Armenian Horse Archers

The Armenian army list has four Light Horse elements in it, which is one of the reasons I chose this list to oppose the Seleucids, and I have photos of the first two elements. Again, they are not based yet as I still have not received my order from Litko Aero for the 60mm x 40mm bases necessary for DBA.

As with the cataphracts yesterday, the core parts for the riders are a micro shaker plug/heart plug, with the tenon cut off so the figure is not so tall, and plastic tile spacers for the arms, legs, and on these figures, the bows. The horses are the new design of split wren's eggs-and-wooden spool, but with a flat head plug for the neck. I used wood filler to fill out the gaps in the neck.

These figures have a lot of metallic ink pen, permanent marker pen, and paint marker work. I painted the figures Cocoa for the flesh, then added the black hair. As you can see, I sanded and shaped the head of the heart plug so the size was not so exaggerated, making it look like they have long flowing hair. Then I painted a solid, bright color with paint.

With the paint dried, I went back with an Elmer's acrylic white paint marker and drew lines of white in various places, to act as edging and trim. Finally, I added slashes, lines, dots, and squares using various color permanent markers. I tried both the Sharpie and Bic brands and did not really notice any difference between the two other than then Sharpie black is much glossier than all of the other colors.

The bridles on the horses were mostly the Office @ Work metallic ink pens, with dots of gold, brass, and silver for the metal work. All of that was with the Office @ Work and Sharpie metallic ink markers. As with the metallic armor on the cataphracts, using these pens really made short work of this task.

Although it may sound funny, using a black pen to define the 'butt cheeks' of the horses really adds dimensionality to the figure. Simple to do, but strong effect. I went back and did it with my cataphracts.

As with the cataphracts, I really like these figures. Also I am still struggling with the plastic tile spacers (I have since determined that they probably have a mold release agent on them that makes gluing and painting problematic), the last versions of these used wooden dowels to pin the arms and legs in place. This is much more secure and stable than the dressing pins I used on the cataphracts.

I am putting the finishing touches on the other four horse archers, and starting to get into the core work of the infantry (four Auxilia elements and two Psiloi elements).