Friday 29 May 2020

28mm conversions! Lakhmid Arab cavalry (Sassanid allies)

Hello guys,

I have been trying to include a little unit of Lakhmid cavalry to my Sassanid Persian army of III-VI centuries since 2017, but without success, due to the lack of appropriate miniatures, Until now (imho).

The Lakhmids were an Arab (Nestorian Christian) kingdom of southern Iraq with al-Hirah as their capital, from about 300 to 602 AD. They were generally but intermittently the allies and clients of the Sassanian Empire, and participant in the Roman–Persian Wars.

In the battle of Dara, and later in Callinicum (533 annd 534 AD) they fought in great numbers (roughly 5000 men, mostly mounted) as horse archers, regular cavalry and some camel riders.





The miniatures themselves are the following:



I decided to use a mixture of Gripping beast plastic Arab heavy cavalry, and Armorum & Aquila Sassanids horse archers in armor. There is also a metal javelinman cut in half and converted into swordsman with bow.


The plastic kit is quite versatile, I used the horses provided in it for all miniatures, and the lower half of the riders for a couple of miniatures, but I cut and sanded the stirrups in order to eliminate them
(they would appear a century later )


The plastic bodies are nice, with lamellar armor, perfect for this project, as I have seen depictions of Lakhmids using it.






example of Lakhmid cavalry in videogame "Attila Total War", just for painting inspiration, but showing an interesting variety of equipment.



Also some heads are suitable for Lakhmids, like the plastic Sassanian style helmet, or the metal helmet with a cloth surrounding it (to prevent the heat in the metal helmet). It seem in that era turbans were not used, so I avoided turbans and other stuff more proper to the crusades era (like muslim curved swords or later types quivers for arrows etc).


In this image of Spanish magazine "Desperta Ferro" you can see a Muslim warrior (left) fighting a Sassanid champion (right), although is a century later than battles between Belisarius and the Sassanids, the equipment probably was very similar, I am referring to the clothed metal helmet of the Arab.

this guy is a Sassanid body (Sassanid provided most of the equipment and weapons of Lakhmids) with an Arab head, with a similar helmet of the previous illustration and screenshot of the videogame "Attila Total War".


This well equiped horse archers is similar to my noble or officer :


Finally, a more modest warrior:







I will additionally use Sassanid shields with its transfers by littlebigmen studios.




I found this banner on the internet, it seems it belonged somehow to Lakhmid Arabs, but I am by no means sure of that... I will not use it becuase the origin of the information is not known to me.





Finally, you can see here, in the good old Warhammer Ancients Battles supplement, a brief description of the Lakhmids in Wargames, as they appear in several rule sets and army lists as "Arab cavalry" and other similar names.





I hope you like it!



Sunday 24 May 2020

Aventine's 28mm Sassanid Elephant

Hi there,

A year before starting this blog I painted a Sassanid elephant from the excellent Aventine Miniatures Sassanid range, I have taken new pics of the elephant these days, and now it is finally in the blog, where it deserved to be.

This unit is one of the center pieces of my growing Sassanid Army for Impetus and/Hail Caesar... The army is composed by miniatures from A&A, Aventine and Gripping Beast.
It is a metal Elephant, and  I am very pleased with the sculpt and the finished result of the paintjob 
(it was painted partly with airbrush).

The Sassanid shield transfers are Little Big Men Studios, the best transfers I have ever seen. The shield in the ground is hand painted, a late Roman design belonging to "Lanciarri Seniores"

I hope you like this little jumbo, soon I will post a Savaran/Clibanarii unit I am currently painting, and a post showing the whole army.

Cheers!

















Saturday 16 May 2020

Belisarian Bucellarii: Early Byzantine elite cavalry

Hi guys,

Two years ago, I painted a test model of a Bucellari of Belisarius, an elite cavalry knight of VI c. AD, suitable as a clibanarii/clibanarius too.  And two weeks ago, I decided to finish the unit!

These miniatures represent the elite of the early Byzantine armies, Bucellarii, armoured cavalrymen, trained to fight with composite bow, small shield and long Kontos lance, like the Clibanarii.
General Belisarius had a personal guard, and almost personal army of Bucellarii, which in the mid-6th century,  numbered 7,000 at its peak.

The bucellarii of Belisarius fought battles against Sassanid Persian like Dara and Callinicum, and against Vandals, Ostrogoth, Franks and Visigoth in the West,  or Slavs in the Balkans.

Meanwhile Aventine Miniatures is designing and sculpting its own version of these troops, I decided to use the very nice sculpts of Wargames Foundry Miniatures,  Late Roman and Arthurian ranges, I got my inspiration from Wargames Foundry painting guide book (the second book they did) where there is an article about converting Late Roman Clibanarii into Belisarian Byzantine Bucellarii, by master Kevin Dallimore. So with my (very) limited scupting skills and miniatures available, I made a unit of Bucellarii, following Mr Dallimore's examples and instructions.

I am very pleased with the result and colour selection, Foundry's Arthur is now my own version of Belisarius.  The banner is just a photo of the banner depicted in the mentioned book, printed and painted in some parts, as I am terrible at freehand painting...

Most horses are Foundry half barded or armoured horses, while a couple of them are Old Glory's, while the lances are metal with a plastic Warhammer pennant glued on it.

They are based for Impetus/Hail Caesar.

I hope you like them!





some close ups :










Tuesday 5 May 2020

Warhammer: Foot Reiksguard finished


Hello mates,


I managed to finish my foot Reiksguard unit for my Warhammer Empire army (or Oldhammer Empire), it is 10 men strong, I had previously show to you in this blog 6 of these guys, but in the last week I finished 3 more, I painted the flag bearer some months ago but did not take any photos of him.

I used the flag provived in the book about painting miniatures in 'eavy metal style, by Mc. Vey.
As you can see, I tried to reproduce here the look of the old school painting of the nineties,  The foot Reiksguard in red and blue clothes, with red and white feathers.

The shields are airbrush painted with a skull transfer overpainted.








Some pics of the command, sorry about the quality of the pictures.