cheap beasts

Do you think it would be possible to use dark elf Cavalry as Khymera beasts? And add a rider as beasts master? If so, how would you do it?

Dark elves ride horses or cold ones so it depends which you want to use as a base. Cold ones are slightly easier to do because the legs of the riders aren't sculpted onto the mount so you can literally take the legs of your cold one knights add body head and arms for your beastmaster onto that and voila you've got a rider.

Got myself Chaos Hounds and Hormagaunt bits

Personally I would use Cold Ones rather than horses.
I can see a decent Beastmaster as a rider like that, on a horse alongside Cold One Khymerae.

I used Cold One Knights as my Beastmasters, replacing the riders with bits kitbashed from Wyches and Hellions.

Was talking about cold ones, sorry.

I don't actually know that you would have to modify cold ones to be kymarea as the fluff indicates that there isn't any specific way they manifest.  They can pretty much look like anything.  The only specific description I can find is from the 5th edition codex and reads "long-fanged, many-eyed, and sinewy".  So... extra eyes?

If non-GW models are acceptable, I've used Tamiya Velociraptors models for both mounts and counts-as kymarea.  They're the right size, have comparable (if not better) detail than GW's, and are varied enough to keep it interesting (with modular limbs).  They also have the huge advantage of costing less than $2 a piece from most outlets ($10 for 6).

They're also really birdlike and spindly so a meatier model (like actual GW cold ones) looks like an alpha or a predator driving them forward.  The guys on their backs with whips help with this image.



Edit: picture added for contrast, but you can't really see the detail on the raptor

There is detail? It's looking.... blank.

That was one of the first pictures I pulled up from google and it was a direct comparison to a cold one so I used it.  This one shows the detail a bit better.  It's fine so it's difficult to see in most pictures, and that khaki color doesn't help.

I'm planing on buying a box of Forest Goblin Spider Riders. One spider is to be converted into a "mount" for a Haemonculus, the other nine will probably be used as Khymerae.
Why wouldn't Dark Eldar have nightmares of giant spiders too?

Those raptors look very nice, by the way. I think some kind of conversion should be done to them though. They look a bit too... normal, for the 40k universe.

Rokuro wrote:

I'm planing on buying a box of Forest Goblin Spider Riders. One spider is to be converted into a "mount" for a Haemonculus, the other nine will probably be used as Khymerae.
Why wouldn't Dark Eldar have nightmares of giant spiders too?

Get a close look at the spider riders before you buy any.  I bought a bunch from one of the fantasy box sets on ebay to make half-spider, half-wych jetbikes but when they came I was so dissapointed in the sculpts I decided against it.

These weren't even complete at the bottom, just a flat surface with a hollow cavity where they meet the base.  Totally screwed up my idea to suspend them from guitar string or have them mid-leap on an transparent rod.  There abdomens also aren't complete, just a flat section with a hole for the rider to plug in to.  I ended up using them as weapons platforms for my exodite guardians, which worked a bit better.

Edit: The spiders also don't fit on 40mm bases (which kymerae now use) just so you know, their limbs hang off the front and back.

Rokuro wrote:

Those raptors look very nice, by the way. I think some kind of conversion should be done to them though. They look a bit too... normal, for the 40k universe.

They're too "real" for the 40k universe but I like them anyway, and enjoyed painting them so I did use them a lot when huge beast packs were useful.  They really fit my exodite force well, which was all dragons and dinos.  Since 7th edition I rarely take beasts, and never in the quantities I used to.

stilgar27 wrote:

Get a close look at the spider riders before you buy any.  I bought a bunch from one of the fantasy box sets on ebay to make half-spider, half-wych jetbikes but when they came I was so dissapointed in the sculpts I decided against it.

These weren't even complete at the bottom, just a flat surface with a hollow cavity where they meet the base.  Totally screwed up my idea to suspend them from guitar string or have them mid-leap on an transparent rod.  There abdomens also aren't complete, just a flat section with a hole for the rider to plug in to.  I ended up using them as weapons platforms for my exodite guardians, which worked a bit better.

Edit: The spiders also don't fit on 40mm bases (which kymerae now use) just so you know, their limbs hang off the front and back.

Thanks for telling me. Looks like I'll need to do some sculpting.
But considering what I have in mind for the Haemonculus, I might as well convert the other spiders with some leftover Talos parts while I'm on it.
As for the bases; I was planing on using 40k bike/cavalry bases anyway.

Vampire Counts Dire Wolves look pretty much exactly like Khymerae when painted correctly. Just add some spare nid bits. They have the bare skulls and the muscle showing.

On a related note, I've been thinking of picking up some of these to use the stags as Clawed Fiends - if the size is close, enough, that is -



Horned Fiends instead of Clawed Fiends!

I suppose if they are too small I could use them as Khymerae instead.