Preparing and Painting Persians

 Although I have quite a few 20mm Ancient armies in plastic, I've always avoided the Persians as they only really had five major engagements I'm interested in. As you need hordes of them, and they are very fiddly to paint, the effort/reward ratio just wasn't worth it, unlike, say Romans, or Gauls or Hoplites. 

Anyway, the Netflix series Alexander the Great sadly piqued my imagination, so 15 years since I painted my last 20mm Ancients, Persians here we come.

I spent a degree of time looking at Army Lists in DBA, Lost Battles, Phalanx and Command and Colours to see how much stuff I needed and what I could get away with. The biggest issue is they start off with massed bows, and end up with lots of Auxilia and skirmishers, while also needing tons of cavalry. I'm not too fussed about using Immortals against Macedonians, they are just blokes with spears and big shields, which makes life a bit easier. So I worked out the minimum amount of stuff I needed and ended up buying far too much, as is always the way with boxes of plastic figures.

I'd completely forgotten I also  had a big bag of second hand Persians in the loft, as well as two four horse chariots, some Egyptians (with chariots) and what appears to be an entire spare Macedonian Army. Oh well. I just sorted through the pile and picked out the absolute minimum I could get away with painting, which was still quite a lot of stuff.

I started with the infantry as I hate painting horses and cavalrymen are so much more obvious as they don't have great big shields to hide behind. The plan was to base all the infantry up for painted ng, but just experiment with paint finishes on a dozen figures to start with.

The figures are a mix of Zvezda, HaT and Caeser. Coming across a second hand box of Caeser figures was a godsend as I was very short of infantry, and the also came with loads of spare shields and weapons. The bag of old Zvezda figures I had was missing all its shields and weapons, so I could re-use the Caeser ones with them as needed.

This lot should be enough for (in DBx terms) for 6 x Psiloi (Javelin), 6 x 4Bw, 2 x 2Bw, 8 x 3Aux, 4 x 3Aux/Sp, 4 x 4Sp - these last ones being four elements of Immortals, which when paired with four of the Bow units would make 4 x 8Bw. I also did some separate Leader figures. 

Figure prep was OK as very few of the figures had any significant flash. I had to assemble the various weapon and shield combos, and I had to make some extra shields for three Immortals as they were missing, but I had enough spare spears for the other figures. I then stuck them to their temporary bases and undercoated them in undiluted PVA.

Once the PVA has dried (overnight), I undercoated them. First spray black prime, then  a misting of white to catch the highlights. This bit is all a bit laborious, but worth it in my experience, especially on soft plastic figures. 

I was then able to start on the experimental figures. I did a dozen Javelin skirmishers and a dozen Apple Bearers, so a mix of irregular and slightly more regular figures, the latter in something approaching a 'uniform'. I'd bought some extra colours at Hammerhead - orange, purple and a darker flesh tone, all Coat D'Arms pots as I hate dropper bottles for small amounts of paint. The waste is shocking. 

In the end I settled for blocking in the base colours, washing them in dark brown ink, then once dry, going over the highlights to mitigate any staining, then adding the final details, in particular, various stripes, spots, piping etc as well as the shield fronts. My collection of Posca Paint Pens were really useful for this as I could dab on tiny amounts of all sorts of wierd colours. Finally they got a coat of floor varnish, but I usually leave at least 24 hours before varnishing as it can make the ink run if you do it too soon.

By now I had a method which worked and I'd sorted out some colour combos which worked too, so then next batches were larger. Firstly the 24 generic infantry figures, and then the big batch of 24 Archers and 16 Immortals. I left the Archer skirmishers and leaders until last. I could block paint one batch while the paint or ink was drying on another lot.

The farthest two rows of figures are the test batches, but I'm pretty pleased with how they are coming out, even if the process is very labour intensive. They are taking over twice as long to paint as Romans, but I'll try and keep the numbers manageable. Irregular uniforms are always hard, they need a common colour palette, but each figure also has to be different to every other one. 

I've done enough to start basing them up now. The varnish has dulled some of the details so I'm having to go over some of the stripes and spots etc with my paint pens again as I go along. 

I'm rather pleased with how the Sapabara/Archers work. This can be an 8Bw element in DBA, or a 4Sp and a 4Bw element. So far so good, the finished articles will no doubt appear at some point in my long running Thursday Toy Day articles.