Festive Persian Siege Towers...? OK, it's a stretch, but...

 OK, maybe not - but if you are prepared to stretch to a bit of Old Testament nonsense and have an Early Achaemenid Persian army you'll probably have wondered what to use for 15mm scale "Cyrus Mobile Towers" at some point in the past... and now, I may have found the answer!

Very recently Pendraken announced an MDF Siege Tower in 10mm scale, which a quick email to Leon revealed was less than 40mm wide, and so would fit on a standard DBx basing frontage - the key challenge for other towers I'd looked at in the past. 

At only a fiver a pop, I quickly ordered a couple and then set to with the wood glue to assemble the two of them. 

With Museum Miniatures releasing some new Persian Sparabara, my own Essex Persian infantry were already slated to be replaced in the new year anyway, but this project meant that some of them won a last-minute reprieve from eBay as I instead upcycled a few bases of mixed bow / pavise infantry for tower crew. 

I then added on some re-purposed Essex War Wagon horses to pull the towers (because I had them lying around with ADLG needing less wagons than previous rulesets), otherwise Museum's Draught Oxen might have been the ideal choice (although it looks like Essex "might" sell the wagon horses separately if you ask nicely too), and with the application of some printed-off "wallpaper" patterns (repeating the idea from my Assyrian Chariots of a few years ago) to give the towers a more detailed look than I could ever hope to paint and, well, Cyrus is your uncle! 

There's about a dozen crew inside each tower, and a couple on the base as well to keep the enemy away from the horses!

You can fit 2 standing Essex infantry on each of the three internal levels. I used the wallpaper on the pavises as well. 

This pattern is one of a number I've made available to download as a pdf from my site, but there are loads of images on Pinterest if you search for Persian or Assyrian Graphics.

The tower is painted in Citadel Magragge Blue - not sure if its still available but it is a nice strong dense dark blue. 

I glued the drop-down "bridge" in the open position to fit more crew in. I may add one of the Museum kneeling archers here too once I get round to buying them. 

Adding a different image on one of the front panels just about stops making the tower look like it's wearing pyjamas. I think.... 

The second tower I did in yellow, trying to blend in the yellow borders on this graphic from Pinterest. 

Here I used much more of a mix of graphics - not sure it's as effective though as the blue one. 

Part of the reason for using a mix of graphics was that the main one didn't scale down well to the smaller panels at the top of the tower.

Again, space on the drop-down bit for a kneeling archer.  

Even the 10mm ladders internally don't look too out of scale. 

This is a standard 40mm wide and 80mm deep DBx "war wagon" base.

• Get the Towers from Pendraken
• Download the Wallpaper
• Oxen from Museum
• Crew from Museum
• Crew from Essex
• Horses from Essex (maybe?)

Happy Christmas!