An Army for Byzantium V

Does This Work?

Three units painted and can I make an evaluation on whether this concept works? I am satisfied that the figures do the job very adequately in representing the 9th - 10th C. Byzantium soldiers; the pros and cons I have discovered so far are listed below:

Positives

    Nice Perry sculpts with lots of movement

    Easy to cut and convert polystyrene plastic.

    Widely available particularly second hand.

Negatives

    Only two poses of the horses.

    Long coats are not strictly historical.

    Weapons are a bit fragile

    Slim and proportional sculpts (about 28mm to top of head.)

    Ridiculous GW prices

The size of the sculpts I have listed as a negative even though I do like this style of anatomy. The problem is however that it drastically reduces the ranges of miniatures that additional figures can be sourced from. This is particularly an issue as there are only armoured foot and cavalry available from the Riders of Rohan range. 

Other ranges that could be considered are: Gripping Beast, Essex Miniatures, Crusader, Fireforge Games, Eureka Miniatures, V and V Miniatures, Hinchliffe and Minifigs. These are mostly a much chunkier style than the GW figures. The exceptions being the Minifigs which are a very veteran range and pretty limited sculpts and V&V which are beautiful resin figures but quite large (30mm) and ruinously expensive. Any of these ranges would make a lot of sense as the basis of a later Byzantine army. They are mostly focussed on the styles suitable for the 11th Century, the First Crusade and Manzikert but will work okay for 9th and 10th Centuries considering the limited information that can be relied on.

The Hinchliffe figures are a similar height to the Rohan figures but a bit more crudely modelled so not a great match. I do have a bunch of these from my friend Les' lead mountain but they have so far failed to inspire.

The V&V figures are probably the best match stylistically so I have procured a few when I saw them at less than their horrifying £8.00 a cavalry figure. They are significantly larger than the Rohan but this can be rationalised as a much heavier guard Tagmata unit. The detail on the figures is superb and they go together very nicely although the parts need to be cleaned up and sprues trimmed off. If I have a big lottery win  I can afford to pay someone to assemble a bunch of these for me.

Suggestions from others for matching ranges have included the larger end of 1/72 figures. Research showed that there are some Zvezda and HAT figures that measure up as 25mm tall so could be worth investigating. This also reminded me of the HAT 28mm El Cid range as a possibility. I remember these as being a bit poor but I have ordered some to compare up close.

If they work size-wise they might provide the basis for conversion fodder. We shall see.

An Army for Byzantium IV

 Tagmatic Cavalry

The next unit I decided to try was a more regular cavalry regiment, maybe even a Tagma contingent from Byzantium itself. The paint scheme would be a bit smarter than the border Thematic versions and the other modifications would be:

• Adding mail aventails to the helmets of all the riders
• Archer figure converted into standard bearer
• Standard bearer horse with upgraded barding
• Shields swapped out for buttons with Arab/ Persian inspired design.*

 

*This was apparently a thing, following the success of the Arab conquests. 

I was using new horses for this unit, and I considered briefly chopping up the models to give some variety to the ludicrous 2 supplied poses. Punted this to a future unit on time saving grounds.

 

As I don't dick around with sabot bases, I needed to drill out my preferred MDF to be able to superglue the studs on the horse models to the bases.

This seems to work quite well making the hole a close fit to the stud. What was less successful was the using the plastic cement on the seam on the rear of the horse. Rather than fill this area I decided to add a horse tack strap to the area to cover/distract.

The replacement shields were fruits of many patient hours with my accomplished crafter wife in shops providing all sorts of interesting materials. They looked bling enough to be carried by prestigious Tagmata guard  cavalry and being plastic easy enough to attach.

The figures chosen were mainly spear armed to speak to the purposeful nature of the unit. 

The standard is again an LBMS flag re-sized and with some painted details. The standard bearer is an archer with the right arm remodelled with some Milliput.