A surfeit of chariots

OK, these are the issues.

I've got  a lot of chariots, but they're not all in the right place.

Persian chariots? All over the place from about 5 incompatible sources. Assyrian chariots 3 incompatible sources.  The Persians - I can 'afford' to lose some. The Assyrians - really, they group into 3 separate forces anyway, one of which is very short of chariots. The Minifigs 'S' Range figures only came with 3 chariots:

Really, they need more. There is one (2, but I'm not touching the Indians) obvious source:

Adding these would give me a chariot force of 8 chariots. It's a viable option and one I'm looking at as the probable answer. However, that leaves 2 questions. The first is; do I leave the paintwork as it is and simply put in a new crew, or do I repaint them? The second is: who do I use as a crew? The original Assyrian chariot has an 'S' Range charioteer (conversion?) and Garrison crew. Perhaps my charioteer conversion - except he only has the short rather than full length armour?

Well, it's a couple of things to ponder about.

Slowly catching up

Redone some of the missing pictures - Byzantines, Kushites, 'S' Range Assyrians, Corinth. At some point I'll stat cancelling the corrupted ones and just gradually do new versions.

Possibility of some 'S' Range Ancients production in future...

There have been a few times in the past when when I've raised this with no reply. This time, responding to 'Any chance of either bringing out early series PB or 'S' range figures,' I received 'I haven't come across any S range in molds but I THINK I have some masters.
> Which code and how many would you need?' and later 'we have no plans to re-do S ranges but would mold some up if someone wanted 100+ over, say 2-3 codes
and we had the masters|!!'

Well, I can provide some masters, also when given an idea of what I would be interested in I got 'WEll, that sounds worth doing then
Remind me in about a month to see if I've found them'

Soooooo........

'Possibility' of production in limited sense then, so if anyone is interested might be an idea to let me know so I can forward the info to Dave Ryan - I doubt he would want lots of people emailing him but if I can give him some idea of the potential, who knows, 'we have no plans to re-do S ranges' might become 'Yes, it's worth doing.'

PB23s, Armenian archer

Part of the unpainted figures I got in the summer were a dozen Armenian archers. These were a troop type that I didn't have in my original army, so it's a very useful addition. Yesterday I undercoated them, today I painted them...

12 figure units painted in plain, rather drab, basic style, quite quick to churn out really.

'S' Range Egyptian chariots finished.

At least, the first of the unpainted squadrons is finished. All it needs is basing. I'm using them in my Egyptian standard 4 chariot squadrons. Happily, the ones they are supplementing are also in 4 chariot squadrons.


 My format is one chariot with a 'noble' archer to 3 chariots with a standard armoured archer.

 

  
'Harry's' chariots,  'S' Range Egyptians  have the horses painted differently to mine, the crews are darker skinned and I've done mine with the archer firing forward. However, the  chariot body seems to be the major influence and they are very similar.

Overall, they should fit in well. Only another couple of squadrons of these to go.

An Earlier Persian Army

This is basically the Persian army Pre-Garrison. Although I still have all these figures, quite a few haven't made it into the current Review.

This is the basic army as it stood about 8 years ago. It probably represents it's lowest point. Many of my earlier figures still hadn't been resurrected or repaired, others were MIA, quite a few of the subject races simply weren't subject any more.

At least the Great King was still in one piece then. I really must repair him. As I've previously noted, I took photos, few days later I dropped him.

 My favourite unit was (possibly still is) a unit of Lamming Sassanids converted to Persians.

I will confess I like the deer motif - should have used on a Scythian unit though.

The two units of Garrison 25mm infantry are survivors - I used to have a couple more at one time.

 Lamming provided a few units, including more Sassanids such as these light infantry archers and javelinmen. It was a time of quite nicely painted shield patterns, just the standards were a bit large and... well, the parrot on top was at least original.

It's an interesting reflection of how armies change over the years, even if this particular force was far from complete.

The Grand Review - first photos.

I'm calling this first photos because they're not all that good. I haven't got lights set up so they've literally been taken with a hand held camera using the camera's own flash.

Also... having taken a load of photos I found that I'd forgotten a load of cavalry. About 50, including 2 Guard units! So back I trundled... more photos, counted up and wondered why so few chariots... found them, didn't have room for them so they joined the King's inspection retinue...

Also realised that there are serious gaps in the photo record... need more photos...

 The first picture shows the army taken from the left flank. Quite a bit of the left flank figures are missing and it only shows three of the lines of figures.

 This one taken from the right flank includes the front line of light cavalry - no space to include them in the other lines. This photo was taken before I realised I was missing a few chariots so the Royal Guard is smaller than in the first photo!

 The Great King preceded by his Guard cavalry and followed by some of the chariot force. The figures at the bottom of the picture show the 'Royal Army'  of Medes and Persians, to the King's left are the troops of Phrygia, Lydia and the cities of Asia Minor. The Persian cavalry directly to his left are presumably there help ensure they behave themselves!

