Almost unbelievably, I recently actually managed to find time to do some painting!

What with real life being very busy and all the actual gaming I’ve been doing, the painting side of things had slipped, but I had a spare hour or two and thought that I really should get something done…so I did.

These are the Laminids: more 15mm sci-fi from Khurasan. I’m going to add them to the Pelagic Dominate force that I already have: they will fit right in with the other “sea creatures” that that range features.

These are very simply painted with GW Contrast paints: just one coat per colour, so only four paint pots opened. They were, in fact, so easy to paint that next time I order from Khurasan, I shall add another two squads to make a platoon and ask Jon if he can add a command figure to the range.

Sassanids

I’ve also finally got around to re-basing the Sassanid infantry to go with the recent re-basing of the cataphracts, clibanarii, horse archers and elephants.

I almost didn’t bother: I mean, who fields Sassanid infantry anyway? But the figures were there, and would have prayed on my slightly OCD mind as “incomplete”, so re-base them I did.

The latest To The Strongest lists give them as either standard or deep javelinmen, so I split the figures into two units of each:

I was a bit nervous how the deep bases would turn out - I’ve only ever used the double-sized bases to deep elephants before - but, actually, these look just as good…and I had a bolt-shooter set that I could add to one as dressing as well, so all good.

Polish Lithuanians

Finally in this burst of figure production, the painter I use to augment my own efforts sent through the first of the Polish Lithuanians: a unit of Petyhorsy armoured cavalry.

Nice figures and beautifully painted.

One thing, though. By Fire & Sword, the manufacturer, use plastic horses with metal riders. Now I’ve no objection to plastics and have loads, but they seem to be using the soft rather than the hard plastic, which can sometimes lead to the horses, particularly with ‘heavy metal’ riders, not standing up straight.

So bad was this on one of the mounts in the unit above that, despite its proximity to its neighbour, the horse leant to one side to the extent that its rider’s lance was tangled with that of his comrade next door…and nothing I did would make it otherwise. Worse, it made the whole unit look weird.

The solution: a bit of stiff wire (actually the bit cut off a lance to make a spear) as a brace between the two steeds:

The close up makes it look very noticeable in the photo, above, but it isn’t on the tabletop. Job done!