Hyborian Age Cimmerian Bowmen

In between basing up my Tusk figures I finished off a unit of Cimmerian bowmen from Kallistra (part of last weekends small order). Nice figures like the regular troops it took me a while to realise what was 'wrong' with them - the entire unit is left-handed! Never mind...

Whilst Kallistra supply you with enough troops for four bases I have kept to the Warmaster three base unit and so by purchasing another two blisters will end up with a total of four units of bow for my army.

Since painting the first Cimmerians I have been trying to apply a bit of logic to the project and have decided that rather than get all ambitious and try and recreate the entire Hyborian Age in 10mm, I am going to initially restrict myself to the time of the Battle of Venarium and concentrate on raising Cimmerian and Aquilonian forces, then see where it goes from there. Re-reading Beyond the Black River I've gleaned a little more info on the Aquilonian army, although Howard typically is sketchy on detail and is wont to misname weaponry. For example the force at Fort Tuscelan has 300 pikemen, but I can't imagine a weapon more useless in the forested Pictish wilderness and would guess that these troops are equipped with long spears.

The look of the Aquilonians is a bit of a problem. Whilst they are the "Roman Empire" of the Hyborian Age they are clearly inspired by early medieval French. I liked the idea of using Carolingians but am not keen on the Magister Militum ones so might use Kallistra's Romano-British some of which can do double duty as Dale troops in any Lord of the Rings games, supplemented with the odd pack of suitable early medievals such as their Scottish Pike (which may well of been what Howard inspired by).