An Old Midlish Rhyme
The wind from the North sings of heroes of Olde
The wind from the East makes our blood run Cold
The wind from the South smells of Spices and Gold
But the wind from the West tells of warriors Bold.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Hordes of poor quality infantry

A commonly held view of the army that conquered most of the known world.


Rospak 25mm hard plastic Thracian peltasts and mercenary Scythian archers,
hurriedly paint-converted to late Persians during the 80's.





Well, 120 figures isn't really much of a horde and I don't consider the figures to be poor quality either though, the Thracian peltast pose is classic "early 25mm ancient" and I will admit to a certain vagueness of details, but they have a certain charm and the Rospak 25mm plastics were a god-send to me 30 years ago during tough economic times. The hoplites, were especially valuable and for years King Rosius depended on them to hold off the Spartans.


No, the problem is that unit of "Persian" peltast/archers I hurriedly paint-converted 1 night 25 years ago for a game. No time for proper conversions and or shading or considering colours and patterns, I just slapped some paint on some leftover Thracian peltasts and Scythian archers and the little blighters have been serving ever since. Now I'm not big on repainting and refitting so do I let them serve on in shame? repaint? or callously discard them after such stout service?

They are "Ros" packs, and they are here and they are a near perfect match for the Rose miniatures in terms of size and bulk if not in detail, but they don't look much like early Persians. Actually they don't look much like modern intrepretations of Thracians or Scythians either but then neither do the Garrison and Benassi figures. What they do look alot like, are some old Greek vase paintings, but those were probably based on Phyrgians....uhhh wait a minute, like those allied or subject to the Lydians? ...ok maybe a repaint is in order, I have a few more Rose archers without a home so perhaps a nice colourful unit of Phrygian archers?

After all, at the end of the day, a unit of colourful archers in pointy hats is a unit of colourful archers in pointy hats, Phrygians, Scythians, Saka, Bactrians?

Two units of Scythian foot archers, a mix of Garrison, Benassi, Rose and Rospak miniatures.

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