Saka & Sogdians, Satrapies of Persia

To continue on the theme of Persian Satrapies, here is a few pictures of my Saka (an ancient Scythian tribe) and Sogdian (a tribe centered around the region of Samarkand) infantry. These too are from the HaT set of Persian Light Infantry.

First the Saka:

Here is an individual figure shown in profile:

Not my best paintwork. But overall, an ok job. I think I might have forgotten to paint the hair on this guy... Anyway here are the Sogdians. They came with an optional Spear/Axe weapon. I chose the Axe. Mostly because I wanted to have some troops in a more close combat look. But looking at the figure it seems more to me that it is in a throwing motion...

And now for a close-up of one of the figures. Definately missed painting the hair on this guy.

I might just paint hair on these figures before using them on the wargames table the next time. It sort of annoys me that it´s so visible. But these photographs actually show the figures bigger than they are in real life. So missing some details is something that happens... though it should never be as obvious as on this guy.


~Claus

Babylonian Archers, Satrapies of Persia

I took a look at my unfinished Persian Army, and found that it was quite a hopeless project to start planning when to do it. However, i did find that i had finished all the vasal satrapy troops of the Persian Empire. Well at least the ones that are on foot.

So I thought that I would show them off here. A few of them I am quite proud of the paint job on. Not the least of these are my Babylonians. So here are the two units I have of these:

I decided that I wanted to show off the detail on the uniforms. So here are some pictures of the Archers individually. First from the unit shown at the top:

Then the two poses from the bottom unit:

They say pictures speak louder than words. Well, i hope they have. I only wish I could field a few more different poses of these wonderful figures, from HaTs Persian Light Infantry set.


~Claus

Egyptian Chariots

... or Egyptian Cavalry, as the box from Atlantic and later Nexus decided to call them. Somewhat confusing, since the Egyptians did not have cavalry, they had chariots.

So watch out here comes the pharaoh, along with his retinue and bodyguards:

I have forgotten which of these are from Nexus and which are from Atlantic, but since they are reissues (the ones from Nexus) one would think that the difference is minute. Well it is, apart from the sprue that i got from Nexus was so badly molded I had to repair several of the chariots out of the box. The main problem was that the yokes were too short, and thus the chariot when the horses were added got lifted off the ground. Very annoying to say the least. Though some were good, and didn´t require specialist work.

I bet you can´t spot which ones are repaired. Here they are the two units of ordinary chariots with charioteers.

The pharaoh himself was painted before I really got into researching uniforms. I am not entirely sure that a blue helmet is fitting. Nor the blue clothes of some of the charioteers. The standardbearer is a simple conversion, and green stuff has been used to create both the standard and pole. It was the first time I used green stuff.

 

Up until Zvezda released their set of Egyptians he was the General of my Egyptian troops. I had hoped to get the special figure from Caesar of a Pharaoh, but he was very rare, and despite my best efforts I did not get one.

I will leave you with a final picture of all the chariots, seen from the front. Countless times my armies have faced these and probably seen the image you are seeing from that exact same angle.


~Claus

Punic War Libyans

I generally buy everything that is of reasonable quality, and fits my definition of ancients (anything before gunpowder), and the Carthaginian Allies, by HaT fit into this category. So with the purchase of this set i got my first Punic War Libyans (along with a number of other figures). Later when i purchased Zvezdas Carthaginian Infantry i got a few more. 

These form the back bone of my Punic War Libyan ally contingent. I would hesitate to call it an army, since I think it is too small. Here is the entire "tribe" lined up and ready for battle. 

As can be seen it consists of 4 seperate units. Three more or less identical units, of spearmen (from the HaT set) with various shield patterns, and of course a "mohawk" which was dyed red. All accurate according to my sources.

Then there is a unit of Libyan spearmen as they look when made by Zvezda. They have somewhat cruder shields, but they have an iron rim. Also they are very clearly wooden, so it would be hard to mix these figures with the ones from HaT, that seem to have hide over there shields.

And then.... we have the command element. I like to group these with the Zvezda Libyans, to make a bigger unit. There are after all only 6 Libyans from the 2 boxes of Zvezda Carthaginian Infantry I picked up. Here we have them.

Only 2 of them are ordinary figures, that can be bought of the shelf, both from the HaT set. Two of the others are simple head swaps. (Can you recognize what set they come from?) And the last two, the Tribal Leader and his standard bearer are alittle more complex conversions. Have a closer look:

Standard bearer:

Tribal Leader:

Generally i like the work i did on these Libyans. However one thing bugs me. Are they supposed to have black skin? Or should they have been more like the rest of the Carthaginians? If you know the answer, feel free to tell me. Don´t think I will repaint the figures, as I like the look of black skin and red hair. But I am curious to what the answer might be.

~Claus

A small cavalry skirmish

Right before I left Roskilde, to move to Skive, in the other end of Denmark, I made a small photoseries of my Numidians against my mounted and mobile Roman units. It was never fought, it was more thought of a sort of diorama, that I would send in to HaTs everything toy soldier page. I never sent it. But now you can enjoy it here.

The Numidian Cavalry charges in:

On the unsuspecting Republican Roman Cavalry, escorting an important messenger, in a Chariot (Original Airfix).

Who will win the confrontation? Here is the entire scene:

Down at the bottom of the picture, the Carthaginian Cavalry can be seen, confronting a few Roman Cavalry men as well. I never did get to find out who won. Perhaps I will play out the scenario this could inspire sooner or later. Sounds like it could be fun.

