Horses for courses

With the recent release of the Wargames Atlantic Mounted Knights and Mounted Serjeants, I thought now would be an opportune time to look at the different mounted  Medieval models that are available in plastic and see how they measure up to each other. 

Spoiler alert! They all do match up to each other very well, read on to see how well...

Let's start with the horses themselves. I've taken three barded horses, one from Atlantic (left), one from Victrix (centre) and finally Fireforge (right). As you can see, they are all surprisingly the same size. All the plastic horses come as two halves. 

The Atlantic horses have four left 'halves' and four right 'halves', each left 'half' is compatible with any right 'half' with four head variants, which gives a remarkable 16 horse combinations, with heads that make 64 (!). 

The Victrix ones are the easiest to stick together; each left side has a corresponding right side, giving a total of 6 horse variants. 

Fireforge is similar to the Atlantic ones, with two different and swappable sides, plus three heads, giving 12 possible combinations.

Next are the unarmoured horses for Serjeants and the like. Shown here left to right are the Atlantic, Fireforge and Conquest Games horses. Again, the horses are all broadly compatible. We've yet to see the Victrix ones, as they have yet to be released.

All three sets have three 'left' sides of the horse which are compatible with any 'right' side of the horse. Heads are then added. This gives nine variants of horse body plus the three different horse heads (four with Atlantic), giving 21 (or 24) variants.

One major question that has been asked is how compatible are the horses with the metals. It is no surprise to find that the metal horses are smaller - metal tends to be expensive to cast in and there are also issues with heat with larger castings.

Now onto the riders - the knights themselves. Shown here are the Atlantic, Fireforge, Conquest and Victrix torsos. As you can see, they are all broadly the same size apart from the Victrix, which are substantially bigger - presumably they have gone to match the Games Workshop Brettonians in size. 

Next, we have the metals. Shown here are the Atlantic, Footsore metal and Foundry metal. They are all roughly the same size. The Atlantic might look smaller, but bear in mind that the model is lacking arms and a head. The Foundry one looks bigger but bear in mind it has a onate helmet.

The good news is the riders will fit the new plastic horses perfectly. I would not be surprised if Footsore did not universally adopt the plastic hoses and retire their metals. I certainly will be mounting my characters on the new horses. 

I thought it only fitting to end this blog with a picture of the finished plastic knights. I am particularly fond of the tournament-style heads and jousting lances which come with the Atlantic Mounted Kights. They are very Brettonian!

Of course, parts from all the Atlantic sets are cross-compatible, so modellers can use parts from both Serjeants sets or the dismounted Knights set to further customise their models. I'll go much furter and use parts from Fireforge, Victrix and Conquest for mine.

Overall, we as wagamers are truly spoiled for choice with so many offering great miniatures. For hybrid makers like me, this is idea as i can pick and mix parts freely. My knights and serjeants will have a mix of horses and riders, to make them look unique.