Hill Martian Gashant Cavalry

 

Hill Martian Gashant Riders

Hill Martians are the race of Martians that live nomadic and pastoral lifestyles, living from the saddle as they herd and raise their livestock across the plains and steppes of the Martian hinterlands. Their culture is tribal and traditional, and are technologically primitive, fighting with spears, hand weapons and bows.

Each region of Mars features individual and unique tribes and clans, in Mars' Central Basin the Riders of Nepenthes-Thoth inhabit the steppes to the north-east of Sytris Lapis, and are known for their gashant-riding prowess. To the west of the crown colony, is the vast Western Desert, the homeland of the Wagon Masters of Meroe, and the Kel Avashim, who fiercely resist imperial expansion by the British and Oenotrian empires.

Unit of 10 hill Martian Tribal Cavalry

Here's my first completed hill Martian gashant cavalry, which will be fielded as Tribal Cavalry using TMWWBK rules. As tribal cavalry, they are spear armed and are used as a very mobile melee unit, but I've also included a number of models armed with bows, so I can choose to field the unit as armed with Mounted Bows and give them the Sharpshooters trait for +1 point.

They could be fielded with my tribal infantry units as a complete hill Martian force, but I would need to expand that force with some more units. More likely, I will field them as mercenary units, to reinforce my other forces (British or Oenotrian) in their fights against each other, or against the high Martians.

The models are kit-bashed: the gashants are toy dinosaurs with Green-Stuff sculpting for the gashant beaks and crests, the riders are made with Victrix Numidian cavalry for the bodies and the heads from Oathmark elf light infantry, and the weapons are mixed from the Numidians, elves and Wargames Atlantic Goblins. Also to note, the shields are from the Numidian cavalry sprues, cut into hexagonal shapes, as the Space 1889 books mention this as being carried by native Martians.

The leader figure, with the war-flag, is mounted on a real RAFM gashant metal miniature, and is again a kit-bashed Numidian cavalry rider, including a cape from the Victrix kit. He's the only model armed with a firearm, strapped to the side of his mount.

Overall I'm very happy with how the unit came out, I think the models have a variety of colors and equipment, giving them a irregular and tribal look, yet the style of the models is similar enough to still keep the unit looking cohesive and like a team. Waiting to base them all together and with the same basing materials really helps the unit cohesiveness.

The kit-bashed gashants were a lot of work, but I quite quickly worked out how to expediate the sculpting process, so the second half of gashants came out much quicker than the first ones. Basically, a small triangle of Green-stuff gets draped over their head, which I can sculpt into the beak, eye socket and horn shapes. Then a second small semi circle of Green-stuff, with two small cuts into it, gets stuck to the back of the neck and sculpted into the neck crest.

Looking to the future, I'm planning two more Martian cavalry units, one as royal canal martian heavy cavalry, and another as colonial cavalry. I don't know if I will try to sculpt an entire unit of gashants out of toy dinosaurs and Green-stuff again, as it was quite time intensive. I've been working on using silicone molding to cast copies of RAFM gashants to build up new squadrons, and also sculpting a brand new gashant model, that I can also mold and copy, which will be great because RAFM have only ever released two gashant models, which doesn't give a big variety of poses.