Kitbashed Rough Rider Space Pony

Here comes the cavalry! The Ardwick 23rd have called for reinforcements, and the Royal Lancers have arrived.

I wanted to build Rough Riders for my guard, but the old sculpts are pretty goofy. I was thinking about bikes or Cold One lizards or even bears for my rough riders.

Mike has been working on mechanized future cavalry, so in contrast I decided to kick it old school, and build a space pony.

In keeping with the theme of my Ardwick 23rd, gas masks and lots of kit, seemed like the way to go.


I found this old print by Frank Murch online which was inspiring, some sort of anti government propaganda, and I thought it looked great.



I used an old Empire Fantasy horse which I trimmed a bit of the tail and mane. I used greenstuff to sculpt the mask and leg wraps and other details and a Cadian with West Wind head for the rider, cut up the legs and positioned them and filled with greenstuff.

The banner was a wood elf bit, saddle bags, blanket roll and the horse mask canister are from the Ravenwing sprue. I was lucky and found a baggie of 5 of the original power lances in the bits bin at a local store. The horses breathing hose is a bass guitar string, and the reins were made by heating and stretching plastic sprue.

I originally planned on using the las rifle carbine with folding stock from the Armor sprue, but the codex says lance and laspistol or hand weapon.

He was painted and based to match the other Ardwick troopers.



Well I hope you like this more traditional take on a rough rider, I had fun making it.

John

Comments

  1. He looks great, was nice seeing the inspiration pic!

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  2. Great conversion, I love the gas mask for the horse.

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  3. Brilliant conversion! I've often pined for an easy way to do Rough Riders for my army, but the Steel Legion minis would be absolutely brutal to convert.

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  4. That is absolutely beautiful - I'm very impressed with the sculpting, and the paint job is top notch! Nice work!

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  5. Great work and lovely result :-)

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  6. I think it just works! Really really great concept and conversion there! Not to mention the great painting job too!

    I'd imagine a squad of these will look very impressive on the table!

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  7. Yeah, great conversion, are you planning on doing the rest of the squad?

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  8. Nice work John, and boy, that horse is OLD. Great way to incorporate it in your army!

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  9. That guy looks great. I am trying to get the courage to start up a Tallarn IG army with some Camel riders.

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  10. Awesome. I love the concept - the gas masked horse is pure genius - and the finished paint job is superb.

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  11. very good tutorial - thanks for the information and the post. I liked it a lot.

    Tony
    http://dampfpanzerwagon.blogspot.com/

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  13. Wonderful! What did you use for the eyepieces on the horse's mask?

    Thanks!

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  14. Dallas-
    the horse eyepieces are thin slices of round plastic sprue.

    John

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