Maciek's journey to Mordheim - Sisters of Sigmar

 Rank & File month #1

 

The trip to Mordheim was supposed to start easy. A visit to a friendly house -  Sigmar's Rock, the fortified monastery of the Order of the Merciful Sisters of Sigmar, the only place to remain unscathed after the comet hit. 

 

Sisters are some of last remaining locals and certainly the only group that can be deemed good among the greedy or deranged warbands in Mordheim.  Obviously inspired by the 40k Sisters of Battle, but significantly less fanatical. I have never seen them played and always wanted to try them out - they have many weapons and skills to smite Chaos and the Undead.

 Sisters of Sigmar being unfriendly with the undead (by Paul Dainton, Inferno! #19)

For January I give you 12 sisters, mostly the original Mordheim models. They were a joy to paint -  characterful faces and not too overloaded with detail. 

I expected January to be an easy month. You know the feeling - motivation is high, models ready, maybe some free days at the start of the year, workload under control. What could go wrong? Several things apparently. For starters being away from home for over a week (took models but no conditions to paint) and an unexpected additional wave of work. Both significantly reduced my painting time. 

I wanted to use an earthly, muted palette to fit Mordheim and correspond to colours of real-life monastic habits. Grey and brown should provide a nice contrast. I tried out two potential schemes (and couple versions of skin colours from "pale flesh" to warm "bronzed flesh").

Honey or mustard robes?

...and went with the honey-coloured ochre for the robes. Less realistic, but pops more on the table. I also experimented a bit with using thinned down contrast paints as washes over standard paints. I liked the results, more subtle than standard wash. All this also took some precious time. Of course the learning from that is to do colour scheme testing before OWAC starts. But who am I kidding...

In the end I made it, but by the skin of my teeth. Shields are missing and couple of the sisters require further work to get to my usual standard (close-up shots coming next month). In February I will go for wildcard and aim to bring a small piece of Mordheim to life. Go crafting!

Cheers, Maciek