15mm Arab Light Horsemen

 My 15mm Arab armies have been chugging along for many years, making do with some Lancashire Games Light Horse Javelinmen from their Sudan / Mahdist range. 

They have done sterling service but are not the best figures out there, and also suffer from rather spindly spears and swords, so I have finally decided to replace them with some Forged in Battle Arab cavalry. 

These are pretty straightforward figures, typical FiB which take contrast paints very well - especially on the horses - and have robust metal spears (aka arguably a bit too thick but they are very unlikely to break in action)

The pack of 12 (old sizes pre Dec 2025!) had a mix of 6 short spears, 3 commanders and 5 long spear riders plus 12 horses. These are the short spear guys.

And these are the "lancers" with a commander figure too.

I've done most of them with a simple paint job, using contrast paints on the horses, ArmyPainter Leather Speedpaint on the reins (as I find it both works and sort of self-blacklines too).

The white is a white base coat, a layer of Army Painter Holy White, and then normal white paint that leaves bits ofthe Holy White (aka grey wash) visible in places underneath that are folds in the cloth. 

All in all an upgrade on my old horsemen, and a simple but effective set of figures for tabletop use.

  

Forged in Battle Byzantine Cavalry - Part 5

 With teeny-tiny shields, and then slightly larger shields having been ticked off, its now time for the larger almost-Roman-era shields to appear in this ongoing series of Forged in Battle Byzantine cavalry. 

The lance-armed amongst the following chaps are from WE-BE03 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Kavallarioi Lancers, with paints etc being done as per the information in the first post in this sequence. 

FiB tend to include more riders than horses in their packs, so typically you get 12 horses but 2-3 extra riders, in the shape of officer / commander types. This means a lot of included commanders !

This shield has come out pretty well IMO - it is a flat white base coat with Yanden Yellow sloshed all over it, and a red rim applied in real paint - possibly Vallejo Scarlet? The fairly half-hearted shield design was done using a red AK paint pen 

The archers are from WE-BE04 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Kavallarioi Bow

Pretty much all of the shield "patterns" were done with the AK paint pens - worth noting how well and how clearly the yellow design on a red background at the back left of this formation (as you look at them) has some out, as often yellows do fare away on a darker background.

The final trache of cavalry from this painting batch is up in a few days time. 

Forged in Battle Byzantine Cavalry - Part 4

 In the 4th tranche of photos of my newly-minted Forged in Battle Byzantines come some even more bow-tastic horsemen, armed with more bows than lances this time.

The idea of basing them up as 2+1 in this way is to allow me to represent the lower quality units in the Byzantine military panoply - the more bows per base, the lower the quality of the unit. 

All paints etc as per the first post in this sequence.

As previously, the archers are from WE-BE05 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Hyperkerastai (Bow), with lancers from WE-BT07 Middle Byzantine (Thematic) - Prokousatores (Lance & Bow Armed).

I didn't do anything design-wise with these shields - as they are meant to be lower quality troops they just get given a basic shield from the armoury (and the pose of the lancer figure in the centre of each base means you can hadly see the face of the shield anyway).

More to come soon.

Forged in Battle Byzantine Cavalry - Part 3

The third tranche of FiB cavalry now hits the screens, with some actual lance and bow armed riders this time to pad out the non-bow-armed "lance-and-bow" cavalry from earlier this week! 

These are a mix of two packs - WE-BT07 Middle Byzantine (Thematic) - Prokousatores (Lance & Bow Armed) for the lancers, and archers drawn from WE-BE04 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Kavallarioi Bow and WE-BE05 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Hyperkerastai (Bow).

The shield designs (using the word "design" somewhat laughingly..) are hand-drawn using the AK paint pens. They have fairly soft fibre tips so even now, after fairly limited usage, I am unsure whether they will have retained enough sharpness in their nibs to allow me to recreate these rather lacklustre attempts at a Chi Rho design.

And here are the chaps with their sword-waving commanders as well. 

More cavalry incoming soon.

Forged in Battle Byzantine Cavalry - Part 2

This is the second tranche of new FiB Byzantine cavalry, following on from the set I posted last week. 

This handful of figures are a mix of sword-armed officers plucked at random from various packs, with the lancers being from the pack WE-BT07 Middle Byzantine Thematic Prokousatores which are listed as being "Lance & Bow Armed" on the FiB website. 

These lance-armed figures however don't actually seem to have bows!

With this mix of figures I envisage using these either as two distinctive units (with no actual "shooting"  bowmen) or as commanders for mixed bow/lance armed units equipped with the same sized shields.

Paints etc are the same as listed in the previous post, with the fairly unambitious shield designs being done by hand (as if you couldn't see that anyway!) 

More of these figures - this time with added bowmen - to come shortly.  

Forged in Battle Byzantine Cavalry - Part 1

With my rather tired and aged Essex Byzantine cavalry having been succesfully eBay'ed in the middle of last year I had been in the market for some new spiffy Byzantine cavalry for some time, and so at the Warfare show in November I picked up a load of packs of Forged in Battle Byzantines of various types. 

My aim was to create a set of cavalry which would cover the "lance and bow" options for most of the huge span of Byzantine history, adding to the two dozen horsemen from the FiB ranges that I already had painted up some time before (Early Byantine lancers painted last year, and some even earlier Late Roman lancers painted in 2023), and the 18 refurbished/reshielded "kite shield" cavalry for the Middle and Late period which had survived my Essex cull as well.

