Sunday 28 February 2010

1st Corps Horse Archers

I am pleased to report that the 1st Corps horse archers I received but hadn't seen yet, fit perfectly on their horses! I was very worried they wouldn't, given the previous form with some of my more recent purchases from 1st Corps such as the Spanish cavalry, Macedonian command and elephant crew. This is an example of a fully assembled figure who has also been undercoated:


He's a great looking miniature and is very well sculpted. The 'dip' technique should look great on him! This one did, however, require some time-consuming assembly.


The photo above represents the contents of one of 1st Corps' unit packs of Persian horse archers. You receive enough metal to make up 12 horse archers and enough variety of figure and horse to mean no one model is the same - a great idea in my books. There are a choice of 4 different horse poses and about 8 or so different riders. Some riders do, however, require some extensive assembly which I found to be very time-consuming and rather frustrating! Most require body and legs glueing together (this is to allow more variety of poses) and the quiver and bow and hand need glueing on in most cases. This is fairly straight forward but can get a bit fiddly. The riders do fit onto their mounts very well though, with minimal additional modeling required.


This is a size comparison shot of a 1st Corps horse archer (right) with a Foundry Thessalian cavalry man (left).


The horse archer model weight A LOT less than the Foundry model and as you can see, looks a little smaller than the Foundry.


This photo shows three of the horse archers I'll be painting over the next week or so (along with some spare Thessalian cavalry in the background - these will form the start of my second unit of shock cavalry for the 2000 point army I'm building). I have a lot of work on in the next few weeks or so so I'm not sure how much I will get done on either this project or my Roman project.

3 comments:

DeanM said...

Your project is moving along I see. Someday I would like to get some Scythian mounted archers - they look really colorful - and pretty good skirmishers too. Dean

Secundus said...

These are very tricky to put together aren't they. Worth it though and they do look good are dipping, this was my first unit I ever dipped you know...they were the days.

Consul said...

DeanM - Vendel Miniatures have just released a fantastic range of horse archers which are definitely worth checking out (the photos on their site are very colourful). I'll be painting my 1st Corps archers in a similar way Secundus painted his - fancy patterns but a little duller in tone (lots of browns, traditional dye colours).

Secundus - They certainly are! It took me the time it took me to watch 'The Hangover' (good film) to trim and assemble 4 horse archers and 3 Macedonians. I like the fact I can use these archers against my Romans, Macedonians AND Greeks! I only need one unit now instead of three different ones! Your horse archers inspired me when I saw that you'd dipped them and I knew I could get similar results so I just had to buy some.

Consul.