core of the army: infantry. Three squads of seven posthuman nightmares. This the core of the accidental army - I'd always loved the old monopose plastic plague marines and after winning a couple of accidental eBay auctions.... well.

Apparently the pathway to hell has seven steps. Below the cut for more photos and conversation.

mortem tyrannis: neuron plague

The Weeping. Mutterflux. The Slithering Scourge. Neuron Plague. Somnambuphage. It is known by many names, but we all know the result:

urgh.

...

Two mobs of 14 plague zombies. A mixture of the recent Poxwalker miniatures from Games Workshop (some of them mildly converted), classic Necromunda Plague Zombies, and a bunch of weird conversions the ideas for which were largely nicked from Wilhelm.

These were all mostly painted with washes and largely pre-date Contrast paints, being done in bits and pieces over the last couple years.

Below the cut for a big pile of gross disease-ridden thingos.

mortem tyrannis: praise! joy!

Cast aside the bronzed lie of the Emperor, He who brings death, He who takes away your children, murders your cousins, takes your lives and offers you nothing but endless grey for a future.

Throw aside the crushing golden heel of the Empire - come with us, O cousins! O sisters! O daughters and uncles! - come with us into a bright and sticky future.

There will be only peace.

graffiti may be the voice of the people, but oppressors only listen to gunfire

We've seen these lovely scavvies and renegade guard several times in Necromunda, where they form a street gang. In the platoon-to-company scale game of 40K, they form a mob of oozing cultists, prepared to die to defend their saviours-in-white, the sons and servants of Him Who Is King Behind the Mask: The Cult of the Three-Eyed King.

The nucleus of the cult was a handful of models I'd hacked together in about 2004 or so, the last time I'd played Necromunda, using some bits from a friend's Skaven Mordheim gang and a few Cadian guard that I'd bought in the vain hope of starting a new project. They played a few games, got some thoroughly average paint jobs and sat in dust and decrepitude for something like fifteen years until I got back into the hobby hard a couple years ago.

join us! never know pain or hunger again! joy! praise!

I then rescued a couple of them, stripped them and gave them marginally better paint schemes. I've since added to the Cult, and now it stands at a healthy twenty-one figures; three times seven - an auspicious and sacred number to the High Lords of the Warp, They Who Bless and Prosper Us, Yea! E'en Here in the Depths of this Hive.

Why don't we go through them? Meet the family. Hear the whispers. Taste the blessings of the Winged Lord and His Great Servants; let Them feed you...

mortem tyrannis: daemon engines

A tank is one of the oldest expressions of industrial slaughter; small wonder that daemons love to inhabit them.

malicious artillery

possessed tankettes

The showcase of my accidental Death Guard army continues with the warmachines that I've accumulated so far. My partner bought me a trio of the easy-build Myphitic Blight-Haulers a Christmas or two ago; I painted them last year. The Plagueburst Crawler was a decision made once I realised that this army was beginning to actually be an army and therefore needed heavier support than ranks of plague marines and some cultists.

Below the cut we shall see some more photos, O yes.

mortem tyrannis: officers

 I've accidentally put together a fallen Death Guard force.

officer cadre

How do you 'accidentally' put together an entire army? Well, the same way any fall occurs: one step at a time.

At any rate, once I realised that the three squads of plague marines, mobs of cultists, and swarms of zombies basically constituted an army, I gradually put together an officer cadre. I've painted several of these grimy bastards this year as breaks between projects, so I might as well show 'em off.

sorcerer

This is the Forgeworld model Necrosius, although when I went to look him up to link him, it appears he's no longer produced. I intend to use him as a Malignant Plaguecaster (an idiotic name for 'plague-themed sorcerer' but whatever). I think he was the first of the officers I painted, some time last year.

The sculpt is great, with ritual bone skewering him, rotting pauldrons and a cool glaive-staff. I've given his back banner runes in the Dark Tongue and an old-school check pattern, but the paint scheme is otherwise the streaky white with yellow details that I use army wide.

surgeon

Plague Surgeon. I put this guy on a 32mm base without thinking; the Death Guard officers are all on 40mm bases, as they are huge. I don't like that officers are weirdly bigger than the regular soldiers, but it works okay in a chaos army so I'm happy to ignore it here. I should get him a base extender though.

