bench update 10 August 2024

Today I sawed 4 Mongol warriors in half (maniacal laugh) and my goodness, that plastic is tough. The result will be some more convincing light mounted riders. See pic, at left of shot.

After lining up various possible replacement LH I've decided to just borrow two as need be, either from my Huns or the copious Steppe LH. 

bench update 04 August 2024

With all the fantasy/weird west 28mm minis painted, I'm assembling contenders for Mongol LH. NOT Golden Horde, I want the invaders to fight my Teutonics and Russians. The existing core of CvGen, 2xCv, 6xLH are soaking in neat Dettol (pine tar based disinfectant) and we shall see if that cuts through the thick protective varnish to strip paint.

For the remaining 3x LH I have found a number of Italeri Saracen - but not quite enough. I have pulled in some contenders from the large number of spare Strelets Turcopoles - but those are big mounts. I have even added two pair HaT late Roman LH, on small dainty mounts that look like ponies.

Dark Age Greek raw material

Not so much an army in need of a rebase, as elements that date back to my first DBA conversions of the Atlantic sets that sat around unpainted since I was a kid. I had fun reworking the chariots using wire and card! Likewise for the horse, the black shields were part of the 2.0 Dark Age Greek army while the forces still on their Cv bases are 1.0 spares. 

Over on the right I have old Atlantic Trojans that I used for Carthaginians. I'd forgotten about them, and they are way too big to match the Caesar Trojans.

In the "recyclable" ziploc the Esci barbarians and more Atlantic Greeks I converted for the 2.0 Dark Age Greeks.

IV/47 Golden Horde

Pre 2.0 this was a successful, if over-varnished, build of Mongol Conquest directly from Zvezda. Then 2.0 made it obsolete, splitting that into an all-mounted Conquest and the Golden Horde variant. 3.0 is more specific again. I'm not too sure what to do about it. There are good potential supplements, notably Italeri, but all of them lack enough LH. I don't think there are any great options.

IV/17 Later Crusaders

This army occurred by accident when I decided that the Zvezda Russians were kind of hopeless but wanted to build something with them. The core is those plus Italeri Medieval Knights. Then for 2.0 I doubled down and added more Spears and converted 2 elements of Crossbows. 

My plan is to abandon them... I never intended to build Saladin-period enemies for them after all. I would like to make up Feudal French b, but may have to settle for a more generic Franco-German mishmash.

IV/16 Scots Common

Unlike my Sargonids the issue with Scots Common is not that 3.0 makes a lot of it wrong, it is two things.

1. Old ugly bases - easily fixed by rebasing, that's the point of the rebase project 

2. Overenthusiastic pikes. This is a 2.0 problem, where I added more Pk elements for 2.0 but made really long ones. I guess I was trying to cover too long a period, having Flodden in mind. Wrong! But in my defense a lot of the literature needlessly drags Flodden in.

I plan to fix both issues by throwing money at issue #2, buying more Strelets medieval levy and using those. My original Scots Common were from the pretty ghastly Army of the Wallace, full of kilts and bad poses, really a fantasy Braveheart army.

I can recycle those, hopefully, to Highlands and Isles.

I/51 later Sargonid Assyrians

I look at this project with very mixed feelings. The Assyrians as described in one of Donald Featherstone's books (maybe wargames through the ages?) gave me the same sort of oooo! feeling that most young teens get wargaming nazi German armies. These green-sawdust based elements must date back to among the very first DBA sides I converted (circa 2010) and are directly inspired by a photo of Airfix Waterloo Cuirassiers converted to Assyrian cavalry. 

The 3.0 list later Sargonids are essentially a whole new project, barring the one element of Hd that I converted for 2.0 using Atlantic Indians. I conclude I should have bought the infantry as well, many years back when I bought the allied infantry.