12. Oathmark elf cavalry

I didn’t show our family Oathmark armies here so far (this will come later), but I mentioned, that my wife chosen the elves (that pointy-eared…). She mostly has archers (because they are by far the best archers in the game), which limits the tactical options a lot. This needed to be fixed! Any other infantry type would only make the archers harder to reach, wouldn’t really change the overall tactic of the army. So something else was needed. I think that the cavalry can be a big game changer in this, so lets go for it.

Elven cavalry… How to get them? First try is looking at the Oathmark range of Northstar. They constantly releasing new sets, but there isn’t any elf cavalry yet. Who is making elven cavalry? Lets look at the 9th age Miniature Library, which is always a very good starting point if you are searching for sources. There are a lot of possibilities, but unfortunately they are too expensive, and we are on a budget…

What to make, if nobody produces the kind of miniatures, what you are looking for? Coversion! Yeah, I love it! That means, that you have to get some miniatures, which at least partially fit your expectations, then mix and modify them. In the case of the elven cavalry, I got the kiss from the muse, as I was looking at the Gripping Beast plastic range: horses with full scale armor (Goth Elite Cavalry)! How awesome looking would be a charge of them in bright sunlight, as scales would be sparkling from light! And I think its also fits (my imaginary) elven attitude, to protect not only the rider, but also the horse.

So the horses are perfect, but the riders need some modification. I think that the bodies with chainmail are pretty okay to be elves (altough the upper body seems to be pretty short), but the weapons and the heads are far away. Changing the heads is not a big deal, I took helmeted heads from the Oathmark Elf Light Infantry box, and fitted them to the body (with just a little carving). And yes, they got also decorative feathers. The shield is also not a big deal, I just glued the elven shields instead of the original ones (they won’t look like the weapon holding hands, but they are mostly covered by the shield). Let´s get to the weapons!

My wife wanted to have 5 riders with swords and another 5 with lances, and I didn’t oppose to her. The swords were easy, I just cut off the original hands where the chainmail ended, shortened the elven, sword holding hands properly and glued them together, ready:

Half of the riders are already ready, but the most complicated part is still ahead: the lances. The original box has lance holding hands, but I didn’t like them, I wanted to use hands from the elven box. Unfortunately these hands don’t hold lances, so the first step is cutting away the swords and drill a hole in them (1,5mm, and watch your fingers). Then I needed bare lances, so I cut away the hands from them. There was another problem: the lances are too simple for elves… I had to modify them too. I cut the point of the lances, and glued the cut-away swords on them. The contact surface is very small, no chance for superglue, but plastic cement molds the two surfaces and creates a strong bond between them. Be careful, it takes time to harden, and the lances should be straight and in line (important to have straight cuts on both parts)! The result is a long and elegant killing device, which fits for the elves. I fitted the drilled hands to the body the same as the sword holding ones, and I glued the pretty lances in, and the lancers were also ready:

As you can see, I also made two banner bearers (so my wife can use two separate units of five), one with a shield another one with a (bent) horn from Perry Miniatures English Army 1415-29 box (because I only had 9 shields left for the 10 riders).

The box contains 12 riders, but I used only 10 of them (because Oathmark uses 5 figure wide units). So there are two miniatures left. What to make with them? Characters, of course! I made a leader (champion, captain, general, prince, king, whatever), which was easy: fitted a head, and two arms on the original body, as written before.

The second one had to be a mounted wizard. That’s hard, because wizards don’t have armor so chainmail had to be hidden. I filled up the surface with sculpting putty (I use Milliput, but I think other products will also do the job), but honestly, I don’t know how it will look after painting… Then I took a hooded head from the elven sprue, two hands from the Frostgrave Wizards sprue, and fitted them (I will probably modify the staff afterwards, I don’t like that miniature, retro-future rocket on the top). The last step was to make a cloak. Sculpting putty again, but I won’t describe what I´ve done with it. As you can see I really suck in this… If you want to sculpt cloaks, search for tutorials, and don’t take my work as a reference. I will try to fix everything with painting. Sure. Not gonna work, I already know, but I will try my best to reduce the losses. The results here:

Next time? I don’t know, let it be a surprise!