Monthly Archives: January 2016

Parthian cataphracts

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Here are the Parthian cataphracts that my friend Joe painted for me.  There are two group of twelve figures each from respectively A&A miniatures and Aventine miniatures.  IMG_4094.JPG

They are awesome figures and Joe did a great job painting them up for me.  The A&A figures (the two groups in front) are a mix from their Parthian and Palmyran range of cataphracts.  The Aventine figures (the two groups in back) are from their Parthian/early Sassanid range.  I use them for eastern irregular cataphracts in a number of armies.

Here’s a close-up of the A&A figures:

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and of the Aventine figures:

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You can probably tell that the Aventine figures are a little more slender, but I don’t think it’s enough difference that you couldn’t mix them in the same unit.  I just had all the A&A ones done before I got the Aventine ones, so they are separate.

I have another couple of 12 fig groups whose bases I haven’t yet finished.  (Why do I need that many cataphracts???)

But because I have these I’ve got my older Old Glory cataphracts for sale Older cataphracts.

Joe also painted up some cataphract generals and they look nice on their round bases:

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We put our generals on round bases for ADLG generals that aren’t included in units.  It provides a distinctive easy-to-identify the generals bases.

Legio I Parthica

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A vexillation of Legio I Parthica prepared for the Persian campaign:

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My friend Joe painted these for me.  Very nice.  The figures are by A&A miniatures from their 3rd century Imperial Roman range.  The shield transfers are by LBMS including a hoplite decal placed on the banner.  It’s a centaur, the symbol of Legio I Parthica.  You can probably see it better on the close-up:

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And the other cohort:

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Sassanid generals

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I painted these figures a long time ago and have just rebased them on the round bases we are using for generals in ADLG.  They are A&A Sassanids.  These are nice figures and I wish I had them to paint over again.

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They are beautiful figures and they came out fine I suppose, but I think Persians should have more patterns on their clothes, and horse barding, etc.  I imagine I was in a hurry to get them done at the time, but maybe I was just intimidated about trying to put designs on things.

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Some Arabs for ADLG

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We had a mini-tournament for Art De La Guerre (ADLG) here over the weekend.  I used a Sassanid army and I painted up an Arab nomad ally contingent for it.  I imagine these guys are all pretty anachronistic for the 6th century AD but they are unmistakably Arab.  Maybe they’ll fit better in later Muslim armies?  First up some Black Tree Designs camel archers:

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I have one small critique to what are otherwise fine figures: there are only two camel poses.  More variety is always better you know.  But these are otherwise awesome figures, and I got great service from BTD in the US.  Every time I order from them the figures are here in less than a week.

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Hmmm.  These pictures aren’t great.  The white is very washed out in the photos but in real life there is a nice visible contrast that shows off the details of the figures much better.

In ADLG terms these are medium camels with bows.  They have some nice things going for them: they scare horses so any horses in contact with them are disadvantaged by that.  They fight well in dunes (although I didn’t see any dunes in any of my battles) and they ignore brush.  In the tournament they stood off some Goth cavalry and got the best of some Chinese ones.

They were in a command with these Perry miniatures light cavalry:

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I’m not that excited about these figures.  They turned out fine (same problem with the photography and the washout of the white) but what a pain in the 388 to work with.  I’m very tired of all the cleanup required on Perry’s metal figures.  They are just covered with vent flash.  I have an elaborate process of cleaning them up: 1) clean them up using my magnifying hood 2) prime them in light gray so I can see more and clean them up again, then 3) base coat them in black and start painting.  Even after the two step clean-up process I still find vent flash.  I was down to the last color on these and found more of it.  Amazing.

These sculpts are pretty rough by Perry standards I thought.  They reminded me of the Old Glory angular sculpts rather than what I’ve come to expect from Perry in nice free flowing lines.  But for Arab light horse, they’ll do I guess.

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In ADLG terms these are light horse with javelin.  They didn’t do too much in the game.  Skirmishers basically keep enemies occupied and they did that.

Aventine Daylami

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I’m using some of the Aventine Sassanid spearmen with Gripping Beast shields and LBMS transfers to make up a unit of Daylami.

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These figures are awesome! These are the advancing poses with guys that look like they are marching off to war. Nicely done. The heads that come with these are different than the heads that come with the guys with the spear upright pack. I’m hoping to get a bunch more of these heads to put on the guys with the upright spears. I like these quite a bit.

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Those LBMS transfers are the bomb!  There are a couple that I didn’t line up very well but I think I’ve done a good job of hiding the most egregious bits of that on the stand.  Anyone have good tips on lining up the LBMS transfers when there is no boss in the center?

So I’m not sure the guys at Aventine intended these figures for this use, but they are great.  I’m happy to finally have some infantry for my Sassanid army.