Hobby Update: Abyssal Horsemen

I still have only about 1 square foot of desk space to hobby with (shifting to working from home has not been kind to my available space this last year). But painting up the Necrons recently was fun, and I hope to get in a game of anything this year, so I am trying to reorganize a bit, and squeeze in a little more hobby time now that the weather is getting nicer and vaccines in my friend group are on the rise.

I still have a handful of KoM infantry-sized units to do up. Several were even primed last summer, but I failed to work on them over the winter. Even now, with the smaller space I am hesitant to tackle those projects yet (each with roughly 15 minis per unit; all with stands), I so grabbed something else from my "pile-of-shame": some Abyssal Horsemen.

I picked up the models sometime back in 2019. They are Death Knights from the Runewars game. I played a small demo game, and the game had a few neat mechanics (like secret orders, and a up-in-the-air unit activation method), but was pretty convoluted and every gaming tool from rulers to dice was proprietary (I mean, it is a Fantasy Flight game). So the game is totally not for me. However, the minis were surprisingly good. I think the game is pretty defunct now, but have not followed it. If you can find boxes of it, consider picking them up if any catch your eye.

A box of Death Knights comes with 4 knights, just two sculpts repeated. The pieces only fit together one way. All in all, these are not bad sculpts. They were designed to be narrow, and sturdy, and fit over their bases, rather than play around with physics with jumping models and extreme leaning. I liked the simplicity to these. 

Nice and simple. Well-designed. 

While searching for a suitable base, I found one that already had paste and cork board, done up for some Varangur I'd imagine. I decided to re-use that. The cork board was in big chunks in the middle, longwise, which would not be great for cavalry, so I just tore at the cork board, removing what I could.  I needed to make it more flat, not entirely flat. Anything glued down stayed, and the rest I pasted over, spreading some green stuff around for "lava".

The models had some seriously thick stands, which wouldn't play well with the re-used base, so I decided to be brave and remove those. I saw glue around the hooves, so I broke out my knife and managed to pry/cut one off the stand. As you can see, it has little inserts and stuff, which is why the miniature felt so secure. Peg, hard plastic, and glue would do that! I freed the rest from their stands and removed the nubs. The plastic here is quite hard. I don't think I would attempt this with a typical model. A saw or something would probably work better to gently separate the mini from the stand.

They are quite sturdy.

Base conceptualized and models freed, I set about finding a way to make them more interesting. I  had snagged two boxes back in the day, enough for a regiment, but was originally put off from hobbying on them. I was used to more-customizable kits, so when I opened the boxes at the time, the sculpts stumped me, and I wasn't sure how to really turn just two repeated sculpts into a unit that looked decent.

Revisiting them now, I decided that some weapon-swaps and head-swaps is all I can really do with the sculpts as they are. The limiting factor is me! I didn't really want to mess around with any big conversion work since I'm just getting back into hobbying again. I dug out some old Chaos Warrior helms, and a bunch of old Empire weapons, since it looked like they needed hands and not gauntlets or gloves. After cutting off helm horns and arms, I just started fiddling.

Step 2: Draw the rest of the owl. Sorry, I didn't think to take any WIP shots.

One of the riders is grabbing the reins with their left hand. I decided to leave all of those as-is, so most of the swaps are for right handed-weapons. I liked the sculpt pointing, but figured only one should be doing that, and made him the champion. As I got to painting these, I realized that the "faces" are intended to be more masks, so be aware of that, should you pick these up. That's a neat idea, but I needed to have heads facing different directions to get a more varied unit. In retrospect, I probably should have both realized this sooner and swapped out the last three heads as well to go with a more "uniform" looking unit, but oh well. 

With no WIP shots, ya get a few more completed shots.

I do like the bronzy armor, both in these pics and in real life. Several layers of GW's Gehenna's Gold did the trick. I had one bottle myself, and inherited two from someone giving up their collection... so it's nice to find a use for the color. Thinning and layering aren't my strong suits as a hobbyist as I tend to want to play games more than hobby, and so just crank out units that are "good enough" for the table. Both here and with the Necrons, where the goal was to just paint... my painting skills are improving ever so slightly. 

And a shot from the side. I mean, they're cavalry. They should be flanking, after all!

Having played zero games of 3rd, and it been over a year since I read the rules... I hesitate to comment on their use in game. For my collection, though, they should be a good addition as I slowly round out the army. I lack quicker units, so the cavalry aspect should be a plus, and with what looks like very typical typical stats, but Fury, CS and Regeneration (and one more attack) they should hit as hard as typical heavy cavalry, like in the Kingdoms of Men, but do better in any multi-turn combat. Time will tell, but these will be making their way into any eventual Abyssals list!