Spring Clean Challenge Sassanids Revived

Already doing better than last year we have consulted the Sworpoint army list and have some ideas for a basic structure for the army.  We have 16 cataphracts (8 bases in the rules) and need at least as many light cavalry.  So I’ll need 16 Sassanid horse archers from somewhere.

These are some Gripping Beast plastics that were in a Saracen First Crusade force that I got from a friend who has had to retire from the hobby.  Although that is very sad I’m determined to give these models a good life in their new home so start by ripping their heads off.  I’m swapping the arab headdresses for Iranian and Median heads from the Wargames Atlantic plastics set.  I’ll finish the conversions be carving off the stirrups – thay weren’t used widely in the region until after the Arab conquest era and will allow my horse archers to represent Parthians and earlier Persian forces too.

I was a bit stuck with the colours but I’m coming round to them and may continue the theme by using bright contrast colours on the infantry too.

Here you can see the Huns at the front (Wargames Foundry), Daylami (mixture of Footsore and Gripping Beast) and the two elephants.  Wait – two elephants?  Yes, I couldn’t resist a brief foray to Aventine Miniatures for the Shahanshah (King of Kings) on elephant to go with the existing Gripping Beast one with the troop howdah.  I love having a bid setpiece as the army leader base and the Shah on giant stompy elephant is doing it for these guys.

Having taken the OTT team’s recommendation and watched Bahubali it turns out that Indian elephants are a totally different colour to African ones so I’ve already made a mistake with this one and will need to make it much darker with a mottled skin colour across the face, lower ears and particualty toward the end of the trunk.