Armenian Archers and More Armenian Horse Archers

I still have 2 1/3 elements of Armenian Warriors in the last stages of gluing, but in the interim I have finished the two elements of Armenian Archers (i.e. psiloi in DBA) and finally gotten around to photographing the last two elements of the Armenian Horse Archers.

First the Armenian Archers:

Nothing new here, in terms of construction. The bows are tile spacers, about the only thing I will use them for anymore. The arms are pieces of wooden coffee stirrers sanded down with a Dremel. The figure on the far left, in the above picture, uses a Faber-Castell artist pen. The tip almost looks like a paint brush, so the lines are excellent compared to those where you use a nylon nib. In this case I have painted on little "X" on the white trim. The ink is waterproof, but not permanent, so you need to varnish it pretty quickly.

I have been using thinned-down Elmer's Clear School Glue as a varnish. Although it is shiny, it is not more so than Future Acrylic Floor Wax. It might actually make sense to use both - the Future to penetrate the wood and the glue to coat it - in order to maximize protection. At this point I have not tried both. These figures only have generous dollops of the clear glue.

The archers, being the poorest class of troops of them all, are less richly dressed than the other figures, but I still put some trim on in places.

The new horse archers are not different from the previous ones in any way except the paint schemes.

I decided to try a few skull caps for head coverings on this batch.

All in all I really like the color schemes. I am still debating about adding one or more quivers per figure. Although it would certainly be appropriate, it would also clutter the figure more than it already is.

Let me know if you have an opinion on this.