Monstrous mounts

Would you prefer dedicated monstrous mount boxes or riderless boxes followed by upgrade sprues?

  • We know that Raptor cavalry are planned. Do you think it would be better if the initial release was just riderless raptors and then "upgrade sprues" could be released to add riders from different factions. 

    like a bulldog upgrade sprue that had 2-4 bulldog rider legs, some different bulldog head options and some bulldog specific cavalry options. 

    then they could do the same with lizard men, or world war 1 French or whatever. then there could be a vote for which faction gets their upgrade sprue first. And while not everyone may want WW1 french raptor riders, the number than want raptor mounts is probably much higher.



  • +1

    'Cause of Mister JTam, we are all now wishing for a multi-genre Polish Winged Hussard box.. so riderless exotic mounts will be more than interesting (as separate sprue or even as a box) in order to achieve our wildest dreams.😁  


  • Cross-compatibility between mounts and rider legs would be ideal. We already have goblins that can ride spiders, and may well be able to ride the raptors. 

    Has anyone tested the goblins on the horses?


  • @William Redford 

    Cheesy answer... but a hybrid course of action would probably be best.  

    Initial kit should have riders of some sort.  But the riders should come in two pieces with seperate legs and torsos. Both arms should be molded separately (no reins holding arm molded to torso).

    This maximizes the ease and flexibility of the kit for conversions.  It also paves the way for upgrade/conversion sprues that might just be torsos and heads or similar.  


  • The problem with mounts alone is where do you get the legs for your riders of choice?


  • @JTam from the upgrade sprues! :) but yeah. Its pretty much the idea of the hourse in the General Accoutrements. But with the idea that riders would come, Just not the need for a full box of 1 type. 

    So if, for example, you guy 20 raptors to a box. and there were (eventually ) 5  rider upgrade sprues released at that time  (Lizardmen, Bulldogs, Oohrah, Conquistadors and Cannon Fodder)and each rider sprue had 4 rider legs. You could in theory buy a box of Raptors and 5 different upgrade sprues and Make 4 raptor riders for each of those factions... or buy 5 of the same sprue and make 20 Raptor riders for your chosen faction.


  • You could always have a small selection of basic legs with pants & boots, or light armour (greaves and knee cops). Add in a couple of futuristic armoured options and you could cover most humanoid figures. Then just add torsos and arms of choice from the desired range and you have a mounted version.

    I like the idea of riding legs for a variety of upper bodies as I want to experiment with making my own jet bikes / grav bikes for sci-fi games. 


  • @William Redford 

    That would certainly work.  

    I probably wouldn't call them upgrade sprues per say.  I would call them "Grognard Cavalry," "Raumjager Riders," etc.  Because they are complete cavalry miniatures minus mounts.  But that's just semantics.

    EDIT:  No, I read more carefully.  You do mean upgrade sprue.....  I don't know... Now I have to buy three products (mounts, Infantry box, upgrade sprue)  to make cavalry.  It's not the end of the world.... but it will annoy some.

    I think it would be great if the Spiders, Horses, Raptors, and whatever else comes down the pipe has the same size saddle area so any WGA cavalry miniature can fit.

    It's worth noting that Grognard cavalry should be excellent for converting to Death Korps of Krieg, Valhallan, Vostroyon, and Steel Legion Rough Riders.  Raumjager Cavalry would be excellent bases for Cadian,  Catachan, and similar Rough Riders.  These could be seperate "Riders only" kits as you described.   Or I would prefer Grognard Raptor Riders and Raumjager "Y" (cybernetic horse things? / motorcycles?) Riders with the the Raptors and "Y"s having similar saddles/seats allowing interchangeability of riders. 


  • I still have high hopes for a WW1 German Cavalry kit.

    https://wargamesatlantic.com/community/xenforum/topic/51683/german-cavalry

    Adding some Death Fields parts like exploding lances and cyborg horse parts seems like low hanging fruit.  

    Is a part cyborg horse a monstrous mount?  Hmmmh.... maybe if you squint.


  • The thing with "monster mounts" like raptors is more that if they are useful as models in their own right, selling boxes of them on their own makes sense.

    For the cavalry side of things, unless you have a clever opportunity as with the Goblins/Giant Spiders design (most other troop types can't get away with bow legged infantry poses), you want a dedicated rider sprue.

