"Sassanid army composition: unarmoured horse" Topic

After a marvellously quic and helpful response to a question about how to paint black horses I want to test your skills again.

I am building a C4-6th Sassanid army, picking up bits and bobs from ebay. I have too many SHC catatphracts, probably not enough EHC and more foot than I can shake a stick at (gonna give them integral archer and field them as a pavisier type rather than the lowly rabble), but I'm sure it will look lovely when its painted and ready to go.

My last acquisition was a bunch of lovely cavalry from Gripping Beast. They are unarmoured with shields, on horses with no caparison/armour, they have (?ahistorical) globe hats and should carry spears. Now, I thought that my Sassanid light horse would be bow-armed, a la Parthians, so I want to steer away from basing them for that.

My question: will I base and play these as tribal(Iranian, hill, other? – WAB BtGG suggestion) cavalry (Cv) or will someone shock me by telling me exactly how I should depict and deploy them?

Thanks in advance.

I would base them as Javelin armed light cavalry

Thank you Bluewillow.

Note that up until the significant reformss of the 6th Century, you would find significant numbers of vassal cavalry with specific regional variations in dress and equipment. Even after the reforms of the army into the armies of the 4 quarters under the Spahbeds of the quarters, there would still be significant regional variations between the various quarters, and the Royal army itself.

The globe hat is very unlikely to have been worn by cavalry, (the representation comes from a confusion between 19th Century peasant hats and Royal carvings showing the various crowns, so you might want to hack it off and play with greenstuff to replace it with either a skythian type bonnet, spangenhelm, headband over bare head or any one of several hat styles.

Khusrau, the voice of wisdom! I would prefer to field these fellows as vassal/provincial MC (Cv), and keep the LC (LH) with their bows, so I am glad to bow to your authority!

The Sassanid army will allow me to solo the Fall of Rome with the Eastern threat, but I have only read of them from Roman and fictional sources. I recently finished Procopius' Persian Wars, and, er, Caspian Gates by Harry Sidebottom. Could you recommend a good Sassanid primer? By good I mean cheap, well illustrated and not too high brow/in-depth.

No way will I interfere with the funky hats: the old Airfix Guide to Ancient Wargaing had them with them on and that's what got me interested all those years ago! As a obligate solo wargamer I can put up with the inaccuracy!

Thanks Khusrau

Crocus,
Montvert publications have Sassanian Armies 'the Iranian empire early 3rd to 7th cent.AD'. By David Nicolle with colour plates by Angus McBride.
There are a lot of good drawings included.