Ideas for Astral Knights Bikers

As I've said before I want to give the Astral Knights the look of 41st millennium knights riding into battle with lances, shields and fluttering banners.  Here are some of the ideas I've been mulling over to try and achieve this look.

Firstly the armour of the marines.  There aren't many options for the basic biker marine legs so I'm going to try and get as many Ravenwing cloaked legs in as possible.  Hopefully these will give the look of the robes that knights used to wear.

The Ravenwing upper bodies have a fantastic chest which has the sword from the astral knights chapter badge in the centre.  I want to try and get some high necked bodies as these help portray heavily armoured knights more than the standard low neck sort.



If you've been reading my blog for a while you will know my thoughts on space marine helmets.  I love the crusader type with the solid face plate, it looks so much more knightly than any other sort (see here). Of course I'm going to try and convert all the helmets to have plumes from the empire knights set, just like my tactical squad sergeant, for more details on this see here.

With the marines decided upon it's time to think about the weapons and bikes.  For the lances I want to go old school and use proper lances (ties in nicely with power lance rules in 6th edition).  The only thing resembling a biker with a lance officially available from GW is the white scar commander. (Image from GW)

Now correct me if I'm wrong but that isn't a lance, I don't know what it is but it isn't a lance.  So my only option is to delve into the mists of time once again and look at the empire and bretonnian ranges.  These two sets look like my best options.

Empire.

Bretonnian.

I love the Bretonnian lances, more detailed, lots of fluttery banners and hands/arms that will blend really well with marine armour.  The only thing left is to try and make them look a little more techy, so if you have any ideas for that please let me know.

The shields caused me some initial problems, there are lots of interesting shields out there, from the space marine storm shields through to plain warhammer shields.  However, a biker needs at least one hand on the handlebars so if he has a lance in one hand then he can't have a shield in the other.  My solution is to mount a small shield on the armour plate that covers the handle bars, it will go on the opposite side to the lance, and I've found the perfect shields...

These are from the grey knights terminator set and they are the small shields that are mounted on their left shoulder pad.  They have an interesting variety of shapes but they all contain the sword from the astral knights chapter badge.

So now just to get all the bits together and start work.....

If you have any ideas that I haven't thought of or want to make any suggestions then please feel free to comment below.