Mordheim 2019: Anomaly

My God's have gone, into the fountain.

The corrupting touch of wyrdstone is manifested in many inexplicable ways. As the years stretch on, hushed rumors tell of rage and malevolence given invisible form, of agony haunting singular locations, that bring doom upon those that haplessly wander too close to the City of the Damned.

It has been a little while since I last talked about the undead warband we are making for Mordheim 2019, which we are creating to draw parallels to the odd Newtonian physics-defying anomalies from the novel Roadside Picnic. The novel featured all manner of dangerous phenomena/entities, such as invisible spots that exhibit extremely strong gravity, able to crush anything that walks into them, or caustic colloidal gases that transform most of what they touch into more of the same gas. We wanted to create a similar phenomena borne from the extreme exposure to wyrdstone. For the first, we had the idea of some invisible presence that can animate discarded weapons found throughout the city, killing those that wander too close to it. Perhaps it is the distillation of the anger and sorrow of those who set foot in Mordheim? To represent this, we wanted to create a dying warrior who had been struck with a multitude of arrows from an unknown source.

The fallen warrior is based on a wounded Death Korp model.

The model is based off of the wounded Death Korp guardsmen from Forge World’s Quartermaster set. To distance the model from its futuristic underpinnings, I sculpted platemail on the model’s torso and replaced the head. I opted to give the model a horned helm which I created with from a modified High Elf Shadow Warrior helm. To create the arrows, I used brass tubing (Albion Alloy) for the arrow shafts and thin strips of plasticard for the fletching.

The arrow shafts were created using brass tubing, with small pieces of plasticard to fashion the fletching.

For the model’s base, I created a patchwork of stone tiles. In the past, I have created these using plasticard, a process that is extremely time-consuming. This time I sculpted them using a two-part epoxy modeling putty called Milliput. Milliput handles more like clay then greenstuff and when cured is much harder and more resilient, allowing for it to be sanded. This was my first time using Milliput and I must say, I am impressed and will certainly be using it in the future for certain applications. It is perfectly suited for laying down the foundation of a model or sculpting large areas.

I am really happy with how this model turned out, fitting my original vision of the model. I hope to make more curious anomalies like it, possibly showcasing other unfortunate victims of unexplainable events. Let me know what you think!

- Adam Wier