Just before I rush outside to spray undercoat on this sunny day I thought I'd take a few snaps of these kitbashed Arab riders and infantry I'm about to start working on to try and highlight where the various arms, legs, hands and weapons from the different sets I used have all ended up. These are all Gripping Beast plastic Arab bodies with a range of different heads, and the odd different arm added. The armoured heads are from (I believe..) the Fireforge Russian infantry sprue which I think look quite "Arabian Nights" when added to a dishsash-wearing body, and the bald head is a Mongol horseman one from Fireforge's Mongols cavalry set.
The sets I'm using are :
GB Plastic Arab infantry
GB Plastic Arab Heavy Cavalry
GB Plastic Arab Ligft Cavalry
Fireforge Plastic Mongol Cavalry
GB Plastic Elite Gothic Cavalry
and the odd sprue of Fireforge Russian Infantry & GB Vikings
These have been glued together and any white and yellow patches are where I've used polyfiller and wood filler in an effort to make the joins between glued components disappear. After it dries I sand it off with a small round hobby file.
These are "added-skirt" armoured Medieval Russian and Viking bodies with a mix of mostly "arabized" heads from the GB Arab infantry and cavalry ranges, and metal shields from Footsore.
These mounted figures are based on torsos from the Gripping Beast Gothic Elite Cavalry set, which has three rather nice fully armoured (or barded) horses and a rather paltry 3 different poses of riders, all of whom are thrusting with lances or actively charging with swords.
This pose does however just about work for mounted archers if you snip off the left hand and replace it with a snipped-off hand holding a bow. Luckily there are plenty of these hands spare in the GB infantry and cavalry boxes!
There are loads of bowcases in the GB Arab cavalry and Fireforge Mongol sets so I've also been able to do a load of the Lance/Bow cavalry holding lances and with bows stowed, as well as leaving some just as lancers. Simply replacing the heads makes a massive difference, but this set of Gothic torsos really does need quite some kitbashing as otherwise the limited number of poses would be, well, quite limiting.
More of the "Arabian Knights" style bowmen. The GB plastic bowmen are pretty bland so mixing them up with some extra heads and even arms from the mounted boxes (and these Medieval Russian armoured heads too) really helps make them more interesting as a set.
Here are some "Turkic" – style bowmen using Mongol heads. The one on the left looks to have acquired a Fireforge Mongol arm too, as these are exceedingly (weirdly!) long. I've also spotted at least one of these needs more filler before spraying..
To make the army even more varied I am mixing in metal figures from North Star, Gripping Beast (I think) and Perry (in order of left to right after the plastic figures) to mix it up a bit.
These are the GB Gothic Elite Cavalry horses, which I painted up first as I hate painting horses so I now just try and get them out of the way before starting the infantry! These horses are the same as the GB Roman cataphract pack I believe, with three poses. Instead of metal armour I've used GW Contrast Paints as a base (with extra detail from normal paints) to create colourful horse barding for the elite horsemen.
These are some of the GB Gothic riders with "arab" heads and bowcases added .. very much WiP, much of the detail isn't added yet.
More to come… especially if lockdown returns as that seems to help my painting no end !
