15 mm Medieval Georgians (Essex Miniatures)

Preamble

The genesis of this batch of figures began with a slip of the keyboard. I spotted 52 Essex early medieval riders (no horses) on eBay. At just over £10.00 delivered I couldn't resist.

There were 12 Crusade era figures amongst a job lot of Byzantine figures. Specifically, a couple of Syrians (CRU39a) and ten Georgians (CRU28). Perfect for four units of heavy cavalry for my allied Ilkhanid Mongol army. I've painted these figures twice before: in 2000 and in 2011.

Horses

Like every long time wargamer I had a collection of spare horses, but not enough. At the Other Partizan I ended up with more than enough horses, thanks to the help of Dene at Instant Armies and one of the tabletop sale vendors. Since then eBay has furnished a large number of half armoured horses, but thats a story for another day.

Georgians not Armenians

There's not a lot of difference in dress and equipment in this period. I used the previous batches as Armenians distinguished by appropriate banners. This time I thought I'd add Georgian banners so they'd be clearly identifiable on the table. I prepared some suitable flags and settled on a mix of generic and western Georgian banners.

The Georgians are interesting. In Art de la Guerre (ADLG) the units could represent:

• Frankish mercenaries in the service of the Ilkhan (although I already have some). The core Ilkhanid list allows two units of medium or heavy knights. These can be either impetuous or impact elite.
• The core of a Georgian allied command. List 215 contains both medium & heavy bow armed cavalry options in the Ilkhanid period. Both can be upgraded to elite.

This is useful, but given I already use an Armenian ally, the former is the more likely: using two allies is a big step.

Figure review

These are old Essex style, but still good quality. As I was using horses from a variety of manufactures, there was a bit of filing involved to ensure a snug fit.

The only real drawback was a mould line that ran down the shield of the CRU28 figure with a surcoat. In the end I removed some shield bosses as the mould line was too deep. I also had to be bend the shield arm towards the body to fit three figures on a base; this made painting a bit harder.

Amongst the 12 figures there were only three poses. I kept the figures with visible armour and surcoats separate so, if I needed to, I could represent medium & heavy units respectively or use an armoured unit as a general. The exception being the Syrian figures which I used as standard bearers in both units. Thanks to shield patterns, banners and horse poses the units with surcoats don't look too uniform.

I'm not convinced this worked with the armoured unit on the right below. In fairness, I painted this unit in 2000 to use up left some over figures. It's been touched up and rebased at least twice whilst it's been waiting for some mates!

When I came to add flags I found it wasn't practical with the armoured CRO28 figures; the spears are too short. I could add 8 mm high flags to the Syrian figures, but the printed flags needed extra brush work even though they were laser printed at 600 dpi. All the other flags were 9 mm and they only needed the edges painting.