Seleucid

True to my chaotic and apparently random painting tradition, I have started another army! This time its a Seleucid army I have had kicking about for a year or so. I bought it to make up the II/19b list, and just never got round to painting it. I made a start, but it just kind of petered out.

I decided that I would get the 4 elements of pike knocked out, deciding to go for speed rather than beauty. The photo of the progress to date is shown below.

The figures are Magister Militum Seleucid Phalangites (code SEL007). The figures are depicted wearing trousers in the Eastern style, and Phrygian type helmets. I painted the clothing a mixture of bright colours, indicating that my phalangites have fallen under the influence of Eastern decadence! The shields have VVV shield transfers applied. Painting was in a very quick block colour, klear wash technique. Not the nicest figures I have ever painted, but they'll do.

You may have spotted that the front two elements have a gap at the ends of their bases. The reason for this is that given Magister Militum figures are quite slender, having the regulation 4 figures per element leaves them looking a little too spaced out for my liking. I see a phalanx as being much a more closely packed shoulder-to-should affair. The gaps you see will be filled with an extra figure - standard bearer or command figure, just so the front rank elements can look more densely packed. I will post a better pic when the elements are finished.

This photo shows the elements I had completed prior to starting on the pikes. From left to right, a war elephant, an element of Galatian mercenary warband (4Wb), and element of Greek auxilia (4Ax) and a scythed chariot and driver. All the figures are by Magister Militum, except for the Scythed Chariot, which is by Museum Miniatures - I just preferred it to the MM version.

Meroitic Kushite

I have recently knocked out another DBA army in preparation for a themed competition coming up - this time it's I/58 Meroitic Kushite. The figures are all from QRF miniatures, and are quite nicely sculpted. They are very much "true 15mm", not suffering from the issues of scale creep seen with some other manufacturers. In size and style, they are very much like Essex Miniatures, and I think figures from both manufacturers could work very well together in the same army.

The first photo shows all 12 elements arrayed for battle. The spear, blade and half the bows are from QRF's Kushite range. The other half of the bow are from their Axumite range, and the elephant is from their Carthaginian range.

Here we have 2 views of the general on his elephant. The elephant, javelinman and mahout are actually Carthaginian, and the general himself is a Kushite bowman cut off his base with the legs bent into a kneeling position. Although on the whole, the sculpts for the figures I bought are clean and crisp, I did feel that the elephant has a slightly more "grainy" feel. On the right hand pic, you can see the one element of skirmishing bowmen (2Ps) that this army has.

This pic shows the five elements of close formation spearmen (4Sp), all are from the Kushite range. I did one element with zebra skin shields - I have no idea how historically accurate this is, but given their fancy hats, I thought I would jazz them up a bit. Two of them also have cheetah/leopard skin kilts on ...a bit camp maybe?

Here we have the two blade elements (4Bd). One lot are axemen and the others are sword (or perhaps more accurately machete) armed. They have been painted as iron weapons rather than bronze, although bronze may have been more accurate for the axes? These guys have very dandy leopard skin shields ... although given the scale of some of those spots, the leopard who donated the skin must have been the size of a horse!

...and finally 3 elements of bowmen (3Bw) - a mix of Kushite and Axumite.

The basing for the army has been done on plasticard, with dried sharp builders sand stuck on using PVa glue. I did sieve the sand to get the bigger bits of grit out, some of the bigger bits being stuck on after the sand to give an arid rocky feel to the ground. Patches of light green static grass were used to finish the whole lot off.

This army was knocked out very quickly, using the Klear polish and ink wash method. Although a bit more time spent on them would have produced a smoother finish, I am still pleased with the end result, which is (I think) an army painted to a passable war games standard.