Assyrian light infantry slingers

 

With the exception of 3 4 horse chariots I've still got to do this lot ends the current phase of painting Assyrians. Still a few more units needed for the army - at the very least, unit of light cavalry, unit of heavy cavalry, unit of LHI slingers, a load of light archers as levies, more chariots. OK, basically I'll probably never stop.

Couple of facts. The light infantry slinger has a helmet, the heavy slinger doesn't. Also in the 20mm Assyrian army the slinger was converted into a load of different spearmen/javelinmen by the simple expedient of replacing the sling with a spear and giving them a HaT shield - just bought a couple of boxes, used the shields and discarded the figures. However... I never actually got round to painting up a unit of unconverted slingers...

More Assyrian LMI

The second unit so I've now got a unit for each flank. 

I like these, and I have to admit - using paint pens for shields has really made a difference! 

A warning to the unwary

 This is how I realised that the wash method doesn't work for every figure...

So I tried it with my 20mm Garrison Assyrians.

There are lot of 'unconverted' Garrison sp/bw/sh heavy infantry. These are the ones in the Egyptian army - sand coloured bases. To be fair, the 'damage' isn't obvious - but look how dull and blotchy the shields are.

First of the conversion units. The obvious effect of this  is on the legs.

Again, the legs are where it is most obvious. The armour doesn't look too bad.

Dressed in white. This where it really starts to show.

Some of these are just - well, don't like looking at them! Most of these units also had converted officers and standard bearers.

On to the archers. Another version of my universal archer - this figure is probably the most versatile figure I've ever made, lost count of how many armies it has appeared in. Photos don't show it as well, but the red looks really dirty and dull on these.

Lost count of how many of these I've got - Assyrian light infantry archers. More than the 64 from the Review anyway.

With these I tended to do a lot of zigzag patterns on the skirts. Put the wash over them and now I don't know why I bothered. Some are worse than others, most ofthem are  - well, not good.

So that's what happened to my 20mm Garrison Assyrian army. It languishes in a couple of boxes. Could I recover the damage? Probably, but at that time I suddenly acquired Harry's collection. That was a nominal 3,600 painted figures, but turned out to be a lot bigger, plus a load of unpainted figures - and that was just the main purchase. So the Assyrians just got left...

Assyrian LHI Archers

 

Assyrian armoured archers from the chariot set. I made a point of putting these on a production mould because I anticipated needing a few for myself. 

Mounted them as LHI rather than HI because... well, just because. It's a figure I like and my guess is that I'll do more of them in the future, both as LHI and as HI..

My current Assyrian armies...

 

Back in 2017 I posted an Assyrian Review of my then Assyrian army. It has increased since then but the main change from then is my start on a 25mm Garrison army. The ones here are 20mm Garrison, Minifigs 'S' Range and Lamming.

This lot are the Minifigs 'S' Range, though some chariots are a Minifigs/Lamming mix.

These are the Garrison figures. Chariot with card bodies, heavy infantry with HaT shields. At this time I experimented with a wash over the paint - didn't work very well so that an army I like was, in my view, ruined :(

My Lamming force is slightly smaller but nice...

Then their are things like these chariots - tin plate chariots I got from Harry  repainted and given Minifigs crews and horses and Garrison chariot wheels. Archers are 'S' Range Carthagians that I feel are a lot more at home with the Assyrians!

And then there's my 25mm Garrison army... still growing, long way to go, only 5 painted chariots so far, but lots in the pipeline. 

Thoughts on the current project? That Minifigs force includes 24 chariots. Some of these also appear in the Lamming army which also has 3 pure Lamming chariots.. Meanwhile, the 20mm Garrison army has 13 chariots. So these combined armies have 40 chariots. It's a target...

25mm Amazon army

 

Current state of the Amazon army. Not big enough yet for a Review, but seemed they deserved to have some sort of parade.

Right flank guarded by the new conversions. I expect the final army to have another one of these units.

