Byzantine Skutatoi

Although I have collected wargames figures for many, many years, up until recently, the majority of my 25/28/32mm figures have been fantasy figures. I do have some Viking figures, but they were bought initially as part of the "Kremlo the Slann" Warhammer deal, one of the very first "army deals" that Citadel ran, just shortly after the release of 1st Edition Warhammer (I must have a look for Kremlo, he's in a box in a cupboard somewhere in my room).

The Norse were a recognised race in Warhammer in those days and so I added to those figures by picking up a few painted figures at Bring N Buys over the years but never enough to field a decent sized army. And then, of course, latterly the Norse disappeared from the Warhammer mythos (although an unofficial Army Book is available thanks to the Warhammer Fantasy Battle Reporter Forum).

And although I picked up Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) when it came out (and 1.5 edition) I never really got round to doing a historical army in the larger scale. Regular readers of these ramblings will recall that I have a 15mm Nikephorian Byzantine army, purchased in the early 1980's during my years at Dundee University and some Macedonian figures as well but that was really the only Ancient period armies I had, and when they did make an appearance after my University days it was usually DBA or DBM that was played.

Then about 2 years back, I got it into my head that I needed to get hold of the WAB army books before they went out of print.

And so I did.

All of them.

Within a space of about 3/4 months. Thankfully, most were eBay purchases otherwise, Mrs Kingsleypark would have been filing for divorce if I had paid full price for the books, but still it was a fairly irrational spend as WAB had only made a couple of appearances at Kirriemuir Wargames Club and then it soon transpired that the fabled 2nd Edition of WAB was due to be released and no one knew at that time what effect the new rules would have on the Army Books.

Okay, I could play WAB with the 15mm guys, but again in another bout of irrationality, I got a dose of figure envy and was eyeing up all the fabulous pictures of 28mm Ancients Armies that populate the interweb. So as Xmas was approaching I decided to write my letter to Santa and I knew I would ask the old fellow for a 28mm Army. Which one? Well there could only be choice as far as I was concerned and that was a Byzantine Army, and I suggested to Santa that he looked at the wonderful army deals that Gripping Beast offered on their web site. And so it was that Xmas 2009 saw the arrival of the 28mm Byzantines to Kingsleypark Manor.

Not a big army, it was the Thematic Byzantine Army Deal 1 which consisted of a unit of Heavy Kavallaroi, a unit of Light Kavallaroi, a couple of units of Psiloi, a unit of Skutatoi (they call them Kontaratoi but I can't stop using the WRG 6th Ed terminology) and a Mounted Command pack. But it was enough to be getting on with and filled with new found zest, I decided to paint up the Skutatoi.

I would like to show you the rest of the Army but they don't look very interesting with just a black undercoat.....