Misthåvn Cities of Sigmar Cavaliers

Finally the final unit of my Cities of Sigmar army is complete. The Cavaliers are packed with detail - possibly too much - and I'm chuffed to have finished the huge task of getting them painted up. Pics below the jump...

It's been a while since I started work on this unit. The other Cities models also took me a long time to finish, and I took a break to work on other projects before confronting this daunting group of minis. I'm glad I did, because they turned out to be a ton of work. Each is so detailed it could be a character model itself. There were points where I felt I wasn't enjoying painting them at all! I don't envy anyone who's running a cavalry heavy Cities army. But hey, they're done, and I think they look awesome. Here's the photos.

The Champion has a few small conversions I'm happy with. The big one is the horse's head armour, which is taken from the Idoneth Eidolon's fishy armour. With a bit of bending it fits perfectly over the horse's head, and works well with this fish insignia knight (and the nautical theme of Misthåvn).

Another conversion is that I removed the helmet crest from the detachable helmet visor and attached it straight on top of the visor-less helmet. I did the same for every knight in this unit. One strength of the Cities kits is their excellent face sculpts. I like the faces more than the visors so it would be a shame to hide them.

Finally, I also used the kit's saddle-mounted flag to mark this one out as the unit Champion. There's enough saddle ornaments to give one to each knight, but they are already supremely busy sculpts, and I wanted to save the bits for my bitz box. I liked being able to choose and match parts in this kit, and I think the wavy sword is perfect for the Champion's personal style.

The second knight also has a helmet crest cut off and attached directly to his helm. The portcullis crest is great - I like the choice of heraldic elements in this kit. I paired it with the horse head with a tower crest.

I also added a spare bit from the always useful Mega Gargant kit - a glass buoy attached to a ring on the horse's barding. Just another little nautical piece.

This Cavalier got a helmet crest from a Bretonnian Knight. The crest on the horse helm is a sun icon from the Hurricanum kit. I'm pleased with the colour combination of the warm yellow-ochre with the Misthåvn sea blue - I kinda wish I'd come across this combo earlier in the project!

The little shield on the Bretonnian crest got painted in Misthåvn blue, and has a little skull transfer from the excellent Cities transfer sheet. I also switched out her gigantic horse hammer for a smaller one from the infantry set. 

This knight uses the parts in the Cavaliers kit that seem Ghur-ish in nature. The horse armour is fringed with fur, the saddle has carved horseheads, and the rider has a wooden leg from sparring with wildlife (I think as a Misthåvner, this is more a piratical feature).

Accordingly, I painted his horse brown (the others are in Ulgu-ish black or grey). I also attached some fins to the horse's headpiece, which look either monstrous or fish-like.

 The knight's helmet crest is a bestial head from one of the Cities banner toppers.

Finally, the standard bearer. Like the infantry units, this banner uses one of the sails from the Dreadfleet Empire galleon. That boat has two main masts (one and a half of which went to my infantry standard bearers) and this triangular front sail. It's attached right onto the Cavaliers standard pole, with a bit of rope holding it in place, and a unicorn topper from the Steelhelms.  All of the sails have pre-molded detail, which I found was a little too shallow to be easy to paint.

He also has a flagon from the Mega Gargant hanging from his saddle. Other than that, this is a straight forward build based around matching up nice parts from the kit. He has a gargoyle helm crest, and so does his horse.

For painting, I eschewed the Cities lore suggestion that each Cavalier has their own personal heraldry. This kit was already a challenge to paint, so I kept it simple and matched them all to my Misthåvn colour scheme. I added Misthåvn transfers and learned that the transfers designed for Steelhelm shields are a little too big for the square spots on the Cavalier models! So some of them got anchor imagery cut out of the bigger and more complicated Misthåvn transfers meant to go on banners.

Painting really was the hardest part of this unit. I wouldn't jump into painting a second set of these any time soon. I think this is it for my Cities of Sigmar army for the time being. I have a ton of Bretonnian Knights lined up to paint soon, and I'm glad for the more restrained sculpts of Warhammer Fantasy!