West Wind Productions Armenians

Finally something wargaming related...

While waiting for the West Wind Productions kickstarter to arrive, I got impatient and decided to paint up an Armenian allied contingent instead. The Armenians were caught between the Late Imperial Romans and the Sassanid Persians for much of the period the three nations existed, so the Impetus army lists gave both the Romans and the Persians an option to include an Armenian allied contingent.

The list calls for one to three heavy cavalry units, two to four light horse units, and a number of archers (either as ranked or skirmish unit), and javelin-armed infantry. I decided to get two units of the cataphracti (two packs), two units of light horse (one pack), and two units of formed archers (two packs).

The cataphracti were a straighfoward choice, since West Wind had a specific pack for them, and they look somewhat different from their Persian or Roman counterparts. I was not able to squeeze 12 figures onto the base, so I put five figures in the front rank and six in the rear, slightly staggered.

Now West Wind has an Armenian Light Cavalry pack, but these are equipped with javelins and shields, so would not work for what I wanted. I googled around and decided that the Armenian horse archers would probably resemble that of their neighbours the Persians, so I got a pack of their Parthian light horse. As it turned out, West Wind gives a baker's dozen for the human figures, and the luck of the draw gave me only one figure with the characteristic Phrygian cap, so I managed to make two units with no Phyrgian-capped figure.

Impetus (and the Dux Bellorum-Impetus mash-up that we use) utilises a large base that is essentially four DBX bases in a 2 x 2 formation (with the exception of foot skirmishers, which are 2 x 1), so a proper Light Horse unit should have eight figures instead of six. However, each pack of cavalry figures came with 12 horses, so I decided to put the figures in a Catabrian circle, which made the spacing look about right; two of the figures are in a 'Parthian shot' pose, so it added to the look.

For the archers, West Wind actually makes an Armenian Skirmishers pack, but these come with a mix of archers and slingers with shields, which were not what I wanted. I ended up using their 3rd Century Auxiliary Archers, which looked about the same. The archers were supposed to have 12 figures per unit, but again West Wind gave me 26 figures in a pack, so I squeezed 13 figures onto each unit.

The larger base allows for a more organic arrangement of the figures, and also have space to add scenic features to the base. I added some 'tuft' which I got a while back, and also added some clusters of rocks made from cork bits to match the look of the Deep Cut Studios mat we use for gaming - I am quite happy with the result.

Over all I enjoyed building, painting, and basing these units, but in retrospect perhaps I should have chosen to build an Arab contingent, which would at least introduce some camels into the mix.

The kickstarter figures are expected to arrive this week, and my share from this will be four units of Gothic foot, which I hope to paint as two deep units, with mounted commanders.