Thracians: armoured/corps

WE HAVE COME FOR YOUR GOATS

I am and have always been terrible at doing hobby projects for any sort of deadline, whether it be a painting competition, a tournament, or some sort of community challenge. But if that challenge involves something I was going to do anyway? Different fuckin story!

The thing that I was going to do anyway involves a conversion of one of Victrix’ plastic hoplites, which I did a little preparatory work for a couple months back in expectation of the Mortal Gods core box arriving chez moi. Mortal Gods, of course, is a skirmish game set in ancient Greece whose name should always be pronounced a bit like:

Anyhow, I Did The Thing and put together an entry for Azazel’s Armoured / Army April – Anathaetes,a heavy hero for my Thracians.

This is one of those rare conversions that happened more or less exactly how I planned it out. All the prototypey stuff I did previously made it into the final product as intended – his cloak sits on him quite comfortably and looks pretty comparable to the Foundry peltasts. His rhomphaia is probably still a little bit long, but the proportions are right and you get a good sense of this weird, spindly blade in comparison to some other swords from the period.

Wear it like you stole it, I guess.

His armour maybe bears talking about a little bit – the Thracians were overwhelmingly known for using much less armour than most people in their part of the world, preferring to fight as highly mobile skirmishers. Greaves & helmets started to see wider use from the 4th century BC, but big old breastplates like this one were almost unheard of, with the notable exception of the royal household cavalry. So this dude is pretty much dressed up as one of them, minus a horse and spear, plus a rhomphaia and a healthy respect for the Rule of Cool. Anyway, with his bronze helmet, cuirass and greaves he is easily the most heavily armoured Thracian I own, so he’s my Armoured April entry.

The other half of the monthly challenge is Army April, which is a simple case of putting together some nice group shots of your long-term labours and a great opportunity for me to admit: I probably own more of these dudes than I’m ever likely to need.

That right there is easily 450pts worth of Thracians for Mortal Kombat Gods. You probably need about 250 to get started with? 350 is a pretty big game. 450 might be… Unwieldy.

• 

• 

• 

But they do look nice. A bonus element of the challenge was to add some new stuff to said army, which of course I did with the big man up top, as well as this dude:

Diethenaerys is a converted Aventine miniature, with a shield from the Victrix sprues and another custom rhomphaia. He’s actually intended to be a slightly more historically-accurate substitute for this guy:

And I think he’s come out rather well. The other additions this month were a set of Footsore’s brand new Thracian peltasts!

• 

• 

These models are actually so new, they’re not even really out yet. Footsore made a few of them in advance of the full release to sell at Salute, and I was lucky enough to be able to snag a few of the leftovers from that show. They’re expensive and, having more folds in their cloaks, they’re quite a bit more difficult to paint than some of the other models in my collection, but I think they’re really gorgeous models. Lovely sculpts, great faces – and extremely well cast to boot. I am a happy bunny. And I have so, so many Thracians.

Happy hobbying, everybody.