Thematic Byzantines, Varangian Guard

Many years ago, under the influence by two exceptional painters and modellers at the Edinburgh Club, South East Scotland Wargamer Club (SESWC), after much study of their work I came to realise that the secret to creating interesting dynamic looking units was to go for as much variation and dynamism as possible and to limit in as much is possible, the repetitiveness of the miniatures! I won't jump too deep into that concept except to throw in a few pictures below..... 

Anyway, with that in mind, as I started to clean up these Varangian Guards and ordered some extra sword and axe hands from Gripping Beast. With a quick-ish hand swap, I think these have reduced the level of homogeneity in the unit to make each miniature more interesting and the unit feel more "alive".

The Anglo Danish unit below is a nice example of how I strive for variation and to create as much dialogue between the miniatures as is possible with my toys. To have the miniatures "talk" to one another. There are many manufacturers in the unit which at first glance oat the list one might not think would necessarily fit together; Wargames Foundry, Footsore Miniatures (Matthew Bickley), Footsore Miniatures (Bill Thornhill), Gripping Beast, and Long OOP Gripping Beast so the variation was easy enough to create by using the various manufacturers. This was not the case with my Varangian Guard units where all the miniatures were from Gripping Beast's Thematic Byzantine range ergo the variation in weapons option.

With this in mind here's what I managed with the simple hand swaps for the Varangians.....

(Yeah, I know, two of the same miniatures has the same sword but I was having an off day!)