Latest Persian light cavalry plus a Review

 

Originally this was  going to be a post on the unit I just finished... then sort of extended things a bit. With the exception of the officers and standard bearers they are all PEC2, Cavalryman with spear and bow in case, unarmoured or conversions of PEC2.

The first lot are ones loosely based on the style of dress shown in 'The Persian Army 560-330BC' by Nick Sekunda and Simon Chew. For convenience I think of them as 'Persian National Army'.

The rest include some of the original figures plus others just representing generic Persians and Bactrians.

So this is the unit I've just painted. Sometimes, I just have to paint Persians. For some reason I didn't do standard bearers for this unit (or the unit of horse archers I'm currently painting).

The strange thing is neither this figure or the horse archer were ever intended to 'production' figures... and it shows with these. The right hand is about as crude as I've ever done... definitely for my use only!

Next, PE4 Conversions.

 

PE4 is another useful Persian as far as conversions go. The original Sp/Bw/Sh armed figure is at the front.

The shieldless ones throwing javelins or firing bows make good Bactrians when in mixed units.

Remove the bowcase and give the figure a sparabara make up useful Hd units for either Achaemenids or Sassanians.

Three more shield variations give a useful range of light infantry or allied troops.

Some PEC4 conversions

 

One of the reasons I like older Old School figures is that they are generally easier to convert into other figures. If the original Garrison range had been super detailed there's no way I would have converted as many figures as I have. 

The front figure is the original PEC4 with spear, shield and bow in case. My initial wish was for shieldless cavalry. Firstly, javelin armed, secondly bow armed. Useful for later Persian cavalry. Strangely, I did do a shieldless  javelin/bow armed figure to act as Bactrians; for some reason never made it into a production mould. For Bactrians, I simply use a mix of the javelin armed and bow armed cavalry.

Give the bow armed figure a cloak and it became a Caspian or Paricanian. With these four figures I can effectively field/represent any combination of Persian light cavalry.

Of course, bend the left foot forward and stick it on a base... Front figure I use as Kardaka - don't know why I didn't do a version without the bowcase, for my purposes not worried. 

Meanwhile the cloaked figure acts as a Caspian, both have other uses though - gives me a couple of decent variations.

So that's 6 simple conversions of the basic PEC4 with others possible. All of them are more useful than the original figure!

Some Sparabara units.

 It occurred to me that I've lots of sparabara units but they're not well represented as unit photos. So I thought I'd put some of them together. One disclaimer - I like the violin shaped shield rather than the actual spara - put it down to artistic licence. 

The original Garrison Immortal fronts this unit. Not a figure I really like because the spear is very weak and tends to snap where it leaves the shelter of the shield.

Most of my spara units are 3 three bases though some are 6. I've also got a few single element units.

A unit of Persians. I should probably do a couple more of these...

And the first of the 2 robed Mede units.

A six element unit of the original Persian archer. I should do more 6 element units.

 

I'm not sure about this unit - it's a lot brighter than the others and looks a little out of place.

My universal archer figure - probably the most useful conversion I ever made! 

Side on view to show off some of the tunic coloours. These are a right mix - like the red/white spara unit the design of some are a bit anachronistic, the frontal stripe design more suited to an Alexandrian based tunic. Still, they look good and help with the irregular look.

'S' Range Persians or Medes

 Some Minifigs 'S' Range 'Medes' - actually Persians but the Persian/Mede codes were the wrong way round for these figures. So they are really Persians even if Minifigs called them  Medes.

Originally I was going to base these as Sparabara but finally decided on 3Bw and - well, spears on an 3Ax or     similar base.

Again, two different styles of figure for the spearman!

'S' Range Persian spears

This unit was a 40 strong unit bought from Harry. To fit my systems I've increased the size to 48 figures and included an extra officer and standard bearer - both Garrison - so it could double as two 24 figure units. One thing I couldn't quite match was the shield colour - so the shields on the extras might have to be repainted at some stage. Although actually Medes, not Persians, these figures were coded as Persians by Minifigs.

Other than painting extra figures and a minor repair on the original standard bearer the figures have just been rebased.

In common with many other 'S' Range figures there are two different variants.

Persian Review 2023 - the rest

 

So this little lot includes Assyrians, Egyptians, Lydians/Phrygians, Ethiopians, Thracians, etc...

There are also a few figures that were missed on the previous posts - 14 Bactrian cavalry, 12 Sarangian archers and 6 Indian horse archers.

Except for the last two pictures this lot are just random bits of the army. This is the right flank, basically a light infantry screen including Milyae and Syrians.

Left flank, including Arab archers at the front.

The Indians missed out on having their own army when I got a load of Minifigs. So this archer unit is the only Garrison Indians I've painted.

Assyrians in the foreground, various Asian Greeks behind them. The smaller 'blue' Assyrians are ones I did, 'red' figures are ex-Harry.

This is more of a test unit. I usually paint Nubians/Kushites dark brown but I experimented with black for these. The standard bearer is a Rose figure.

Carthaginian spears pretending to be Phoenicians backed by some Asiatic Greeks. All these figures are ex-Harry, though the original Carthaginians were supplied by me. A lot of figures I sent Harry came back painted when I bought his collection!

The front row are from my original 70s army and are in need of some attention. Behind them are my Hollywood style Carians in black armour.

Phrygian/Lydians. Need more of these for the Lydian army - and the figures for that are just sitting there!

Garrison Phrygian axemen. A 40 strong unit acquired from Harry.

Egyptians. The ones with the falcon shield blazon are more survivors from my 70s army.

Ex-Harry Persian javelins backed by ex-Harry Persian archers. In front of them some converted Milyae.

Various Nubian/Kushite/Ethiopians backed by Thracians and with Arab archers in front.

Meanwhile, thought it might be an idea to round off the army with some Greeks. On the right flank a load of late Greek conversions, to their left a couple of units of Thebans. I admit I don't like that Theban figure - it overlaps the bases too much!

Could have used more but decided to leave the rest of the late Greeks in their box.

So that's it. Not sure, but I might do a separate post grouping the main pictures together as one Review rather than leaving them separate.

This lot totals about 570 infantry plus 20 cavalry - plus, of course, about 250 Greek hoplites!

Ignoring the Greeks, army itself has 2,058 infantry, 521 cavaly, 36 camels, 17 chariots, 3 war wagons and an elephant (not counting the 8 Sassanid elephants!)

Review of the sparabara units.

 Last time I did a Persian army Review in 2020 I had about 300 sparabara. The current count is 484...

I've included some odd Persians and Scythians as a 'skirmish line' which takes the count to 534 figures.

It should also be pointed out that the Review in 2020 totalled 984 infantry. The two infantry posts so far have passed the 1000 figure mark.

Right flank...

Centre... Note the Scythians are 6 figures per element, all the othersare 8 figures per element. There are a total of 63 sparabara elements. If you work on the original 20 men per figure that would be just under 10,000  men...of course, if you go by the DBX ratio, roughly 250 x 534 = 133,500... 

Left flank... 

My Garrison Persian army is quite big - quite a bit bigger that my Minifigs one...