Finally finished my first part of the project. It's been a long time, unfortunately. For almost the entire month of August, I've been too ill to really paint anything. That left these three sitting around not getting finished. But now they're done!

They are the first of 4 identical units. Due to a brilliant deal, I now have more than enough chariots to build a full Royal Legion of Chariots. This is the long term plan (think years). In the shorter term, I plan on adding another unit of chariots. This would give me three battleline units. Two chariots which are fast and tanky, and a unit of skeleton warriors. Nothing exceptional, but flexible and great objective sitters.

Each unit is of course built out of a mix of TK and other bits. Black knight horses are the big change. Then there's regular VC skeletons, which have a much better scale, poseability and overall look. Add in a thing from the Sphinx set as the banner, bows from the TK skeleton set, a trumpet from the High Elf spearmen and you've got a something going.

It's not a great photo, and obviously the bases aren't done. I'm going to make a six-base set with a unified pattern, I just need to plan it out a bit. Should look great once done though.

The chariots can both shoot and use spears, so I wanted an archer in the unit. You can see his quiver over the shoulder of the hornblower. The hornblower is using a horn from the high elf spearmen kit. The long ornate horns in the skeleton kits are too much, and would never have been used by a charioteer. I figured a simple horn that could be placed away before combat would be the best. He's holding onto the chariot for stability. I feel that it's important to use the "props" on a model to convey a sense of place. He could be posed a little better, but he belongs in that chariot!

This is the champion. He isn't here to be cautious. He's here to chew gum and charge fools, and he's all out of gum. Or something. You can see the bow resting in the quiver on the left there. Since both crewmembers are wielding spears, I wanted to make it clear that they could grab a bow if they wanted to. The symbol on the front is a lot worse that I remember it being. Oops. Might go back to that eventually.

Last up is the banner. I couldn't find a cloth banner I was digging, so I found this tail piece instead. I figure that nobody will protest it. I needed to give one of these guys a whip, so it ended up here. He's leaning forward whipping the hide off the bones of his horses, to little effect. Habits are hard to break, I guess. The archer in the back is just holding on, trying not to fall out. Used the GW gem paints on the banner, which gives a decent enough effect. Nothing spectacular. When you're tired of the model and just want to finish though, it's a godsend!

That's it for phase 1! I'll write up a new post when I decide on phase 2. Trying to make these blog posts more interesting, so please shout out if there's anything you'd like to see more of, hear more about, or any praise or critiscism (of writing or painting!).