Some Persian horse archers

OK, the cavalry mould is still proving a pain... but the horse archers are doing well. The first unit is now painted - and though I hadn't particularily intended more I might finish up basing more as cavalry for early armies... might even do a couple more as light cavalry units and designate them as Parthian...

I did a couple extra because I wanted to compare two different styles of tunic - the (earlier period) spotty version and the later one with the broad stripe down the centre of the tunic. However, a quick look at the Osprey 'The Persian Army 560-330BC' by Nick Sekunda and Simon Chew suggested plain tunics so... I left them plain!

So this is the horse archer with a plain tunic.

At this point it's perhaps worth doing a comparison. The two on the left are the original javelin/bow/shield armed figure. Next to that one with two javelins/short spears and the horse archer. These are the only figures that 'made the cut' onto production moulds though the double-armed javelin/bow figure is on a Tiranti mould.

Another view. A simple arm swap produces a very effective conversion!

 Whenever I do conversions of this type I keep thinking ' how much more could Greenwood and Ball have achieved with this range'. I've probably more than doubled the total number of Garrison 20mm Ancient figures with relatively little effort - don't know why Greenwood and Ball themselves didn't do some of these back in the 70s!

Some Garrison Parthian cataphracts

Though they'll do as Seleucid, Sassanid, Late Roman and anyone else that used cataphracts...

A couple of years ago I modified the Sarmation cataphract by removing the bow case and replacing it with a sword or mace. The intention at the time was to use them in my Seleucid army and I painted up 4 figures to see how they looked. Roll forward a couple of years to now and I've just finished another 16 to enable me to cover the cataphracts needed for a DBA Parthian army.

Comparing the two it's easy to see that my present batch has been painted to a far simpler standard than the originals - for example, armour plain chain mail rather than chain mail dry brushed over a black base.

This picture and the next clearly show the difference in painting style!

At some stage soon I'll do a second unit - the figures are just sitting there at the moment and looking at me...