+ inload: Imperial Guard Rough Riders +

+ Steel Legion Rough Rider Brigades +

+ Horses, as is commonly known, are best of all the animals, and fittingly it's coming up to the Year of the Horse. So I thought I'd kick off the New Year with some thoughts on Imperial Guard Rough Riders. Tenuous link? Perhaps, but buckle in for another year of meanderings and modelling. +

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+ Rough Riders +

Like psykers, Ministorum priests, whiteshields, and beastmen, Rough Riders are one of those edge units that GW have brought in and dropped out of the Imperial Guard line-up over the various editions of the game – presumably when the designers are particularly enthused about the concept, or a general mandate comes from management. Who knows? 

Likewise these units tend to have enthusiasts, but are less generally popular than things like tanks. The key thing for me is that they lend a slightly archaic, gothic sci-fi feel to the Guard, which can otherwise feel a bit like a real-world army. Nothing wrong with that, of course – that's one of the key appeals to the faction – but I also like the feeling that these weirder elements are in the background.

I've had Rough Riders in various forms in most of my Guard armies, and they were something that I was keen to include in my Steel Legion force, as they appear in the Battle for Armageddon boardgame. However, there have never been Steel Legion cavalry models, and so some conversion/kitbashing would be necessary.

Happily, after a long drought, Rough Riders seem to be back in favour at GW, and there is not one but two plastic kits for horsey soldiers.

+ Theoretical +

I've written about Steel Legion Rough Rider brigades for The Ashes of Armageddon, in this noospheric node [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+] about the 4th Rough Rider Brigade, 'The Forgotten Fourth'. There I've tried to elide the older background with the more modern interpretation of the Steel Legion and Armageddon. The result is that the 'Rough Rider Brigades' included horse-riding cavalry, but were effectively an honorific name, and that the Steel Legion's Rough Rider Brigades were recon forces; the bulk of which were made up of things like Sentinels, 40k-jeeps and mounted infantry.

Part of that was forced by the models I was able to get from contributors – at the time I wasn't able to find any Rough Riders specifically converted to be Steel Legion. Happily, since then some have popped up, perhaps most notably by the absurdly talented Bjarni í Dali (@bjarnidali on Instagram [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+]) – go check 'em out. 

For my take, I was torn between the two current Rough Rider units available: the Death Korps or Attilan. Each had its own advantages. The Death Korps Death Riders (of Death) might seem the more obvious choice: their steeds are clearly adapted to dangerous environments, with rebreathers and goggles, and the riders are in long coats.

However, after a bit more consideration, I decided that the Attilans were a better fit. Armageddon, while unpleasant in the extreme, isn't quite as bad a rad-blasted wasteland as Kreig. The Attilan kit is less distinctive  (and popular) than the Death Riders, it'd be less obvious where the base kit came from. 'Normal' horses also fit my image of slightly retro Steel Legion Rough Rider better.

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+ Practical +

Some not-so-subtle hint-dropping later, and I was the happy recipient of some Christmas goodies. After unpacking the Attilans, I was pleased to see that they'd require even less conversion work than I'd anticipated. The boots and long coats fit very nicely with the Steel Legio aesthetic, so I felt all they really needed was a head swap, change of details and some resculpting on the arms.

The Attilan arms come with fur-lined glove/gauntlets and heavy shoulder pads. These could easily be left in place (deserts can be cold, too!), but I decided they'd be relatively easy work to refashion. To do so, I used clippers to cut away the bulk of the shoulder pad (happily, on the side facing the body, you can see the outline of the pad, which makes this easier), then trimmed them to shape with a craft knife.

For the gloves, the Attilan originals are slightly pointed; longer at the bottom at the top. I drew a mark with a blade to give me a line to square them off, then carefully trimmed them back, matching the width of the forearm. The results are the same length as the Steel Legion infantry gloves.

Of course, this leaves a question hanging – what about the heads? 

As the most obvious and distinctive part of the kitbash, I was delighted to find a third party company, Tiny Legend [+noosphericexloadlink+] that makes some great proxies. They have recently started their 'Blitz Legion' line. I'm planning a proper review of their stuff in a future inload, so suffice to say here that I can thoroughly recommend them. Absolutely brilliant sculpts, lovely prints in an excellent resin, and very clever use of a different, slightly flexible resin to allow the chest-mounted rebreathers to marry up with the heads in different poses.

I've finished building a unit of five Rough Riders using bits and pieces, mainly from Tiny Legends' Blitz Legion Sergeant Retinue, which comes with lots of options for arms, heads and hands.

