EBay Bargains Come Round One In A While

A Surprising EBay Bargain

Once in a while EBay throws up a bargain when you least expect it. This happened to me last weekend when for the price of £23-75 including delivery I bagged myself 12 elements [36 castings] of Cilician Armenian Irr Ax O.

The figures were well painted, and even have magnetic basing underneath. I would have needed to have spent £15-75 plus delivery on the unpainted metal. With this purchase I no longer need to worry about running out of auxilia when I field this army at 500 AP. I didnt even need to do anything to the figures and have taken them straight out of the box and packed them in with the rest of the army.

I am still short of Spearmen but since they operated in close cooperation with the Crusader states in the Middle East I can always use some of my Feudal Spearmen in the army and rationalise as claiming they just hired in some locals for the campaign. I am 99.9% certain that the castings are Essex Miniatures so fit in with the rest of my army with no problem.

To view the rest of my Cilician Armenians just click on the label.

First Run Out With Cilician Armenians

Cilician Armenians Invade the Serbian Empire

I have been building new armies over the last four years as part of Project Lead Mountain. Recently an old gaming buddy rejoined the club and has been getting back into the swing of DBM.

We have been pretty flexible on what games we played and whilst we have stuck with DBM v3.3 and using the M2 and MM2 lists we have been sticking to Book 4 games at the present.

I decided on using my Cilician Armenians which had not been used since I finished them and to my horror Brian went for Serbian Empire. 

Brians army was organised in three commands:-

CinC 26 E/23 EE/8 D [25% = 6 EE]

C2 24 E/22 EE/ 7.5 D [25% = 5.5 EE]

C3 22 E/20 EE/7 D [25% = 5 EE]

Army 72 E/65 EE/32.5 B

My army was a four command one totalling 88 elements and was the first try out. I was pleased with the performance despite Brian having the luck of the devil with his PIP dice rolls most of the time.

When we called time after 4 hours we were both in a strong position, Brian had started to break up my right flank whilst I had started to destroy his central position by killing some of his CinC's command Kn S. The game ended on a 5-5 score with neither of us having taken 25% from an enemy command which converted to 16-16 using the BHGS scoring system.

Cilician Armenian In Disguise

Cilician Armenians Disguised As Mongols

This DBx army list has two elements of Irr LH F described as Armenians dressed as Mongols. I was at a loss what to do to create these two elements until as part of another EBay purchase I added one pack of 15mm Minifigs ZC350 Mongol Cavalry [Firing Bow] to the order.

I Googled for suitable images with very little luck, they were more traditional Asiatic Horde type drawings and thought that considering they were really Cilician Armenians in disguise I should try and make them fit into the rest of the army but still give them a flavour of what the Mongol Hordes would have looked like.

Like most of the Minifigs range they are very old sculpts despite the old company having remastered all of their horses over 15 years ago or more. They are still quite crisp castings and required minimal cleaning up to get them ready for painting. I added them to the list of items to be painted which took on more urgency this week when I decided that I intended to use the Cilician Armenians for the first time on Sunday at Essex Warriors and I wanted to swop out the two Arab-Muslim light horse elements of Horse Archers I was using in their place.

So to all those gamers out there who dismiss Minifigs as being old castings this isn't always the case and with a steady hand and a keen eye you can get some very nice results.

Minifigs ZC350 Mongol Cavalry [Firing Bow]

Cilician Armenians Emerge From The Dark

Cilician Armenians Are Ready

CinC Essex Miniatures trio, CRU29, MOG1 & Unknown

Following on from my post of the 11th August I am happy to report that my Cilician Armenians are finally finished. I bought them off EBay on 1st August as a painted army consisting of 63 mounted and 248 foot. 

What was in the box of infantry

The painting on the infantry was to a reasonable standard but the mounted were not. There were ten elements of Ps O archers which were of no use to me so I managed to sell these on to someone in the club after adding magnetic basing to them and retouching their sides to blend it in which reduced my purchase price by £20-00.

Of the 63 mounted 12 of them went straight into my Early Armenian/Parthian collection after magnetic basing and edging as there was no way they were suitable to use as Bedouin being that they were Horse Archers. It was clear that the person selling this army have thrown together what ever mounted figures he could to create an army to sell. Of the other 51 mounted three were damaged beyond repair and 21 so badly painted they were only fit for stripping back to bare metal. This left me with 33 mounted that needed to be repaired and retouched whilst the paint stripper took effect. After comparing the numbers of figures to the list I realised that I was still short of suitable mounted figures as well as a smaller number of foot figures. I did a quick order to Essex Miniatures for £45-00 and got on with the repairs and removing lots of the infantry from their bases ready for rebasing once I have match painted the new missing figures I had ordered.

The army requires three generals and luckily I also had a trio of Museum Miniatures knights in my spares box which turned out to be perfect to use as the optional upgrade that the generals can be from Irr Kn F to Irr Kn O - more of him later. The army has an eclectic mix of mounted troops a lot of which are old Minifigs and some Essex Miniatures. I am unable to identify the Minifigs castings but after retouching the figures repainting their shields and adding some waterslide transfers I created I am very pleased with the overall effect. To finish off the generals I created some suitable Cilician Armenian standards.

The four generals including the Museum Miniatures trio on far left Irr Kn O & Irr Kn F

Three Irr Kn F elements Essex CRU29

Irr Kn F Essex trio on left, nine old Minifigs  

Eight Irr Kn F elements Old Minifigs

Moving onto the infantry contingent the DBM and DBMM list allow for 56 elements of Irr Sp I or Irr Ax O and 20 elements of Irr Bw O or Irr Ps O. I cannot see me ever needing to field this many Spearmen or Auxilia and have suitable casings in my Feudal collection to bulk out the army if necessary because I can rationalise this as them using some Crusader States infantry to expand out the army if pressed.

The army out of the box didnt have enough spearmen and archers so part of the Essex order contained more of these to enable me to create a uniform look to the army. I already have plenty of additional suitable auxilia to use for this army if necessary.

14 of the 16 Irr Sp I elements of Essex AEA17 Spearmen

12 elements of Irr Sp I Unknown make

Moving on to the large number of archers this army can have meant I needed to paint up lots more figures to match to ensure it didn't look like a mess of different troop types.

20 Irr Bw O elements Essex AEA18 Archers

20 Irr Ps O elements Essex AEA12 Archers

Next up is the Auxilia, the box contained a total of 22 elements. I decided that apart from some light retouching. repainting their shields and adding magnabasing that these figures were good enough to use almost right out of the box. The figures came in two batches, half of which included some figures wearing metal helmets and the other half without. I am unsure of their make so cannot at present add to them. Update been advised the Auxilia are a mix of Essex Miniatures CRU7 and CRU10 mix.

Apparently probably a mix of Essex Miniatures CRU7 & CRU10 figures

Finally there were a couple of spare elements in the box that were based up as dismounted cavalry. One of which is useful to use as a Irr Bd S General for when the Irr Kn O dismounts. They are not particularly well painted and I will replace them in due course with other figures in my Feudal collection. 

Irr Bd O Unknown maker