First of the Classical Indians

Regular visitors will know that I consoled myself for the pain of the new lockdown (no training, no wargaming) with the purchase of new 15mm Ancients army to be used with To The Strongest.

The army I chose was Museum Miniatures relatively new “Z” range of Classical Indians: the “Z” means that they were CAD designed rather than being sculpted. I’ve been really happy with my “Z” Sumerians, really happy with the “Z” Greeks, so after painting a Baueda Marian Roman army, I was very much looking forward to the “Z” Indians.

And I was right to do so.

They are a dream to paint. The detail is excellent, and they take the paint really easily. These first two units, both of longbowmen, were each completed in a day (one Saturday, one Sunday) and I could have fitted a third in if I’d really tried.

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I decided to break away from the way all my other Ancients armies are based (to the old Vis Bellica basing) and go with what had worked really well for my English Civil War armies: one element per unit on a nice big base.

I also decided to go a bit mad with the basing. I usually shove a layer of GW basing material on then dry brush a light shade on top, with flock or a tuft or two for decoration. Here, however, I went for it in a big way: same basing material and dry brush, but with patches of little stones pushed into the basing material before its dry (with watered down PVC on top to hold the stones in place). Then I added three different types of tuft, and two different type of flock roughly mixed together. I think it looks quite good.

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To give you everything, these are 15mm Museum Miniatures Classical Indian longbowmen with infantry command. They are painted with GW Contrast Paints, with the excellent fleshtone achieved by with a 50/50 mix of Fyreslayer Flesh and Cygor Brown. The base is from Warbases (a vehicle base) with the flock etc from a variety of suppliers.

I’m quite happy with these, and looking forward to doing the rest.