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Saturday 23 May 2009

Painting Update: El Cid

Hi

Just a quick post to let you know that I am still alive and kicking...still deaf after the eardrum perforating incident, but otherwise back to full health.

Managed to take a few quick snaps tonight of the Christian cavalry from my 1500pt Age of El Cid Christian army. I hope to take a few tomorrow in slightly better light - it was quite late when I took these, having spent the afternoon babysitting my son while his mum went shopping with her friend....

Basically, at 1500pts, the army is designed to be an army from the time of Sancho Ramirez of Aragon, so somewhere around 1060AD (I intend taking it to Gripping Beast's Hot Lead event and armies have to fit the 400AD - 1066 timeline).

It has an Infante General (yeah, I know he's crap, but I can't fit in a Rey with the troops I want!!) and an Armiger ASB. It has 10 Caballeros Hidalgos representing the household knights who have taken to using French styles of fighting, so they are tooled up with thrusting spears, heavy armour and warhorses. It then has 9 caballeros, representing Aragonese nobles who still fight in the traditional style, fully equipped with light armour, javelins and shield. These are supported by 9 Jinetes who are fully armed with javelins, thowing spears and shields. This is enough points for the 50% core allocation, so the remaining Christian troops consist of 20 peones with thrsuting spear and 11 arqueros (archers). These are then supported by Andalusian allies: a unit of 9 Andalusian jinetes, armed as their Christian counterparts and 10 Andalusian archers (because they are cheap as chips!!

I have no idea how it'll perform in the scenarios on the day, especially as I have to create a 1000pt version as well....

Anyway, I have posted pics of knights before, but here is what I took tonight and they are now arrayed as they will be in the units in the army. I'll try to do a couple of pics of the arqueros tomorrow if I get them based tonight.

First, the Infante and armiger with the Caballeros Hidalgos:



Next, a couple of pics of the Caballeros Hidalgos. Note that I used only models with couched spears in this unit to differentiate them from the Caballeros who are all 'overarm' spear models.



Next, the Caballeros, who, as I mentioned above, are all 'spear overam':



Next, the Jinetes. No standard with these guys, as they always operate in skirmish formation... I also tried to keep the shields very simple and also kept tunic decoration to a minimum to suggest less wealth with these guys.



Now, a rather poor shot of all the Christian cavalry - should have put the flash on!!!



I'm about to start painting the Andalusian archers. Hopefully, they'll take me no more than a week, leaving me about 6 weeks to paint the Andalusian jinetes and then the peones. It'll be tight, but it's do-able!!! If not, I'll have to sub some Arthurian spearmen as the peones for the event!!!

Bretwalda round 4 update coming very soon...

Cheers

Andy

4 comments:

Sire Godefroy said...

You are a brave man painting so many horses - ¡respeto, seƱor!
In general, the cavalry looks plain great: I like the choice of colours (red/yellow as a theme), the Army Standard and, not the least, your slight alterations on the models. Don't bother about playability in tournament, in the first place your army got a lot of style.

Cheers
SG

BigRedBat said...

Lovely work; especially like the way that the colours tie the units together.

Simon

Paul Leach said...

Wow, Andy - those guys look great. I echo the comments regarding the yellow & red theme. Fabulous banners too! I think my favorite bit may be where you make the red and yellow helms look battle-worn.

In the meantime, I hope your ear heals back to normal.

Regards
Paul

Christopher(aka Axebreaker) said...

Every time I look at your El Cid army I want to start my own as yours is simply fantastic!However,the usual story of to many projects and not enough hours in the day get in the way.