Goblin Wolf Riders

[The Gray Ghost]

should I put my goblins on wolves, I can't decide.
They are the figures from Sgt Major which are a big departure from your gw type goblins. I'm just not sure it makes much sense to be riding around on a carnivore.

[beefcake]

Wolves are quite a cool mount.
If you want something more comical, maybe sheep?
What about something like mastiffs? Loyal to their owner, domesticated, wildness gone from them. I think warlord games sells mastiffs quite cheaply, the was a thread about it on here somewhere.

[Spooktalker]

I don't know how you like your games, or how this particular world is you want to use the Sgt Major figs in. Obviously they were sculpted to be riding wolves and were meant for gaming Tolkien, who popularized the idea. I divide up my own fantasy figs into several different realms that don't mix, for example 25mm D&D, 80's British style and a grim dark age fantasy starring Red Box, my confrontation Drune and my Asgard goblins, among others, and I don't have a problem with wolf riders in any of those. From a biological point of view it doesn't make much sense, even if the wolves were huge and wanted to carry the goblins around I doubt it makes sense in terms of anatomy and physics. In the book Guns, Germs and Steel there's an interesting discussion of horses and why other animals aren't suitable, even animals extremely similar to horses like zebras. I can't recommend the book overall though without a number of reservations.

http://books.google.com/books?id=PWnWRFEGoeUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=guns+germs+steel+zebras&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GTMHUZa-HIrD2QWzrIHICQ&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=zebras&f=false

[Doomhippie]

It's a matter of taste. I like the idea of wolfriders but as Tolkien wrote: the wargs occasionally let the orcs ride on their backs. It's more a matter of mutual agreement and dividing up the spoils rather than tamed wolves. Of course that means those wolves have to have the intellectual capacity to understand that. So it's not your average John Wolf from the woods behind your house.

[Red Orc]

I think Gandalf's words at the Battle of Five Armies - '... Bolg of the North is coming... The bats are above his army... They (I take this to refer to 'his army' and not 'the bats') ride upon wolves and Wargs are in their train!' - rather counteract the impression you put forward.

My take on it has been that the Goblins of the central Misty Mountains (Hoarwell down to Moria, more or less) sometimes ride Wargs, as you suggest; but further north, around the Ettinmoors/Mount Gundabad/Mts of Angmar/Grey Mts, and perhaps in the wide lands even to the north of them, the Goblins ride wolves in large cavalry armies, and Wargs are more often a force allied to the Goblins, rather than ridden by them (for mutual gain or not). Hence, at the Battle of Five Armies, the 'wild Wolves' (which I presume = Wargs as it's capitalised, and therefore not the same as the 'wolves' that the Goblins ride - which may be considered tame) are a force in their own right.

[Doomhippie]

That makes absolute sense to me. Especially if an army has an organized cavalry which, in this case, would be wolf riders. In any case I like the idea of wolf riders a lot.