Hobby WIP: Vampire Lord on Horse

I've been fortunate enough to be able to work from home for two weeks now with no issues. If you're in a similar situation, consider donating to local charities or seeing if your favorite restaurant is doing no contact deliveries or curbside pickup or selling gift cards to keep afloat. As someone who is interested in both economics and history (my two majors in college), this is going to get much, much worse before it gets any better, particularly in the US. Be kind. Be helpful.



Being at home, and with some nicer weather finally breaking through here and there, I've been able to prime some things and start hobbying again. I'm starting small with this post, but I've got many more minis on the way... much to the terror of my clutter-averse girlfriend the table is covered with projects at the moment...


The Perry Box
I'm working this guy up as a no-stress test model for some Perry Mounted Men at Arms, which I picked up a while back to run as some Soul Reaver Cavalry, since I liked the Perry Foot Knights as my Soul Reaver Infantry so much. This is pretty far along, but not quite there. The kit has some peculiarities, which I figured I might as well tackle here, rather than bloat the final posts.

Horse-wise, the box comes with 4x of a 3 horse sprue, and plenty of heads. The Perry link actually gives great sprue shots, if you are interested and want to follow along. All the horse parts are mutable, so you can mix and match to your heart's content! The only downside of the box is the barding, which is a bit of a shame, as the armor (in general) was the reason for buying this kit. The box comes with two options: a pointier "Germanic-style", and a blockier "Italian-style"... but only has 6 of each. Care must be taken when clipping both, as the armor is very thin and easy to break, particularly the front parts of the Germanic armor. Also note, that the Germanic style hangs down a bit on the haunches; it doesn't cover the top.

Knight-wise, the box comes with 3x of the knight sprue. The bodies are a little on the small-side; a GW headswap looked downright ridiculous when I was exploring a possible headswap. Like GW, the head bits had a little neck bulb to connect to the torso, unlike Fireforge or Warlord or Mantic Zombies, which include the neck on the torso and the head bit is just a skull.

Each set of armor on the knight sprue is unique, and the non-weapon hand is fully part of the body. No easy arm or hand swaps to be had here! Each body has three possible weapon arms, so you must match them up to get a good look. The arms also include the back of the hand. The weapon-bits come with the the grasping digits, allowing you to take any weapon and just slot it into the arm bit. It's neat, but not great for conversion work. Headswaps and extra bits are about the best I'm going to do with customizing these minis I think.

See? The rear barding doesn't go the the top; the straps on the mini have it hanging down a bit to protect the sides.

This Guy
The lordling is pretty well along, but he still needs a little more work. I'm going to give him a few extra sword bits I think, to have on hand if the mundane warhammer breaks with the Lord's mighty swings. Being a lord, I already added some flair in the form of a neat armor collar thing from the GW Demigryph box, and a furry cape from somewhere (I think the GW Empire Knights kit maybe). The cape looked more like a lion, so I tried a more tan scheme there, rather than my usual gray pelt. I like how it turned out.

My Undead army is currently painted up like the Regnum, with purple and white. I still want to redo them at some point, but unsure what colors they should be, so I'm am trying out straight red for the cape underside and feather. It looks ok, but I'm not convinced full red is the way I want to go, so I'll continue to experiment.

I also tried some glowing eyes for the horse, so play up the evilness. It's supposed to be an Undead Horse after all. Not sure what that entails, but I lack the skill (and will) to convert a normal horse mini into a zombie or skeleton or anything, so evil eyes was about the best I can do. I think the unit will have the eyes, and maybe a greener tinge to the mounts, a nod to rot and reanimation? We'll see. 

Red is pretty striking, though I don't know if I'd like it across the whole army. Alternatively, I'm considering just adding a glossy blood effect to this, like the lion was a fresh kill. "Blood Cape" seems like a neat phrase, though I'm not sure the end result (very bloody cape, back, and horse haunches) would be pleasing. We'll see...

Overall, I'm pleased with the progress so far, and generally like the kit, even though the lack of barding took me quite by surprise. Fortunately, I caught this shortage prior to deciding to quarantine myself!

Since deciding to work from home, I haven't placed any Amazon orders, and would suggest you avoid them as well for the time being; I can't bring myself to risk their lives for my hobbying. Their workers are very vulnerable right now, so be kind and avoid ordering non-essentials.

Instead, look to support your local shops if you can. A few in Madison were offering orders by phone and curbside pickups, for example. If there's nothing local, may I suggest Noble Knight Games for anyone in the US? (They also ship internationally... though I don't know how speedy that will be nowadays.) They have quite the selection; books, minis, and even accessories like primer and paints. They opened up a store in the Madison area, which I have yet to actually visit. However, I have ordered from them a few times over the years, and once more when I decided to start working from home, ordering another box of these guys in order to get more barding bits.

I've got 12 of each type of barding now, and 24 Perry Knights. Well, 23 now, excluding this guy. More knights are definitely coming soon!