Thursday, 26 June 2014

Saracen Cavalry

I tested to batch paint a whole unit in one go.

It saved up on time and I managed to paint a whole unit in less time then it would take to paint them i lesser parts. The idea with batch painting is to use one colour on all models before switching to a new colour and work that one over all. I used a brown primer as a start on these as I wanted to have lots of brown horses and leather on the riders, all meant to speed up the painting.

The miniatures are a mixture of Magister Militums historical Saracens and some of their fantasy miniatures mixed in, and the Hornblower was given a steed from Gripping Beast.
I like the riders and they got a nice mixture of equipment and looks good. The horses on the other hand.. some of them is far to small.











For a light horse unit as the previously painted it works but as I initially wanted to have a heavy cavalry unit I dont think it looks believable.
So I think I shall downgrade these miniatures. They are carrying chain mail armour, helmets and shields so they could be used as heavy cavalry but as some of the horses are really small I plan to downgrade these into a sort of medium cavalry unit and threat them as a milita or levy unit compromised of somewhat richer citizens drafted to make up for a cavalry unit. They are missing the training and horses of a proper heavy cavalry unit.

With that in mind I opted for a more brown colour palette then some of my previously Saracen cavalry units but still with some details and colour. And I skipped on some of the fabric details and so on.


I plan to take some miniature comparison pictures later so you can see the difference in sizes on the horses as I think that on their own they actually look pretty descent.


So the verdict on Magister Militum... I like their infantry and most of their cavalrymen but dislikes their horses.

4 comments:

  1. Nice looking unit! Shame about the horse sizes though.

    Painting in large batches really is a great way to get things done, but can get really dreary. But at least units like these have a bit of variety between figures thanks to different clothing unlike more unified units of more modern ages.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nice work. I see what you mean about horse size. Seems that some of the riders are foot dragging on the ground. Perhaps, they rode into battle on ponies?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lovely job, it's funny I hadn't noticed the size of the horses until I read your comment.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks guys.

    I guess small pony size horses might actually be more historical correct but it somehow looks wrong. On the light horse shown earlier I think it suits better to have smaller horses.

    ReplyDelete