Ready to Battle the Turks

My 11th C Armenians are now ready to join the East Roman Emperor's expedition against the Seljuk Turks.

The figures are all from Perry Miniatures' Crusades range. I mixed together archers and spearmen. Some of the latter are armoured but most not. Mixed spear and bow units were quite common in the East and my Comitatus rules allows for them on the games table. I gave all the shields a red background (in varying shades). Most of the designs are loosely based on the Armenian cross and some I simply made up. My intent, as ever, to give some sort of coherence to a non-regular unit. After painting the shields I 'ragged' them with thinned down Raw Umber (see Ragging Hoplite Shields).

The Perry figures are larger than my 25 mil Byzantines and in fairly active poses. Therefore I have mounted them 7 to base rather than the usual 8 — four in the front rank and 3 in the back. This is what I have also done with my Wars of the Roses figures. It still gives the look of a close order body of men while at the same time not crowding them too much. Most men have plain wool or linen coats but I have added some colour for variety. As usual I have limited my colour palette to mostly red, green and yellow.