No... Sorry, We're Not The Riders of Rohan.

Sorry about any confusion. We are, in fact, The Riders who look a little bit like the Riders of Rohan.

I have an Anglo -Saxon army that can fit perfectly well into a fantasy setting. But to make them appear a little less "historical" I decided to add some "Northern Riders" to the host. After looking at various options I settled on Gripping Beast plastic Goth Noble Cavalry and now I wish I hadn't.

They came out looking fine and they'll look great in battle but the box itself is really very limited with only three horse and three rider poses. For the horses this isn't too bad but with the riders it means that there are four of each figure in a box of twelve. This makes them very repetitive (especially when I have a second box of them to paint).

Don't get me wrong: They came out just the way I wanted and I really like the look of them but I know that the the next lot of figures will look exactly the same as this lot. The rider that's sitting straight looks okay and the guy charging is limited but looks okay. It's the guy with his arm in the air is the real problem...

Again, the figure looks great but it's just too dramatic to have four different versions of him in one unit. To have eight of him on the table (two boxes of figure) will look dumb. The only alternative I can think of is to re-sculpt his whole right arm/shoulder/torso on a few of the figures and that will be a real pain in the bum.

Anyway, enough of my complaining. Here are my Northern Riders who are not The Riders of Rohan (unless I need them to be Riders of Rohan at a later date, at which time they will abruptly transform into the afore mentioned riders). These can make up either one large unit of 12 figures or two units of 6 depending on what rules are being used.

As you can see I tried to make a couple of hero/leaders using the "arm up in the air" torso. One has the sword arm that came with the kit and the other has the arm of an Oathmark dwarf with a big axe.

If you're wondering about the shields I downloaded an image (and, yes... It is a Rohan shield design just like the banners) and worked them to the right size and colour using photoshop. I then printed out a large batch of them, cut them out and fitted them onto the shields. The shield was then given a heavy coat of mat acrylic varnish. And before you ask; cutting out the little holes for the shield bosses was painstaking.