The centre. Pegasus, the general and a chariot in front of a unit of archers. I expect to do a few more chariots plus at least two more infantry units - one of archers, one of spears.

Left flank.  A poorly equipped unit of spears in front of the exotic part of the army. Beastmistress on the right, Sorceress on a tiger in the middle and a bunch of beasts on the end. This part of the army is probably complete unless I add more tigers. 

Zenobia... keep wondering whether I should find a place for her in the army...

A few conversions waiting to be cleaned up and sent away to have a mould made. The ones in the middle with the hoplons would probably make up the spear armed infantry unit, the spearwomen pointing may end up as chariot crew. Haven't checked it yet but the middle spearwomen may be convertible to cavalry as well.

So naturally after writing the above I removed the base from the original conversion and put it on a horse...

No frills on the painting - getting theidea and finishing with this took about  12 hours, though I did do a few other things in that time as well... As a figure, works well and I've also done one for a mould... Quite possible to do a couple of units eventually?

Amazon cavalry

Converted from the foot archer by the simple expedient of cutting off the base then grinding the area between the legs until the figure fits on a horse - I've used Persian horses for these.

I went for a simple paint job. I'll probably do another unit at some stage - easy to do - I won't be putting these on a mould. Must get a mould made for the other Amazon infantry conversions.

Took 7 weeks

For Black Tree Design to deliver these...

After the time taken for the previous ones to arrive, plus the fact that they don't answer emails or anything, I decided that I would only order the minimal amount of figures from them. That meant a few Mechanoids to replace my polystyrene efforts plus a few Robomen. They finally arrived today having been ordered on the 27th April. On the 8th June I asked them if they had a delivery date - don't know whether this reminded them of the order or not, of course they didn't reply...

So at this moment in time that's it from Black Tree. No mass orders, no expansion of the Dr Who races,  none of those nice look artifacts and monsters in their fantasy range... 

Don't know how much their poor service has cost them in future (and past!) sales from me, but that's OK. 

25mm Scythian Horse Archers.

 

They look pretty good. I've put them on the base angled so they don't look as though they are shooting each other!

Back row to the front.

And a back view. It's taking longer to do these because of the patterns I'm putting on the outfits but it does look better than plain.

This is how they fit into the current army. Still a lot more to do but at least it looks like an army now.

So now on to doing those Amazon cavalry...

Busy couple of days.

 This morning visit to hospital for checkup re kidneys. This afternoon Diabetes Review at the Doctor's. Tomorrow dental checkup.

Busy couple of days :(

More playtime things

 

As the current Alice and friends adventure has them going into the church, it seemed reasonable to do an interior for it.

However, doing the interior the same size as the exterior proved impractical...

Common wargames situation - using buildings that are a smaller scale than the figures is more practical for outside scenes, less practical once you cross the threshold.

 

So I've done a second interior more in line with the actual figure scale. I've still kept the square design but have added an extra row of pews and doubled the number of windows on the walls.

Should make life easier!

Playtime

 

Fed up with Post Office so decided to have a play. So I sorted out a unit of Scythian cavalry.

Thought, why not try it with the Amazons? Didn't expect it to work but it did - well, sort of. Not brilliant but does the job.

Refurbished line chariots

 

With paint pens, extra decorations are quite easy. Though I did have to take the wheels off first (only one side at a time!)

Must admit the eagle's head on the  Anzu looks more like a duck's head, but it'll do.

25mm Garrison Assyrian army mini Review

 The army is still building but it's grown large enough to justify a Review...

The King reviewing his forces.

Here passing in front of the Scythian mercenaries.

A quick look at the LMI unit acting as a flank guard.

Driving down between the chariots and the line infantry

Before finally passing in front of the line cavalry

My definition of a force that warrants a review is that it is big enough for the king/general to need to pass between the ranks. Here, a light infantry front rank, chariot second rank and line infantry/cavalry rear rank.