15mm Fantasy Chariot racing

A few years back I played a fantasy variant with miniatures of the old Avalon Hill board game Circus Maximus. The guys putting on the game were using plain old historical chariot teams with human riders and horse teams, but using stats for the common fantasy races ( dwarves, elves, orcs, etc.)

I took it as a personal goal and challenge to see if I could find fantasy figures that would actually represent each particular race on the table. I scoured the 'net, and reviewed my stash of chariot age 15mm armies, with disappointing  results. Luckily I ran in to Splintered Light Miniatures at Historicon the following summer, and was able to special order some fantasy race specific teams and riders.

Unfortunately no one really makes a variety fantasy chariots (SLM does make an undead bones chariot), so I had to scratchbuild most of my chariots. I was able to repurpose a few historical chariots.  Another challenge was finding suitable beasts to pull each chariot. SLM had just about everything I needed.

Here's a WIP shot of some of the chariots. The grey one on the right is composed of two parts of a 20mm Churchill tank track guard (which I commandeered from my son's collection of spare parts). Other material include jewelry bits (green and bronze), 1/72 car seat (white), or completely scratch built bits.

All the chariot team harnessing was sculpted or crafted by me, either with green stuff or odds and ends of material that I had lying around the hobby room.

So, without further ado here are the finished products for the first batch...

The Sea Elves with Elk:

The Skeletons:

The Dark Elves with raptors:

The Rangers with giant weasels:

The Wood Elves with big cats:

The Orcs with wargs:

The Goblins with boars:

The High Elves with saber tooth cats:

The Dwarves with grizzlies:

The High Elves with unicorns:

The Undead with skeleton horses:

The Dwarves with polar bears:

The Sons of Horus with wingless griffons

And the complete group shot of those done so far:

I've also made up some hazards and casualty markers: