I once came across a model shop selling off cheap Airfix Ancient Brits and Romans. As I recall I bought about 20 boxes of each. Naturally I've managed to build up quite a few chariot squadrons with these. The Libyan chariot is based on the Ancient Brit chariot, the wheels (I think) are wagon train? Possibly British Waterloo artillery? Alternate spokes have been removed. For a lot of my later chariots I used the wheels from cheap cannon pencil sharpeners.
The basis of these figures is the Nubian Unarmoured spearmen. Again, they suffer from several stages of separation from the original masters - the face suffers the most, appearing as just a blob.
The feathered headdresses were fun. One of them - can't remember which one - was a pure fluke. The mould had an air vent on the head - when the figure first came out the vented piece was a perfectly good set of feathers. So they stayed in.
Apart from the feathered headdresses, the main modelling items were the cloaks. Not fantastic, but they did the job.
The idea was to have 3 types of figure - archer, swordsman and javelinmen.
I would say that the Libyans came out better than the Egyptians. Rough and ready, certainly very crude, but I like to think that they have a certain character.
They certainly do.
ReplyDeleteYes, they have a sort of elan en masse that says 'We are are barbarians, we run in , chuch spears, stab at you and disappear nimbly back to oyr desert!' . The detail may be a bit crude, but you capture the movement?
ReplyDeleteIt's a nice pose that John Braithewaite used for quite a few figures.
DeleteThey look nice, very nice!
ReplyDelete