Age of Sigmar: The Freeguild Cavalier Minis Are Super Modular
The Freeguild Cavalier miniatures for the Cities of Sigmar give me hope about the future of Games Workshop releases.
GW showed off the sprues from the Freeguild Cavalier miniatures and they showed off an interesting graphic about how customizable they are. I immediately got excited about what I saw.
“…each rider can be equipped with one of five weapons and shields, one of five unhelmeted heads, or five helmeted heads with a choice of visor up, or down. Not content with this, the team also packed in options for the Arch-Knight Champion, and a Cavalier Herald, creating a dream of a kit for fans of armoured cavalry.”
Just so we’re on the same page what we’re looking at here is all the different interchangeable parts for these models. Let’s start from the bottom and go up from there. We’re getting five different “horse legs” to start. These are the foundations for each model. Next we have 5 different “tops” that contain a different horse body and Cavalier torso. The Cavalier torso is designed to fit into one specific horse body which is a little bit of a bummer as these are the only parts you can’t mix-and-match. Still, just between the tops and bottoms you’ve got a lot of different combos you can do.
From there we really get a ton more options. Each Cavalier has 6 different “module spots” that each have their respective options for the tail, weapon, head, shield, horse head, and custom “saddle flavor” — ie where you’d put that weird lantern thing. Additionally, the head has a bunch of variance as well because the visor on the helms can be positioned up or down and there are other various options including unhelmeted options, a champion head, and even a Cavalier Herald head (which I assume is for some sort of unit musician).
Freeguild Cavaliers Give Me Hope?
“But I thought you hated the Cities of Sigmar!” Again, I have to keep reiterating this point: I think the models are awesome but I don’t care for their rules. I have a lot of bias here and it’s okay to like the models and not the rules — both of those things can be true at the same time. So why do these models give me hope for the future of GW releases? Because it’s a step towards more modular options within their model design.
The best example I can point at is the old Tactical Marines. When these models were first released they were highly modular. Sure, their bodies were basically the same and really their poses didn’t vary that much — but you mix-and-match a bunch of these bits to really have your own versions of each squad. And, to be fair, sometimes getting the bolter arms to line-up just right was a chore. So they had their drawbacks, but the idea of highly modular options was there.
Now, let’s look at the Primaris Intercessor. Sure, you can customize this unit a bit — specifically the head positions and the types of Bolt Rifles they have, but other than that they are relatively limited in pose options. Again, compared to the issues with getting the old Tactical Marine bolters to line-up, I’m actually okay with this trade off. The downside here is that you really lose a lot of that mix-and-match “character” that the Tactical Marines had. Primaris Intercessors all look the same now. And yeah, that also makes sense because “Space Marines,” amirite?! But I mean there’s not a whole lot of personality between units any more.
With the implementation of Push Fit models and moves towards making their models easier to assemble the variety of the models within GW’s respective units started to drop significantly. Take these Retributors for example. They really only go together one way. And you can forget re-posing those arms or legs.
Fast forward and we can see GW starting to move back towards more modular options. The newer kits now still have tons of options with all the various heads and weapons — but they don’t have quite as many as these Cavaliers do. It certainly seems like GW is making an effort to get away from the super static look of the Push Fit models and going more towards highly modular options again.
Another really good example is the Freeguild Marshal:
This one model has a BUNCH of modular options and you can build a variety of Marshals from this kit and they can all look very different. I’d love to see more of these types of highly modular kits and less of the super static, less modular units in the future. I do want to acknowledge that it can be a mixed bag as highly modular options can have drawbacks just like fixed posed models do — so there is a balance to be found. And I think the Freeguild Cavaliers found that balance between both options.
What do you think of these Freeguild Cavaliers?
