Hairy Horsemen

Hi all, back again with some more Germanic tribesmen for my new project. The models are again from Wargames Foundry. (This post originally appeared as part of Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge 14).

There are twelve of these chaps in the unit and they came with command as well! Above we see the leader (in looted Roman kit), standard bearer, and horn blower.

 

The rest of the bunch are in a variety of poses. I hand-painted the shields using ideas found on the Internet. Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware, there's no real primary sources of shield designs as none have survived in a condition that would indicate how they were painted.

Foundry also supplied a bunch of wicker shields, which are a real cheat because you just paint them... like wicker :-)

Germanic tribesmen apparently wore very little armour and almost none wore helmets. However the cavalry were supposed to be upper-class kind of peasants so may have been a bit better equipped. Their horses were slow and awful though, at least according to Tacitus and Caesar.

A shot just to prove I painted the back ends of the models too.

These were actually a real faff to assemble as the riders really didn't want to stick to the horses' backs. A little JB Weld (two-part epoxy) set that right though.

Gotta keep crankin' out these Germans! Watch this space!