Custom-Sculpted Imperial Cavalry

[Doctor Thunder]

I've had some requests to see what my club is currently up to, now that we're done with the female guard project.

Imperial Cavalry units are one of the best and cheapest (points-wise) counter-assault units available, but no decent models exist for them, so we're going to make them ourselves for our club members.

We started with our concept art:



This creature is based on the Moa, an extinct eleven feet tall creature native to New Zealand.
The Moa is very similar to a Veloci-Raptor, both in silouette, speed, ferocity, and intelligence, but it is unusual in that is has no arms/wings, not even little ones. Moa were very strong, able to break through a man's skull or snap a man in half with their lightning fast beaks as effortlessly as popping a balloon. The Moa has been the inspiration for other Sci-Fi creatures you might be familiar with in movies like Wizards, Naausica, Final Fantasy, and some Star Wars critters.

The rider will carry a shocklance, which would be an equivalent weapon that would use the same rules as a hunting lance.


Here's our Work In Progress shots so far. It is fun to see the progression from armature to full model. The sculpting is about 50% done at this point, so look here for more updates as sculpting progresses.










More updates to come.

[Inquisitor Blackadder]

Wow... That is.... indescribably cool...

I really cannot wait to see more progress on this!

And I'm certainly glad that bird is not around anymore
Verry cool stuff!

[Lord Adrianus]

Looks very cool

[The Watcher]

Nice work!
Altough we both know thats a chocobo... (save the fact - a chocobo got wings... hmm...)
Well, nonetheless a good replacement for the butt ugly rough riders of GW.

[Pickle]

Awesome Moa, and great feathers, this will look awesome when its done. You gonna be selling these?

[Holy_Smigs]

awesome chocobo

but why'd you cut it's head off?


will this be followed by a diorama of what happens when these IG run low on food... (and thus the massive turkey dinner lookin action...)

[Izzinatah]

Is that sculpted in Grey stuff or something? It's bloody awesome.

[Konstantin]

It's like a Chocobo.... That is soooo awesome! (Or Emu, if you want to be lame)

[Son Of The Forge]

Originally Posted by Doctor Thunder

This creature is based on the Moa, an extinct eleven feet tall creature native to New Zealand.
The Moa is very similar to a Veloci-Raptor, both in silouette, speed, ferocity, and intelligence, but it is unusual in that is has no arms/wings, not even little ones. Moa were very strong, able to break through a man's skull or snap a man in half with their lightning fast beaks as effortlessly as popping a balloon. The Moa has been the inspiration for other Sci-Fi creatures you might be familiar with in movies like Wizards, Naausica, Final Fantasy, and some Star Wars critters.

The rider will carry a shocklance, which would be an equivalent weapon that would use the same rules as a hunting lance.

Have you read any Dan Abnett books yet? Straight Silver, one of the Gaunt's Ghosts series, describes a very similar type of riding-bird cavalry, called 'Struthids'. The world that employed them used psi-link technologies to link the rider's minds to the birds, so that the riders could handle thier rifles and weapons while steering thier mounts with thier minds. Thier beaks and claws are just as much weapons as thier rider's rifles, hacking men in two and chomping off heads and limbs Your design reminds me of them.

You might want to take a quick look at the Chapter Approved rules for Xenos-mounts. Then you can have the bird attack as well as the rider. That would be awesome.

Lookin good sofar. I wanna see more!

[Cortex]

this LOOK ACE! i can imagen my DKoK riding on these! looking good, *puts some money away if hes selling them*