15 mm Repairs!

I'm quite some way off finishing my Arab Conquest army but even so there's pleasure to be had reading the various Arab Art de la Guerre (ADLG) lists and day dreaming about what the army will be like when it's finished.

During one such session I noticed the option to use medium spearmen with missile support (see the end section for what that means in ADLG) and after reading the rules I realised this would be a good thing.  

Although not strictly necessary, I settled on using LI bases at the rear of the spear units to signify the missile support.  On checking my pile of unpainted figures I realised I did not have enough figures for these markers and would have to buy more from Forged in Battle.

The extra pack duly arrived but as I sorted through them I spotted that one casting was prone to a fatal flaw.

The pose in question is shown above.  The central figure is a complete, original casting with the flash removed and the others are my repaired castings.  The bows arms have been primed to aid photography.

The problem is the lower half of the bow; it doesn't always cast properly leaving a seam just below the hand and the bow arm.  This means part of the bow is dangerously loose and totally unsuitable for use on a wargames table.

I suppose I should have suspected something as the lower bow arm is heavily supported during casting and arrives with a channel between the bow and the body of the figure.  The flaw is nearly always revealed when you cut away the support.

Thankfully, only two castings were affected and initially I scraped them but one quiet morning I attempted the repairs shown above by making recurved bows out of 1.0 mm brass rod.

Making new bows
Each bow was made by putting three bends in a piece of brass rod.  I used a long piece, 4 cm or so, and only cut it to size once all the bends had been made.

I started with the central bend followed by the two outer bends forming the recurves.  The only tricky bit is ensuring that the latter are in the same plain as the central bend.

Finally, I cut the original bow off level with the hand and cut a v-shaped groove in the hand to hold the new bow.  Luckily, the sculptor had done exactly the same when creating the master so my hacking didn't damage the hand at all.

Before supergluing the bows in place, I rounded the ends of the new bow but made no attempt to shape them to a point like the original.  The pieces are just too small for this.  Looking at the results above they don't look too bad.

Missile support in ADLG
The following is from the release notes for ADLG V4:

• The bonus of +1 against all if the unit loses the melee in the 1st round is unchanged from V3, but now applies even if their opponent has Heavy Armour.
• Cancels the Furious charge of mounted troops when receiving their charge on the front edge.
• Bowmen, Crossbowmen, Handgunners, Javelinmen, mixed units and MI with bows do not have Missile Support ability.

The full explanation of missile support is on page 20 of ADLG V4.