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.

Horse Archers (2)

Here, I have applied the basic colours to the Horse. It's a little too ornate for the period i'm playing but it will certainly add some character and much needed colour to the battlefield!

This is a shot after the Army Painter dip has dried, some 24 hours later. As you can see it's given the cloth over the Horse a really nice shaded effect although it has given the whole model a shine but this can easily be remedied by using a matt varnish spray.

The rider now needs painting and then gluing to the Horse which will then be properly based.

Horse Archers

I'm going to be doing a couple of posts to demonstrate the painting of one of my Assyrian horse archers. I chose Assyrian horse archers because I preferred their look to other horse archers currently on the market. I can use these initially against my Macedonians and later on incorporate them much like Alexander did after being harassed by them throughout his journey across Asia. They also form part of an Assyrian army I got from Wargames Foundry at a discount (I know it's historically inaccurate to fight the two being several hundred years apart but they come from the same part of Asia geographically as many of Alexander's enemies and share very similar tactics and troop types).

This archer's legs and torso were separated by a thick piece of metal so you can position the body to your liking. I had to get my Dad to do it because it was so thick and he cut a big chunk of the torse out! So I had to use 'green stuff' for the first time which was a little tricky at first but I managed to successfully fill the gap.

I then sprayed both the horse and archer their basic colours as I will be using the 'Army Painter' available through Warlord Games. This method is often overlooked and laughed at by more experienced painters but novice painters such as myself can get a really satisfying effect and make it look almost as good as seasoned professional's work!

I received the Alexander WAB rules supplement through the post today. It makes for a very interesting read and gives some great ideas for future units and colour schemes.