This would mean taking a few liberties with shield sizes and the like, but my theory is always that the armour and equipment of these sorts of guys would not quite be as regimented or consistent as some of us may like to think, so using stuff slightly out of period is not really that bad as long as the vibe is correct.  

I also fired up this new 10" Puluz LED Light Box, which I ordered off of eBay after my old cheap one collapsed!

It seems really good so far, much more robust than my old one, and so if you fancy one yourself and order via this link eBay will even pay me a few pennies in commission - which I guess is better that all this nonsense going behind a paywall!

This combination of new figures and new photographic kit has delivered up a large number of sets of photos, which I'll endeavour to post up over the next couple of weeks when I get a chance.

To start with, here are some cavalry made up mostly from Forged in Battle's WE-BE02 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Boukellarioi Heavy Cavalry set, with a few archer figures mixed in from WE-BE04 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Kavallarioi Bow.

These have mostly been done in Contrast paints, with a mix of GW and Warlord Games flavours on display. 

From memory the paints are:

• The horses are Aggaros Dunes, Snakebite Leather, Black Templar,Skeleton Horde (all GW) plus some Holy White (Warlord). The straps are all Warlord Hardened Leather. 
• Blazes and socks were added to the horses using a "Flat White" AK paint pen, which was very good for these sorts of additions, whilst not being as good for really fine detail as I had originally hoped. 
• I also used the pen to touch up some of the white clothing on these guys, which otherwise was done with Warlord's new Fanatic range Matt White.
• Armour was an experiment using Warlord's Enchanted Steel contrast (Speedpaint) on a white undercoat. It did come out a bit inconsistent in hue over the various painting sessions for these, which suggests it needs to be really well shaken before use.
• I then did some post-varnish drybrushing with Warlord Fanatic Gunmetal to give them a bit of shine on the chainmail and spear points, as the Enchanted Steel is quite grey on its own. 
• Spears and bows are my go-to colour of Vallejo 70.856 Ochre Brown
• The red clothing is Warlord Speedpaint Blood Red, or GW Blood Angels Red - they are essentially the same I think, especially at 15mm scale. 
• The blue on the serpent banner will be Frostheart, a GW contrast paint that is really striking. 
• The green shields are Mantis Warrior Green (GW). The contrasts generate a lot of depth and interest on these small flat surfaces I find.
• The more boring green quivers are Militarum Green (GW), with some in Frostheart with bits picked out in Vallejo Violet 70.960. 
• It's a bit OTT for quivers and bowcases, but going big on these bits it makes an otherwise dull view of the model a bit more interesting - and as I hope to mostly see them from the back as they advance and crush my opponents I feel justified in going a bit off-piste on the rear view of the figures from time to time!

More cavalry to come soon..

    

Refurbished Hittites

The epic task of selling off our late clubmate Clive's collection (on behalf of his family) was not 100% succesful. A rather battered looking Hittite army, presumably bought for DBM or DBMM, resolutely refused to tempt any of the people I offered it to - presumably the near total lack of chariot wheels and crew, and the 50%+ lack of even chariot bodies to accompany the vast numbers of horses was somehow off-putting!

Rather than consign it to the recycling pile however, I decided to take it on as a project, and contacted the nice folks at Essex as I know they have sold separate components in the past. 

They were happy to supply me with horseless chariots and crew, so after a lot of soaking-off of the robust original bases, a full rebasing, and the addition of some new, fully wheeled-up chariots the army has now become a pretty decent ADLG Hittite/Ugaritic force  

This is a pure-play Essex chariot, mounted on a 40mm round base to act as a General 

Both of these are the original Lancashire Games chariot bodies, some with wheels scrounged from the bits box (possibly stolen from unused Napoleonic gun carriages...) and a mix of the Essex and original Lancashire crew

Essex chariot bodies, painted in a simple GW Contrast red with white trim, with Lancashire horses and Lancashire crew 

This may well have been the only "original" chariot from the Lancashire range to survive, with even their own wheels !

Lancashire crew, Essex chariot body, Lancashire horses 

There were hundreds of these slingers from the Lancashire Makedonian range, all based as LI, which makes me suspect it was a DBMM army. They unfortunately suffer from the occasional Lancashire Games issue of very weak ankles, so I'm not sure how long they will survive. ADLG doesn't use many slingers, so I used a load of the spare ones to base up in blocks of 7-8 to use as Levy

These bowmen are very nice figures, and have robust ankles too.  I can see them making appearances in other Biblical armies as well.

I suspect these may be Essex refugees who snuck into the army - based up as Javelinmen, with a lone slinger hidden in the middle of the pack to bulk out the 8 of these figures to two bases of ADLG-appropriate numbers

These are the main body of infantry - using some bowmen to again boost numbers. The simple paint job the original painter did looks very effective, but is really just some easy-to-do dots - very effective for the effort!

The army list has some Elite bow units with Pavise, so having also found these pavises hanging around it seemed an ideal opportunity to use them.

The figures are mostly from the Lancashire Games range, and you can see a load more pictures of this army online in my 15mm figure gallery