Hat Andalusians in my 9th - 10th Century Byzantine Army

 Variety is the spice of life?

That could almost be the motto for my miniatures collecting over the years. Once I am committed to an army or war to recreate in miniature, I tend to want to buy some of everything that is available. It is weirdly refreshing in a way to have the artificial limits on this behaviour, provided by the quite singular style and size of the Riders of Rohan figures, which don't mix well with much else. 

This is quite a limitation when considering that the Thematic Byzantine army can have quite a variety of possible allied contingents through the 9th and 10th Centuries - Persians, Armenians, Georgians, Bulgars and steppe nomad mercenaries. In addition they should really field at least a couple of light cavalry and skirmish infantry units.

The sensible, pragmatic option is to ignore the style differences and just buy these "missing " options from any range that strikes the fancy. This may be the way I go in time, but for the sake of this experiment I decided to try to find something that would match up with the GW figures. A strong possibility in size terms looked like the 28mm plastic offerings from HaT Miniatures. These guys are known more for their 1/72 ranges but do a very abbreviated offering in their own version of 28mm including an "El Cid" range of early medieval Spanish.

 

A couple of boxes were duly acquired, for a close up comparison and to see how useful they could be for Byzantine use. Or as a basis for conversion. The light infantry box contains 32 figures for around £10 - £12, so a bit of a bargain on just a cost comparison. There are 4 identical sprues inside, each with:

2 archers

3 javelineers

2 crossbowmen

1 slinger

For "usability" I considered that a simple change of some of the javelins to slings will give 4 units, 8 of each type. Although all nominally "light" infantry, they do have a right old mix of equipment. There are only 4 separate bucklers (for the slingers?) and one each of the archers and crossbows are armoured in mail. I did choose the box with the most generic selection of costumes. On their heads they are a mixture of simple turbans/headwraps and bare headed. 

The detail and poses very much show the plastic toy soldier heritage of these figures. They are slim and proportional in style and the poses are designed for fitting in a mould with minimal parts to stick together. This means most of the figures are a little flat, the only one with a separate arm highlighting this by its more natural look, when assembled. The detail is reasonably good if quite subtle compared to wargames figures. I have put a wash on an example of each (below) to make the sculpting easier to appreciate.

 

 

 

 

The only figures I have some reservations about drafting into my Thematic Byzantine army would be the crossbow archers. I have seen reference to them in 9th - 10th Century armies but they were rare if they did exist. The crossbows are some of the separate items on the sprues so can be replaced with less controversial bows or javelins without too much drama. Turban type headgear was apparently quite ubiquitous especially amongst the poorer recruits in the regional armies. The acid test for these figures is do they mix with the GW Rohan figures? By and large the answer is "yes".

The heights are pretty much spot on and the proportions very close, maybe a shade slimmer. This works fine for lighter equipped infantry compared to bulkier armoured and becloaked elements. I would not put the sculpting in the same class as the Perry's Rohan figures but few can live up to that comparison. Stylistically they do not clash too much. The next test will be comparing a unit with some paint daubed on. 

Negatives I have discovered so far include VERY thin weapons if in a quite durable plastic. Where it is a big issue is where the spears are attached to the sprue with bulky tabs that are very difficult to remove without damaging them (for me at least.) The flat poses I have already mentioned and if it bothered me enough I could do some surgery with heat and scalpel. How these paint up, with their quite shallow detail, remains to be seen.

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.

An Army for Byzantium III

 The Cavalry

The first group of 8 are the most beaten up of the pre-loved figures that I have. I decided a second rate Theme part-time regiment would be a good start to the cavalry contingent. Bows as an integral part of each cavalry regiment are most likely on balance with what evidence there is for this period. Two bases (4 figures) then as a back rank mainly shooting bows. 

 

Lots of broken weapons so I added a spear, a mace, an axe and a standard pole to the figures and mended one of the bows. The other modification was to sculpt on neck guards to all the helmets. Quilted fabric was an easy finish for my skill set, so the majority got this. The more likely mail version was done (in a vague kind of way) on a couple for variety. 

I have a variety of replacement shields available. The 9th. to 10th Centuries see the introduction of early kite shields to the Byzantine armoury but round shields were still the majority. For this unit though I decided to use some of the detachable shields supplied with the figures. The moulded patterns are mostly horsie-related but one of them is a sort of starburst pattern that that is not too dis-similar from typical Late Roman/Byzantine types.

