Sunday 15 July 2012

Hairy Tapurian Hillmen from the Hills.

From the background material I've read on the Parthians it would seem that they did employ small quantities of infantry during their many campaigns in Asia. What form these took seems to be a subject of some uncertainty so I've had to wing it a bit with the following figures.





They started life as Crusader miniatures Persian Kardakes, I then took a scalpel to their tiara headdresses and replaced them with the shaggy hair and beards now sported. The spear and javelin armament is again speculative but at least probable though I may mix in a few more figures with multiple javelins for variety. The thureos shield would again be a possibility, it was fairly ubiquitous throughout the hellenistic world, but equally a small round buckler type could be mixed in to give a more irregular appearance. The OTT lion head shield is one of three included in a pack of Palmyran cataphracts bought from A&A miniatures and included simply because I like it.
So there you have it a fairly generic pair of irregulars to trail along in the wake of the cavalry and doing  all the menial tasks and helping the nobles feel superior.

Saturday 14 July 2012

Parthian Death Ride.

Overly dramatic no doubt, but as the latest output of miniatures includes two casualty figures not entirely inappropriate:






There are still a few bits and pieces to touch up, exposed as ever by the argus eye of the camera but overall they're coming on nicely.

Monday 9 July 2012

A Short Parthian Re-Cap.

After a somewhat premature blogpost recently regarding some expected progress on my nascent Parthian army I have in the usual fashion been bitten severely on the arse by the fates. The recent hopeless weather here in Blighty which has already delayed several jobs has coincided with a fall off in the amount of work we are picking up so as a consequence a lot of my spare time has been spent chasing after more suitable work and generally trying to keep my workforce gainfully employed.
So just to keep the ball rolling I've taken a few progress photos just to keep up morale at this end.







The hit & run specialists.


The business end of the Parthian Army. Cataphracts.
All of the figures used so far are A&A miniatures from their Sassanid/ Parthian & Palmyran ranges, other than 50% of the horse archers which are Foundry Scythians which are very fine indeed. The only downside with this army is that it represents a later era than ideal for my aims, what I really would like to do is an early Parthian army to fight my large collection of successors but this really is a very small gripe in the general scheme of things.