15 mm Arab Commanders (Forged in Battle & Essex)

My Arab Conquest army continues to grow; even if slowly.  This time It's a complete set of commanders for Art de la Guerre (ADLG) on the currently trendy 40 mm round bases.

As always, click on the images for larger versions.

The middle foot commander is interesting because it uses a mix of Forged in Battle and Essex figures.  I think they fit really well.

It may not be immediately obvious in the photos, but there's far more use of strong colour accents than in the previous battle troops and light infantry.  This took a few goes to get right.  Not leats because I wanted to retain the overall “muted” colour palette and use of bright colours looked garish.

Details of the flags are given below, but first a word or two of the figures.

Figure review
All the mounted figures are from the various command figures in packs AC1 to 3.  This gives a nice variety of poses, although I struggled to find three standard-bearers with long spears.  I sorted the packs into unit batches first and then identified spares for the command bases.  The Forged in Battle policy of adding extra riders to the packs really helped.

The horse poses used here are the most numerous in the four packs of cavalry I have bought so far.  The horses are the same in all packs (AC1-3 & AG2).  Each pack contains a random mix of the same seven (7) horse poses.

Sadly, the most numerous poses have crossed front legs which no amount of bending will straighten because, quite rightly, all four legs are attached to the base.  In the end, the only way forward was to saw through below one hoof and the base.

A bit of careful bending produced a pair of front legs that weren't crossed: not ideal, but better.  With certain poses, it proved possible to glue the “freed” leg back to the base to provide a little extra stability.  Because of this extra work, I am not looking forward to doing the bulk of the cavalry.

For the foot command I mixed in some Essex figures, bought second hand as a job lot, for extra variety. They are from AEA9 & AEA13.  The Forged in Battle foot figures are from WE-AC07 Arab Archers.

Flags to download
These flags are based on those in Nicolle's 1993 Osprey book Armies of the Muslim Conquest.  They are for the Battle of Siffin (657 AD)

Out of interest Nicolle's flags are based on those in Martin Hinds' article The Banners and Battle Cries of the Arabs at Siffin, available in his collected Studies in Early Islamic History

The following are some of the simpler flags; they are for 15 mm figures after all.  The flags on the cavalry lances above are 14 mm high.  This means they fit well, but it makes them relatively small and difficult to drape (I tended not to try too hard).  The other flag, on the foot figure, is even smaller (about 9 mm) and hand painted not printed: very fiddly.

 

 

 

 

 

One note of warning, the yellow flag didn't print that well with the colour laser I was using.  You may want to run a test or two if you plan on using that flag.

List of all the project posts.