They'rrrrrrre Back !

A pair of Hinchliffe Elephants were among the dozen or so units that somehow got left behind at college (except for 1 stray crewman that I found this year). They are odd little criutters really and  a pain in the patute to assemble (at least for clutzes like me) but when I got a chance to pick up a couple at firesale prices 2 years back, I couldn't resist even though I couldn't think of a good reason. I should have known  they would start gathering friends, The red caps are traditional for my elephant corps.

Lance & Bow

I was contemplating horse archers last week, both armoured  and firing, and wondering how to fit in my handful of  Tarun horse archers without building a whole army for them. Eventually I decided that with a bit of repainting to get rid of the Arabic looking stripes and disguise the flowing robes, I could mix them in with some Persian Clibinari.

 After doing them, I realized that adding a pugree and cloak to the Persians would have been easy and helped them to blend in. On the other hand, leaving them as is should make it easier to blend the stand in with my Iranian rebels.  I'm trying desperately to keep the size of these Bactrian of Beyond armies down. The Iranian rebels look like settling on 40 - 50 heavy cavalry so far.

For some reason, I thought I had posted these pictures last week, better late than never and anyway, the 2 replacement Sassinid elephants aren't quite ready. Bloody annoying Hinchliffe kits to be honest but I'm glad to have the old team back. The one archer crewman who remains of the original pair still claims to remember nothing.

Munching the Greener Grass

Why is it that what ever figures I have stacked up ready to paint, its always the ones I don't have that are on my mind. This morning I put aside for a moment my efforts to sort an army for Queen Tomyrot of the Tokharians, ruler of Marakanda (Samarkand to you) and painted up the 2 samples on my desk. I'm not currently adding hoplites but I do intend to add a battalion or 2 of Lambdas and this chap looks fairly officerish so that was easy. The other looks, as intended, very guards-ish. He is also a little hoplitish except for his shield which isn't. It has an embossed animal or god head and polished bronze came to mind. The term Chalkaspides soon followed and then my mind drifted to my old Valdurian Guards, Minifig thureophorai with blue tunics, shields painted bronze and leather armour painted on (I seem to have had issues with painting figures straight out of the box).  Alright then a Guard unit from Alexandria the Farthest, the other intreptation of Hypaspists, fast moving shock infantry, FL's in Basic Impetus speech, VBU of 5 +2 with long spear.

   For some reason I seem to be having trouble with focus and colour, but, close enough.

Is it just me or does the over all size and the look of the head and neck on Garrison Persian camels look more Bactrian than Dromedary despite their 1 humpish apeparance? Is it not possible that the saddle design is disguising the 2 hump nature? Of course it is. Why else would a Queen in Bactria and 2 of her squadrons be riding them?

And last but not least, I started pondering a new city for my lost Hellenistic outpost, not that Alexandria Eschate (the farthest) is bad, but its a real place and I briefly thought that perhaps an Historical Fantasy setting should have made up names so I thought about something like Alexandria the Improbable or Alexandria the Imaginary and turned to Bablefish. OK, now I have a name in unreadable (to me) unreproduceable (to me) Greek letters. No problem, there must be a site that will translate English into a Latin alphabet version of the Greek, yes? Well, maybe, somewhere. After half an hour and after fending off various Old Testament sites that tried to enlist me, I gave up and decided that for a whim,  "Alexandria The Farthest" is just fine.

Now back to thinking about another dozen or more horse archers (galloping and firing) and empty coffers.

Late, as usual

After 35 years the 1st unit of Levy Spearmen finally show up to support the slingers and javelinmen.

Reinforcements Arrive

Clibinarius on borrowed Cataphract horse, Cataphract (need more of these), Desert Queen, Spearmen and a Prince August levy.

Its enough to make a fellow wish he was still doing large, Grantian armies and had oodles of time and money and no distractions. I finally ordered a teeny order of Sassinids and absolutely love these little gems of figures. I was actually ordering some medievals and slipped these in just because. Anyway they arrived while I was at Huzzah and never mind the medievals, guess who's on the painting desk. They might need their own army though.........

Now don't ask me about Zenobia, Rob slipped her in and I have no idea if she's from a 20mm range, a defunct range or a special that he did. But she is just the sort of ruler my new Iranian Imagi-nation needed. I had been sighing and thinking if I bought actual Sassinids then I'd have to buy the long delayed Romans to face them, but the ones I'd want would be the wrong Romans. Well, seeing these, I'm back on track with my series of unknown Iranian and Greco-Bactrian Kingdoms back of beyond. Except that Rob also slipped in some marvelous hoplites that I suspect are Hyborian in origin which has me thinking about Spartans and of course, flipping through the S&S list gives me other ideas. Well the good side of  Basic Impetus using so few troops is that even with multi-basic impetus armies, I could easily do a dozen armies with 100 or so figures each.

Well, first things first, paint at least 1/2 of the new arrivals and finish planned armies then plan and buy more!

Thanks Rob for keeping these figures alive and sharing!.