Wednesday 2 March 2022

Early Byzantine Heavy Kavallarioi First Unit


This unit was started prior to the beginning of The Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge with the first six cavalry models being completed before I went into clean up, prime and undercoat a whole Late Roman army for the challenge, which ended in the Great Varnishing Disaster which put pay to all my efforts on that project. Needless to say it interrupted any progress on my Early Byzantines as well as affecting a huge drop in my painting morale. I shave still to get my money back for the varnish that was provided to me with the promise that it was a "dead flat matt" but I will not stoop to naming and shaming; not yet anyway LOL.

Anyway, that's all by the bye. Overall I think this unit has come out rather well. I spent a long time on the horse flesh, something I really enjoy painting as you can really go to town on them. There is a degree of artistic expression, which I'm happy with as we are essentially colouring in toy soldiers. 

The unit is double armed with both kontos and bow so I threw in a a few miniatures in full mail in the process of loading and loosing a few arrows for a little variation. Also, I added another Draco to the chap at the back in order to balance out the composition of the unit, providing a counterfoil to the large Chi Rho banner. 

I did not manage to make enough time to take all the shots I wanted so I'll be adding some single base piccies sometime soon.

All the images are quite large files and worth clicking on if you want to see more detail.

From (more or less) Eye level:






From Above:






More pictures, hopefully tomorrow of the single bases.

9 comments:

  1. Are these Essex figures?

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    1. No, they're all From the Aventine Miniatures Early Byzantine range, which is quite extensive now- extensive enough to do armies from Belisarius all the way through to Heraclius with a high degree of accuracy based on all the new research.

      Here's a link to the whole range Dave:
      https://aventineminiatures.co.uk/catalog/index.php/cPath/53_167

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    2. Thanks. I believe you have painted figures for my best friend of many decades....JP Ollivier in Brussels eh. Think you had done his 15mm Byzantines?

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    3. Not sure on the date but I think it was about the time of the Agincourt Salute. They were 28mm Gripping Beast Late Romans with a few Sassanids mixed in to represent Belisarius Persian allies when he was in Italy.

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  2. Replies
    1. Thanks Bartek and for your continued support.

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