Pondering Persians...

Well my Wargames Factory prize turned up this week. As suspected HMRC decided to have its cut and together with what USPS decided to take out of it the $100 voucher has effectively turned into $25 - ho hum! As I would have bought the Samurai Cavalry anyway I wasn't too annoyed and at the end of the day it is a pile of free miniatures which you can't turn your nose up at...

Now to decide what to do with the figures, and indeed find out a little bit more about what they are supposed to be. I found a couple of useful blogs with posts on the Wargames Factory figures and Persians in general, namely Grimsby Wargaming and Satrap Miniatures. This has lead me to deciding to organise the models into at least four Sparabara/archer units with three ranks of eight infantry.

Of course by buying the Persian Infantry sprue bundles, whilst escaping having any of the terrible kneeling figure that is in the boxed set, I have a 50/50 make up of spear and bow when what I really need is one-third/two-thirds in favour of archers. I have 12 spare infantry which gives me another six bows plus some from the cavalry box set I have but I will be a few bows short. Nor sure what I am going to do but there may be some crafty use of hand weapon armed troops in the rear ranks if I can't get hold of more bow arms. That said I will need to buy some more cavalry at some stage which will free up some more bows so...

Whilst I wasn't planning to go down the Persian route, looking at some of the subject troops, the old Vendel Egyptian Marines for example, there is more variety than I thought and they would make a great Men of the East style fantasy army as well as being able to crush the impertinent Greeks.

Anyway I must stop going off at a tangent and get back to the Orcs and Zulus...