Turkoman horse archers, converted plastic models

I bought a box of Fireforge Games Mongol light cavalry and its hard not to like plastic miniatures, especially when kitbashing them with Warlord Games Celts for an added variation. With the kitbashing together with greenstuff  I was able to make a unit of Turkoman horsearchers for my Muslim collection in the era of the crusades.

Im happy with the end result and the unit was both fun to convert and paint up. I tried to keep the colour tones a little more muted compare to some of my Arab units to differentiate them from each others and to make a nice contrast.

I have since I started to convert these noted that Gripping Beast will release plastic light and heavy cavalry for the Muslims and it will be nice to see how I can combine these kits with the Mongols from Fireforge to create even more interesting units.

Please check out the GB coming miniatures in this link (I think its an open page even for those without facebook)
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=854296397949379&id=196181460427546

And apparently the box art can be seen on their site now.
http://www.grippingbeast.co.uk/Plastic_Arab_Cavalry--category--339.html

Dismounted Mamluk heavy archers.

During this weekend I finished the bases and added the banner for this unit of Mamluk heavy archers.

In the Ayyubid armylist in Hail Caesar you are optioned to take dismounted Mamluks and they count as heavy arches. It would have been nice to have proper heavy close combat infantry instead of archers with armour but that's how the army list is.

What this meant miniature wise is that I felt it was wrong to only use those extremely cool dismounted Mamluks from Perry https://www.perry-miniatures.com/product_info.php?cPath=23_33_53&products_id=2126&osCsid=lac71suren50m5d1sf20hcaij6 as these are a little to close combat oriented to get that heavy archer unit feel to it and thus I had to supplement them with some archers with heavy armour from other makers.

So the unit is a mixture of makers to get that varied unit feel to it that I like and I cant remember from where they are from.

The banner is a paper banner that "Eric the Shed" put together. http://shedwars.blogspot.se/2015/03/saracen-pennants-flags-and-banners.html that I printed on regular paper and then painted some gold colour on top to make it pop a little. Big thanks for that Eric.

Blood Rage Kickstarter

Dammit, Im in.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coolminiornot/blood-rage

Its hard to resist Vikings and Trolls...



https://d2pq0u4uni88oo.cloudfront.net/projects/1677599/video-500980-h264_high.mp4

Azerbaijani swordsmen

Here we have a unit of Azerbaijani swordsmen.

The miniatures are a mixture of Perrys Swordsmen https://www.perry-miniatures.com/product_info.php?cPath=23_33_53&products_id=2122&osCsid=pft87vrqtn8ue4n53opvn2auu3
and converted plastic miniatures, mostly Warlord Games Celts and with some part from Perry miniatures Mahadists and Fireforge Games Steppe Warriors.


I really dont know that much about the Azerbaijani swordsmen but have chosen to represent them as a warband and will use the rules for Ghazi fanatics found in many of the middle eastern armies.
To represent a warband I went with double depth of bases but I only have 3 miniatures per 40x40mm base to keep the numbers to paint down somewhat and to get a more dispersed and non cohesion look in the unit.

Some a newly painted but some are rebased from previously painted miniatures.
 http://kampgruppe-engel.blogspot.se/2014/02/azerbaijani-swordsmen.html

Birds

Just a small update.
Some birds to add detail to the gaming boards or maybe could be used as objectives.
Nothing fancy, just a quick paintjob, but it will do.

Two ducks and a hen and a rooster, they are based on 25mm flat bases from Renadra and the miniatures are from Magister Militum.
http://www.magistermilitum.com/type/figures.html?cat[]=61928#order=name&limit=36&p=undefined&dir=ASC&cat[]=61928&cat[]=59633

I tried to base them rather generic so I can toss them into all sorts of games and settings.

Tungt infanteri

I have painted a small unit of heavy infantry belonging to the House of Folkunga/ Bjälbo.

The miniatures them self are a mixture of Gripping Beast plastic hirdmen, Fireforge Games Heavy infantry and two Curteys miniatures.
I wanted to try out a new technique as I was after an image of lots of chain mail. By using the chain mailed torsos from GB and arms from Fireforge I think I managed to nail the picture I had in my head with a unit with lots of chain mail.
The Curteys miniatures fit perfectly into my unit as an added variation and I the effect it gives to mix in some metal miniatures in an plastic unit.

I started with priming them "Panzer grey" a dark grey that I really like as a start for painting chain mail. The chain mails was then drybrushed with metal before I started to paint the blue and the rest of the colours.

I have chosen to give them the Lion symbol from the House of  Folkunga/ Bjälbo. I wanted to have the symbol in one colour and not adding silhouette and details of the faces on the lion as I imagined that the yellow lion form wound be enough for these men. This also speeded up the process.

Starting with a dark grey primer and a metal drubrush was a really nice technique for this unit and I will probably use it in the future on units with much chain mail.

I went with the bases you get in the Fireforge boxes and the 60x40mm base is nice for multibasing, I had four men in the front rank and two in the second. By using more men in the front I get a much tighter shieldwall formation without having to paint more miniatures. It also makes a much more fun and varied look in the units.


I choose not to remove the Thor's hammers on the hirdmen torsos as I imagined that the old Gods and their symbols would still be used by warriors.
After the battle of Lena 1208 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lena the victory was attributed to Odin and this shows that for the warriors at this time the old Norse Gods had some importance, at least as a sort of superstitious tradition if nothing else.