So, nice and quick and simple! I've based and primed these, and hope to be splashing some paint on them soon.

+ inload: Cavalry and tanks +

+ Recon in strength +

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Onnagh flicked the lho stick up in a long, long arc through the dreadful, endless rain that had set in since the invaders had touched orbit. It was like the planet had got a stick in its eye and was trying to wash it out. The corporal and I watched the tumbling stick trace a graceful path to its zenith, then descend to land unceremoniously in a murky puddle a few yards away.

We looked back.

"Do that again, and I'll stick you myself." I said, warningly. "Do you want the green bastards to find us?"

She leaned back against the wet concrete and grinned broadly, eyes glittering. Stimms? Possibly. Then again, Onnagh was always the sort of lunatic that relished an argument. The invasion was probably the best thing that had ever happened to the stinking old criminal.

"You're late, anyway."

I grunted in reply. Late for what? As far as we knew, we were the last damned humans on Arcturus – though the crackling gunfire at least implied some of the PDF were still out there. We'd made a tactical retreat – which is to say, that Onnagh and I had belted it after the young corporal the second she'd soiled her breeches and legged it during the first firefight. She was still twitching; still wide-eyed. Onnagh and I, re-drafted regulars from the first Plateau War, had seen it before. Jumped at a noise and never came back.

'Course, that was against those dirty raddlers from the northern jungle and their weird pamphlets; not against these lunatic greenskinned aliens. Both fought like nobody's business – but then, maybe I'd do the same if I believed a big eye in the sky was watching me.

"There's word them off-worlders are coming through here soon. We should make it look like we was fighting."

Connagh pulled a pack of lhos – blessedly dry – from behind her webbing somewhere, stuck one in her mouth and half-heartedly gestured it to me as the Corporal shivered, her eyes trained on the wet road outside.

As I put the stick between my cracked lips and held the chem-blaze to the tip, I had another thought.

I guess the greens didn't believe the Emperor was a god, either.

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+ Rough Riders +

+ Rough Riders are one of those things that makes 40k a gothic dystopia, rather than a sci-fi space opera. I love the contrast of 'ruffs and laser guns' in the setting, and horse-riding soldiers charging hovering battletanks and scuttling alien beasts is an image that I think fits perfectly. It's a sort of 'anti-sci-fi' image that provides contrast and reminds you how advanced and alien the glittering gauss beams of the Necrontyr or fluted wraithbone ammunition of the Eldar would appear to the Imperium's military. +

+ There's an inherent Imperial pragmatism to the concept too; far easier to maintain horses than badly-understood technology; so just like the Romans adapted technology from the lands they conquered, the Imperium is happy for its forces to equip themselves to fight as they're best able to do. +

+ Quite apart from that is the modelling and painting opportunities. Horses (or whatever steed you pick) are living creatures, and thus benefit from a bit of variety. In turn, that gives you something interesting to paint to relieve the tedium of uniforms. The squadron above includes a palamino, a bay and a chestnut, amongst others – and they allowed me to try some interesting techniques such as wet-in-wet stippling (for the dappled grey on the right). +

+ Freehand opportunities abound; the markings on this horse were taken from a holiday snap. +

+ Matching the colours and getting the 'borders' between areas of colouring was a fun exercise. +

+  The models themselves are relatively simple conversions; mainly kitbashes. The rider is made up of legs from the Empire Pistoliers (the layered armour was smoothed down into flak-style plates) mated with an Elysian upper half. Again, the only conversion work here was scraping away detail from the torso and removal of the tubes that run down the side. The rest is a kitbash similar to the Lamb's World infantry, using a Cadian head with respirator from FW. +

+ The horse is from the Wood Elf range; with the armour slightly reshaped. The addition of some packs (from tank sprues and the same upgrade sprue as the rider's head, I think) helps to fit the horse into the universe. +

+ The Rough Riders are one of my favourite parts of my army; I've got the bits somewhere to make five more, so perhaps I'll expand this little group. +

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+ Not so subtle +

+ Main battle tanks are much more popular than horses with most guard players – understandably so; what's not to like about cool model tanks? – but I struggle to enjoy painting them unless I can find some way to give them a bit of character and human interest. This example, E-118, has a Lamb's Worlder hitching a lift on the back. +

+ On the other face, another of those anti-sci-fi touches: a 'requisitioned' cow. I wanted to get the idea that the Leman Russ is an all-in workhorse; likely used as much as a bulldozer and tractor as it is a weapon of war. +