Kitbash: Rough Riders

A lot of my modelling starts with a desire to do something new. True, doing a robot kit is the creative equivalent of comfort food, but I often get bored and insecure. So I look for something just slightly outside of the box. And maybe the end results will prompt some positive feedback to left me up a bit. Thinking about it, that's basically all that Project Chem-Dogs was/is; I'd always wanted a guard force, but that quickly went from doing it easily and cheaply, to being a gender balanced army where every model is some level of kitbash or notable greenstuff modification. Although still hopefully cheaply, even as I increasingly want to build things for tactical reasons. With that in mind, Rough Riders.

The fact that the GRIMDARK Imperium still maintains units of horse cavalry is one of the odder bits of 40K. Their tactical role has been largely supplanted by bikers and jumppack infantry, not to mention the average troop transport. Cavalry in general is pretty rare, with arguably only Chaos Daemons being the only faction being seriously into equestrianism, and they pull double-duty with the fantasy ranges. Actual horsey Rough Riders went without proper rules for a while, and it was looking like they were being put out to pasture, as it were. Sorry. They were however given a new kit for 9th edition, which along with Beast Snaggas suggests that GW is happy for cavalry to be a bigger thing in the setting. The fictional justification for this is basically the same as the use of Abhumans in the otherwise very xenophobic Imperium. Simply, if you have a planet that regressed into a society of horse tribes that look suspiciously like a reference/parody of something, like the famed Attila, you might as well use them as such. Its not like you can expect these equestrian weirdos to make lasguns, so just let them do their thing at today's enemy.

I've never built cavalry before. I don't generally do historical or fantasy wargaming, and while I am English, I am a city boy. Horses are a touch odd to me, especially in the military context, as they don't cleanly fit into the pet/food dynamic, but I digress. Anyway, so making some is a welcome novelty, but one I had to do some research on. First was finding the raw materials, as I didn't want to go for the nice if expensive GW kit. Wargames Atlantic do a very similar kit for their Les Grognards, but that wasn't the look I wanted, and they come in an unhelpful squad size of 9. The look I did kinda want was that of the original Chem-Dog kitbashes seen in White Dwarf magazine, but as those used long OOP metal components that was a non-starter. So I opted to find a fairly basic cavalry model, the specifics not mattering too much, and then dress them with bits in much the same manner as my convict infantry. Eventually, the source material selected was a loose sprue of 5 Oathmark Human Cavalry.

I'm not gonna talk too much about the base models here; they seem fine and are made by the Stargrave people, but I don't have much of a frame of reference. These had the more medieval aspects either removed or obscured, horse and rider painted separately. The spears were lengthened with beads to make hunting lances, although they ended up looking more like those bombs-on-poles they use in Mad Max. That actually isn't bad though, because that's pretty much what a hunting lance is anyway, a pointy grenade on a long stick. A sword was picked to represent a power sabre, although it defied my attempts to make it more visually interesting. The riders were, as mentioned, built like my infantry, which meant lots of green stuff, and a female head. Not that its easy to tell at this scale, with a gasmask on. There's probably an article on gender coding in there somewhere. Anyway, the horse received gasmasks too, although not the full-head WWI style ones as those are fucking terrifying. I sculpted on some rags/barding in the same manner of the riders, and straps for the assorted spare weapons this unit has. Its weird to see a model with a rifle, pistol, and a polearm, but maybe that's just me. Painting then followed in my usual manner, with horse and rider joined just before basing and finishing touches. Painting a passable horse proved easier than I expected too, I just needed some new shades of brown, in a drybrush/wash/drybrush sorta affair.

While there was a prolonged "this looks kinda shit" stage, these came out entirely acceptable by the end. Not the best thing I've ever done, but tableworthy. I dunno if I'd make more, but its nice to know that I can.