Musings: Thunderwolf Cavalry Alternatives

Hi Guys,

While I wait on a response from Forgeworld on my Landraider woes I have been thinking of other options for my marine army. I guess I am just in a mega build type of mood at the moment rather than paint mode. Anyway, I like the idea of being able to use my Crimson Fists as a 'counts as' any marine army as long as those 'special' units from other codexs are clearly WYSIWYG. For example, Death Company and Thunderwolf Cav are very specific units and should have their own specific special figures. I know some people will cry cheese etc…but to be honest; I pay enough for this hobby and cannot warrant re-purchasing core choices such as dreadnoughts, rhinos, razorbacks, landraiders, landspeeders, bolt gun armed marines, etc etc to basically have a different colour scheme. I guess I am of that school of thought of marines as a 5 in 1 codex. Anyway…moving on *steps of soap box*

I have been thinking of doing some Thunderwolf cav up in my Crimson Fist colours; but blue marines on wolves or that abomination of the Canis Wolfborn model make me die a little bit inside.
That got me thinking about using other mounts. I have seen a one of the guys on the blogs (3+ Save I think) using the Chaos Knights as which looked really sweet but I didn’t want to go that path if I can help it.

What I had in mind were Raptors!! I really enjoyed painting up the lizard scale cloak my Crimson Fist version of Vulkan, so I thought it has to be lizards of some kind.

Initially I was thinking of using the plastic cold-ones from Warhammer Fantasy which left the options of Dark Elves or Lizardmen. The lizardmen ones just look plain goofy to me.



The cold-ones look like they must get on board the short bus to go to school… so they are out. Now the Dark Elves.



Now these guys look mean. The only problem is the scale. I saw another fellow do a conversion on them and although they looked great, they looked like big armoured men riding into battle on a tiny pony.

The Lizardmen also had the carnisaur and I saw an awesome conversion with this on coolminiornot…but at $85 a pop it’s just not an option when I would like to have at least 10 of these guys.




So in a hunt around last night I found another mob: Gamezone Miniatures. Now they have a range of Dark elves riding massive cold ones. They are metal but I am pretty sure I can work with them and it’s a good excuse to get the greenstuff skills up. They cost about $12 Euros a pop so I was thinking of buying one for the hell of it and to give it a go. If nothing else, if it works out I can enter it in the next conversion comp. :)

Have a look at the guys below and let me know what you think. Do you think they could make convincing ‘counts as’ Thunderwolf Cav?





I reckon they look fearsome enough and the size looks much better but again, I need to see them in the flesh and actually mount a marine on one to be sure; but going by the standard cavalry base they are mounted on they look to be at least twice the size of the GW cold one options.