15mm Painting During Lockdown - Scythians

Last of my Scythian Infantry Completed

Back in August 2018 I blogged about painting my Scythian Archers and 21 months later I have finally painted up the last of the Xyston Scythian infantry I have to complete this army. I had 115 castings to paint and started them six weeks ago just after the UK COVID-19 Lockdown started. 

I was missing 18 x Irr Hd O elements which accounted for 90 castings meaning I had 25 castings left over going spare. After giving it a lot of thought due to the mix of castings I had left over I decided to create an additional eight Irr Ax O elements from the remainders and hid the single odd casting within one of the horde elements as I hat to waste figures! These auxilia are in my to sell pile of finished figures and will end up on EBay in due course.

I still have a large number of horse archers to paint up but I dont need to paint them at present as I have more than enough finished elements in my box for my current needs unless I go for the almost entirely light horse variation of the army. The thought of over 100 Irr LH F plus the lone Irr Cv O CinC is quite daunting!

So here are the completed eighteen Horde elements.

Here are the eight spare Auxilia elements.Which are now on EBay UK

Finally as part of the Chinese lot I blogged about on the 10th May 2020 there were four orphan elements of Indian Light Horse with javelins. I had to repair two of the castings which had broken javelins and repainted their shields into Black Lacquer so they matched in with my own Indian army collection.. The figures were otherwise very nice and I rebased them in the style of my own Indian army bases for a very quick win as I was missing a couple of Irr LH O elements anyway.

15mm "CHINESE" Ancient Army Off Ebay No:2

15mm "CHINESE" Ancient Army Off Ebay 2

Back in January I posted about an impulse purchase on EBay of a Chinese army. At the time I planned to use it as the building block for creating some other Chinese army options. The original listing claimed it was Yuan & Ming where I was advised by a Hong Kong gamer it was more Sung looking. So when I saw another Chinese army from the same seller I was surprised to see it listed as 3 Kingdom and Early Tang. Given that the time frame for these figures also covered the Sui army it means that I could potentially create quite a few armies from both collections along with my own Later Tang army. The listing was for 296 foot and 158 cavalry. I put in my bid and waited for it to end. I did win the auction and it arrived last week. As I was merging two armies and wanted to be able to use them alongside my own figures I decided that both armies would be rebased to match my own figures. 15 of the mounted were very old style castings and I have decided to discard them. The lot also contained eight mounted Indian light horse armed with javelins which are going to bulk out my Indian army which is missing a few light horse.

Here are the pictures from the original listing.

Whilst the painting style is quite good the use of new bases with make a huge difference to the infantry and light horse. I have decided not to rebase the Cataphracts, cavalry and baggage at this time.

Here are pictures of the two armies now merged onto their new MDF bases ready for basing up. I have repurposed lots of the figures into other standard elements too and found identical castings in both armies that helped me create more elements than I had originally thought I could.

I have not formally started the final basing as I concentrated on sorting out the various figures to make best use of the collection. I will need to add to it in due course so they are currently in temporary storage boxes.

Essex MPA17 Macedonian: Hippakontistai Light Cavalry from Project Lead Mountain

Macedonians - When Whats On The Packet Is Only A Guide

I found a bag of 30 Essex MPA17 Macedonian: Hippakontistai Light Cavalry from Project Lead Mountain. I finally got around to painting them up. I dont even know how I got them except probably part of a grab bag of cheap figures from years ago?

Officially they are supposed to be Macedonian but in reality they were hired in troops from Northern Afghanistan to help out with Alexanders shortage of light cavalry as he moved further into India.

The castings are Bactrian type javelin armed light cavalry and will do for a number of armies, mine will be going into my Greco-Bactrian army. I had 30 castings and only needed 24 so 6 will be sold on as surplus to requirements in due course. Other suggested uses are for Parthians, Seleucids and other Early Successors. Maccabeans, Sogdians, Hyrcanians, Persians, Indians and Arachosians. 

Being Essex they are of course single pose castings and are all riding the same horse castings because these are one of their older ranges. The painted up really nicely and the final effect is quite impressive.

Later Polish 15mm Knights Commission

15th C Later Polish Knights Commission

With this blog entry comes the last part of Bob's commission. Twelve Essex EMED 12A & 13A Knights on barded horses. Link here

https://www.essexminiatures.co.uk/collections/15mm-medieval-eastern-european

Bob gave me some illustrations to give me a guide as to what he wanted but as with everything sometimes the customer isnt right and I went back to my Polish research documents to make sure what was shown in the illustrations matched the historic facts. I have a copy of the heraldry carried by the Polish army at Grunwald in 1410 and I researched loads of Polish heraldry shields based on their Herb family system [Herb = Clan] and it meant that most individuals of Polish ancestry didn't have unique heraldry but the entire Herb shared the same armour decorations. Since I was only painting twelve knights I was spoilt for choice and picked those designs that looked varied along with one of the Polish Military Order knights in Yellow and Black Check design.

So here are the finished knights unbased at Bob's request: