Garrison 2020 Persian army Review

At first I was just thinking about putting posts for individual groups of figures -Chariots/Guard, Sparabara, Irregular archers, etc. Then I thought: OK, I've cleared 8' of the table, most of the Persian infantry and some of the cavalry are already out, why not do a Review?

The last Persian Review I did was on a 6'x4' table in my original shed. That was 5 years ago! Further, it included Minifigs as well Garrison and also quite a few Greek and Indian auxilkiaries/subjects. This one includes some subject peoples - Lydian/Phrygian, Assyrian and Egyptian - but only ones that were 'officially' assigned to this Persian army.

The first thing, of course, was to start seeing how things fit. I put all my Sparbara units in a line and they basically covered the whole 8' frontage - about 300 figures! So I split them into two lines. I have done a count - 984 infantry, 314 cavalry, 18 camels and 14 chariots/war wagons (it's worth noting that chariots are more a feature of my Minifigs Persian army!)

I did try to get a frontal photo but even though I set the army back as much as I could it still didn't work!

Looking down the line of battle is a bit better. The army is smaller than the one reviewed last time, but that one included Greek allies and all my Minifigs. The shelving to the side is about 2' from the side of the table.

I thought that grouping all the heavy cavalry together would look more impressive than splitting them over both flanks. They consist of 17 12 figure squadrons plus the 12 figures at the front - a total of 216 cavalry. Also in the picture are the 6 light cavalry atached to the Egyptian contingent.

I finished up using three photos of the infantry.This is the right flank.

And the Centre...

And the left flank including some Scythian cavalry attached to the Scythian contingent. There are six 'ranks' - 1st, Generals/guards/some light infantry, 2nd, chariots and assorted infantry and light cavalry, 3rd and 4th various Sparabara units, 5th the Egyptians, Assyrians, Carians and other Asiatic Greeks (as in Garrison PEA8, Ionian Auxiliary Hoplite). I don't have any of PEA5, the Nubian auxiliary, here - they are all in the Egyptian army. Dedicated to Persian army, green base, dedicated to Egyptian army, sand base.

Some light cavalry. At the back, standard PEC4, others are conversions made several years ago. I had them on a Tiranti mould but recently stripped some figures of these two units and they are on one of the new moulds I'm having made - expect a lot of these two conversions to appear in future armies!

OK, the front rank are mainly 70s cataphracts with a couple of conversions. The light cavalry behind are ex-Harry, camels include my Funcken-inspired conversions plus some standard Garrison camels.

This photo shows some standard PE4, PEA3 and PEA4 -the interest in this photo is that the two outer units are ex-Harry that I still haven't got round to rebasing!

 

 

 

This is just a photo to show some of my storage plus a bit of a view of the mess known as my work bench - the cardboard box in the corner is my spray booth!I think it also gives an idea of how limited space is around the table - 2' is not really a lot.