Pirates and Tunnelers and Cavalry, Oh My!

Seeing a tip over at The 25mm Warrior about sales over at Target, I hopped on over and secured a number of packs for Wizkids' Pirates game at 2/3 off.  The game itself looks entertaining, and the little ships and monsters should see some action in RPG sessions.  The link above also shows an example game, check it out and hurry over to Target if you're interested.  If you haven't seen it before, their CCG area is near the registers, not back with the toys, at least in the ones around here.

My other find while I was there was an Imperial Guard Termite!  Well, not officially.  It's a GI JOE Cobra tunneling machine, but it works as a Termite for me!  With a little repainting this will probably see some use in some special 40K scenarios, as well as use in pulp and superhero RPGs.  See it here, captured by some Ork Kommandos who were kind enough to pose for scale purposes.

I've also been working on a test batch of Techno-Barbarian Rough Riders for my Chaos Guard, and here we see the results, but first a few words about the Chaos Marauder Horsemen kit.

There are a few things I would like for them to have done differently.  The riders are legs and torso as one piece, and the way their belt/girdle is situated and their general build makes it difficult to cut and reposition, so mine are all just torso forward.  The spear arms are all in a throwing position, which could be changed, but a little inherent variety would be nice.

But aside from those gripes, the kits are great.  Lots of heads, shields and various gubbins, and a wide variety of weapons are available.  Being mine are Rough Riders with hunting lances I went for the spears, but there are some good flails and axes there too.  The riders fit beautifully on the horses, no need to glue them on.  I plan to paint them separately and then click them together again.  But the best parts are the horses.  They're gorgeous.  Even if I wasn't doing these units I'd like to have a set of just the horses.  I hope to be able to do them justice when they're painted.

So, the first five Chaos Rough Riders.  I made them mostly as Marauder Cav, with a little 40K-ification thrown in.  Some greenstuff, some Chaos Warrior heads and CSM parts and Catachan bits round them out.  Here's the first two:

Chaos Warrior head on the right-side one, Marauder Horseman head on the left, with some GS.  I tried to make it look like an extra chainmail veil.

See?  Aren't those horses nice?

View from another angle.  Here you can more clearly notice the combat knives strapped to their back, and pistol holsters and grenades secured to their mounts.

Guy on the left has an Iron Warrior head and a CSM chainsword as a backup for after he's used his lance.  Might end up as the squad leader.  The other guy has a Catachan "knife" with a scabbard attached via a GS strap, and some more GS enclosing his helmet.

Side view showing accessories.

Another contender for squad leader, pistol and GS crest added to his Warrior helm.

Other view.  I trimmed out the pistol from his holster, since he already had one in-hand.

And here's the squad so far all together:

Horsies for the Dark Gods!