Byzantiad - Work in Progress

All this talk of Mediaevals and Ancients, and Byzantine and their many foes, has led me at long last to have a look at what needs doing with my armies. Although Byzantine history is one of my favourite areas to read about, strangely enough, it is not at all my favourite period to wargame. I suspect it has something to do with wargames 'competitions', the meaning or purpose of which is quite beyond my comprehension. 

A survey of my stuff indicates a great deal of work to be done: buffing up and repair work on already painted veterans, and finishing off the figures I have not painted. We begin with some kavallarioi and skoutatoi that until two weeks back were quite innocent of paint - apart from the skoutatoi shields. Those shield have sitting idle in the arsenals at least 20 years - probably nearer 25.

Recent projects in battle array - quite a 
compact little corps.

  This little array looks almost like a little army in its own right - just 1 element short of a DBA or HotT army. A few comments:
1.  The shield designs given to the cavalry - apart from the command group in the rear - I found on the internet a few days ago. The command groups's shields were left over from my trapezitai light horse.
2.  The skoutatos shield design is quite frankly anachronistic, really dating from the late Roman, early Byzantine era, some 4-5 centuries before the period of this army.  But I just liked the look of the design - a stylised version of the rather horrible exsanguinated head on a bloody stake design.
3.  The shields have been hand painted.
4.  The lances will receive pennons and lance heads. Time was, I used pin heads with flattened points, but it seems these days the pins I have are too hard, my pliers don't quite meet flush, or I'm as weak as a kitten - the method ain't working. So I'm thinking of using the spear points from some unused plastic flagpoles from my War of the Spanish Succession sprues. That experiment will receive a trial later today.
5.  For my own army, I developed a convention that the kite-shielded, barded cavalry are Tagmatic - in effect the regular, imperial army - and the unbarded cavalry with round shields will identify the Thematic - in effect landed militia or retainer cavalry. My convention is  quite arbitrary, and the fact is that the bards were disappearing through the period of this army (c950-c1050CE).
6. The flaggy things are paper, coloured with felt pen.

Hand painted shield patterns and paper flags -
I'm tolerable pleased with the look.

I've also been working on the 'Enemies of' - specifically some light horse and close-order archers in the service of Abasgia or Bulgaria, as circumstances indicate. There's still a bit more needed on these, but pictures like this tell me what needs doing. 

Now, these fellows were all picked up second hand from somewhere, long ago. The guys in front are tiny - possibly 'true' 15mm, where the others are nearer 18mm. In fact most of my mediaeval figures are indeed 18mm. The four figures on the right flank of the main body look as though they could be Pechenegs; the others - I have no idea. I certainly have a broad mix of light horse archer figures!

Finally for this posting: some bowmen - apart from psiloi (light infantry) the only close order foot unit that I have fully armed with bows. 

Somehow a Norman archer has photobombed this
pic.  Rather an orphan, he's the only Norman 
archer figure I have...

Still a bit of touching up to do - especially the animal pelt jackets (Sheepskin?  Wolf? Bear?) these guys are wearing. I'll suppose they are sheep or goat skin unless or until I discover different. 

That will do for this posting. I hope soon to show the finished products...