Minifigs Persian Hordes

Bought as part of a job lot many years ago and neglected since then. I think that the ones in the lot I wanted at the time were a load of Syrian archers. I could have added a few more details to these but felt that it wasn't really worth doing - they'll do as they are!

I have quite a few of these archers - my original Minifigs army in the 70's had 60 of the things. One of the Arminians seems to have sneaked into the unit. Even so, one unit only has 6 figures in it.

Perhaps a bit of an insult to call the Arminians Hordes, but I already have one painted and one unpainted unit lying around as light infantry.

Last figures this year

As I've mentioned, once the tree goes up I lose access to my painting desk. So this lot are probably the last lot of figures I'll get finished this year. As it is, I only painted the horses - the riders were bought ready painted. I don't know whether it happens today, but back in the early 70s 'S' Range and early PB riders were moulded with saddles attached and the horses were were bare backed - so quite a few people would only buy a few horses and just swap the riders for the battle they were fighting. So these days I buy some riders that never had their 'own' horses - happily, Garrison horses usually do the job!

Figures in pretty good condition though one has lost his plum,e (me being ham fisted!)

Simple paintwork - personally, I don't think I could ever leave the shields that plain!

Bit blurred, but still shows that the Garrison horse is a reasonable fit. I didn't bother touching up the paintwork on the riders - it isn't really all that noticeable on the table.

Current phase of Indian army complete!

Done and based. Started this around the beginning of the month and have now produced:

2 x 48 medium archer units
1 x 18 strong light medium  archer unit
1 x 12 strong light infantry archer unit.
2 x 24 strong medium javelin units
1 x 12 strong light infantry javelin unit
Total 186 infantry.

(Completed) 1 x 12 man extra heavy cavalry unit
1 x 12 man light cavalry unit
2 x 12 man medium cavalry units
Total 48 cavalry (but also did 1 x 12 man Egyptian heavy cavalry unit as well)

3 x 6 man 4 crew heavy chariots.

Which is not bad for 1 month!

Looks a lot when you look directly down on them

A more normal view.

'New' medium cavalry. I've cheated a little bit. By painting them with blue saddle cloths and plumes, plus giving them cowhide shield covers, they don't look too different from Kushites. Of course, Kushites are mounted on sand bases rather than green, but...

Second unit of flower shielded infantry plus unit of light infantry added.

The archer serves three purposes - bulk line infantry, light medium as mercenary archers and standard light.

So that is effectively the Indians complete apart from a new crew for the 2 horse chariots - another 10 figures and that's it. Once I've painted them I'll do the full army review.

More Indians - javelins

Done (but haven't based) the unit of javelinmen.

Same shield type as for the chariots, basically quick paint job apart from that - background is light green which doesn't really show on the picture.

I've also done a few figures to act as officers for units - could (should?) have given these standards, it would be easy but the idea of this army is speed rather than quality so didn't happen.

Next lot up is another archers unit. I have also got a cavalry unit being undercoated - but I've cut off the (can't describe it, the front rolled part of the headband?). The figures have been put on Garrison horses and will be joining my Saitic Egyptian army as heavy cavalry!). This leaves me with 36 earlier cavalry riders with thick javelins and about 30 later ones with (mostly broken) thin javelins. These will probably provide another 2 units of Indian medium cavalry and a Saitic light cavalry unit. Need more horses.

Also to do are another 24 javelins - probably as a 12 figure LI unit and 12 figure LMI mercenary  javelin unit. Still to be decided.

Indian 4-horse 6-crew chariots.

So, at 6 days three chariots took twice as long as that load of infantry and cavalry - though to be fair I have based them.

Mainly because I took a bit more care and also added more detail to them.

Plus it does represent 18 people and 12 horses - takes a lot more than 2-horse 2-crew chariots.

View of the crew - shield designs total fantasy but look good. I may end up doing a javelin unit with a similar shield design.

Likewise the chariots - pure fantasy but I like them!

Painting some Indians

Been busy last few days... lots of Indians archers and cavalry sorted, still more to do. One thing about Indians - wargames paint the flesh in all different shades ranging from flesh to black. The ones I've been doing to match the army I got from Harry use Vallejo medium flesh; for the ones I'm doing now I've painted brown to give a range of skin tones.A quick search shows they were given their brown spray nearly 3 years ago!

70 odd archers and 24 cavalry so far. Not bad for about 5 days work.

Extra heavy cavalry had already been started and were finished using the same flesh colour as the 'main' army.

Light cavalry mounted on Garrison horses - I've got a lot of Minifigs Indian horses but I'm keeping most of them back for chariots. Light cavalry rather than mediums - already got a couple of units of medium cavalry, will no doubt be painting more!

Infantry very simple basic wargames figures , no frills and quite roughly painted.

Still got a lot of poor quality painted figures to sort.

However, at the moment concentrating on getting more unpainted figures done.

One thing is that I haven't done an Indian army Review since I bought the original army, just various chariots and elephants as they were added. So probably do a full Review when I've got more figures painted and based.

One shot wonders

Back in my wargames heyday one of the 'gimmic' armies were the Seleucids. If you look at the 1977 WRG Army Lists, Seleucid armies could field Asiatic archers, 'Irregular D' MI bow@1 point - 20 to 75. The same army list  Late Achaemenid Persian army could field Subject race archers 'Irregular D' LMI bow @ 1point - up to 50. Which meant you couldn't use the same unit in both armies - very unfair. Anyway, as Irregular units could be up to 50 strong, and as command points were 25 per unit, lots of armies had a 50 strong unit of cheap archers that would basically fire once but run away if challenged. They had their uses.

