The Waving Flag: Cilician Armenian Redux (Again)

Friday 24 August 2012

Cilician Armenian Redux (Again)

Pardon the tautology in the title but I have finally finished the battle groups I need to field a full Armenian ally for my Ilkhanid FOG army.  In March last year I posted the background to this ally; I’m just disappointed it’s taken me so long to finish all the options.

First up is a battle group of protected heavy foot:



The figures are all from Essex and I used a lot of artistic license to paint red spears but I based the banners on those provided by Chris Brantley to provide a coherent colour scheme:



I think it really helps tie everything together:



I must also pay my respects to Neldoreth at “An Hour of Wolves & Shattered Shields” whose tutorial on painting shields inspired me to try his techniques on the shields and banners.

Although it’s been a year and a half since I last posted I have been busy.  I’ve also completed all the light and medium foot options.  There’s some protected medium foot as an alternative to the heavy foot:



I used the same technique on the shields this time on a brown base (click on the above for a larger image). Then there’s a selection of light foot archers:



These figures are interesting as they are a mix of the Essex Armenian bow and Essex Viking archers!  All that was required with the later was a paint job on the helmet (with nasal) to turn it into a soft hat (and nose) everything else was perfect:



As I discovered in 2001 the Essex MER 32 (Celtic Isleman) makes an excellent Armenian archer:



As a consequence of all this experimenting with light foot I have 18 elements when I only need 8! Typical wargamer.

Finally, I will be “borrowing” some Arab bow from my planned Timurid army until I can get some more Byzantine inspired bow painted:

4 comments :

Monty said...

Excellent work here and I think it fits under the "better late than never" category!

For what its worth, I don't think it takes much artistic license to paint spears in a color. I was looking at a 12th century print of Arab warriors and noted they were all sporting red spears. I'm sure they copied it from someone else!

Vexillia said...

Thanks for the kind words and the comment about the spear colour.

I find that I'm getting better at finishing things as I get older however the end point can be far longer than I imagined at the start.

Tony Aguilar said...

These look good. This army is on my to-do list.

Vexillia said...

Thanks. I had fun doing them.

Salute The Flag

If you'd like to support this blog why not leave a comment, or buy me a beer!

Salute The Flag