15 mm Daylami Medium Infantry (Forged in Battle)

After nearly eighteen months painting an Arab Conquest army with a deliberately limited & muted colour palette it was time to go wild.  And what better subject to choose than that wargaming cliché the Daylami: fierce mountain warriors renowned for their brightly painted shield designs.

Daylami in ADLG
In Art de la Guerre (ADLG) Daylami are very good troops. They are listed as medium swordsmen impact elite in 5 of the 9 Arab Empire lists: Arab Conquest (130), Umayyad (131), Abbasid (134), Khurasanian (136) &, Bedouin Dynasties (138).

The first 4 have a maximum of 2 units and the last one a maximum of 4 units.  I decided to paint two units (12 figures) as, once I start trying the different Arab armies, I was sure they'd be more then useful.

Inspiration required
Of course, once the decision had been made to do some Daylami, the next question was: exactly what shield designs to use?

There are some very ornate 28 mm designs available from Little Big Man Sudios, but there's no way I could do that free hand on a 15 mm scale shield.  Plus I wanted a slightly "less precise" look based on what I could achieve free hand.

Luckily, I found inspiration on an Italian website tagamata.it which has some beautiful medieval Islamic figures including lots of Daylami with a great selection of geometric patterns and colour combinations to copy and build on.

As I was aiming for an early period feel I avoided the patterns with arabic script (too early for the language to have spread), and I chose colour combinations that were perhaps a bit bright but in 15 mm it's what you have to do if you want things to "pop".

Now finished, they form part of my "all the colours in the paint box" collection.

Figure review
The figures are all from Forged in Battle's WE-AG05 Daylami Warriors.

After I bought them I spotted WE-PS09 Daylami Hillmen which, on reflection might have been more suitable for the early Islamic period but the shields are much smaller and the designs would have been that much harder to paint.  I did think of adding some of these but buying 48 figures to use 12 didn't make sense.

Although these figures were designed by the same sculptor who did the Arabs the style is slightly different.  Being clean shaven makes a difference to the faces, but overall I felt they were a touch on the slight side compared to the Arabs.

Some of the hair was poorly done.  Figures with curly hair were a swine to paint. The detail wasn't deep enough to easily dry brush or use a wash.  I tried both before settling on dotting in the curls with a mid gray and toning the scheme down with a dilute black wash as required.

On the plus side the shields were a decent size and with clearly defined edges that made painting a coloured trim very straightforward.  In addition there's a lot of different poses in the pack; a trend to be encouraged.

Slideshow

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