28mm - Greek Light Cavalry - Victrix

 

A change from Napoleonics for sure!   Yesterday I completed a unit of Greek Light Cavalry made by Victrix.   These were certainly a lot easier to paint than the Napoleonics I have been mostly painting this year. 

There are 12 plastic cavalry in the Victrix set and with enough spare heads wearing later style helmets to cover Alexander's Macedonia.

There are also plenty of arms, so there are sword options as well as shields.  I opted for the classical Greek Light Cavalry of the Peloponnesian War era.  I rather liked the additional left hands clutching extra javelins. This meant a sleek Stanley knife amputation here and there but it means this unit looks like it wants to shower it's foe in javelins!

The figures and horses went together really well. The horses needed a little filling on the rump but this was straight forward. Other horses only had one hoof in contact with the stand. This made them a little wobbly. I used the basing material to try to grasp another hoof to add a little more strength.

The fit of all other parts was generally very good.

It was fun to paint these. Although the clothing is simple, I was still able to add a variety of colours and the addition of bronze always adds interest to a figure.

Some of the horses have a furry creature's pelt upon the back of it instead of saddlecloth. I wasn't too sure what the animal skin was initially.  As I was applying wolf colours I thought I could make out a lions tail.  A little further research and I discovered that Lions were around in Greece until around 400 AD.  This changed everything for me!  Lions aplenty for another 800 years...so lion pelts they became.

I was most interested to read Wargames Illustrated and be inspired by the article about Simon MacDowall's new rules for the period called 'Alala!' published by the Society of Ancients.  There is a lot to be said for period specific rules.  I have spent a lot of time making generic period rules be more time-frame specific.  Rules that cover the nuances of a particular period are becoming more interesting to me.  I was very keen to try them so made the purchase!

The rules have a lot of elements that really appealed to me and having read the rules several times now, I am really looking forward to trying them out.  This gave me encouragement to finish the painting on these Light Cavalry.

I have several things on the painting desk at the minute. I have spent the last month or so rebasing and re-organising and even painted four 'Bloodbowl' fantasy figures (Fantasy...whatever next!). It was actually a really nice change to do something totally different, though at times I felt very much out of my comfort zone!   I'm not sure what to paint next...but it will be fun for sure!