The Skoutatoi

If you'd been worried that I hadn't posted any pictures of Byzantines in 15mm for a couple of weeks, then worry no more, as here come the Skoutatoi for my Byantine army! 

FiB tend to chuck in a couple of extra figures into each "24" blister pack, to leave the officers and standard bearers as extras.  

I used the extras up by making a couple of bases with 5 spearmen in the front rank rather than the usual 4, with the theory that I can occasionally use these bases as "supported spearmen", or just call them even more Skoutatoi as needed, depending on the design of the army list.

Shields are of course LBMS transfers, sold to me by Forged in Battle. 

This padded armour is Warlord Games Blood Red from their Speedpaint set.

TheLBMS transfers are smaller than the shields by some margin, so these blue 'blokes face' ones I painted in with a dark blue (and also a mached red) up to the edges of the shields.

This armour is GW Aggaros Dunes contrast type paint. One of my favourite contrast colours. 

These rather odd looking shield transfers seem to be missing a bit  - possibly a cutout for a shield boss? 

Anyways, as they too didn't reach to the edge of the shield I painted in a red edge to each shield before sticking on the transfer (which already has a red edge...)

That also didn't really look right, so I then added an outer edge of yellow with an AK paint pen, which I am finding is much easier to use for touchup than a brush.

This armour is GW Militarum Green - a contrast type paint.

Viewed from above this close up you can see a load of casting lines that I perhaps should have spent more time shaving off .. but, "three foot rule" and all that I guess ?!

An extra shield transfer was cut down and used for the standard bearer. 

Forged in Battle Byzantine Infantry Skirmishers

 Now you're probably sick of seeing horses for my Byzantines, here are some pedestians! 

Yes, the Byzantine armies can often have a handful of foot slingers, archers, and javelinmen - including, in ADLG terms, some actual proper Medium Foot javelineers, and fortunately FiB do a pack of mixed javelins and slings to make up these chaps. 

The pack in question is WE-BE08 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Psiloi (Slingers (12) & Javelins (12), which has rather more slingers than is needed in ADLG, but fewer javelinmen. 

My solution was to base up a mix of Light Infantry with slings and javelins, and then to make up 3 bases of Medium Javelineers using 3 javelin figures and two slingers lurking behind them.

I've painted them in three distinct schemes, which I suspect will help as it seems likely that a slinger and a javelin light foot will be found in each of the three commands in my arm - when it gets on table eventually. 

I also didn't go with shield designs on these, partly as they are lower class troops so may not have invested as much time and effort in shield designs, but mainly as the shields ate pretty small, so it would have been too hard to do a decent design on them!

 

Newline Designs "Hittite" Chariots

Newline Designs make some of the best value (and actually, "best" by any criteria) 28mm Biblical figures out there IMO, and I have previously bought a near-full Later Assyrian army from them which has taken to the competitive tabletop on several occasions.

With a couple more events coming up this year where the Assyrians could potentially appear I have been looking at adding some 2-horse chariots to my army in order to repurpose it as an "Early" Assyrian force, getting some more usage out of the many infantry, cavalry and chariots who have done such sterling service as Later Assyrians/Sargonids over the last few years. 

Unfortunately Newline don't make "Assyrian" two horse chariots, and their 4-horse ones are so hefty that it's impossible to imagine two horses pulling them at all, never mind at speed over a battlefield... so a bit of morphing and imagination was needed as I bought a set of three "Hittite" chariots for the princely sum of just £24 to repurpose as Assyrians.

And here they are - well, almost.. 

As you can see I have used some "wallpaper" on the fronts of the cabs to make them look a bit more like my existing Assyrian troops. 

These chariots come with three crew, a driver and two spearmen. In ADLG the crew for Assyrian chariots are archers, so I have some Assyrian bowmen on order to slot into these cabs at a later date.

I elected to use Contrast paints for part of the colour scheme for these - my Assyrians are in block colours, but I do like the more washed out effect for wood grain which is cast onto the model - it reallt picks out the grain nicely.

Here you can just about see where I have magnetized the javelin-armed crew members either to the base of the chariot, or in some cases to the side walls.

The idea is to allow them to be swapped out for the Assyrian archers when they arrive, and also to use up some of the large number of rare earth mini magnets I seem to have acquired with no real plan as to how to use them over the years! 

Of course, doing it this way opens up the oppotyunity for these three to become the nucleus of a Hittite army in future as well.. which with Newline's annual sale knocking 25% off of these beasties, making them a ridiculous £6 each (compared to Foundry's eye-watering £18 per single chariot!) is a real possibility in future!

This slightly darker, more solid-paint model seems to have had some frosting on the wallpaper when the matt varnish was being sprayed, which I didn't notice as I rushed them to the lightbox. 

 

Another coat of brush-on matt varnish should hopefully fix it. 

Some very nice models indeed, and amazing value to boot!

Forged in Battle Byzantine Cavalry - Part 6

 In this rather large batch of cavalry you will already have spotted a bit of mix-and-match going on in order to make up various types of lance and bow armed horsemen. 

That process, of maxing out the "cavalry", did still leave me with a handful of spare figures to create some actual "light cavalry" - with any shortfall I may need in army design terms being made up by repurposing some of my old Essex Late Roman horse archers if required.

So, here are the dregs, sorry, the Light Horse Skirmishers and Scouts for the Byzantines!

One of the bonuses of ADLG (or indeed any DBX set) is not having to paint up "units" of lots of identical figures, and so I have gone with 3 different uniforms for these chaps to allow them to be clearly identified as beelonging to different commands on-table.   

There are various figures from WE-BE05 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Hyperkerastai (Bow), again using the same paints as in the first post in this set of 6. 

Hopefully these photos, and my witterings about painting them have been of use - if you want to look at more Byzantines these, and many other photos of other ranges, can be browsed in the 15mm Gallery on the Madaxeman website.

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.