Kurdish Javelinmen
The Sassanid Persian Empire was a real empire - Persians (obviously) ruling over the peoples of modern-day Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, the Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Dagestan), southwestern Central Asia, most of Turkey, certain coastal parts of the Arabian Peninsula, the Persian Gulf area, and areas of southwestern Pakistan. In wargaming terms the problem is two-fold - firstly finding suitable figures, and secondly finding 'room' in an army list for so many different factions. I've decided to mostly have 'proper' Sassanids in my army, with a couple of 'token' contingents from other nations - these guys and the Parthian horse archers I painted earlier in the project.
These are some of A&A Miniatures 'Parthian' javelinmen, equipped with shields from Miniature Design Studio (very kindly given to me by Dave Toone, the proprietor). The shields are actually from his 'Sea Peoples' range, but seemed like just the thing for Kurdish mountain-men. I really like the figures, particularly with their new shields. As supplied they come with the large 'bamboo and leather' shields of the A&A Sassanid infantry - I thought they'd look more 'foreign' with different shields. They look different enough to be 'foreign', but have enough colours in common with the rest of the army to 'fit in' too. There's a bigger picture in the Sassanid Photo Album.
Hopefully, tomorrow or the day after, I'll be able to show you the Early Imperial Roman 'thing' I painted for Warlord Games last week.