This sculpt is also lovely, with a screaming daemon in one pauldron, all the tools of a healer and then a sick rotting sword, which I've painted up like corrupted bone. I also let him keep the white robe of a real doctor so that he didn't get mistaken for his yellow-robed magician pal, above.

brewer

Foul Blightspawn. I picked up this model and the Biologus Putrifier below in the second-hand section at CanCon 2020, intending for them to serve as painting palate cleansers. They are actually quite detailed and intricate sculpts, which proved a bit frustrating to paint. I eventually came to love them, as my Death Guard painting style really is a lot of fun.

alchemist. grenadier.

Biologus Putrifier. He has so very many vials and bottles, which made me put off painting him, but the design is actually cool as shit. He's an insect-faced parody of an angel, with the wings replaced with racks of alchemical nightmares. It's a great concept and very neatly fits into the concept of Chaos Space Marines being 'fallen' Angels of Death (with the obvious caveat that in rebelling against the fascist Imperium, they aren't so much evil as just completely fucked). I also wrote a lil' passage on the original instagram post for this guy:

"..and then descended the seventh part of a seventh part of the Great Horror; and in its vanguard were seven fiends, each cast in its own aspect of the Decay That Wastes Hope... and then the fourth was shaped like unto an angel of Order, but corrupted. In place of wings, it bore branches of bone, hung upon which were vials and alchemy, the rotted fruits of evil. In place of a halo, it bore a half-crown of broken bronze. In place of a face..."

-From the Seventh Prophecy of Šeru’a-eṭirat.

bannerman

Noxious Blightbringer. Mildly converted from the really excellent Blightkings kit for Age of Sigmar as the only way to get one of these bell-ringing maniacs is in the 8th edition starter box, Dark Imperium, and the resellers on ebay charge a surprising amount for them. Mostly I just love the conceit that his guts have been replaced by the dark gods with another, smaller bell. Hilarious.

I gave him an old marine right arm, replaced one leg with power armour, and gave him a Heresy-era Death Guard helmet to make sure he reads as a fallen space marine. I think it works. 

archivist

Tallyman. I joked on instagram that once I realised that Games Workshop had released a fat archivist model that I needed to buy one, so that I could have #representation on the tabletop. Because I am also an overweight archivist, you see. Do you get it?

(admittedly, I lack tentacles or an abacus made of tiny skulls)

He was fun to paint, especially adding some spare scrolls and book pieces to his base to make it look like he's standing in a ransacked, filth-soaked library. Note that his right arm is red, indicating that he was once a Dusk Raider.

captain

Chaos Lord. This creature has been fighting the Long War for many ages of man. Short even among his brethren in 1991, he is now completely dwarfed by the giant-sized modern sculpts of the other officers, as you saw in the first image. That's fine with me, as he's clearly been blessed by the deities and demi-deities of Plague and Despair: face of a Plaguebearer; Nurgling infestation; rotting skin; hooved feet; and fewer fingers, at the very least. Being made shorter is just one more way he is #blessed.

I agonised over how to paint the Nurgling, but eventually decided on the classic yellowish green, making him deliberately cartoony to contrast to the marginally more subdued murky greens and dirty creams of his armour.

He also has a red right hand. How low you have fallen, O son of Albia.

See more photos of all these grim gentlemen below this here cut.

Those Who Trade: Animals

 Here, at the end of all things the Colony 87 miniatures.

Julius Samarkan and his living goods behind some electro-barriers

This is it, folks! The last Colony 87 miniatures! Crooked Dice have also grouped some cyberpunk miniatures and added to the range since the Third Wave Kickstarter, but these are moving into a different aesthetic, so I didn't pick them up. I'm happy to say that this is more-or-less the whole range and move into new directions. For one thing, all my new civilians need somewhere to live...

For the final post, we have alien pet merchant Julius Samarkan and most of the Colony 87/Crooked Dice animals (except for the space cat from yesterday). These were a lot of fun to paint, although obviously a little fiddly in some cases. I don't think I'll keep them all as Samarkan's, but use them to liven up tables.

Anyway, below the cut!

Those Animals: Gyrinx

 Psychic feline-analogues from beyond the stars.

or, put another way: space kitties!

If I'm going to paint cats, I'm always going to call them Gyrinx. I know that the original Rogue Trader bestiary described them as orange, but that text is more what we traditionally call guidelines anyway, right? (For some great ones, by the way, check out Sho3box).

The kitten on the left is one of the handful of remaining Colony 87 sculpts (although Crooked Dice may have just put him in; I don't think he was part of Jon's brief). The other two are from Bad Squiddo Games, part of her Vikings range. I got them originally for my wood elves, but they don't work as hunting cats. They do work as weird alien cats, though.