Hobby Corner: Assembling Storm Lances

Storm Lances on the table

Storm lances. Every Cygnar player's favorite unit, and everyone else's most hated model. They're Cygnar's best (and arguably only good) unit, and the game's best cavalry.

Why do they have to have electroleaps on both their shots and their melee attacks? Why assault? Why do other cavalry have the lance rule but not storm lances?

Today, I'd like to talk about how to put together storm lances, not how to play them. I hit some unique problems when putting these together, and I found what I think were some pretty good solutions. I'd like to share those so that anybody else who finds themselves frustrated at the same thing might search, find this article, and maybe save themselves a bit of pain.


First off, these are some good-looking models. But you'd never know that by looking at what you first get when you open the box. The right and left halves of horses, and I think the riders come with arms detached.

After using superglue to put the right and left halves of my horses together, I hit my first issue. The horses' four hooves wouldn't sit flush to the base. Two were higher than the other two, and the horse would nearly be lying on its side if I angled it so all four were touching. How on earth was I supposed to get these things to stand up?

My solution was to find a number of teeny tiny rocks and glue them to the base, then have the horse step on the rock for a solid foundation. With this method, I was able to get three of the horse's four hooves attached and left one midair. A very important part of this process was the modeling clay they call green stuff. You can buy it on Amazon or Miniature Market, and the link here gives a good description. In the photo here, you can see how I used the green stuff to attach the hooves to the base and the rock, and even the rock to the base. I also used superglue because why risk it?

I chose to prime the riders black and the horses white. Why? Mostly just for extra contrast. I'd be painting both mostly blue, and this would help the riders' blue not look exactly like the horses' blue. I've also found that priming things white makes them look like you did highlights even when you're too lazy to actually do so.

I'm not a great painter, but when I spend the time on models, they do tend to come out pretty well. It's not talent, it's just carefulness. Really bright light helps a lot too.

You can see on these photos how once I finished painting the horses, I glued a number of tiny rocks to the bases.

I also took care in painting each horse's coat a different color, just to be cool. You think I'm cool, right?

The next challenge was in angling the lances when attaching the riders' arms and placing the riders on the horses' backs. Do the lances go downward or upward? Should they cross over the horses' backs? Should they point straight up?

You should definitely figure this all out before gluing the riders' arms in place. Assemble your horse, sit the rider on it without glue, and dry fit the arm to see how you like it. Also consider at this point how you'll be storing the model once you're done. The more the lance sticks out, the more volume you'll need in your storage box.

Green stuff is useful when attaching the rider to the horse, as he won't sit completely flush. I added glue near the rider's crotch and where his ankles contact the sides of the horse.

After all this, I painted the base brown, glued store-bought hobby grass onto it, painted the side arcs and letters on the backs to identify which model was which, and sprayed them down with sealer. Ready to go!

You can click to embiggen any of these pictures, and notice the flaws in my painting.