Mitanni are ready for action!

Now that I've finally got all the diverse elements of a Mitanni army - six light chariots, two auxilia (with options for being either heavy Maryannu or light Amorite) a horde of Amorites, and three psiloi, the army can now be arrayed:

More Amorites

With the Amorite Auxilia done it is easy to stay motivated. (I recently read an article that says the best way to get a project done is to start it, even just a little. Then a kind of hard-coded "got to get on with that" impulse overtakes our equally hard-coded "must get around to that" procrastination impulse.) So, a certain amount of greystuff-modelling later, I have a bunch of convincingly hairy spear and club-axe men, all converted from the Atlantic Egyptians. I add my last two Atlantic Plains Indians club-men (the ones with bow slung, and armed with a throw-club and knife.) With kilt and beards added they are pretty convincing. I've already used a few of them for my Assyrian Horde as it happens. I also add short javelins where I can. Atlantic Egyptians have very slender limbs and tiny hands but so long as I drill into the shield as much as I drill into the hand, I can slide a thin wire in to represent a javelin. But only one! The shields are a mixture. The club-axe wielders shields aren't positioned right but a full tear-down and rebuild doesn't seem worth it. I trim the shields to have concave ends and leave it at that. A couple of the spearmen get greystuff shields but they don't look great so the rest get card shields. I use the same dimension as last time but leave the sides straight - according to AANE this was a natural development of the original x-frame - but this makes the shields look surprisingly wide. Oh well, it's not a biggie. Here's the Horde, and you can make your own judgment on the shields.

I try a few combinations before I settle on that grouping, because between the conversions I have 12 figures. So I go for a 7Hd stand, a 2Ps and that leaves 3Ax for an eventual expansion into Amorite times. Here's the Psiloi:

Amorite Auxiliaries

In pursuit of two 3Ax elements for my slowly-emerging Mitanni army, I turn back to a bag of Atlantic Egyptian spares. These were figures I mutilated decades ago trying to create a "barbarian" army, mainly by chopping the shields about.

I sort out a half-dozen that look promising. Most of them wield a blade, one a spear and one a weighted axe. Using a very sharp craft knife, I cut most of the shield of each away, leaving a kind of X configuration. These will be the support struts, or at least the nub of support struts, for the Amorite shields.

The Amorites I have in mind are pretty early, with very simple kilt, shoulder strap or straps, and a shield fashioned by fastening an animal skin over an X-frame. Because there was no frame, the shield took on a concave-edge once the skin dried. One example shows the tail of the animal left on for decoration and I decide to use this for all six.

I decide that based on the Atlantic figures, which are very slim, the shield body will be 8mm x 11mm, not counting the tail. I draw these out on an old business card with a ruler, then draw the inward curves at each end. I cut them out with scissors, and use a very fine pair of scissors to cut the tail, concave ends and sides.

Using grey stuff (equivalent to green stuff) is risky with plastic minis as it tends not to stick, but it does leave a very solid result unlike plasticine, the other alternative. These minis take the grey stuff quite well. I add a baldric or cross-belt, a broad waist-band, extra material to make the shield struts look more convincing, and of course a beard.

Painting is on the easy end of the scale. After sealing each mini with flexible tough wood stain, and a base coat of white, I add flesh, white for the kilt, brown for leather and wood, deep brown for hair, and bronze for weapon blades. With all basic colours blocked in I then re-coat the kilts, add a lighter flesh tone on the prominent flesh areas, tidy up any over-paint then add eyes and eyebrows. I use variations on red and green-blue to add a border trim to each kilt. Turning to the shields, I mix a buff shade and use that for the inner side, then a feathered tan for the outer spine and tail, then a pale buff feathered back into that for the shield panels, and finally deep brown feathered onto the tail tip. Lastly I line-in most of the edges.

With another well-diluted coat of stain to provide durable protection, they are ready to be based.

There's nothing fancy about the basing which is a thin scatter of grit and medium flock over ochre once the figures are firmly embedded in grouting. I add a few wisps of field grass from Woodland Scenics.

Maryannu Heavies

Looking around the shelves for inspiration I found I had a dozen heavy Caesar Mitanni foot still on their sprues. They are leftovers from the Midianite chariots project. At the time, I wasn't convinced I could use heavy foot, given that the Midianite elite rode around on chariots. But there they were, so I picked them as an easy project.

Caesar Mitanni are produced in a hardish plastic which resists many base-coat techniques. They also have a certain amount of warping caused by packaging. I used very hot water to straighten spears, and "set" them in cold water. This technique is not foolproof: as minis heat up again the warp can return. Once cleaned up and washed with detergent, I used Tamiya Black paint to undercoat. This is a very hardy paint that grips plastic better than other acrylics do. Once fully dry, I smudge-coated each with white. ("Smudge" is midway between dry and wet - a good amount of paint coats all raised surfaces but hollows are left lightly brushed.)

Because the heavies are clad from top of helm to ankle in bronze-studded leather, I use an unorthodox approach to the next stage. Normally, flesh comes first then one paints in order from undergarment to outer to equipment. But in this case a wash with a light leather colour (a mix of yellow and leather) provides a large short-cut.

Flesh is next. This is a calculated risk, because I have yet to dry-brush with bronze. The bronze dry-brushing convincingly conveys the bronze-studded effect to their outer armour and shield. I've found with previous attempts that the dry-brushing needs to be fairly accurate, so I'm hopeful I won't have to re-touch the flesh too much. The idea is that only a second, lighter flesh tone will be needed later.

