Iberian Heavy Cavalry

The Iberians had some heavy cavalry, but it was not the most common component of their armies. These would typically represent some more wealthy men, perhaps nobels. Here is a unit of them.

Notice how they all are armed with swords, and armored with chainmail as well as having a scutum shield. They are part of the Spanish Cavalry set that HäT make. There was only one pose of them, and I found I would not make any conversions of them. Here is the pose.

Basically he is a warrior waving his sword. Also notice how the camera captures everything, down to the pieces of bit and tackle I have not painted. You get 3 of this pose in each set. I bought 2 sets.

The standard bearer is also one of those poses from the set. He is special, in the sense that it is actually a multipose. You can get a standard, or a spear, simply by cutting off the boar at the end of the standard. You also get 3 of this pose, and as it is unlikely you will need 6 cavalry standardbearers when buying two sets, the multipose is a good idea.

Finally we have the leader of the unit. He is a conversion, made from the HäT Punic Wars Command set, and a headswap. He has been given one of the lose swords. Notice he does not have a shield, I think it may have snapped off. But I did not find one, so I have taken the picture of him without it.

Finally here they are all three poses, that make up the unit, seen from the front. I tried messing with the picture alittle seeing if I could get them cut and pasted into the above pictures, but it just looked wrong. It is also somewhat easier to see the special Spear/Standard that the standardbearer is holding in this picture.

Hope you enjoyed the view

~Claus

Iberian Warriors, Scutati

So, after what seems like an eternity, here I am again, writing a blogpost about my Iberians. This time its the Scutatis turn. Named that way because they carry the large spanish shield, called the Scutum. It is sort of oval in shape and covers most of the body.

Here are the guys.

I was probably better at painting when i painted these than I am today. Notice the shield pattern. Aparantly this kind of pattern was quite common. As for the colors i cannot say, but it seems reasonable to me.

Actually the unit consists of figures from up to three different sets; three conversions, in total and the standard scutati from the Spanish infantry set that HäT produces.

Here is a look at the most common type figure in the unit:

Notice how "heavily" armored he is. That´s right. Apart from the shield and a breastplate, he has no armor. Until Orion came out with their set of Iberian Infantry, this was the heaviest common unit type that the Iberians had. That is unless you make a few conversions, and convert some of the Command Set that HäT produced to Iberians.

Here is a look at the first conversion.

 Please note how the head is split in two by bad molding. Some would have fixed this, but I generally do not do that kind of thing. I simply don´t have a steady enough hand, I think. The conversion is a simple headswap. The body is a light infantry man (or levy infantry man) from the Punic Wars African Infantry set, also done by HäT. I made two of these figures, just for the variety.

Here is a look at the officer of the unit.

He is much more heavily attired. He too is a conversion, made by swapping heads onto a figure from the HäT command set. The shield is much too big, but so is the figure, when compared to the others in the unit. I guess he is somewhat of a giant, this officer.

Well that was my first post in almost a year now. I hope you enjoyed it.

~Claus