From GrahamB - Loads more Ancients (555 points)

More IT problems have delayed me posting these. I can’t find the settings on my iPad to enable me to upload photos to blogger so I have resorted to uploading photos from my telephone.

Anyway, in the meantime I have still been painting more ancients for my classical army’s for the Mithradatic wars and other Successor army’s. Firstly here is a unit of Successor Agema heavy cavalry. They can also serve as Cataphracts.  I don’t know the manufacturer as they were bought 2nd hand and given long spears from Aventine Miniatures and a spare Victrix Greek standard.

Secondly I have completed a small unit of 4 Scythian horse archers who will see service with various armies. I think they are A &A miniatures. The riders have separate legs and torsos allowing multiple poses.

Next are two Caesarian Roman units from Wargames Factory so have been in the plastic pile for years. I have enough Caesarian Romans already mainly in Red, so these have yellow and white tunics as well as a variation in shields to represent either Pompeys troops or imitation Legionaries or even Italian allies of the Romans or Successors.

Next up are a unit of 16 Greek Hoplites from Victrix Miniatures. They paint up and rank up very easily.

I have added three units of 6 generic ancient skirmishers, a mix of spare metal figures and cobbled together plastics giving one unit of bows, one old slingers and one unit of javelin men. 

Finally I have completed a unit of 16 Theurokitai from Aventine Miniatures for service with my Successors. They could also double up as imitation Legionaries.

So 16 x 28mm cavalry @ 10 pts = 120 points and 79 foot 28mm figures @ 5 points each = 395 points giving a total of 555points.

***

That is...a lot of horses, a lot of riders, and a lot of guys...for a lot of points...

555 points it is!

GregB

From MartijnN: Some heavy hitters (28mm Roman cataphracts)(120 points)

 I have slowly been getting my painting mojo back. Boy, has this Challenge been a slow starter! I started working on these 28mm Gripping Beasts before the new year began, but I have just been finishing them recently. I thought I'd experiment a bit, so I gave them a back undercoat and a white zenithal, and then had the luminous idea to airbrush them in silver, trying not to hit the areas that would not be metal (which, on these figures, frankly isn't a lot). However, I forgot that I would be using speedpaints again. And as you know, these are fairly translucent, which is the whole point of them. This, of course, meant that all colours  applied over them ended up as metallics. Which again meant that I had to do them again, either by applying a new white undercoat or by layering them up with acrylics. I'm pleased enough with the end result, but my shortcut sure took me the long way around!

Anyway, here they are. Their name is Greek in origin, being derived from kata and fraktos, meaning "completely covered". Sometimes, we find the term clibanarii also (probably from a pun, meaning something like "oven-men"), and historians are still divided on the question whether these were different types of cavalry or simply two synonymous terms for the same type of horsemen. There were numerous units of these super heavy cavalrymen in the late Roman army, although not much of their is history is very certain. They probably first appeared in the East, and at first the Romans used cataphracts levied from allied or subject peoples. They were regularly employed by the Sassanid Persians; there is a famous description in Ammianus Marcellinus' book XXV. They were probably armed with the long lance, the kontos, although they have also been described as using mattiobarbuli, heavy darts. In the Roman army, they increased in numbers as time progressed, but there were not very many of them at any given time it seems. However, just like the Grenadiers of the Old Guard, any wargamer should have at least one unit of them!

These Gripping Beast plastics look the part. I think they are accurate enough; I have my doubts about the saddles, for since the Romans probably did not yet use stirrups at this time, I feel the famous horned saddle would have been a better choice. Using a standard saddle without stirrups while wearing 40 kilograms of armour und being just a little top heavy might result in some highly undignified and unsoldierly experiences with the forces of gravity... Still, the figures were relatively easy to build, even for a clumsy oaf like me, and the result is pleasing enough I think. (Yes, I noted I had forgotten to paint the front of one of the bases, this has been corrected 😉). They go together well with the Victrix late Roman infantry I painted last week. As they are part of the same army, again no squirrels...

So, there we have it. Twelve 28mm cavalrymen should net me another 120 points and bring me to about a third of my target. Onwards and upwards!

12x 28mm horse @ 10 points = 120 points

Martijn

Wow Martijn those are some very well painted cataphracts! But more importantly: I am glad to hear your mojo is slowly returning, thank your time!

