I Decided that I needed Another Book 1 Army - Scythians
After must humming and hesitation I decided that I would do a Scythian Army for 2018. I already had some Scythians that came with the Sargonid army I finished in November 2017. So I sent a rather large order off to Zyston for their excellent range of Scythians. I spent a bit more than I planned to but they were offering a 15% discount for purchases over £200 GBP. This meant my purchase started out as £222 & it reduced to £190.
I only ordered Personality figures, Body Guard Cavalry, Archers, Slingers, Auxilia, Infantry, Subject Foot, Woman Warriors & some accessories to go with their baggage elements. I already have 72 Museum Miniature Horse Archers to paint along with a large bag of old Essex castings so if I need to add to these I might submit a further order in due course.
First up are the 18 elements of Irr Ax O Subject Foot. As is usual when I build an army if I like a particular casting the label on the packet is only a guide. So I have mixed up the Zyston Infantry & Subject Infantry to give me what I felt was a better casting mix for these elements. I still have 18 elements of Irr Hd O Subject Foot to paint so none of the castings will be wasted.
The figures come in two parts & you have to purchase their metal spears separately as an additional order. I have had to drill out every hand to take the spears & glue their shields onto the castings. If I am honest I would probably not do this again as its a huge time sink to prep the figures.
The castings are beautiful sculpted & were not too difficult to paint once I actually started them as a batch of 54 figures on my production line.
The Scythians also have a small contingent of 6 x Scythian Slingers Irr Ps O. The Zyston castings come in three poses & once cleaned up of the casting vents & other excess bits of metal they make a small addition to any army as necessary.
The army has the option to use up to 24 elements of Scythian Archers Irr Bw I/O with the option to regrade up to 25% of them as Irr Ps O. This means I needed to create 6 elements of Scythian Archers Irr Ps O. There are a lot of poses & after sorting out the poses I wanted to use for the Irr Bw elements I used 12 left over castings for the Psiloi.
Once in a while EBay throws up a bargain & for little more than the cost of brand new metal I purchased 21 elements of Irr LH for £41 inc delivery. I knew that it was a gamble and that they will need to rebased. I had spotted that two of the castings were not horse archers but Persian Bactrian light horse figures from Essex. I instantly discarded this element into the draw with the other castings of this type to be worked on in due course. After removing the 40 castings from their bases & cleaning up the figures bases from the old basing material I mounted them on brand new bases in readiness to match them to my already completed figures. They turned out to be a mix of Essex, Museum & unknown castings.
Here are pictures of the figures as listed on EBay. Had they been purchased to add to an old army I might not have bothered to rebase them but they had four different basing styles so looked a bit of a mess to my eyes.
Once I had retouched a few small areas of damage to the paint & rebased them I was amazed at how well they turned out. Here is the end result.
I still have a lot of castings left to do to get this army on the table & don't expect to be able to deploy it before September 2018. I used then this month for the first time by substituting my Armoured Early Armenian cavalry and archers for the missing Scythians. They look near enough for friendly games whilst I crack on with the missing troops.