The armour on these figures consists of a diagonal pattern scale or padded form in either long or short versions. The one exception is a pose in a shortish mail shirt with some sort of thorax armour on top. These work quite nicely as padded cloth armour (kavadion)  with the thorax painted metallic as a lamellar klivanion. I also painted the long plain coats with an impression of padding. Most of the figures also have lower leg armour and bracers on their arms which can be painted as leather or iron. (I did a 50/50 split for these self-armed, provincial part-timers.) 

 

                                        10th C. Icon with Klivanion Lamellar armour

The unit standard is a vandon banner which perhaps had a common symbol for each Theme and the individual unit identified by the colour of the triangular tails.

They have ended up looking a bit more uniform than I intended but with the cloaks in subdued browns I think they still have more of an ad hoc feel to the.

   

For the next group I will try a smarter scheme that could be a posh Tagmata guard unit.

An Army for Byzantium II

Starting With the  Infantry

Because I have more of them. So destroying some as I work out what I'm doing will be less of a problem for me. I have collected several dozen of the foot version of GW's Riders of Rohan. All second hand and in various states of disrepair. If you buy them new they are on sprues of 12 figures, 4 with bows and 8 with spears and swords.

These are one-piece figures with just a shield that needs adding. For my first unit of foot I chose mainly spear wielding poses or ones that could be converted. The spears are frequent casualties in the used miniatures I have collected, so I was replacing most of them anyway. I have not decided on integral archers with my foot regiments as yet but a rank of archers is an easy add later.

Dull coloured cloaks and miscellaneous equipment suits my vision of part-time Theme regiments so these were finished in a variety of colours and with most of the body armour  painted as padded body armour.

I replaced the small shields with larger ovals (from Newline Designs.) These could as easily be kite shaped shields or large round ones in the 9th - 10th Centuries.

 I found some suitable decals for the crosses on the shields and a sheet of LBMS banners which I scanned to create the cross part of the typical "tailed" standard. The (slightly wonky) cross on the top of the standard was made from beads superglued together. Most of the weapons were trimmed off and replaced with steel spears. 

Apart from weapon and shield swaps, the only piece of conversion I did on these figures was to trim back the luxuriant Rohirrm hairstyles and modelled instead the neck guard commonly shown on the byzantine soldiers of this period. Some of these were painted as fabric and others as mail.

Reasonably happy with these. The plastic is easy to cut and shave when making changes to the figures. The infantry are the junior part of the army however so the acid test will be how this works with the cavalry figures.

An Army for Byzantium

Byzantine Kitbash

 Since I first saw the Riders of Rohan in the Peter Jackson film "The Two Towers" I was impressed at the depiction of cavalry fighting, during the destruction of Pippim and Merry's captors by Eomer's warband. 

The combination of close fighting and horse archery brought to mind Byzantine practises and the early medieval influences in their clothing and armour worked for that too. (Other scenes such as the charge down a "cliff" at Helms Deep were less inspiring!)

When the Perry sculpted miniatures based on the film came out I bought a few to see how they looked with half a mind towards converting them into a historical force  For various reasons this went nowhere and the idea joined a plethora of similar parked project ideas...

 Recently I found myself reading about Byzantium of various periods and I decided to take another look at the feasibility of a cheap Rohan to Byzantine conversion army.

Do they look like Byzantines?

Well... sortof.  They are equipped with headgear that are a mix of ridge helmets and segmented type that are fairly ubiquitous during the 6th to 10th Centuries. There are some fancy horse themed crests that can be trimmed back to make them less obviously fantasy based. The armour is an appealing mix of scale and what looks like leather. Some of it could also be easily painted as padded cotton which was in widespread use after contact with the Arabs. 

Quite a mixed/scruffy bunch they are, which fits my image of self-equipped regional Byzantine forces. They all wear big cloaks which were certainly a thing in Byzatium, although it is generally thought they would not have worn them during a battle as too encumbering. (Other sources specify a dull coloured cloak as required equipment for keeping out of the notice of enemies in the prevalent raiding and guerilla type of warfare.)

Weapons are bows, straight swords, axes and spear/lance (used overarm.) This is all fine although it  could be argued that not every rider should be equipped with a bow. I can overlook that.

 Overall I think it is close enough. The long viking style hair that a lot of the riders have can be ignored or changed to a hanging neck guard like the illustration above. Carved flat it can be a fabric/leather version or some might get scales or mail sculpted on. The Byzantines ot the 9th to 10th Centuries look like the best match. This is the period when Byzantium was counter-attacking the enemies that surrounded them. The army was formed of regional forces (Themes) backed up by the Emperors guards from the capital (the Tagmata) which makes for an interesting composition of units.

So a positive start but is there usable option for the infantry component that is required?