Completed Arabs And A Ramble

I finished my 6mm HOTT Pre-Islamic Arabs this afternoon, giving the sand on the bases a heavy wash in khaki and a dry-brush in GW Bleached Bone. I don't know whether to add some patches of vegetation or leave the bases bare; the former may overwhelm the figures a little.

Here they are:

In the comments on an earlier post I was complimented on my choice of armies. I thought I might share why I have the ancient armies I do, and where I might be going with them (one day).

My first real brush with ancients was when  a friend of mine put some together for WRG 7th back in the late 1980s. He did his in 6mm, and produced Hoplite Greeks and Persians, as well as Indians. He added to it and extended his collection to cover Alexander and the Successors.

I decided to follow suit but thought I'd start a fresh period for us to play - after all he had everything we needed for a good range of games in one era. I went for Sub-Roman British as my first army, because I couldn't resist the idea of using Arthur - I was thinking HOTT even then. I also did some Early Saxon opponents. This got me started on a set of Dark Ages Britian armies - enough Sub-Roman Brits to do two armies, with regular and irregular options, as well as Picts and Scots-Irish and even some Vikings. But then I went wild; the era covered by the Scots-Irish went a long way back, and I decided to do a different opponent for them. And thus I started my Early Imperial Roman army. I think that by this stage we'd abandoned WRG 7th and were playing DBM. I liked the Early Imperial Romans; they're the 'classic' Roman army to my mind and they also seemed to have the widest range of possible opponents, both in terms of geography and troops types. The Scots-Irish were their first foes, but I also did Meroitic Kushites (because they could have elephants), Sarmatian, Parthians and Alan (the latter for obvious reasons).

By the time I'd assembled that lot I found I didn't really have any desire to play DBM any more. I still don't. The armies languished in a box for years, but I eventually reworked them as DBA armies, using massed figures on 40mm frontages. It didn't take me long to find that I didn't really like DBA that much either, so back into the box they went.

About four years ago I hit on the idea of just playing HOTT with them, and it's given the armies a new lease of life. I have a lot of painted and based figures from the DBM/WRG phase, so was able to generate new armies from left-over figures - Welsh and Norse-Irish, for example. I've got twenty-eight Celtic chariots looking for an army. And, of course, I've been inspired to complete at least one project - the Pre-Islamic Arabs.

So that's a brief summary of how I've arrived at the particular HOTT ancient armies I have. The Parthians open up a range of possibilities further east - Classical Indian is an army I'd like to do, and would look great in HOTT, for example. But I don't have any figures for that, and the idea of adding to my already vast pile of unpainted 6mm lead somehow seems wrong. I know I shouldn't.

But I probably will.