    As far as WW1 Cavalry goes, sure. They would supplement an early war range quite well. Unfortunately, that doesn't match well with the existing 1916+ kits. If WGA decided to expand to the Palestine campaigns, cavalry (especially the Australian Light Horse) would be appropriate.


  • @Mark Dewis 

    German cavalry was active throughout the war on the Eastern front.  Great opponents for the upcoming WGA WW1 Russian Infantry kit.


  • Ahhh. That takes me back to when the old WGF forums got spammed by porn bots...


  • The thing with "monster mounts" like raptors is more that if they are useful as models in their own right, selling boxes of them on their own makes sense.

    This, plus swapping riders from one mount to another. Separate catalogue items are the way to go. Even though I'm not entirely satisfied with the price point of the spider box - but that might be influenced by how much sprue space is wasted on the scifi nonsense. 

    For the setup of the riders themselves, I don't think it would be a good idea to attempt a single type of legs that fits all types of riders. Scifi gear has no place on a knight's legs, and lizards need to have claws. And at that point, depending on poses, you might as well do the riders in one piece. Just... don't mould the rider's legs into the mount, that is barbaric.


  • @JTam Actually I would be cool with bodies attached legs for the riders in the set as long as monsterous mounts themselves are shaped in such away that  they  can work with all the historical horse riders WA is going to do, I mean that did worked for GW monsterous mounts (seen more than a few knights riding beasties other than the horses they came with). 

    Also if we are talking raptors they should just do lizardmen riders for the actual set.


  • @Brian Van De Walker 

    The advantage of seperate legs and torsos for the riders are...

    1.  Greatly aids conversions.   And a lot of folks will be picking these up for conversions.

    2.  You can add command and female torsos greatly increasing kit flexibility.  


  • @Mark Dewis Well we are talking rides.


  • @Blutze  Every bloody rider in the Drowned Earth is molded on his beast what plonkers . I thought that stoped after the Rifts metals way back. No figures for me I`ll make me own, one of the pleasures of the first DD figures by Citadel were Foot,Horse, and Rider all seperate and we still have them today. 


  • Well we are talking rides.

    Heh. Actually... @Hudson Adams could you take care of that spam link further upthread? I guess we shouldn't have spammed it out so quickly, leaving it as the last post for longer so you guys could catch it.

    I thought that stoped after the Rifts metals way back.

    Sadly, no, GW is actually doing it extensively these days. Their separations are rather mindboggling in general, like that one piece that is head and right thigh on the "easy to build" generic large-sized paladins. Gotta have some weird algorithm that plans out the most efficient sprue layout.


  • @JTam Yeah, no... despite what you think, the two part body thing is not going to do either of those that well really, particularly in "historical scale" proportions and here is why:

     

    ONE:

    A lot of cavalry in history wear shirts, armor, coats, robes, etc. that go down over the rider’s pants legs. So using say a Persian cav figure legs with say a an open jacketed torso from the any of the of the conflicts of the musket age is just going to look odd in bad way, and things with armored legs or skirted legs and no breastplate are just “what (insert expletive) were you thinking?” kitbashes and that’s pretty much true for most of the other potential combos out there. 

    Now you might have some counter argument in the case of “generic pants and boot legs” if it were not for point 2&3.

     

    TWO:

     I keep telling you all this and you all don't seem to get it or listen, but women warriors on average would have different proportions from their male counterparts (we are talking warriors, not body builders here, know the difference).  Meaning in historical scale, female torsos on male legs would look off normally unless you do actually do work anyways, and well likely still look off at least a little. Heroic scale may be a different story and armor might hide or fudge it (though to be honest that does defeat some of the point of females in armor), but overall it’s not going to fly particularly with a generic set of legs which would likely only really work for males.

    (The torso attachments would probably not even fit right unless the females in question are all big boned, and I don’t know about you but I don’t want to see anymore that bad compromise in plastic).

    THREE:

    Its actually just smarter overall to make the beasties compatible with regular horse riders in the first place because what people really want to do is take rider X and put them on the monstrous mount, NOT rider X’s upper torso and some random lower half on the monstrous mount cause that lower half  is all that fits with said mount.  That is just bad design and going to look tacky, not to mention be a pain to cover up paintjob wise (you and the others need stop thinking this an IG set by GW we are talking about for at least 10 seconds).

    FOUR:

    The real reason to have a 2 part bodies (for riders at least) is posing not conversion.


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