The 8 horsemen of the Apocalypse - Chaos renegade riders

OK, let's start with the appropriate soundtrack shall we ? The 8 Horsemen of the Apocalypse deserve as much. ^^

Ok now, following my plans to have a sizeable chaos renegade army for Rogue Trader this year, I've taken some old models from the shelves. WHen I say old, I don't only mean the model themselves are old but the conversion are too !

Most of the group was converted a while back during summer holidays. The idea then was to build riders as different from one another as possible, using different heads, bodies and making sure there were as few doubles as possible.

To add a little weight to the unit and make it an 8 man unit to please the Lord of Blood and broken skulls I added that guy as well :

Now I can be honest with you folks and admit I never quite enjoyed the angry hippo look of the original Juggernaught. The 2nd ed one was way scarier but waaaaay too static. I actually think the metal and plastic versions that came after are just perfect representations of the concept but that's not the subject here.

Since I didn't want a angry static hippo but more of a dynamic angry rhino instead, I cut the (very small and silly) feet away and used a different head. Luckily enough, I had a pair of metal marine biker legs and a damaged chaos knight body to make a brand new rider !

Painting wise, I tried to keep my reds rich and warm but not too bright. The black armour was done using my usual recipe to achieve a worn out look with added rust and weathering. The aim here was to use a more painterly style rather than look for smooth blended stuff. I want the armour to show it's 10 millenia old.

To tie the riders together, not only were the riders painted the exact same way but I also use a very limited palette on the hounds with similar collars for all and a few colours for the rest.

To make up for numbers, I had used damaged bits such as this palanquin rider I cut n parts about 20 years ago now. I know it looks a bit silly to make him a centaur like that but I thought it was in the spirit of the old fashion so was pretty happy with it.  

Now here's probably one of my favourite riders, I thought it looked cool to have both the hound and rider being cyclops and they convey a real sense of malevolence. The head is pretty much a small fimir head actually and if I were to make small fimir, I'd probably try to use such a head to convert orcs or the likes.

Now anyone who's actively tried to collect chaos renegades and especially riders will know the following one is an absolute bastard to find ! I don't know why but I know 4 people (myself included) who struggled on this particular one. 

Now of course, those old renegades do show signs of age, in the models and the designs as well, I do find though that they still look cool and menacing with dark paintjobs and weird hound with skull face of course.

You'll have to believe me when I say those old riders aren't exactly easy to make look dynamic but with the right pose and mount, they can actually look pretty convincing :

Last and definitely least, here's the desperate attempt to salvage that other palanquin rider (with shuriken catapult (just how RT is that heh ?). He looks silly I know but if you consider this as a hommage to the works of gods like Pete Brown and the likes then you can accept that kind of stupidity and embrace it !

These guys have been incredibly fun to paint. I think most painters will agree riders usually are quite energy taxing and can take a huge toll on our mojo and that's probably why I've kept clear of them for a couple of years. But when I started working on them, I knew where I was going and things just went by themselves which was very nice.

Despite being very tempted to finish binging Black Mirror I actually preferred getting behind the desk. The low standard I had set for them must have helped as well but they are definitely a very great item to have ticked in my list.

I have plans to paint a few more things before the end of tis very short month and that might be tricky to achieve but so far deadlines have worked in the last couple of months so let's try to keep things this way !

Of course we needed another 4 horsemen to have our 8 so here are my favourite :

Oh and in case you're wondering, those kind weigh around 460 points give or take from The lost and the damned book so in a couple of months I've managed to paint something close to 1000pts for this army (can't even believe I'm talking about an army) !

Have a good time all !