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| No idea why this figure wasn't made slightly differently and put into service with the Carthaginian range but... |
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| Nice figure though and this unit will act as the light cavalry component of my Garrison Romans. |
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| And here's one I made earlier. Might try cutting away the quiver and shield detail to convert it into a Carthaginian Numidian. |
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| Another Roman cavalry unit, REC4. After this I'll do a unit of REC3 and 5 so that I've got a unit of all the Garrison cavalry figures. |
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| An earlier picture of this figure... |
So getting on quite well with the Romans - this phase needs a couple of units of light infantry and two units of cavalry to be comple, but the army itself will still need more auxilia and, possibly, another unit of REC4. Another possibility would be to give them a dedicated unit of Sarmations as well.
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| Slowly getting on with the Roman cavalry. |
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| I'm treating these as Guard cavalry - this element is the general in purple. |
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| While this lot are from the unit. |
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| The entire unit... |
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| Not great photos I have to admit |
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| Here's one I painted and photographed earlier. About 20 years earlier... |
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| Officer |
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| Standard bearer |
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| And REC6 itself |
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| And another one I painted earlier... |
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| Most of the classical range horses don't have any markings on the base. This one does and is RECH6! |
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| Originally this was going to be a post on the unit I just finished... then sort of extended things a bit. With the exception of the officers and standard bearers they are all PEC2, Cavalryman with spear and bow in case, unarmoured or conversions of PEC2. |
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| The first lot are ones loosely based on the style of dress shown in 'The Persian Army 560-330BC' by Nick Sekunda and Simon Chew. For convenience I think of them as 'Persian National Army'. |
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| The rest include some of the original figures plus others just representing generic Persians and Bactrians. |
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| So this is the unit I've just painted. Sometimes, I just have to paint Persians. For some reason I didn't do standard bearers for this unit (or the unit of horse archers I'm currently painting). |
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| The strange thing is neither this figure or the horse archer were ever intended to 'production' figures... and it shows with these. The right hand is about as crude as I've ever done... definitely for my use only! |
The last major Persian Review was in 2020 Since then I've done quite a lot with the Persians including Xerxes army (including cavalry), the early robed cavalry, and of course the Late National army. With all that, I thought it might be an idea to do a Review of my Garrison Persian cavalry...
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| This is the cavalry, chariots, camels, war wagons and elephants... |
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| In 2020 the mounted forces included 314 cavalry, 18 camels and 14 chariots/war wagons. |
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| Today it's 501 cavalry (174 light, 321 heavy/medium), 17 chariots (two of them are general's chariots), 3 war wagons, 36 camels and 3 war wagons! |
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| War wagons, elephants and later cavalry. I've included the Sassanid elephants here for two reasons - firstly, the crew are Garrison 25mm Persians anyway, and it's unlikely that there will be a Sassanid army Review any time soon. |
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| Up to strength with robed early cavalry - one guard, three line units. I keep thinking of painting up Assyrian cavalry as early Persians mounted on unarmoured horses - already done that with some Minifigs 'S' Range Assyrians and it works quite well. |
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| Persian camel corps - Cyrus the Great's with towers, some Arab conversions for Xerxes, plus a unit of 'normal' Garrison camels. Which means I still need to do a unit with the other Garrison camel figure! There are another 6 Arab camels lying around somewhere... |
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| A view of the right flank. Scythed chariots, various light and heavy cavalry including some I got from Harry. The chariots are the 'new' ones made since 2020. |
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| Part of a back row consisting of about 200 cavalry - 150 heavies and 50 lights. Looks quite impressive on the table! |
So that's pretty much where the Garrison cavalry force is at at the moment. Still a way to go but I'm getting there.
The cavalry figures offer a lot of different possibities as far as weapons go, though the original catalogue generally specified weapon and whether the horse was barded or not. There was also an oddity as far as the horses go...
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| MEC1 Lance, crested helmet, barded horse. |
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| MEC2 Knight plain basinet with banner, unbarded horse |
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MEC3 Battle axe, closed plumed basinet unbarded horse
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| MEC5 Squire open basinet carrying forked banner (Knight Bachelor) barded horse |
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| MEC6 Knight horned helm with barded horse |
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| MEC7 Knight crested basinet with barded horse |
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| MEC9 Man at Arms spear and shield |
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| MEC10 Mounted crossbowman |
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| Banners |
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| MEC1H Barded horse |
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| CC2H. Which should be a Carthaginian horse - quite simply, the Carthaginian horse was converted but the number under the base wasn't changed! Should cause confusion if anyone tries to id one of these! |
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| MEC5H - Same horse as CC2 though base has been changed to the 'correct' number! |
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| MEC6H |
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| MEC7H |
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| GC1H Another example of a conversion where the number on the base hasn't been changed. A lot of Garrison horses were based on other horses - makes sense, no point in creating completly new masters every time! |
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| MEC9H. Note these horses are just the masters I have - the mould book lists different horses for each figure. However - mould R103 lists 10 each of horses MEC4H, MEC5H, MEC6H, MEC7H,MEC3H, MEC9H and MEC10H. I seriously doubt any mould could hold 70 figures... |
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| Again, I have got a new master mould of these. |
This is another part of the consolidation process. Generally, Garrison figures from a particular range were spread across lots of moulds - not easy to cast! Not sure whether the infantry will follow on new moulds, have to see - I've got masters for all of them, though a couple of the Confederate artillery seem to be the same figure as the corresponding Union figures. What I do intend to do is photograph the whole range and put them on Pages - update, Union infantry and cavalry have been.
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| These are the figures as they could fit on a new mould - obviously Pete will fit them differently to this! Not sure when this lot will be sent off, may even do it in January. |
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| The Confederate mounted figures. Note CCWS2, listed as Robert E Lee. That's how it's identified on the box, personally don't believe it, not with that cigar hanging from it's mouth... I'll probably do a bit of 'reidentifying' on this one! |
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| CCWS1 Mounted Colonel. Note all the figures have been put on the Colonel's/General's horse because ...(see last entry!) |
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| CCWC2 Officer |
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| Listed as CCWS2, Robert E Lee. Don't believe it - to me it has to be Grant! Which is UCWS2. |
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| CCWC1 Trooper with sabre |
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| CCWC3 Standard bearer |
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| CCWC4 Trumpeter |
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| The Union mounted troops. Note 'UCWS2' -I'm going to call that CCWS2 Robert E Lee in future because I think it has been misidentified in the past! |
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| UCWC1 Trooper with sabre. |
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| UCWC2 Officer |
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| UCWC3 Standard bearer |
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| UCWC4 Trumpeter |
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| UWS1 Colonel mounted |
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| UCWS2 General Grant mounted. Except as far as I'm concerned (and will describe it in future) CCWS2 Robert E Lee. |
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| Now for the silly bit. It was after I'm photographed all the figures on the officer's horse (actually the horse for CCWS1,2, UCWS 1, 2) that I realised I had the box of Masters on the table... so could have used the 'correct horses... These are, in order, Horses 1,2,3 and 4. A couple of them are a bit damaged. |
