Photos of Museum Miniatures Assyrians for L'Art de la Guerre 2018

Building the Biblical army collection

Having been rather bereft of Biblical armies, ADLG and its easy-to-collect army sizes has allowed me to turbocharge this neglected part of my collection.

First up were the Myceneans, and then the NKE ended up being rebased as well. But now, finally, and after 30 years of collecting and gaming I now have an Assyrian army as well!

As with the Myceneans, these are Museum figures. They are a little static in their poses and stylized, but for Biblical era I feel that this style works really well.

The Assyrians are a ruthlessly efficient army and so the regular poses of most of the men (from the one-pose Museum packs) also feels right. Many of the colour choices were inspired by (but sadly not particularly closely copied from) the fantastic 28mm Foundry range, which have provided three Generals elements for this army as well

(There is lot's more of this stuff on my Links Page)

This is the whole of my 16mm army assembled, based and painted up. It all fits on an A4 sheet of paper!

The highlight is of course the Chariots. I picked up 4 normal chariots, and 2 Generals ones - allowing the Generals to be embedded in two units if needed, or to expand the army to a 300, 6-chariot force

The amazing patterns are simply pictures downloaded from the internet after a search for Assyrian Patterns. I then cropped the images I likes the most, and resized them in Word (right-clicking the image and selecting "size") down to 1.2cm high and the right width. The Museum chariots are quite good for this as they have a big blank slab of a front wall.

Unusually the army has a lot of cavalry - a mix of Heavy and Medium, plus some Elites - all with bow

In my army the Elites are dressed in a lurid green

A wall of regular infantry holds the line. These are mixed Bow/Sword units.

Resizing the chariot patterns was a bit of a leap of faith, but in the end even my rather cheap and low-res printer seems to have done OK.

This pattern may well be Indian, but reduced to around 2.2cm x 1.2cm and with a bit cut out to accommodate the chariot pole for the horses it looks pretty neat I reckon.

On the side walls a more generic geometric pattern.

This one has images from the Ishtar Gate - a full freize. You can just about see the brickwork.

This wraps round the sides as well. The Museum chariots are unusual in that they do fit on a 40x40mm base with the horses being quite small and stumpy, and posed not to stretch too far back.

I got mixed up as to which figures are supposed to be in the crew, so some of these are probably part of the infantry command pack. Anyway, no mistaking that it is a Heavy Chariot. You may also see in this photo one of the few things that you need to look out for on these chariots - the width of the axles is a little bit too wide as they are cast. Its easy enough to trim down the axles a little so the chariot wheels sit closer to the cab - but if you don't do this the wheels and their hubs are a bit wider than 40mm, so the chariots don't sit neatly together in a line as the hubs of their wheels knock together. I made that mistake, and then had to cut the wheels off and re-glue them in again

There are 2 chariots with red as the main colour, and 2 with blue.

The main blue here is a GW colour - Macragge Blue (affiliate link to eBay). Its a really strong, rich colour and gives great coverage

This one has the colours swapped round. The red is Army Painter Chaotic Red (affiliate link to eBay) - again a great "ancients" colour.

The Warriors + Sun motif is pretty bold on these, and again the Ishtar Gate is the side wall.

The Generals chariot is of course purple, Vallejo 70.960 Violet (affiliate link to eBay). This front plate design is more of a rug. I'd foolishly decided to stick the shield on before coming up with the idea for using printed patterns, so the pattern is cut around the shield (poorly!)

The Green that contrasts with the purple is Army Painter Army Green.

Geometric patterns on the side walls again

These light bowmen are about as generic as it gets. But to keep the same colour pallette across the army and make them a bit less boring I gave them hats in Vallejo Game Colour 72.023 Electric Blue (affiliate link to eBay).

Just about dodges the Smurf look I think

For the Medium Cavalry I used one Assyrian cavalryman and 2 of the Scythian horse archer figures, painting them in a uniform. The tunics and horse barding is in the two tones of blue I've already mentioned.

Trousers are Army Painter Skeleton Bone (affiliate link to eBay) - one of my go-to generic colours.

Adding a strip of Army Painter Army Green (affiliate link to eBay) colour to the bowcases gives them a tiny bit more interest from the back

These are the Heavy Cavalry, with 2 lancers and one bowman. Their main tunic colour is the same Chaotic Red as seen on the chariots.

Like the Mycenean army I painted earlier this year I have stuck to using Vallejo 7.856 Ochre Brown (affiliate link to eBay) for all of the wood (spears and bows). There's no history to this, it's just that it stands out better than a 'brown' against these figures.

The same Electric Blue is used to pick out the highlights on the bowcases - again the limited pallette comes into play

Each horse has a head decoration of Army Painter Pure Red (affiliate link to eBay)

This is also true for the Elite units wearing green

Their main colour is Vallejo 70.838 Emerald Green (affiliate link to eBay). Very bright, very silk-like

Bowcase highlights in Pure Red

All the armour is drybrushed Miniature Paints Gunmetal over a black base coat

Here are the infantry - this is an officer with a hand-axe, and a mix of the two poses of swordsmen with an archer added in the rear rank as well

I will make some extra bases for proper Support elements, but using spare bowmen in these units kinda embeds support as well. And I ran short of swordsmen figures.

All of the troops have red and white striped ribbony-things on their belts - a nice little splash of colour. This close up the painting looks messy, but at tabletop distances its kinda interesting and stops them just being a wall of blue.

As with the chariots and cavalry, the basic colour is the GW dark blue, with shields as the Army Painter Chaotic Red

The edging strip along the bottom of each tunic is Electric Blue.

Shield edges and bosses are metallic bronze

Having the one swordsman among the 3 spearmen breaks up the unit a little, making them more interesting to look at

The raised shield is particularly good as you get a glimpse of the coloured uniform behind

Some of the units have tunics edged in a vibrant green - the same as used on the Elite Cavalry, again maintaining the colour pallette

Army Green to highlight the bowcases for all of the Average troops.

Leaving some of the undercoat showing has the effect of blacklining the bows and spears where they connect to the hands of the men

Usual basing technique - sand, Rustins wood stain, drybrush in Stone Golem pale grey and Skeleton Bone - as you can see here

Yeah - you get the picture...

The straps on the bowmen are also Skeleton bone, as are their trousers

These are the Medium Foot mixed units - slightly different spearman figure, but exactly the same painting so I can use them interchangeably

In the biblical era, everyone had black hair and a beard

Only the edging on the tunics varies - subtly

One front rank man in every 4 has a sword here.

These are not Museum - they are very old (possibly dating back to the late 80's) Essex Scythian horse archers, appearing here rebased to the new basing style as the Saka LH.

Repainting their bows in Ochre does make it look like they are carrying large bananas I'm afraid

I also got some shields to use as casualty markers from Magister Militum

With 10 of each shape I did 11 Green (1 hit), 7 Yellow (2 hits) and 2 Red (3 hits). With very few HI in the army only having 2 "Red" markers should be enough

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