Cretan Archers

Since finishing the Iberian Scutarii I've been busy chipping away at the next large batch of troops. I've been doing mass clean up of the projects I'll be working on, roughly 8 unit packs, including head swap conversions so it's been slow going. Once all the metal was filed, drilled and washed, the conversions finished and the light troops sprayed, I gathered this lot to paint up first.

The main thing that's new here are the Cretan Archer conversions, I wanted to create the type that carried and shield and helmets. They are based on Newline Designs 20mm Cretan Archers bodies and all have heads from the Newline African Veterans, who have great Hellenistic type helmets. Having new heads attached allowed me to have some poses to have their heads at different angles adding a little more variety. Finally I got hold of Macedonian shields from Xyston to complete the skirmishing archers not afraid to get close to the enemy. These shields may be useful for other Newline Hellenistic pikemen if I wanted to use LBMS transfers as they seem to produce some that are made to fit these shields.

They were painted alongside the Greek Archers and Slingers. The Greek Archers had a couple of head swaps just to give a slight variant in the form of adding a bandanna wearing Greek head to the pose that lacked one originally. All three unit types were broken down into tunic colours so I could batch paint the various units in this way I slowly chipped away at this substantial chunk of the prepared figures. 

One of the things I have done to cut a corner is to selectively highlight some parts of the figure. With these it was the tunics, faces and helmets, everything else received a base coat and wash. The shields have water-slide transfers from Veni Vidi Vici but I had some trouble getting them to lie flat without creasing. In the end I used many layers of varnish to mitigate this best I could.

Some are based as usual on 80mm frontage and quite a few based individually to represent skirmisher markers for Strength & Honour. I have quite a few Iberian Caetratii and Numidians to paint up that are entirely for this purpose, furthermore if they are needed for another system since I tend to use grids the different format won't impinge on the game. There's also an option to make a movement tray for them. 

I managed to squeeze a game of Strength & Honour in with my friend and concentrating on getting the rules right to teach them. The game went as well as it could and was a testament to the play-ability and beginner friendly nature of the rules. We were both able to focus on our tactics with only minor rules checking for certain situations.   

Cretan Archers:

Cretan Archer Skirmish Markers:

Head Swap Conversions:

Greek Archers:

Greek Archer Skirmish Markers:

Greek Slingers: