I've wanted to do some Rough Riders for quite some time, but I couldn't come to grips with having a mechanized military force using horses. There are so many better choices and I've always thought this a bit silly. Especially when using Cadians. When the Space Marine Scout bikes came out, I finally had an idea and decided to build up a unit.
The first thing I had to do was alter the bikes to look a little less physically imposing than the heavily armored Marine bikes. Looking at the model, there were a few things I felt could be removed to accomplish this. The armor front that held the heavy bolter was the first target. First, the Cadians don't have heavy bolters on the Rough Riders and secondly it would give the model a much smaller front profile. I trimmed the forks smooth. I then took the armored front piece and trimmed out the light and made it small enough to fit. The ended up reminding me of old World War II bikes.
I first pieced together my Sergeant and his bike. After priming the bike, I just couldn't appreciate the large dead pedals on the bike. It made the model look very bulky and I figured I could do something a little better. You can see the 'light work' a little better here.
I decided to cut off the pedal and trim it smooth with the pipes. There was also a small gap here. For the pegs, I had two lasguns cut up and used the barrels for the foot pegs. I trimmed out the small bit at the end of the barrel as well as the bayonet stud. This helped make the bike look much smaller. On this picture you can also see where I removed the skull. The Sergeant's bike was cut smaller, but I decided I didn't need to go that low on the 2nd and 3rd bikes.
For the Cadian rider himself, I took the Space Marine Scout legs and used a Cadian body. The boots had an armored piece on the front and I cleaned that smooth to look closer to a Cadian. I decided to ignore the rear armor on the boot and leave it be, as well as the ankle armor. I figure bike riders need some foot armor. For the upper body, I used the Space Marine Scout hand for the handlebar and Cadian arm for the weapon. I'll need to add a small plate with green stuff over the knuckles of the Cadian hand.
The Hunting Lance was a headache at first. I tried to make one or two from scratch and just couldn't find myself happy with anything. Perhaps when I'm better at all of this. Anyhow, I took a lasgun and used the hand and rear of the action. I took the exacto knife and trimmed it smooth to make it look more like a block than a gun. It also nicely fit the trimmed up metal hunting lance from the original kit. I removed this from the hand back and combined the two parts to look like a more modern hunting lance.
Here is the completed Sergeant after some secondary work:
I wanted the second Rough Rider to look like he was holding the lance up over the handlebars, but to appear as if he was uncomfortable. This was achieved by repositioning a standard Cadian arm and attaching the lance to the hand holding a stock.
The third Rough Rider rests his lance on the handlebars. Positioning the arms was problematic here and I had to rotate the hand on the Cadian arm as well as create the lance. I also needed to rotate the body and this forced the Cadian arm to be repositioned greatly. I needed a lot of Green Stuff to make this work.
Here you can see the repositioned weapon hand:
Rough Rider #2:
Rough Rider #3:
The Cadian "Easy Riders":
