Adding to the Caliphate

With my 15mm Arab Conquest army now veterans of several tabletop encounters, I am now in the process of adding units in order to expand it into one of the later caliphate armies such as the Umayyads who invaded the Iberian peninsular.

First up are the infantry, who transitioned from largely Arabic warbands to units of Berber spearmen sometimes incorporating archers. This was actually a real pain: having painted 160 Arab warriors, I now had to paint another 160 Berber spearmen!

The Balck Guard veterans and a couple of the units had already been done (see post from 20th May) so it was now just a question of slogging through the rest. These are all Red Copper sculpts printed by Baueda in Italy before they were sold back to the UK.

Luckily the Berbers are easy to paint: or at least they are the way that I paint them!

Undercoat in Grey Seer, then splash on a base coat on Contrast White paint. Leave to dry. Then dry brush a bright acrylic White over the Contrast White to give you the folds in the robes. Then paint the faces, eye slits and hands in a dark flesh Contrast paint. After that, the sash and headdress in a Contrast colour of your choice: here I have used Stormfiend Blue.

After that, it’s just a matter of finishing the figures. The Spear shafts are in Wyldwood, the pennants in a variety of Contrast colours. The shields are Wyldwood (painted at the same time as the spears) then drybrushed in bronze then washed with Agrax Earthshade.

Easy and quick to do: about two hours per unit.