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:

Later Polish 15mm Generals Commission

15th C Later Polish Generals Painting Commission

Following on from Bob's commission to paint some Polish Cavalry he gave me a packet of four Essex knights consisting of 2 x XMED11 and 2 x XMED11a unfortunately this meant that he could not make up a single command group without duplicating one of the figures. I assume this was a special order as they were all on barded horses. Luckily I have some left over later 15th C knights in Project Lead Mountain. So after cutting off their lances and drilling out their hands I replaced the lances with long steel spears to create standard bearers to make up two command groups. I will give Bob the option of taking both groups when I next see him. Failing that I will have a nice command element to add to my own collection or sell on. I still have twelve more Polish knights to complete for his commission but I prefer to work in discrete batches to ensure I manage to get them done.