Sarmatian Heavy Cavalry

 The next set of Sarmatians from my FiB painting marathon are these "Elite Heavy Cavalry" 

Using the visual key of "an armoured horse on each base", and all-metal armoured riders, this lot have 3 lanncers on every base as well so they can be identified as being primarily hard-charging Impact cavalry.   

In fact, not just "3 lancers", but "2 upright and one at 45 degrees" lancers!

Some of the FiB "cataphract" horses have edging to the armour that can be painted to give a bit of extra colour - like the guy bottom left of this photo. 

Whilst these are all armed with lance, you can see that some of the riders are sculpted with a bow and bowcase (and arrows) on their backs - so if I am using an all-mounted-shooting army they are still legitimate troops to drop on table as a discretely identifiable set of figures (ie in one command) 

This set of 4 bases all have a bowman on each base as well as 2 lancer figures.

The archers from FiB don't have armour, but these ones do have metal helmets so they can fit in with the "Heavy Cavalry" ethos of this little set of 12 guys perfectly well. 

Again, plenty of bow cases and arrows on their backs too. 

More to come soon..

The Sarmatians Ride !

Just after FiB's rather chunky price increase (1/3 reduction in figures per pack, but no price change) hit the shelves, I managed to find a seller on eBay who was offering "full size" Forged in Battle Army Packs with the "old" numbers of figures per pack as well  - effectively making them 1/3 cheaper than buying from FiB direct. 

Having sold a rather old Khurasan Avar army on eBay earlier this year I had been meaning to replace such an army in my "Steppe tribes" collection anyway, so the combination of this and the FiB price hike/cheap deal ended up being the trigger moment for what has turned out to be a substantial purchase of 4-legged lance and bow armed Steppe tribesmen.

And here is the first tranche of a LOT of cavalry !! 

Having picked up a few extra packets of cavalry at Entoyment too (also at the old prices) I somehow ended up with well over 100 cavalry .. which meant I defaulted to production-line painting of the horses so I could bash through a load of them before even starting on the riders. 

These FiB sculpts are both great (in that they are pretty varied and dynamic) yet also they are starting to look a little tired, with some exhibiting casting lines, flash and occasionally twisted legs too. 

This however ended up being something I managed to turn to my advantege when painting so many horses in a batch, as it allowed me to adopt a technique that means I could be sloppy with the fiddly bits - the reins. 

Initially all the horses were undercoated in white, after which they were done in variety of GW contrasts (Aggaros Dunes, Gore Grunta Fur, Skeleton Horde, Temnplar Black Cygor Brown), with some greys in Army Painter Holy White - all whist trying to leave the (often hard to see) reins unpainted wherever I could. 

I then went back over all of them with a thin brush and standard white paint to vaguely (ie not all that accurately) pick out some more of the reins where they could be easily seen (not always easy on these castings), and then used either Army Painter Hardened Leather, or (for the "brown" horses) GW Contrast Miltarum Green to go over and pick out the now-white straps and reins, using these two paints to also "blackline" the reins and make them stand out against what was usually some variation of tan or brown horse flesh. 

This (I think) looks effective, and is pretty easy to do quickly - unlike, say, Essex horses where the straps and really well defined and stand out some way from the horses themselves, which requires more careful painting to not look messy.

 I also did a lot of variation in the saddle cloths - of course this is mostly hidden when the riders are on, but it is not hard to do and gives them that little bit extra pzazz if you do look closely at the finish figures.

 And here are some of them now:

These are "included commanders" - a mix of all sorts of packs of figures really.

 

My "system" for these has been to put at least one "armoured" horse on each base to denote "Elite Heavy Cavalry".

Pretty much  all of these riders have metal armour using ArmyPainter Enchanted Steel, which for this army I then toned down with a wash of ArmyPainter Dark Tone on the metalwork, as for some reason the Enchanted Steel was coming out more pale grey than usual (perhaps the heat of the last few weeks?) 

I've not gone for striped windsocks, mostly as I find they can easily ends up looking like a refugees from Finding Nemo. 

These are two bases of Medium Cavalry Archers - the lack of metal armour on the riders bodies, all three horses being unarmoured, and having a firing, bareheaded bowman on each base being the visual clues for myself and my opponents.

On the far set of horses the "self-blacklining" effect of the ArmyPainter Leather on the straps can clearly be seen. The fronts of the horses are where the casting of the reins seems to go most awry, but luckily most of the horses are "head down" so on the tabletop it's barely visible if at all. 

I've also tried to keep to a muted palette on these - mostly tans and khaki-greens with the occasional splashes of colour with a blue cloak or ed tunic here and there.

Many more to come ! 
 

Forged in Battle Late Romans

 It was only fairly recently that I realised that I didn't actually own any proper "Late Roman" legionaries. 

I've got Lorica Segmenta guys with square shields, Republican mail-clad chaps, Middle Roman half-way curved shield dudes, and some early Byzantine spearmen who have stood in for very late Romans in the past.. but none of the actual Late Roman/Patrician guys at all. 

So rectifying that became a bit of a mission, especially after I somehow acquired some Forged in Battle LBMS transfers for Late Roman Legionaries - that I of course could not bear to waste!

And, after a bit of painting and purchasing, here is the finished result:

I now have some Legionaries who, thanks to LBMS, look exactly like everyone elses!

These are mostly from the mail-clad set from FiB, with a couple of leather-cuirass guys in there - most notably the chap at the front leaning on his shield, who is IMO by far and away the best figure in any of the FiB Late Roman packs. 

I have squeezed a couple more leather guys in the rear rank, so as to get 4 bases (32 figures) of "quality" legionaries and then 16 figures of all-leather "2nd string" ones out of the two packs I bought. 

Top down view.

Here is a more simple shield - easier to blend in the transfer from a brushstroke POV, but still a little challenging in terms of paint matching, as the transfer is really very, very vibrant and none of my collection of Reds quite managed to match it perfectly.  

Once the figures have been matt varnished it looks a lot better, but if you look closely you can see the painted in edges.

These are the leather-only chaps, with a less inspiring (or less "real-looking") shield design too. They also got black crests to make them even more less imposing. 

The poses in these sets are a little underwhelming TBH, and I also found the faces to be very small, often on many of them a little too small to do my latest "blob for the nose, cheekbones and chin" face painting style - however the GW Darkoath Flesh base coat seems to pick them out almost well enough anyway. 

As there was so much Hardened Leather Army Painter Speedpaint on these, the straps were done in GW Militarum Green contrast so it would stand out against the leather armour. 

So, I now own 48 Very Late Imperial / Patrician Legionaries !

Museum Z-Sculpt Persian Immortals in Campaign Dress

 I already have a bucketload of Persians from Museum, but I had been lacking any in Ceremonial dress - so the January Sale in early 2026 was my opportunity, and my excuse was to use them to build the solitary unit of Apple Bearers for the Later Achaemenid army.

And here they are, looking suitably stylish.  This is the pack of Foot Command (2 standard bearers, 2 axemen, 2 trumpeters) all squeezed on a 40x30 base together with 4 rear-rank archers shooting overhead.

They are painted in GW Gryph-Hound Orange with Army Painter Fanatic DaemonicYellow + Royal Blue spots applied on top. 

For the standards, I just painted them in Fanatic Gold, and then gave them a wash with Dark Tone to take the edge off a little. 

Here they are with the Xyston Takabara - not too dissimilar in stature, but best they are not on the same base maybe.

As seems to be the case with many (but not all) of the Museum Z Sculpt figures, the detail on these castings was a little short of what the 3D renders on their website promise, most notably around the belts, straps, scabbards and bowcases. 

This did make them a bit harder to paint with Contrasts than they really should be - in stark contrast to the Xyston figures, where you can practically see where the sculptor has cut out and stuck on thin strips of Green Stuff to make the belts on the figures - but even so I am very pleased with how they all came out. 

There are more pics in the 15mm Gallery on my site.

 

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. 

Rubbery Barbarian Slingers

At Devizes last year I picked up some Warlord Games resin barbarian skirmishers from the bargain bucket on their stand. 

I'm not even sure if these figures are still in their catalogue, as the bright future that was supposed to be "Warlord Resin" (aka rebadged Siocast) never really took off due to, well, Siocast resin turning out to not be some form of magic new material, not being particularly cheap, seemingly reliant on one company in Spain for machinery and raw materials, and often covered in flash..

.. but hey ho, these guys actually seemed pretty nice sculpts, and I also picked them up for a bargain price - and here is how some of them have turned out. 

The chap on the far left who has just released his sling seems to be ideally suited to this resin material, as the resin is rubbery but tough - I can imagine a metal casting of this "opened up" sling being so long it might be hard to cast, and prone to stress breakages as it bent.

 

They are all on 60x30 bases for ADLG in 28mm.

They've all been done quickly and simply with GW Contrasts, and Vallejo flesh to pick out the muscles (OK, sort of..) on the bare arms and highlight their faces. 

 

I really like some of the facial expressions the sculpts have captured here 

And this guy, poking a finger at whoever he's about to hurl a slingshot at, is super! 

More fragile Camels

 I've already posted loads of photos of the Red Copper Camels that Harry @Mightllittlemen on Instagram printed for me a while ago, but here are some more, just a bit further away..  

These were printed at 90% of the "recommended" 15mm nominal scale - I made sure to glue the "threes" of them all together at the rump or neck as well to generate more stability and robustness on each base. The bases all have a layer of metal in them too for extra weight.  

As I'd already spent ages doing the last batch with a layered painting style I decided to bash these ones out a little quicker, as I suspect they will be my second-string camels (is that a thing?) that only get used when I try to put an all-camel force on table.

Irritatingly they seem to have come out pretty much the same as the ones I slaved over for hours - perhaps its my eyesight, or just the 90% thing means they are that bit further away so you can't easily see where I've been careless with the paint !

 

At 90% they did become even more fragile, and one particular design seemed to struggle to correctly print its forelegs - you'll see in the photos some of the camels have large bits of vegetation in front of them, which is covering the missing legs and also the metal pin I had to drill into their underbellys to get them to stand up. 

Here they are next to the 100% boys. 

This angle looks like it shows quite a noticable difference, but some of that may be a visual trick due to the tall spear on the larger print.

Mixed together here they seem fine to use as a mass.