Early Medieval Byzantine Flags (Conjectural)

Introduction

For those following my progress of my "fantasy" Byzantine army, will have noticed that I've started the command bases and have recently finished the mounted commanders. I'm about half way through the foot commanders and have one base in need of a flag.

I decided to design my own. I based them, very loosely, on illustrations 27b & c from page 75 of Ian Heath's classic WRG book "Armies of the Dark Ages 600-1066":

It's worth noting this from Heath "[Leo's Tactica] records .... a new type of swallow-railed bandon had become the principal standard of both infantry and cavalry units". Must have been awkward for the infantry.

Designs

Here are the three core designs: the core flag, a short tailed version and a long tailed version. The central (brown) section is correctly sized for flags printed 8 to 10mm in the hoist.

They are all highly stylised compared to the reference image. The absence of swallow tails is deliberate. I printed mine 10 mm high and, at this size, simplicity counts for a lot. There are two tailed variants because I wasn't sure which would look best. I used the short tailed versions.

If you are feeling brave you can cut, shape and curl the tails to match the reference. I decided not to. Mainly because I really didn't fancy cutting a shallow taper on something 2.5 mm high.

I did experiment with just splitting the tails. As I expected, painting the edges of the newly cut tails was a pain. I decided not to bother because they didn't look that different and not worth the extra effort.

Colour variants

These look a bit bright on the screen but when printed they will look right. Any darker and they lack impact when printed the right size for 15 mm figures (10 mm in the hoist).

More free flags.