Cheers Sander 

From AlanD - Historical and Statuesque Cataphracts (140 points)

Hello everyone!

This week I have been mostly painting a box of Gripping Beast late Roman Cataphracts. I quite like these figures, although putting them together was a bit irritating. I also have a gripe with one of the horse poses, as when you look closely none of its hooves are actually on the ground. As far as I'm aware, horses never run like this, unless they are jumping over something, and they certainly don't when trotting along covered in horse armour with a big armoured bloke sitting on them. Maybe they are some sort of hover tank.

Anyway, I'm please with how they came out, and they should give my third- and fourth-century Roman armies a bit of punch.

I'll have a go at cheekily claiming 20 bonus points in addition to the 120 points for the 12 cavalry. So far, I have completed New Acquisitions and Overdue in the first section. I'm happy to (boringly) claim these as History, also in section 1, but if Millsy goes to the pub early this Friday he might consider giving me 20 points in Section 2 instead for a 'Statue of a Famous Person.'

Let me explain.

The weak point of my petition is the 'famous person' bit. However! I can make a good claim for the 'statue' bit. The appearance of cataphracts and clibanarii impressed late-Roman observers with their polished all-encompassing armour, so that at least two authors that I'm aware of (Ammianus Marcellinus and the emperor Julian) explicitly compared them to living statues. Most famously, Ammianus described the heavily armoured cavalry that accompanied Constantius II as '...cavalry with cuirasses, whom the Persians call Clibanarii, protected by coverings of iron breast-plates, and girdled with belts of iron, so that you would fancy them statues polished by the hand of Praxiteles, rather than men.'

As always, I bow to Millsy's sagacity and innate sense of justice. Have a nice weekend all!

From Millsy: You smooth talking devil Alan! It's rare that I have to Google something someone says about me and it is flattering, so if nothing else that inclines me to let you sneak this in under the statues category in the Library.

I've been waiting to see these since you spoke about them last week on the chat. A couple of the horse poses do indeed look like they are floating which is a bit odd. Hopefully that doesn't make them too fragile. Poses aside your brushwork is superb mate, especially the iconic striped lances and coloured horse furniture. A beautiful unit all up and I'm sure they will give Paul a few scares.

140 points for your tally sir!

From IanS: 15mm Palmyran (184pts)

 

Well, I remembered this week to do the post, work was hectic and I forgot last week.

 Palmyran Army

 This army came about as I fancied painting a new ancient army as for the last two years I have been repainting existing armies.  I had heard about the Palmyrans and looked on the DBA army list and started from there.

So First up is the General and his standard bearer for the Palmyran Army, I have no idea what company the figures came from as they were part of a job lot on eBay a couple of years ago.  The Draco standard is home made from green stuff and the lance could have been thicker.

Next up is the last unit of Cataphracts the figures are from Forged in battle.

Then we have the last two units of Light horse archers.  In my last post I mentioned I could never tell which way round they were facing, well it was only when basing I noticed that one rider is actually stuck on his horse the wrong way round.  I am fine with this and he is obviously a parthian.

Last but not least are two heavy infantry units again figures from forged in battle.

So here is the finished army.

 

On the left the heavy hitters:  5 units of Cataphracts with the Army general with 3 units of light for screening those Cataphracts

Infantry consists of 4 Heavy archer units.  Yes there should be 4 figures to a base but I did the maths wrong when ordering.  3 Heavy Infantry to give backbone to the Infantry Line and last but not least 3 Light infantry archers for skirmishing 

This army equates to 1250pts in our local rules which is a club night sized army. 

Next up some roman allies for this army if they had such a thing.

So points being claimed:

Army General - 2 x 15mm figures each 4pts = 8pts

Cataphracts - 12 x 15mm figures each 4pts = 48 pts

Light horse - 16 x 15mm figures each 4pts = 64pts

Heavy Infantry - 32 x 15mm figures each 2 pts = 64pts

Total 184pts

May I also claim 3 squirrels one each for Cataphract, Light cavalry and Heavy Infantry

I was wondering if you'd forgotten to finish the post last week - I saw it sitting there marked "draft" all day (and it had been there the previous day when I checked). That's a great looking army.

As for the squirrel points, sadly you just get one for these as they are all from the same army.

Tamsin