In the early days my levies were based on the S Range Mede archer - 50 of them, of course. However, I soon followed the trend, got rid of most of my S Range figures :( - a couple of hundred of the things overall - and replaced the levy with what was now becoming the 'standard' - PB24, Syrian Archer. I only bought 30 of them though and used them as MI in my Seleucid army - the Achaemenid force I fielded was early.

There must be thousands of these things out there and in recent years I've been quietly acquiring them - usually as part of other purchases. It then became possible to start thinking about the whole levy situation again - though of course I have done this at times in the past, for example.

So I've been putting all the 'near right' figures together, mainly painting hats, bows and quivers so they more or less look compatible, and put it together.

I'm ignoring the MI option, LMI/Irreg Bw are already complete. This leaves LI and Hordes. LI in a couple of lists are an option instead of LMI. I had already acquired a dozen; I decided to double this. Meanwhile, Hordes - can have up to 20 elements of these in DBX, 100 figures of which I already had 30/6 bases, so double this up and do another 6 bases - should do for now.

132 figures looks impressive but... WRG in those days would need to be 4 units, 100 points. Figures 1 point each, grand total 232 points - and a WRG army was between 900-1500 points! Cheap, but not very effective.

This shows the clear difference between the later version in front and the slimmer less detailed first version behind.

Stance is another difference - facing directly forward the later version is easier to put on bases compared to the shooting angle of the earlier one.

Meanwhile, still got some that have been stripped/are being stripped, no doubt I'll get more... at some stage may even get round to the MI option!

Persians and Dahae

Originally I was going to do these as two posts but they're all horse horse archers that fought for the Persians so...

Originally Assyrians, these make excellent Persians - S Range Assyrians on early PB horses. I can't do scale armour as well as I used to though.

One reason I went for Persians is that the helmet design is the same as an example dug up on the battlefied of Marathon.

All in all, really would like more of these conversions.

Another one of the orphan units, these early PB Dahae come from a variety of sources  though most were painted by me.

The rather complicated patterns on some of these show I painted them in the late 90s.

Or at least I painted most of them then... and finished them off a couple of days ago.

The Kushites are coming Part 1

Seemed like a good idea - Egyptian haven't had an outing in ages, likewise Kushites...

So, this one is basically a Kushite incursion into Egypt, possibly the incursion that led to the overthrow of the ruling Dynasty and founding of the Kushite 25th Dynasty. The defenders are the Amun Division.

The scenario also lets me use my ancient Airfix Foreign Legion fort. It's rather old, having bought it when they first came out, and seems to have lost it's gate, but, can't have everything.

First sign of trouble is when a cavalry patrol rides back to the fort screaming things like 'The Kushites are coming! The Kushites are coming!

Now, the fort is there more as a customs house rather than somewhere designed to stop actual armies...

I've set this one up length ways giving me a battlefield 6' long and 4' wide. The Nile forms a boundary quite simply A4 and A5 MDF sheets sprayed blue. As the battle proceeds I'll move the terrain/action up and down the table as required!

The original idea was to use my Ptah Division as the Kushites, but then thought - well, got a perfectly good dedicated PB Kushite army so...

The Kushite figures cover quite a range of 90s era Minifigs Egyptian/Blemye figures. The chariots are a reasonable paint job, infantry are mostly black undercoat and drybrushing - not sure, think the warband are actually supposed to be Old Kingdom Egyptians!

Being silly - phalangites.

Just that - being silly. Normally phalangites would be spread over several armies but couldn't resist this. This lot are totally unsorted and 'unprocessed'. So it's a mix of bases, lots of figures with no sarissa, lots 'missing' on the grounds I've just collected together the 'main' boxes...

Numbers. Harry originally sold me 250, but he had 400. When they arrived he'd sent... 400. Not all are here though. Add the 150 or so Garrison conversions I was building up - another 50 strong unit had been prepped ready for painting, cancelled when Harry's figures arrived. Then the original Macedonians and Seleucids from my 70's army.

OK, what's actually here? Lot's missing, the troops mustered have a 35 base frontage. 4 to a base, most units 4 deep, others deeper. Total about 600 phalangites (my total force is about 750-800). Total length 84"/7'.

These pictures aren't really good - but they look spectacular on the ground.

Some Minifigs Alexandrian phalangites with thinner pikes next to the start of my converted Garrison units.

The 3 units of Garrison conversions - left flank are Asiatics with trousers painted on, middle standard phalangites, right flank 'elites' - G16 Boetian pike with a longer pike!

Mainly Minifigs Successor phalangites. The unit with the bronze shield are Garrison conversions credited by Harry to Ray McGarry

 

Continuing the Harry component.

The 2 right hand units are from my original 70's army - the Alexandrian phalangites are from a 48 strong very early PB unit with the telegraph pole pikes, about 1972/3, Trivia re the extreme right Hinchliffe unit - mid 70's entered them as part of an army in the Ancients section painting competition at the National Wargames Championships and it won.  Wouln't win today and besides unkind people could point out that it was the only entry...

Early PB catalogue lists - 101+

When the PB ranges first came out they were a bit - confusing. Firstly, the Macedonian and Punic Wars figures are actually S Range. When first issued they came with an s tagged on the end of the code. Then, when the Imperial Rome range came out they simply continued from PB101 - but without the s. Later, the PB101+ figures were re badged as IR - but the codes didn't all tally with the 101 series - the IR series was quite a remodelling job.

So... saw some figures on EBay where the seller couldn't find the codes - early PB101+.  It seems to me it might be useful to have those 101+ listings available somewhere so I'm putting them on the Pages part of the blog. Meanwhile they're here as well.