Hobby WIP: Scouts with Bows

Most of my hobbying lately has been on some D&D baddies and bosses for an ongoing campaign I’ve been DMing… but some minor progress has been made on a few Kings of War units. First up are some Mounted Scouts with bows!

I ordered these months ago from Firerforge Games, from their Mongol Horde line. I picked up a box of their Mongol Cavalry (12 figs), and two packs of their Heavy Cavalry Archers (4 figs each).

My original plan was to build up 4 Troops. Three Troops would have 4 normal cavalry models led by a Heavy, and the Forth Troop would be all Heavies, and either see the table rarely, or be given a magic item like Fire Oil to help my opponent keep my units straight in their head.

In retrospect, I overbought, and could have done without the second pack of Heavies. The sculpts for the Heavies are made from a very brittle material, and generally lackluster. I even broke a few things here and there just cleaning up the injection lines… They'll make good unit leader models, but I’m not sure when (if) I’ll get around to working on their exclusive 5-man unit at this point.

Everything you get in a pack of the Heavies. Not bad, but very little room for customization, and everything is very brittle.

That said, I really like the kit for the normal Mongol Cavalry, and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a more Eastern or explicitly Mongol style army or models. Like the Mounted Sergeants from Fireforge, which I just did up recently, the basic Mongol Cavalry sprues are simple, but very well designed.

There are only three distinct horses and four distinct humans, but each has simple tweaks to get a lot of milage out of the kit. Each human is leaning a bit, so mixing and matching, you should be able to get a very dynamic unit. Additionally, you not only get bows, but also options for a shield, as well as lances and swords. Lots of great bits!

Simple, but very well designed to give the hobbyist lots of options.

So, those are the models. I’ve been looking forward to getting a few units of these Scouts on the table top for a while now. They unfortunately still aren’t ready for a game yet, but progress is being made...

Lots of armor on the "heavy" horse... but you can't be the unit leader if you're dead.

Like their Mounted Sergeants, these models have a built-in base for stability, which necessitated me using the Vallejo Paste again(White Pumice). I applied it a little thicker than I did before, and also played more with the orientation of the horses, to try and show more of their Nimble special rule (and to possibly enable me to model up some Scouts attempting more of a Parthian shot, when I get to the humans).

All the normal Mongol cavalry have bumps on the reins. Which is probably knotted cloth or something, but I dry brushed some shiny gold onto it. Raiding has been good.

Again, I used this wonderful horse website for coloring inspiration, but ended up not experimenting too much. I wanted enough variation to make the unit look interesting on the table, but similar enough to try and show the mounts in each of the units all belonging to the same horse lineages, if that makes any sense.

  

A few pebbles here and there and the mounts will be good to go!

The mounts have been in this mostly-finished state for.... almost three weeks now. So what’s taking me so long to get these troops done? Well, the humans are the issue this time around. The Heavies are all clad in armor, and were pretty simple to plan and do. All the regular Mongols, however, have wrap-around clothing (unlike the simple draping tunics of the Mounted Sergeants). The wrap-around complicates my usual split white/purple clothing.

I’ve experimented a bit, and am nearing a workable solution with the colors of the cloth. I am also working on some simple kitbashing/greenstuff (mixing the Mongol bits with some GW hats, Roman-style bits etc), in an attempt to try and show that these are more auxiliary or more irregular troops, since the style is decidedly different from the Roman theme I'm shooting for this army in the long-run.

I'm hoping to be done with these guys in a week or so... but we'll see. I've been bouncing from project to project and getting distracted lately. A few posts may end up intervening before these guys are finished up.