Xyston Takabara

 Earlier this summer I accidentally ordered some Persian Takabara infantry from Xyston, as part of a valiant effort to get value for money out of the postage costs of buying one piece of 15mm artillery from them (which you may have already seen ...).

This first photo shows their backs, as that is where most of the arty stuff is visible, as I did them with a base coat of GW Contrast, and then added double-spots with Army Painter fanatic colours - which didn't run into the Contrasts, much to my relief.

These are great little figures, and even better with LBMS transfers on their shields - although with 4 different sizes and shapes of shields and transfers, each of which is only slightly different, matching them up is a little tricky! 

Because the transfers might not always go on the right shields, its really important with these I found to blend in the edges of the transfers with paint - which I have done with all of the ones here. 

It proved a perfect excuse to get my Wet Pallette out again to do the blending, and a good self-justification for buying some of the ArmyPainter 6-part "triads" as well to blend an exact match for the LBMS transfers too. 

These guys are especially good IMO, with a base of Mantis Warrior Green with Pure Red and Daemonic Yellow dots. 

You may notice that a couple of the archers here are wearing Early Persian ceremonial dress - and are in fact Museum Z-sculpt figures, as it turned out I needed 12 archers to give each base 2 "support" shooters as well as the 4 spear/axe/sword armed troopers.

Anyways, I am really pleased with how they came out - there are some more photos of them in the Photo Gallery on this site.