The Marrowbeast Ritual

There was quite a number of hobby community challenges running on Instagram with Halloween as the deadline. Way too many to keep up with them all, but I managed to contribute to a handful. The project we’re discussing today kills two birds with one stone, since it combines two challenges with a strong thematic link: #ritual28 and #HellFireIdolJam.

Remember Children of the Beast Mother and The Herd? The two opposing cults from my Verrotwood playthrough. If not, here are two blog posts to revisit:Verrotwood Part I and Verrotwood Part II. Anyway, I wanted to expand my folk horror cultist collection into a larger warband that could be played as Cult of the Possessed in Mordheim. A gifted miniature and two community challenges pushed me to build a narrative around that idea.

The Idols

I received an as of yet unreleased demon figure from The Still Tower as a surprise gift a few weeks ago. The moment I saw it it felt like it belonged with my cults. The design combines parts of male and female anatomy into a body horror whole that reminds me of a few particularly memorable Kingdom Death monsters. The pose and goat-like features are an obvious reference to Baphomet. And coincidentally, the obscene creature shares several visual cues with each of my two cults.

That’s it: two formerly hostile groups are joining forces because their respective deities decided to merge into one, more powerful entity! Since the parent deities are named the Beast Mother and Marrowbul, this new demon shall be known as Marrowbeast.

One of the many community challenges running in October was #HellFireIdolJam by Hellfire Miniatures. The theme is simple enough: sculpt an ancient idol - preferably one that’s weird, creepy and cursed. The resin demon The Still Tower sent me comes with a small statue sculpted in its likeness, so an idea emerged: I would make the idols of Beast Mother and Marowbul in a matching style. Designwise I wanted it to show that my two idols were essentially parents of the resin one, so they would each need to sport some of its design elements. They were done in Super Sculpey. Here is the entire unholy trinity:

The Ritual

Ritual28 is a free non-combat tabletop game from Ben Has Hobbies. In the game, two players control a group of cultists each, dancing in a circle around an idol. The game is all about movement and positioning, and the opposing teams might not even interact at all. The theme is a great match for playing out the wedding of Marrowbul and the Beast Mother. I loved the idea of this game, and there is a ton of potential for making it visually stunning. Since it requires only a one square foot play area it’s a playable diorama, essentially. You can find out all about it in Ben Has Hobbies’ video introducing it HERE. The link to the free rules download is in the video description if you want to check it out for yourself.

Ritual28 was so thematically fitting for the particular story I was putting on. But unfortunately the gameplay side of it didn’t end up captivating me. Unless the rules change dramatically in a future update I don’t see myself picking this game up again.

The Cult of Marrowbeast

Now that all our disciples are on the same team, we have a Mordheim warband:

• Magister - Verka from Children of the Beast Mother
• 2x Possessed - Venera and Pluton, brand new conversions using figure sets I sculpted for SmashBash in 2022 and 2023
• 3x Darksoul - Jaromir, Gavril, and Karda from Children of the Beast Mother
• 4x Beastman - Bogdan, Danka, Boril, and Jelen from the Herd
• 5x Brethren - from my Mordheim 2019 Cult of the Possessed, with newly updated heads and paintjobs

Still missing some mutants to cover all options, but this is already a fine pool of models to draft a warband whenever I want to dip back into Mordheim.

I can see myself using the Cult for even more games, so their lore and member count is very likely to expand further. For example, Hellfire Miniatures dropped their own skirmish rules system Tobel28 just the other day, which is themed around forests, creatures and cults. Another potential thing to cover, time permitting. I have so many games I want to blog about. I’m yet to play The Doomed, and it’s been months since the release... I’ve been meaning to do a post about Gaslands for over a year. Necropolis28 and The Weald have been out for a long time and they seem right up my alley. Just like Instagram hobby challenges, new indie tabletop games and miniatures are coming out with increasing frequency. Which is great! I must only make peace with the fact it’s impossible to give attention to everything that catches my eye.

Happy Halloween!

Disclaimer: Everything stated is my personal, biased opinion. Ritual28 is a free digital download. The demon figure from The Still Tower was sent to me by the manufacturer as a gift. No part of this post is paid promotion.

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