An Army In A Day (And A Bit)

In playing around with my HOTT Ancient armies recently I have come across the various half-finished projects I have. We all have them, and we get them out, look at them, and then put them away again.

Well, this weekend I decided to complete one. Several years ago - as in possibly twenty or more - I bought the figures to do a Later Pre-Islamic Arab ally force for my ongoing 6mm Early Imperial Roman and Parthian DBM armies. Those two armies have now been converted to HOTT (and, technically, DBA) armies, but the Arabs languished in their packets, unloved and unassembled.

That is, until three years ago, I decided to get them out and start painting them. There were enough figures to do a complete HOTT/DBA army, so that's what I decided to do - a Later Pre-Islamic Arab nomad force. I sorted out the figures, undercoated them and put the first lot of paint on - the base colour.

Then we moved house. They were packed away, and forgotten.

I found them again last weekend and, having played some games with both the Parthians and the Romans, thought they would make an excellent opponent. With nothing major on this weekend I decided to paint them. As in complete the army.

Here they are as I found them. I had applied one base coat to each, and a base coat to about half of the riders.

I completed the infantry in a couple of hours.

Another hour saw the two elements of cavalry done.

After lunch it was time to do the centrepiece of the army - the camels. There are four elements of these; a total of 48 figures.

They took an hour or so.

The camels were quite fiddly to base. For my 6mm armies I use 40mm frontages with four times the number of figures a 15mm HOTT element would have. That meant twelve camels to a base. They're a bit bigger than horses, so had to be packed in tight (although not as tight as the sixteen figures needed for a Parthian cataphract element).

Here's some close-ups. I still have the bases to do, as well as odd bits of detail such as the standards and maybe some shield patterns on the general's element. I'll do those tonight after tea, and probably do the bases tomorrow.

The full army. It's based on the equivalent DBA 2.2 list, but converted to HOTT. It consists of:

2 x Riders (Arab nomads on horses, including the general)
4 x Riders (Camel-mounted warriors)
4 x Spears (Foot warriors)
2 x Shooters (Archers)

Strictly there should be one less Shooter and one more group of warriors on foot or on camels, but I liked the 2-4-4-2 symmetry. Also in the DBA list, and equivalent DBM list, the foot are Blades (Inferior Blades in DBM), but I didn't feel this worked so well in a HOTT-based army. As Spears they are more vulnerable to Roman Blades and Parthian cataphracts; I have used Spears for irregular Blade/Inferior Blades in other armies and it worked OK.

I think I may have enough figures to do an Arabo-Aramean army now, which would give me a nice matched foursome. Obviously I'll actually do it in three or four years' time ...

Update: I started the bases today as well.