28mm Heruls / Heruli cavalry for my Early Byzantine army

 Hello guys!

After a year without any posts about my late antiquity collection, now is the turn of a little update, a couple of bases of Herul cavalry, for my Belisarius army, based for Impetus.

My plan is to complete my Early Byzantine army of Belisarius at the battle of Dara, 530 d.c. and there was a Herul contingent commanded by Pharas "the Herulian", one of the commanders of Belisarius.

These horsemen were painted a long time ago (2014!), but never placed them on bases. Also my painting style have changed a little bit since I painted them.

Appart from being my Herul foederati, they also can be almost any generic germanic cavalry from III d.c.-VI d.c. in my opinion.

The miniatures are a mixture of Gripping Beast metals, some Crusader and Westwind.

The Heruli were often mentioned during the times of Justinian, who used them in his extensive military campaigns in many countries including Italy, Syria, and North Africa. The afordmentioned Pharas was a notable Herulian commander during this period. Several thousand Heruli served in the personal guard of Belisarius throughout the campaigns, and Narses also recruited from them. They were a participant in the Byzantine-Sasanian wars, such as the Battles of Dara or Anglon.

I used this miniatures because all the illustrations and reconstructions, like the previous one, I have seen so far, depict Heruls as (mostly) unarmored horse lancers.

In further post I will show here the complete Early Byzantine army I have so far for the battle of Dara 530 dc.

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 :

28mm Late Roman "Funditores" or slingers

Hello guys,

This weekend I managed to finish a "unit" of slingers, called "Funditores" in the "Notitia Dignitatum" I also tried to reproduce the shield design from the mentioned Late Roman document.

The miniatures are plastic Gripping Beast Late Roman infantry box, but with some minor conversions,  I changed the heads (but one, with the nice Panonnian hat) with other plastic kit and a metal head from the same brand,  and used the hands with slings from Dark Age warriors box set and some metal bucklers from Old Glory, very easy!

The miniatures are based for Basic Impetus,  not so many miniatures needed and a lot of fun! I also can use them for Hail Caesar. 

I painted them in a simple colour scheme, red and white,  more tabletop level than showcase, but it is fine enough for me... I have a tendency to paint faster when painting plastic miniatures than metal ones.  Anyway the sculpts are fine, some details are a bit soft, like the sword or "spatha".

Here you have the minis:

I hope you like them!

More Late Romans: Ballistarii (conversions involved!)

Hi guys,

Some time ago I wanted to include in my late Roman army a unit of ballistarii, or crossbows... As far as I know, there are not specific miniatures for the "rare" late Roman crossbows, so I needed some conversion work... How? well, I took 4 Psiloi of "Crusader Miniatures" Byzantine range, and substituted their heads them with Roman/Arthurian heads from "West Wind"... and voilà, sort of a Roman ballistarii.

I used as reference some Late Roman illustrations from several books (Osprey, Concord, etc...)

Now the miniatures, they are based for Impetus (well, Basic Impetus), but perfectly suitable for other games like Hail Caesar or any other flexible game that uses multibased miniatures (so not SAGA).

And now, just a test model for another simple conversion that I will cover in another post: Late Roman "Funditores" or slingers. I use Gripping Beast  plastics to convert these, very simple, and painted in a "fast" way.

Cheers!!

Sassanid Iranian horse archers for Impetus

Hello friends,

Now I bring you some more Late Antiquity miniatures, cavalry of Sassanid Persia. I already have a Sassanid army, base for Basic Impetus, and I needed light cavalry, apart from all those fancy cataphracts. 

The miniatures themselves are from Gripping Beast (riders) and Aventine (horses). I like the sculpts a lot, (much more than Gripping Beast's plastics...)  The colours I used are completely concjetural... like most Sassanid colours depicted in several illustrations out there. For the base, I wanted a more desertic look than my usual bases, although, I made a mistake and you can notice the horse base just under the sun, but I do not mind at all.

The unit is very versatile, because I can use them in their Sassanid army, but also could serve as mercenaries or eastern foederati in late Roman or Byzantine armies, specially in Belisarius army, who used Sassanid cavalry in the war against the Ostrogoths in Italy.

I hope you like this little update.

Cheers!

Early Byzantines coming !!

Hello fellows,

Some years ago, I started a project, armies of late antiquity in 28mm, I built a Sassanid army, almost completed, a Goth army (almost completed too) and a Late Roman, Patrician and Belisarian/Justinian army... the latter is my favourite, but, sadly, nobody produces proper miniatures for Justinian armies.

Inspired by venerable Warhammer Historical books, full of nice pictures of  Perry and Gripping beast miniatures I painted some samples for my upcoming Byzantines! I say upcoming because Aventine Miniatures and Footsore, have announced that range in the "near" future!

Until that moment, I have painted some units for my Late Romans that can be used for those Eastern Romans.


First, a test model for a unit of Belisarius' personal Bucellarii, as seen in one Kevin Dallimore's book, published by Foundry, with some pics of Foundry's Late Romans converted into Belisarian Byzantines... here you have my personal approach:

I also painted an "Army standard bearer"converting lightly a Foundry Cataphract, I just copied or try to emulate a photo of the book "Fall of the West" by Warhammer Ancient Armies:

Apart from those sample miniatures, I painted a "unit", based for Impetus, of Belisarian Bucellarii, using Old Glory Belisarian range. Their cavalry is not bad, but, in my opinion, the infantry is not historically accurate or even well sculpted. My inspiration was the book "Byzantium beyond the Golden Gate" from Warhammer Ancient Battles, which portrays some pictures of Old Glory figures.

Sorry for the quality of the pics...

Old Glory also produces some armoured horse archers, I think in their medieval Byzantine range, I "converted some of them using Foundry heads in order to make them look more "Belisarian" or Roman and less medieval...

I also love the sculpts of Foundry Clibanarii, so I painted a unit of "Sagittarii Clibanarii", mentioned in the Notitia Dignitatum, as a unit in the army of Egypt (I think...)  I only painted the buckler shields in the appropriate historical colours imho.  Two of the horses are Old Glory, all of them "half armored", they look Belisarian to me.

Finally, some infantry, Skutatoi or Legionaries, from Gripping Beast , painted several years ago, with a lower quality paintjob.  One officer is a converted plastic Saxon from Gripping Beast and a WestWind head.

I hope you like this project!

Cheers