Conquest: Weaver Courts Gemred Knights and Scaile Dancers Model Review

Special thanks to Para Bellum for providing the models in this review. If you want to get 10% off and support Goonhammer you can make your Conquest purchase by clicking here. You’ll also need to enter code “goonhammer” at checkout.

Today we're reviewing two Weaver Courts kits. While both come on brute bases, they each push the theme of the army in distinctly different directions.

Gemred Knights

Gemred Knights. Credit: Para Bellum

Fun fact: "gemred" means "moose rider" in Gaelic. (This is a lie. It doesn't mean anything.)

When I first saw these I didn't like them. I liked the riders, but the plodding meese didn't match with the vision of elven grace I had in my head for the Weavers. As I built and painted them, however, they grew on me, and began to make sense. Of course the Court of Winter has frontier-ranging moose cavalry (mooselry?). Of course their mounts have weird faces. By the time I finished them, I was fully bought in: this unit makes a great addition to the range. We need more mooses in wargaming.

Assembly

The kit comes in three frames. Each frame builds a moose and their rider.

Gemred Knights frame diagrams from the assembly instructions. Credit: Para Bellum

Building the mounts is nice and straightforward. The bodies are just two halves that stick together. There are a few moose face options. None of them look normal. The only tricky part is attaching the meese to their scenic rocks -- there's no holes or niches for the hooves to slot into. You just have to find foot placements that seem sturdy enough, slap down plenty of poly cement and hope for the best.

Regarding those rocks, it does look a bit weird for every member of the unit to be cresting their own little cliff, but it certainly is characterful and almost tells a little bit of a story. I suppose it also prevents them from overhanging their bases as much as they would otherwise. (Although maybe just make your base sizes larger if you're having to contrive ways to reduce overhang?)

Assembling the riders is not so painless. You'll have to awkwardly hold parts in place while the glue sets quite a few times, especially for the weapon arms, which will droop into unwanted positions if you're not careful. The pauldrons are a bit tricky to attach as they don't have a peg to fit onto and just sort of sit loosely on the shoulder. There are a few head and weapon options. Always nice to have.

An assembled Gemred Knight. The rider is not glued in place yet. Credit: Rachel/PB

I opted to keep the riders separate for painting, but made sure to dry fit them to the mount as I assembled them to check I wasn't accidentally building them in a way that wouldn't fit in the saddle, or poke the moose's antlers with their blade, or similar mishap. After painting, when it came time to glue them into position with superglue, it wasn't obvious if there's an intended way for them to sit in the saddle to maximise contact area, but they seem sturdy enough at least.

Overall it took me about 30-45 minutes, including cleanup, to assemble each Gemred Knight.

Painting

I find the studio scheme a bit busy and difficult to read (and also probably too time consuming for me to attempt to replicate) so I immediately tacked in a quicker, simpler direction.

Three Gemred Knights, primed, partially basecoated and ready to paint. The riders are all saying YEEEOOOWCHHH!!! Credit: Rachel/PB

I wasn't sure if I wanted the meese to be icy blue or cold purple. Both felt very appropriate for northern rangers, but ultimately the latter felt like it would be more fun to paint and seem more ominous. I airbrushed the mounts with a mixture of FW Ink Purple Lake and Vallejo Air Color White to begin with, then gave that a good drybrush with a slightly lighter mix of Citadel Genestealer Purple and white to provide some shading. Next I used Citadel Contrast Shyish Purple, watered down a little, on the furry bits, and one of the reddish Contast paints (I don't remember which) on the face. I painted all the armour, tack and antlers in a mix of much darker purples and greys, using Contrast paints as much as I could, and finished off with a very light purple drybrush just to help things pop. I finished the face with some extra red highlights and painted the eyes with Contrast Terradon Turquoise so they'd stand out.

The riders' armour reminded me of the Wild Hunt from The Witcher III, so I painted them metallic, adding a purple wash to tie them to their mounts' fur. I used a Green Stuff World Colorshift Metal paint, Evil Forest, on the wing membranes that stick out their butts for some reason.

Painted and based Gemred Knights. Very awkward to photograph. Credit: Rachel/PB

I'm pleased with the result. They look cold, ghostly and foreboding, and came together nice and quick.

A painted Gemred Knight. Credit: Rachel/PB

Scaile Dancers

Scaile Dancers. Credit: Para Bellum

These are unbelievably cool models. It turns out, "What if a fairy had a chain-whip?" was a question that needed answering. They're dynamic, elegant, an original concept and provide plenty of opportunity for skilled painters to get creative and show off. Possibly some of the neatest elf-adjacent things ever to have been brought to plastic. I hope we get a lot more like them.

Assembly

This kit builds three Scaile Dancers, with options for one of them to be a bit extra as a champion. There are two sprues, one of which is an unusual shape. The first has all the parts for the two normal Dancers and the weird-shaped one builds the more customisable third. There are a few head options, which mostly seem interchangeable.

Scaile Dancers frame diagrams, from the assembly instructions. Credit: Para Bellum

The instructions are, once again, good enough and overall the models go together intuitively enough, but this is a slow kit to build. Cleanup was also a bit of an issue, with plenty of mold lines to pick up. After that there is a lot of holding spindly bits in place so they have plenty of time to bond together strongly.

The worst part is the wings, because they just slot into little holes in the back of the body. This means you have to hold them in place for absolutely ages, otherwise they'll droop, fall out, or just not bond well. It might actually be a good idea to subassemble the models and paint the wings separately, but that will make the aforementioned difficulties with attaching them to the Dancer's back even harder.

The worst part of the Scaile Dancer build process: attaching the wings to the body. Credit: Rachel/PB

Thanks to the stupid wings in particular it took me about 1 hour to build each Dancer. And then I knocked a wing off one of them and had to reattach it. Ugh.

An assembled Scaile Dancer. Credit: Rachel/PB

In the end they look sick as hell, so what gives. And in general they seem quite durable, in the way that only springy, bouncy models can sometimes be.

Painting

You know me. I like to get things on and off the painting desk in rapid fashion, because my hobby time is very limited these days.

I knew I wanted their carapaces to be quite similar to Oberon's, but I didn't want to basecoat them by hand, so I mixed up some FW Ink Emerald Green with Vallejo Air Color White and airbrushed that over the light grey primer I'd used. When highlighting it I opted for white highlights instead of yellow, resulting in a cooler, mintier green overall. I thought this would contrast more nicely with the pink of the wings, face and hair.

When painting the wings I ran into an annoying problem with the Vallejo Model Color Pink I was using, in that it is quite bubbly and the texture of the wings is a worst-case scenario for making it bubble. In hindsight I should have basecoated the wings with the airbrush but that would have involved a bit of masking which is always seems like too much effort for me.

Three finished-ish Scaile Dancers. I'm not entirely happy with the wings, and I haven't based them yet because I'm waiting on some nice marshy foliage to arrive. Credit: Rachel/PB

Final Thoughts

Two of the best kits in the range so far. Neither is flawless by any means, but both exemplify what's cool about the Weaver Courts. Para Bellum's concept artists, modellers and kit designers have done really well here. Bug-shaped hats off to them.

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don't forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.

Tags: Conquest | Conquest Last Argument of Kings | Weaver Courts | TLAOK