Three of the Immortals Regiments. Several didn't make it to the Review... it was only after I started processing the photos I realised the back 'S' Range figures have swapped Regiments!

The left flank of the Immortals is secured by several quite powerful Mede, Persian and general sparabara units.

 The extreme right flank of the second line is the Scythian contingent - a unit of Sparabara surrounded by light cavalry.

 Just behind them lots more cavalry, mostly heavies, and the start of the Persian and similar levies.

The right flank of the fourth line again includes lots of cavalry.

 This is the part of the line being passed by the Great King but also includes the fourth line. The two contingents on the back row are the Indians and the Thebans.

Another shot of the third and fourth rows up to the extremme left flank. Basically, Thebans at the back, Phrygians at the front covered by half a dozen chariots.

These are the Persian (etc) levies  in the middle of the army.

Right at the back of the army and jammed between the Indians and the right flank cavalry are the rather less than dependable Assyrian and Egyptian levies.

Size wise, I did make an attempt to count them. The second row includes about 524 infantry, the third row 405 and the back row 262 - a total of about 1181 infantry. I didn't sort out the the numbers of cavalry in each row, but the total was about 370. There are also 5 elephants and 24 chariots. Several units of infantry and cavalry didn't make, specially some of my still-to-be-sorted Immortal units, nor have I included any of the roughly 200 infantry, 180 cavalry and 8 chariots of the Charles Grant Persian contingent.

This is the Hinchliffe component of the Grant army - it represents about half the cavalry and three quarters of the infantry, the rest being Garrison. I need to get a few photos of the entire collection together.

I don't think I'll ever try this exercise again.

Persian army - Grand Review teaser

Having spent ages redoing all the individual parts of the Persian army - well, haven't finished yet - I thought I'd like to see them out en masse.  Haven't sorted lights out and ran out of time setting up but I thought I'd do a temporary share of how it stands at the moment. Still not sure if I'll get everything on that I want to get on and thee will still be a few units missing if I do!

First couple of photos are shots down the length of the 6x4 table showing what's out so far. I haven't the faintest idea at the moment how many figures are actually on show!

 The next shot shows part of the first line - basically Immortals and Sparabara.

 Although this looks like three lines it's really meant as two. In the third line you can see many of the 'levies' including Indians, Egyptians and Assyrians.

 Looking at this picture, perhaps I need to separate the second and third lines a bit more.

 The solid mass at the back includes the Thebans, Lydians and Phrygians.

MW 122,123,126,132,146

As part of going through and reinstalling the lost pictures I've combined two posts to include all 5 of the articles I did way back on starting wargaming.

The Greek artillery train

My Greek army does have a small artillery train. Garrison Greek artillery crew and RAFM catapults - "Small Catapult, Onager" and "Small Catapult, Dart Thrower" available from RAFM Miniatures . Mine were bought when RAFM were sold by outlets in the UK.

There's nothing much to say about these, so I'll just let the photos talk.

Work in Progress

Apart from starting to go through and rebuilding previous blogs - and hoping they'll come back naturally - my wargaming activities in terms of painting continue.

Two painting projects amonst many others are concerned with my chariot forces. The first is continuing with figures bought in the late 70s-early 80s. I have a Lamming-orientated chariot force, some of which I'm still painting... 2 horse chariots similar to ones on the header picture. The next batch is a load of Egyptian chariots that were included in the ones bought from Harry.

The Lamming figures 'stopped' at quite an advanced stage. A couple of good sessions should, now I just need to get the paint on.

The Egyptians have had a couple of good sessions. When I've completed all the unpainted 'S' Range chariots it will give me about 20 of the things. Add that to the 'Garrison/Rose' conversions, EA Range and Lamming chariots and the Egyptians will have quite a few chariots!

As for the future, for Egyptians I have so many Minifigs Egyptians that I think Minifigs will dominate that army scene. I do have quite a few Garrison, but mainly of two figure variations.  It isn't as clear cut with the Assyrians. Frankly I see the future as 3 separate armies - Minifigs, Garrison 20mm and possibly a hybrid Garrison 25mm/Lamming force.

Re other armies, Greek no contest - Garrison 20mm. There were very few Minifigs Greeks bought from Harry but lots of Garrison. Likewise, Garrison also made up the bulk of my own early Greek armies. The 'S' Range figures I have will actually fit in quite well anyway.

For Persia... well, they always did take everybody. OK, unit sizes don't match between Harry and I, but... well, really don't think that is going to matter much.  The Garrison Persians were due for major reinforcements, plus I still want to make them, but...

The 'S' Range Persians had a major advantage over Garrison because the Funken-inspired Immortals, Medes and Persians didn't have Garrison equivalents. Now, they do:

I have 50 of the Immortal archer ready for painting, the other figures need to be sent away to have a mould made, still thinking 'will I, won't I'. Probably will.