Hobby Update: Horse Raiders / Sliksneer's Shriekers

Wisconsin had a few nice, albeit windy days back in February, and I managed to prime a small group of minis during one of them. Up now are some redone Varangur Horse Raiders / Sliksneer’s Shriekers!

The formation!

I’ve had Horse Raiders in some form for quite a while, and I had previously redone them into two troops of three minis, with a seventh bonus mini kept as a Mounted Skald drumming away, back from when that was an option. Since their last update, I have picked up a few ebay bundles, and aimed to expand these into regiments, though I wasn't able to prime them up to do over the winter.

The models are more GW Chaos Marauder Horsemen, and were all ebay rescues from the last year or so, all with broken javelins, missing pieces and such. I set my sights on these in the New Year, slowly replacing pieces and getting them off of their old bases. The previous owner(s) used a variety of glues, making all this more difficult than usual, since some things were cemented together, requiring snipping, sanding and the raiding of bits boxes to touch up.

For whatever reason, the primer was very hydrophobic. This was my first winter with a garage, and my primer cans are kept there, so this may have been a temperature thing, or a shaking thing. I’ll have more to prime soon, so we’ll see if I can troubleshoot things at all. For now, I ended up slapping a thin layer of light gray craft paint over everything after priming. The rest of the paint did stick a little better, but it still took forever to paint these up.

Two troops as a regiment.

The older models had a black primer, with the newcomers getting a far lighter color. I used the same paints, but things turned out a little differently, likely due to the undercoat. Thankfully, I was able to mix the old and new models together and it all looks fine.

A regiment, based as such.

The Horse Raiders haven’t had any impressive showings yet, but I still think they have a lot of potential as a unit, and that I’ve just been using them very poorly. So far, they’ve just been run as troops with throwing axes, which has seen them run up, maybe land a point of damage with a toss, and then get charged and routed. This could be ok I guess, if you are using them to instigate trades while supporting them properly with Mounted Sons or Frostfangs or monsters or something. However, even here, the cheaper Snow Foxes would likely be more cost-effective speed bumps if you just need a chaff unit to be dying for the cause. The Raiders are versatile, so you want to preserve them if you can.

Since the axes put them into charge range of too many things, I had resolved to use these with bows next time, though I was unable to get in a game with the old unit prior to finishing up the new models, since this took most of my February hobbying time. The bows should be less impactful (no piercing), but should keep them safer until you are ready to charge something with them. 

The new Lord, Sliksneer.

And if I can figure out how to use the units a little better, Sliksneer’s Shriekers look like a great formation to run. They are irrelegular, so they need to be unlocked, but that is not a difficult hurdle to clear, and can be done by some Draugr even.

In the formation, the Raiders get buffed to Me3, which should let them hit just a bit harder when the time comes, and Sliksneer himself gives a nice Brutal Aura to Barbarian Units, which covers the all human units in the army, even including stuff like the Huscarls/Hearth Guard and the Mounted Sons! The formation seems very strong and definitely worth checking out. At the very least, I hope to get some normal Horse Raiders on the table very soon!