Dark Carnival
Unlike GW's carnival of chaos (essentially just Nurgle in bright costumes), the Dark Carnival is made up of mere humans  celibrating the doom of mankind in a macabre parade.
The herald's job is to warn men that their doom is approaching.  "The carnival is coming!  Run for your lives!"

The model is inspired directly by a model in the Mordheim rulebook, made mostly with Zombie parts decorated with accessories from the Mordheim plastic sprues.

This Jester is a converted Bad Moon ork Wierdboy.  The face mask is from an Eldar Harlequin.  The right arm is from the zombie sprue again.  The key here was hiding the model's orky origins...
This Jester started as a goblin Blood Bowl model.  By painting the face like a mask and the skin in flesh tones, you can almost believe it's a crazed human on a pogo stick.   The face is painted dark red and highlighted with red, orange and yellow.
No Carnival is complete without a strong man!  Marauder legs, an Orc torso and arms, and a Dwarf head give this model plenty of bulk.  I filed down the helmet to look like a bald head.
This goblin model was painted with the same dark blue, yellow, and orange colors as the rest of the band.  He makes a great musician-equipped walker...
This model acts as my illusionist.  Originally I pictured a guy with a top hat, but her cuteness convinced me.  I'm very happy with the highlighting on the crystal balls.  This warband has the most blending of any minis I've painted! 
My Knife Thrower is made mostly of bits from the Mordheim plastic humans.  The studded vest is from one of the old plastic henchmen included in Advanced Heroquest (wow, takes you back, huh?).  I tucked extra knife sheaths wherever I could fit them to emphasize his specialty.
The Ringmaster is another converted Ork Wierdboy, this time an old metal Blood Axe.  After removing the original ork head, I replaced it with a horse skull and put the original hat back on.  The hands are mostly unmodified, just repainted in tan colors.
No conversions here... This is one of the classic chaos sorceror Familiars, and makes a perfect little Walker for the Dark Carnival.  I particularly like the skeletal puppet...
This jester is another completely stock model- Joules le Jongeleur, a special character from the old Brettonian range.  We actually wrote up special rules for "riding toys", to account for the pogo sticks, little wagons, and the hobby horse seen throughout the warband. 
My Sword Dancer is actually a wraith model from Reaper.   I had several models in mind originally (including Rackham's incredible Shanys L'Ombre model), but I really liked the pose on the wraith and the it was the right price. I painted the model with a more subtle version of the Dark Carnival colors used up until now.
You can really see the dynamics of the pose in the side view.  The sword, held behind the back with 2 hands, is a seperate piece- very clever model work to get such a nice pose out of a metal figure.
The new Bretonnian line has way more character than ever before, especially the Grail Reliquae.  I just had to order the guy with the horse skull- how Mordheim can you get?  I figured he'd make another great Herald, so I painted him up in a muted, dirty variation of the Carnival colors.  I may go back and touch him up at some point, the model's really nice- I just couldn't wait to get him into play...
This Rackham miniature is part of their chaos dwarf line, and makes the perfect Puppet Master model for the Dark Carnival.  Nothing like a sack over your head to make you good and creepy...
My Fire Breather model is made almost entirely out of parts from the Bretonnian men-at-arms command sprue.  I painted flames on his surcoat, sleeves and head spikes.  The bottle was painted green and given a gloss coat.
To make the hand holding the bottle, I used a zombie hand and bent the fingers around the bottle before gluing it in place.  You can see the fire pattern on the back.
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