~Claus

Biblical Libyans, Caesar

Well, I thought it was time for something a bit more fresh. Not completely fresh, as in brand new paint jobs, but something that i had done within the last 5 years at least. Also I was afraid that this was becoming very much a HaT blog, which it is by far going to be. So I let my brand new camera snap a few pictures of my Biblical Libyan Army.

First here is a picture of the entire army, lined up ready for battle.

That is 7 units, or what amounts to 2 sets of Caesars Biblical Era Libyan Warriors. I decided to paint them up like is shown in Osprey´s Ancient Armies of the Middle East, and Osprey´s Armies of the Pharaohs. Or at least i used those pictures for inspiration, along with the box cover.

First off we have two units of Bowmen:

I decided that it would be easy for these Libyans to obtain red dye, as well as yellow dye, but that their main clothing would be skins, or leather. So most of the units are are painted in red or brown colors.

Next up some warriors with swords, that have capes:

The feathers are supposed to be ostrich feathers. With alittle imagination I hope they look like it.

Then we have some warriors with spears. 

Curiously, the set only provides one pose of these. 

All weapons i assumed were bronze so they have been painted accordingly. As one of the Osprey books dryly remarks, attire was kind of minimal. The next warriors are completely naked, save for the leather phallic sheath. 

In the last picture, you will note that one of the figures has a cape. This is my general, or tribal king, if you fancy that word better. I have made a solo picture of him here:

As can probably be seen: I am not a great painter, when it comes to small details. I am more of a paint-up-a-unit-a-day kind of guy. Though I would like to think that I am better than the tribal king here shows. But then again, this was some time ago. So perhaps I have become a better painter since then. One can only hope.

~Claus

Carthaginian Army, HaT

Back in those days when I was living in Roskilde I had more space, and fewer figures. So today, it would be harder to do what i did back then. I basically had a place, on top of a deep yet low bookshelf, that was simply perfect to set up an entire army. So thats what i did with my Carthaginians.

The above picture shows the entire army lined up. The army consisted of Carthaginian War Elephants, my Carthaginian Cavalry, Iberian Infantry, Carthaginian African Infantry and of course Numidian Cavalry along with Numidian Infantry. Quite a colorful army.

Today I have an entire Army composed of Carthaginians without allies, and each of the allies (Numidians and Iberians) have their own army as well! In all three cases painted. This could only be done thanks to the many manufacturers that have dared to dive into the subject. So thank you Zvezda, Orion, and HaT. Especially HaT for their groundbreaking work.

~Claus

Republican Roman Cavalry, HaT

So here is another update.

When i had made the Carthaginian Cavalry, see last post, I had some Republican Roman Cavalry, that I still had not painted. I ended up giving them what I considered a pretty ordinary uniform.


The units had to be a bit smaller than i really wanted, but, I later, when they came out, painted some Italeri Republican Roman Cavalry men, to make the units a bit bigger. Of course at the time I had no idea that they would be making some.


I was more or less uninterested in Republican Romans, and used mixed units, of both republican and imperial romans. Today I have 3 massive armies of Romans. 1 Republican, 1 Imperial, and 1 late imperial.

As can be seen in the pictures, shields were hand painted, and i was beginning to experiment with making horses more than 1 color, giving some "socks" in white, and blazes. I later showed these horses to a person who knew about horses, and the "socks" it turns out where too perfect for what they would be in nature.

~Claus

Carthaginian Cavalry, Conversions

So I promised a few pictures of some of my figures. Well I thought I would start off with something that old, and something that really was not made by any one figure company.

So back in 2000 something, I sat down, and did some simple headswaps. These were my first conversions, ever. I took the heads of some of HaTs Carthaginian African Infantry, and gave them the bodies of some of HaTs Republican Roman Cavalry. It felt like a good idea at the time. Carthaginians often took the armor and equipment from the battlefield, so why not cavalrymen too.

The result looks like this:

and from another angle, and a little more in focus:

Back then I was not as skilled as I am now. First of all I would have adjusted the heads, so that the guy at the back to the left, did not look like a casualty. But other than that, I am pretty pleased with the result. The pictures were published on HaTs website.

Some time later, HaT made a set with Carthaginian Cavalry, making this a project that i had not needed to do. But that´s life for you...

~Claus

Introductions & why this blog

So, first of all, welcome to my blog.

I am Claus. I am born in 1973, on november the 10th. And I have been collecting miniature toy soldiers the most of my life. Of course back in those days, i did not know I was collecting. I was merely playing with toy soldiers.

Today I am very much a collector, painter, and the occasional wargamer.

So why this blog?
Well basically I want to share my hobby with other people. Having trawled the web, using google, no doubt ineffectively, i did not come up with anybody near me that I could share this hobby with. So i thought, after a while, that I should do something about that. Since nobody else in Denmark apparantly is doing what I am doing. Well nobody that I can find online...

So here it is, my blog.

To start with let me introduce you to my workspace, as it looked a few years back, when I used to live in Roskilde.


As you may have noticed, I use Games Workshop paints. Or citadel paints as I think they where called way back then. And as you might notice, the figures are 1/72 scale, and all what i consider ancients. (That is anything that is before gunpowder, or is not using a gun).

Well, that is it for now. Stay tuned, as I will most likely be posting some pictures of some of my figures soon.

~Claus