Raiders from the North - Thracian Light Cavalry

During my painting sessions in December I was able to finish some more units. One of them was a battle group of Thracian light cavalry. As you may have noticed I did two bases for them some time ago. The only thing I did was to add four more bases, so now I have a complete battle group for Field of Glory. The figures themselves are again taken from the hellenistic cavalry set made by Zvezda.

The Thracians were a people living north or north east of Greece, roughly in the region which today is Bulgaria. They were devided into many small warlike tribes and therefore also often made raids into the nearby territories of Greece and Macedonia. Thrace itself was rich of timber and metals, the Thracians often served as mercenaries in Greek and hellenistic armies. They were known for their skills as light infantry and cavalry.

The four new bases:

The battlegroup as a whole:

Ancients! Hoplites, bowmen and light cavalry

Nearly two months passed since my last post, a quite sad fact. I admit, I havn't done much since then. I'm writing my masters thesis at the moment and a computer game ist stealing my time. But I finished some ancient figs that waited long enough on my shelf half painted. I also adapted my old terrain to my changed game board, but I missed to make some pictures (it also looks unspectacular, so you don't miss anything). The last thing I did was to change the blog layout, which you may have noticed.

1. The Hoplites

You may have seen my other four bases of hoplites, also taken from this set. They had no armour, because it were the rear ranks. Now I've done some front rank hoplites. They wear greaves and linen armour. I made them very colourful, because they were rich men and rich men always like to show their wealth - and colours were expensive in antiquity. I have two more bases on the workbench, the last ones. With ten bases you can field nearly every Greek DBA army, that involves hoplites (there's only one exception).

2. The Bowmen

Eight bases of Bowmen from this set. With eight bases I can easily make a FoG battlegroup or use them as psiloi for Greek and hellenistic armies. Their tunics are held in bright brown and sand tones, because bowmen were drawn from the poor classes of the Greek society and could therefore not afford fancy colours for their clothes.

3. Light Cavalry

These two bases are from this superb set. They can be easily recognized as Thracians, a people with a long tradition as mercenaries for Greek poleis and hellenistic states. They'll serve as light cavalry for DBA.