Once the bronze is on, dry-brushed with a fairly moist brush, the heavies are looking very close to complete. But that's an illusion: there's quite a bit of detail to go! They wear a variety of sleeved, sleeveless, calf- and full-length robes under the armour. (Caesar sculpting ought to show archers with sleeved garments with a wrist-guard, but it's not present.) So now we're returning to the "traditional" approach of painting from the inner, out.

I paint fabric over with white or yellow. This includes the tassel of each helmet. I also put a thin wash of white or yellow onto the central square of each shield. Next, I paint over most yellows with red, or at least add a red band on a fabric panel. For the whites, I add a variety of colour: maybe one has solid light blue, another solid white, another a blue stripe. It should be a lot more detailed but simple often looks better.

With the fabric finished it's time to move on to the browns. With a yellow-leather I go over each shield inner, then adding a deeper brown I paint spear shafts and bows, and finally beards.

Now that all basic colours have been completed, it's time to add the extra detail and touchups. The main portion of this for these figures is simply the second run of flesh, done in a much lighter tone and concentrating only on the raised surfaces. This both removes the bronze dry-brushing that carried over to the original flesh coat, and picks out flesh dimensions. Otherwise the fine detail is simply a few corrections of over-paints, and arrow shafts and fletching.

Next the hardest part of any true 1:72 mini: the eyes. Probably nine in ten mini painters have steadier hands and better eyes than me, so let's just say a procedure that often works is this:

• get the flesh highlights done (above)
• put a patch of white into each eye socket
• put a very thin line of brown onto each eyebrow, or just under the helm rim if the helm sits low
• try to work a second very thin line of brown from the outer, lower eye socket across to the centre, and perhaps leave a small extra brown mark where the pupil could be. The ideal result looks like a comma on its side, curl upward, but just a smaller horizontal line of brown than the brow line will work.
• mix tan/leather and white to a deeper shade than the face base flesh, and with it, draw a diagonal line from the inner eye socket, side of nose and to the cheek.
• mix tan and white to a pale, pale tan, and re-highlight the nose, cheekbones, and possibly the brow between the eyebrows, especially if you ended up with a unabrow look.

A few "gold-bronze" highlights on the armour, and the minis are ready for varnishing. I use an acrylic stain, very tough and flexible. The stain provides the effect of lining and shadowing, without needing to work for it, though the trade-off is that white looks dirty-white.

These lads are good to go to basing. I'm adding a couple of previously-completed spearmen retrieved from the Hittites. They always looked out of place. This brings me to four heavy archers, and ten spearmen. I do a 4Bw base, a 4Sp base (which will probably be used as 4Bd for Canaanites) and two 3Sp bases, which can be used as Ax for my Mitanni, though not convincingly.

Firepower!

HaT's Greek Catapults

Additions for DBA2.2 armies Later Hoplites (Phokians) and Syracusans

With spring comes daylight saving and with daylight saving comes enough light to work on projects during the evening! Having just completed a HOTT army in 28mm, I turned my attention to an easy project for DBA in 1:72 - HaT's Greek Catapults.

These are probably not particularly historical outside of Syracuse's floreat. HaT does tend to do pretty detailed research though, and besides, I'm not that fussy. So, what do you get?

The pack contains four catapult kits, and enough crew to provide up to six per engine. The crew is very simple but well thought-out: one man with a bolt (roughly javelin sized) two with rocks, two holding an arm out as though they were adjusting something (on opposite sides so you can use both) and one in windlass-cranking position. Four crew is plenty to place on a DBA base so I reserved a couple from each pack to use as camp followers or such like.

The catapult is of a proto-ballista design, essentially a giant cranequin on a trestle stand. The trestle is perhaps the least likely part of the model, but a siege engineer might have erected such a thing. The catapult certainly couldn't be transported on it.

That's a finished model, though not taken at the greatest angle. The figures were very easy to finish with a sharp craft knife, and the catapult needed a little work on mould lines. The plastic is of the rubbery kind HaT often favours, so super-glue worked fine to stick the catapult parts together. Once cleaned up and washed in  normal hot dish-washing water and detergent, they took the base varnish perfectly. HaT is very reliable for this. I did not bother to base paint the catapult and just laid various browns over the base varnish, then a final sealing coat of tough varnish. I base coated the crew in white, and since they are dressed so simply the job of adding flesh, hair, another layer of white to make the white tunics really white, then light flesh colour over the first flesh tone and the eyes (always the hardest in this scale!) The javelin and a sword for one crew were the only other detail I can recall. Oh, the  rocks were a bit of a nuisance, but by using a fine detail brush I managed to make the rock not look like part of the hand or vice versa.

Mitanni Chariots Finished

Put the "green sprinkles" over the ochre terrain, just enough to suggest a sparse thorny desert vegetation. They ought to match the original two Mitanni chariots but I'm not sure they will. But good enough for a combined 6-chariot army!

Make with the Mitanni

Another Chariot army beckons as I make a start one four more Mitanni chariots by Caesar Miniatures. These are the elite of the Mesopotamian power, known as Mariyannu, or Mariyanni. (Presumably the Egyptians knew them as Mrt, and the nation as Mrtt - I see references to Martu = Amorite.)

The next question is, what do I use for foot? The Mariyanni elite lorded it over a mixed Mesopotamian/Anatolian bunch. I think I can probably morph over my Syrian Ax and Mesopotamian Hd, and maybe add a few elements from the HaT Assyrian Allied Infantry I have yet to do anything with - I bought those to be the core foot for an Urartu army.

Taking a step back briefly, I have to admit that this is yet another of the slightly bogus, nearly imaginary armies the DBA lists are so full of. I'm not saying it's dead wrong mind you, only that the sources have probably not grasped its place in history (or geography to some extent).