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| The completed army |
It was my inability
to resist the temptation of Gripping Beast's beautiful plastic Arab Cavalry
that led me to building a Saracen army. I'd intended to get my Crusaders
finished first but my enthusiasm to get these guys on the table top gave them
priority. And as I've suffered at the hands of Saracens more than a few times
there was also some added enthusiasm to see the fight from their point of view.
The Saracen army I
have constructed is founded on its heavy cavalry core. Its doctrine is based on
the strength of massed Hearthguard shooting. This will be the function of a
unit of 12 bow armed mounted Hearthguard, one of whom will be a banner bearer.
In order to maximise
the number of Saga dice available to this unit on any one turn my Warlord is
likely to be an Enlightened Priest. I'll support this with two smaller units of
Hearthguard (mounted, with lance) to defend the warlord and threaten weakened
enemy troops, and one unit of Dailami for use against those pesky opponents who
try to make use of terrain, especially those that hide their foot archers in
rocky ground.
12 x Hearthguard (mounted, bows) one of whom carries a
war banner - this is the principle attacking unit of the army. I intend
to throw multiple dice at it to get it to annihilate enemy from a distance.
With 11 dice shooting each activation, plus rest activations, this ought to
cause some opponents a lot of pain. The Saracen battle board allows for
activation pool dice so chances of getting to a large enough number of dice to
be really effective are reasonably good.
These Hearthguard
models are constructed from a box of the Gripping Beast Arab Heavy Cavalry. The
banner is a pole made from 1mm brass rod with a paper flag with printed design
which I have overpainted and then set into
position with PVA glue.
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| Lots of shooting power here |
Painting Saracens
For the most part
Saracens are pretty straightforward to paint. They have relatively few shields
and those that they do have are easy to find pretty simple designs for. The
trouble is that according to most illustrations they seem to have a fondness
for fine fabrics with intricate designs.
Robes - in stark contrast to the very
one-dimensional colour scheme I adopted for the robes of my Mutatawii'a
(black/black grey) I decided that my Saracens would be highly colourful and
each of them would be unique. My technique for achieving this was to paint each
robe in a solid base colour to which I added a pattern comprised of either a
vertical stripe design or a pattern based on spots. Choosing which figure
should have what, and what colour I should paint it, was determined randomly
(yes, really) using an Excel spreadsheet created specifically for the purpose.
I like to take as much active decision-making as possible out of the painting
process!
I started with four
basic design concepts, which evolved through the painting process for each
figure. The design concepts were:
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| Stripes |
Vertical stripes: black vertical stripes
painted onto the base colour. Another colour then added within the black
stripes.
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| Diamonds |
Diamonds: a pattern of diamond shapes in a
contrasting colour, painted onto the base colour. This would then be later
embellished by adding other colours inside the diamonds, along the lines
between diamonds, or both.
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| Cross-shape |
Cross-shape: essentially a central dot with
four small strokes around, arranged in a repeating pattern.
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| Four-spot pattern |
Triangle/square/flower: created by painting
spots in a contrasting colour onto the base colour, then adding three, four or
more dots of a different colour around the outside of the spots. This might
then be even further embellished by adding further spots, for example.
Every figure was
painted with one of these initial conceptual designs, and embellished further
in due course.
Armour - to give a highly decorated effect to
armour, I applied gunmetal and brass paint over a black base coat to armoured
areas. Contrast and shadows were enhanced by judicial application of Windsor
& Newton Peat Brown ink, and then very fine details highlighted a bit more.
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| Close-up of bow |
Bows - I appreciate that the bows used by the
Hearthguard are not intended to be composite bows but painting them a simple
solid beige brown was a bit boring and in my opinion didn't look particularly good. So I've painted
the ends of the bows as if they are made of horn (in the same manner as the
composite bows of the Steppe Tribesmen accompanying my Rus Princes. Maybe
they're not accurate, but I think they look a lot better this way.
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| Standard bearer |
Standard Bearer - The standard is printed on
paper to size, but I have overpainted the design to make it blend in better
with my painting scheme (i.e. so as not to look so accurate!) Very pleased with
the finished result.
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| Dailami warriors |
8 x Dailami - troops to clear out or occupy
hard cover, or at the least deter enemy from using it to hide their bow armed
troops in.
After a review of
available figures I didn't found any I liked so I have made this unit out of
Gripping Beast Plastic Arabs. To give them a distinct look I selected heads
with mostly pointed helmets and gave all the figures large teardrop shields
from which I removed the cast-on bosses. I also removed their cast-on belts,
weapons and pouches and replaced them with a wider waist sash made of green
stuff. Finally, instead of normal spears, I gave them zupins made from 1mm brass rod.
The zupin is a short fighting
spear with a point at either end. It was a weapon particularly associated with
the Dailami (see Lev, Y: Infantry in Muslim
Armies during the Crusades in: Pryor, J (Ed.) Logistics of Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, Ashgate, 2006) https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ntMeWddadwAC&pg=PA186&lpg=PA186&dq=zupin+spear&source=bl&ots=1l0yNT3Zbl&sig=Bd7rIK4Qxm0Q3vg2dwi5WqkuEmQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjgrMmZiKLKAhXISBQKHXzoAKoQ6AEILjAC#v=onepage&q&f=true).
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| Shields in close-up |
Dailami shields - I wanted a uniform design,
but with some variety between figures, so I settled on shields of varied base
colour, each of which would bear a slogan in Arabic on a painted lighted band
across the centre. As this is a comparatively irregular unit I opted for
different slogans on each shield - all very well but finding eight different
Arabic slogans was not easy. Apologies to anyone reading this if the slogans I
have chosen are inappropriate in any way - I have no idea at all, sorry - they
are simply chosen for their overall look.
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| Hearthguard with lances |
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| Hearthguard with hand weapons |
8 x Hearthguard (mounted, lance) - this is
basically two points of useful filler. Their primary purpose will be to
generate additional Saga dice - but they will also probably be useful in
defending the Warlord and attacking enemy that have already been softened up by
shooting. At least, that's the idea.
These figures are
eight very nice Perry Miniatures Saracen cavalry that I had bought a long time
before because they were pretty. As these figures were really a bunch of odds
and ends I assembled them into two easily distinguished groups of four, one equipped
with lances (made from 1mm brass rod) and one with a selection of hand weapons.
In converting two of those figures I managed to break their hands, so replaced
the hands (and the weapons) with spares from the Plastic Arab Heavy Cavalry
box.
Saracen shields - the shields supplied with the
Perry figures and Saladin are very nicely modelled and really don't warrant
detailed painted designs. I painted them entirely brass, to which I applied an
ink wash followed by selected highlighting.
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| Saracen warlord and friend |
Warlord - this is another Perry Miniatures
Saracen. His sword has been replaced with a (slightly oversized) one from the
Plastic Arab Heavy Cavalry box. The horse is bent to a slightly more dramatic
pose, further emphasised by being raised a few extra mm in height by adding
some pieces of plastic to the Renedra base. I also added a dead Templar to the
base for decoration, made from odd bits from the Fireforge Plastic Foot
Sergeants set put together into a suitably dead-looking pose with green stuff.
The shield he is lying on is an odd Gripping Beast metal one from the bit box.
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| Saladin |
Saladin - I couldn't resist buying Gripping
Beast's Saladin figures as it is gorgeous, so this army has an extra Warlord.
It's just a lovely figure.
Really looking forward to getting these chaps on the tabletop!
