{WH} Chaos new mounted marauders

On 7 Nov, 13:44, Fin <f_mac... RemoveThis @hotmail.com> wrote:
> Are these interchangable with the older metal minis or do they look
> out of scale, stupidly different etc if mixed in a unit?

O.K., as no one seems to be responding to you, I’ll give what help I
can, although as I don’t have the previous Chaos Marauder Horsemen
this will be limited. I assume you are referring to those released in
2002, at the same time as the plastic Chaos Marauders. From the
photographs in WD270, these were mounted on the then-generic
unarmoured plastic horse. Placing half of one of these against the
opposite half of one of the new horses shows they are much the same
size, albeit the new ones are a little slimmer in the haunches. The
new riders are moulded with the body and legs in one piece, and their
proportions are pretty much as the still-current plastic Chaos
Marauders on foot. So the quick answer is yes, they probably are
compatible.

BUT (there’s always a “but”, and this one is the size of Paul
Sawyers) there is a problem with the new horses – briefly, they are
insufficiently generic. The moulding comprises three rectangular
frames that are folded concertina fashion for packing, usually causing
one of the outer frames to become detached. The two outer frames are
identical, and contain parts for two horses (let’s call them A and B)
and two riders, these having options to be armed with either a hand
weapon or spear and shield, or with a flail. There are 16 separate
heads for these, 7 helmeted and 9 bare, (plus one helmeted head for
the Champion) on the central frame, which also contains the body for a
different rider and a third style of horse (C) plus parts for to build
some of the above figures as a Champion, Standard Bearer or Musician.
All three frames have many additional detail components that can be
used to “customise” the figures. However, they won’t be capable of
differentiating the horses.

The horses are made in a new style, the right-hand side including the
tail, neck and mane and lower jaw for that side of the horse. The
left-hand side lacks the tail and neck. The left-hand neck and lower
jaw is a separate component. The upper jaw and eyes form a fourth
separate component, there are two of these on each end frame. In
addition, the centre frame contains six more of these, five of which
have a protective chamfron, and all are different. There is also a
horned, two-part, alternative for the Champion’s horse. All of which
should give the high level of individualisation desirable in a
barbaric unit. But this is undermined by the horse halves. Whereas
there were only two of the old generic horses, the halves could be
freely exchanged to produce four poses (more if you cut along the
girth line to divide them into quarters, something some of us have
been doing since the 1970s). If this could be done with the new
horses, it would be brilliant, and in the case of horses A and B, it
would appear this was originally intended to be the case. However,
these have a great deal of detail, including a housing under the
saddle. On one horse this is cropped part way over the haunches, but
on the other it looks like a tattered version of a Napoleonic Hussar
Shabraque, with a pointed tail extending behind the haunches.
Removing this, or extending that on a non-matching half, will be a
major modelling job. So ignoring the head variants, you are really
stuck with two each of horses A and B, and one of C, or multiples
thereof. (A girth-line cut to separate out the front left-hand
quarter may help this, but I haven’t tried this yet, and standardising
the armour on the lower forelegs should be possible.)
Probably the best way of integrating these into extant units would
be to use these to form a new command group if forming a new unit, or
use the new horses to remount an existing command group, and the
horses so freed up to mount the new riders.

FWIW, the new Knights are incompatible with those on old generic
armoured horses as the new mounts are HUGE, but as each is a superb
individual figure, one could be included as a unit champion, otherwise
I’ll be using mine as non-specific characters.

Regards,
>
> Fin

Moramarth