Suggestions for Vampire/Dark elf cavalry

[FramFramson]

I've had a tough nut to crack in the last little while. I'm trying to assemble a unit of 30/32mm Vampire/Dark Elf (in the Mage Knight world they're one and the same) cavalry. I'm having a devil of a time trying to find anything suitable.

The idea is that these are cocky young nobles serving as light cavalry (horses, not lizards or skeletons or whatever) They need some armour and gear but not too heavy or elaborate. They can be armed with swords or lances, though swords are preferred (weapons swaps are an easy conversion though). Bare heads with long hair are fairly important (pointy ears can be added if need be).

My original idea was to use GW Dark Elves' Dark Riders, but once I got them, I realized they look way too much like rogues and not anything like knights. Plus their horses are a travesty... they look like cartoons! GW's Blood Knights are sort of getting at the idea but are far too elaborate with the armour and acrobatic poses and (more importantly) are terrifyingly expensive! (I need 8 figures... $250 plus P&P seems a WEE bit steep for that).

I looked at Gamezone's Dark Elves and Vampires, and the Dark Elves are mounted on some excellent horses with a cool branding pattern, but the figures themselves appear to be kitted in some bizarre coneheads/KKK outfits. And their vampires are just as elaborate and nearly as expensive as GW (actually all of GameZone's cavalry is pretty expensive for this purpose... €10+ per figure).

Reaper is rather light on cavalry/mounted units.

Mantic seemed like a great possibility, but their necromancers are all riding dead or skeletal horses and their not-Dark-Elves have no cavalry (yet?).

I really had no idea this'd be such a poser. I would have thought a simple vampire knight would be one of those quintessential ubiquitous fantasy types.

I'm willing to do some conversion (the source figures don't actually have to be vampires or dark elves), or mix mounts from A with riders from B, so long as the component parts can be obtained cheaply enough. Maybe even some conventional human figures would work, like a troupe of Perry riders or some Spanish Conquistador cavalry (obviously either one would require head swaps). I'm open to suggestions, even just for cheap mounts that would work well.

For a picture, imagine this fellow as a young-looking vampire and you might get sort of an idea where I'm going:



Mantic's Mounted Vampire Lord is also a fairly close for a rider (the horse is, alas, dead), albeit a supremely blasé one.



Any ideas would be most appreciated!  


EDIT:

If they were in a pose like this, I think I'd be in heaven, but that's probably asking a bit much.

[beefcake]

I don't know how soon you need them but Mantic are going to be making some dark elf cavalry sometime in the near future as it was part of their kickstarter. I seem to recall some concept art that would fit what you are talking about but that may have been in my head  along with other strange things.

[Franz_Josef]

Check out Mirilton's Shadow Elves cavalry.

[Heldrak]

GW plastic Cold One Knights riders (Elfy, armored) on living horses of your choice (GW plastic Wood Elf steeds are popular). You can add sword arms from the GW plastic Dark Elf Corsairs set if lances don't float your boat. All of these components should be readily available from the various bitz services, too...

[white knight]

Sounds like you want the copplestone sculpted grenadier dark elves, with a horse swap. They are like the Foundry Revenant elves, with more armour.
They are available from Mirliton.




Ignore the GW figure in the middle:

[FramFramson]

Thanks for the replies - all good suggestions so far.

I may wait and see what Mantic has in store - just buying everything in one go without having to do conversions is massively easier - but I don't think I'll wait forever if there's no timetable.

I was thinking that conversion was where this was going to go, so I'm probably just going to try and get as many options as I can before deciding.

For steeds, the wood elves have their Wild Riders which have a nice angular armour and which will look sufficiently mean in a darker colour scheme. There are also other options, like the Bretonnian Mounted Yeomen, so I think I'll be alright using some of those as mounts.

For the figures, are there any suggestions for figures a little less elaborate/armoured than the current cold one knights? Maybe a non-GW option? These are fairly light cavalry units (harassers and scouts), so I'm trying to keep them simpler, probably a breastplate and maybe greaves or shoulder armour, but not a full kit. The Cold Ones' Full plate with all kinds of doo-dads isn't the best fit for mostly unarmoured horses either.

The copplestone ones are nice, especially the musician, but can you even get the riders separately? Mirliton's site is not loading for me at the moment.

The one thing that might make this a lot easier is to make it clear that I can use any rider body, so long as the kit is right and the scale is close enough to GW, since odds are good I'll be using their heads and mounts and GW fits my existing scale anyway. I can just get some elf heads from one place or another for swaps. A breastplate for sure, but perhaps only partially armoured otherwise. Here's two sort-of examples:

 

And also the first image in my original post.

Nothing is set in stone yet, so I'm open to different styles so long as they're not recognizably something else (i.e. wood-elf leaf pattern armour, won't do).

[white knight]

There was this company that also sold a lot of the grenadier figures, including separate riders, but I can't remember the name, except I think it included warehouse or something like that.

[white knight]

Found  it!
http://www.battlezone-miniatures.co.uk/shop/category/216

They only seem to have two of the variants, but you can get them without the mounts so perhaps you could get these for the bulk and then if you want get the other variants from Mirliton and keep the lizards for something else.

[fastolfrus]

How about going for a historical option:
http://www.warlordgames.com/22070/preview-polish-winger-hussars/

Winged Hussars are readily available from a number of manufacturers, if you leave off the wings they aren't so obvious.

[FramFramson]

Actually a pike & shot era historical figures were high on my list of possible replacements, but I'm not nearly as familiar with the historical manufacturers as I am with fantasy ones. ECW/Conquistador/TYW cavalry are all perfect in terms of what I'm thinking about for rider clothing. I was going to make a post in the Pike & Shot boards, but you might have just saved me the trouble.

Those Winged Hussars might be perfect if (as you mentioned) I left off the wings and did elf headswaps. How do they scale with GW minis?

[area23]

Ral Partha elves by Chris Fitzpatrick. Only a few variants but they look nice.



linkydink:
http://www.ralparthaeurope.co.uk/fantasy-armies-elves-c-37_39_47.html?page=2&sort=20a

[white knight]

if you go with ecw, Renegade and Bicorne (both by the same sculptor) make nice big figures that should work well enough with GW heads and bits.