The Road Warden and the Highwayman

After about four years away from actively engaging in the hobby, I decided to dip my toes back into Warhammer this past fall. I can't remember how it started, but by mid-summer I was religiously re-reading the Mordheim rulebook, and seeking out any supplements I could for it. Mordheim itself first came onto my radar about ten years ago though, when a local gaming club was holding an all-comers game at a convention I had been attending for a couple of years. The appeal was instant: it was at once so similar and so different from Warhammer Fantasy, the main version I played at that point. I immersed myself in Mordheim, downloading and printing off rules, warbands, and supplements, and eventually feeling confident to write some of my own. Times changed though, and I had less and less time on my hands. By the time I went to university, my Mordheim obsession was dormant, though I still had all of my old homebrew rules and documents. I intend to share some of those over time; for now, here is my first conversion since diving back in, and my most recent one from this past weekend.

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The road warden is a very cool hired sword, lore-wise, mechanically, and in modelling terms. His ability to ride, snipe, and pummel enemies down is a great asset to a warband, and I like the idea of a lone lawman wandering the roads of the Empire, dispensing justice. The original metal miniature communicates this very well, and I wanted it to be clearly reflected in my conversion too. In creating him, however, a few challenges presented themselves: I had no suitable hammer, no suitable crossbow hand, and a limited number of horses and legs at my disposal. Like with the troll tribe, each challenge led to an interesting design process, and ultimately made me enjoy the conversion even more.

The horseman's hammer, a melee weapon iconic and relatively unique to the road warden, was the first order of business. I love the pose of the original warden model, with the hammer balanced on his shoulder, and wanted to pay homage to this in my own design. That meant finding a suitable arm first, and I settled on one from the Outriders kit holding a pistol at the same angle. A bit of chopping and drilling gave me a workable hand, and an earlier experiment turning a Free Company halberd arm into a ratcatcher's weapon hand (more on that in another post) had left me with the butt of a halberd, just the right size to slip into the new hole. The hammer head came from a Stormcast Eternal: I've cut the hammers off of a few from the original AoS starter kit to add new weapons, and while the head is pretty ridiculous, it looks perfect for staving in the skulls of beastmen and bandits alike. Currently, the hammer isn't glued in place, but fits so snugly in the hole I drilled that it doesn't shift at all unless I put in the effort to pull it out.

Next was the crossbow arm, a departure from the original warden. The main detail I didn't like from the original design was the fact that the weapons swap depending on whether he's on foot or mounted, but the alternate weapon in each case vanishes from the model. I wanted both weapons visible at all times, which called for some precise cutting and gluing. I sacrificed another Outrider arm for the cause, and sliced off the first puff on its shoulder so that it would extend straight out. While this does make the arms asymmetrical, the effect is worth it. I flip-flopped for a while on cutting the crossbow and pistol, worried about whether the fit would be right, or if I would just ruin both in the process. When I finally worked up the courage to eyeball it and take the plunge, it worked better than I could have imagined! The angles were almost perfect (good enough for me), and though I glued it a little off-centre, I don't think it's noticeable. This small success has inspired me to keep taking risks in modelling.

The third challenge was to conserve legs as best as I could, since GW never gives you enough. In order to do this, I tried my hand at magnetizing, taking a pair of standing legs and a pair of mounted legs to work with. The Outriders kit gave me five sets of legs and five horses, but magnetizing would allow me to get more mileage out of them by swapping out torsos from generic legs rather than creating a unique pair for each figure. Eventually I will invest in more mounted bodies, but for now this works. The magnets in the torso and legs protrude a little bit, so the fit isn't quite flush, but it's close enough, and the "snap" of the two pieces sticking together is so satisfying that I'm content.

The head was the last detail I added, and it actually took me about a month to settle on one. I had initially picked a helmeted Outrider head, to mimic the original warden's head, when I realized that a helmet isn't part of his listed equipment. This wasn't a problem for the original sculptor, but it presented a small challenge that made me second guess myself. I did end up scrapping the first head, then debated between two other suitable ones for several weeks. One of the two looked better, the other fit better; I'm sure it isn't a surprise that I went with the first. It meant scraping down his shoulder to make room, since I didn't have any green stuff to alter the sculpt yet, but the fit turned out not to need any in the end. The eyepatch and open mouth give the impression of a grizzled veteran, but one who still won't hesitate to chase down the enemies of the law.

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As mentioned above, the highwayman is my most recent conversion, and one that I'm very pleased with. In the Empire in Flames supplement, he is made out to be the road warden's nemesis, the two having similar but contrasting skill sets and equipment: where the warden is heavily armoured and a crack shot with his crossbow, the highwayman is a swift, gunslinging outlaw. I wanted this complementary feel to come through in the model itself: he should look distinctly different from the warden, but with callbacks that make the two complete each other.

Where the warden looked grim and determined, I wanted the highwayman to feel frantic and daring. The running legs from the Empire Archers had been sitting in my bits box for ages, waiting for a suitable character, and I decided this was the one. I especially like the sense of motion in the sculpt, and the fact that these and the warden's legs are in the same general pose: left forward, right back. The Outrider arm extending its pistol across the chest sprung to mind right away, and I quickly dug it from my box as well. I wanted both guns to point in the same direction, so I used the same technique as for the warden's crossbow. The highwayman actually has the same base left arm as the road warden, another homage to the earlier figure.

Like the horseman's hammer on the warden, the highwayman's cloak is an iconic piece of gear. I knew exactly where to get it, pulling one of the left arms from the Outriders kit. Previously, these cloaks were my hurdle to converting a highwayman: I liked them, but the raised arm was too limiting for what I had in mind. this time around, I decided I would just cut it off entirely, and set to work with my knife removing everything necessary to make room for the pistol arm below. the process was surprisingly smooth, but once the cloak was on, I ran into a familiar problem: the head I has chosen wouldn't fit straight due to the high shoulders. I thought of the road warden as I cut down the left shoulder to make room for the highwayman's chin. The head is another callback, coming from the Greatswords kit as well if I'm not mistaken. The large feather, pointed in the opposite direction, adds to the figures' complementary feel.

I had fun setting up the confrontation between the Veteran and the Revenant, and decided to put together another one with these two. The horses they're riding come from the Outriders box, like so many other parts of these conversions (and most of my others; it's pleasantly surprising how versatile and compatible the Empire kits are). I've added some embellishments to each one to give them some character, and intend to do the same with the other three from the box. The highwayman is riding the Monster Slayer's Steed, with a severed giant head and hand on the flanks, a dragon jaw around its neck, and a bestigor skull on its head. The road warden is on the Priest's Steed, with a banner, a holy book, and a Sigmarite shield on the back, and twin-tailed comet blinders (made from Flagellant accessories).

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The photos in this post were taken through my magnifying light, which I found helped a lot with the normally dodgy focus of my phone camera. These are just two of what I'm loosely calling the Hired Sword Project, a challenge to myself to build a complete collection of Hired Swords. I'm referencing the list from broheim.net, and sticking to the characters with a rating of 1a, 1b, or 1c, just to make things manageable. Progress is going well, and I hope to keep sharing what I make!