Khurasan Miniatures: Previews und Neuheiten

Khurasan Miniatures präsentieren ihre Neuheiten und neue Preview Bilder auf Facebook.

We are very pleased to release five new codes for our popular late 14th century range, available now:

http://khurasanminiatures.tripod.com/late-fourteenth-century.html

The new codes are three of foot knights wearing houpelandes or aketons, rather than the jupons we initially released, and two codes of infantry with polearms, one English with bills (or guisarmes), the other French with the polearms favoured by that nation, so ox tongues or partisans. The shields on the infantry with polearms are separate, so may be left off for such infantry types as Brigans. These are marketed as „English“ and „French“ but the English used French-style polearms and the French used the bill-guisarme! Italian and other infantry did as well, so they’re fairly international.

Well, there’s going to be at least two heroic 15mm ranges from us. Why? Because the dollies are already made for the second army! The heavy cavalry dollies anyway. The second army? Frankish/Norman/First Crusaders!

We did just one test set of them — Eastern Frankish milites with their mighty swords-of-war. We know these birds from their famous (and fated) performance at Civitate, but they were knights so they fought mounted too, and as far as I know no one makes them on horseback.

Deciding which heroic 15 range to do as a followup to the Trajanic Romans was hard. I wanted to do really REALLY iconic armies, so I think Trajanics in so-called “lorica segmentata” was a no brainer. But what army after that? First I thought hoplites would be the obvious choice, but it’s a little too same-y in time period (well, classical at least) and another regular infantry army.

Other contenders included Achaemenid Persians (too complicated an army) and Sassanids (famous with wargamers but not famous-famous), Medieval Swiss (ditto) and Rameside Egyptians, complete with Yul Brenner as cinc, and I was very close to doing that one! ECW was also considered by too much of a jump for the second army. In the end the 1050-1100 period in Europe (and the Levant) just seemed better known and sufficiently different.

Of course we are a ways off from doing more of that second army yet. We have the first one to finish — the Trajanic cavalry and high command, and some light troops as well.

Raumm, Earl of Hell, commands thirty legions. One of these is the GOR, the Gremlins of Raumm. After Raumm departed this dimension to sow discord elsewhere, the Great Red Dragon, marschall in his absence, set about organising Raumm’s forces. The northmen of Raumm were a mighty force but small in number, and their unreformed raider compatriots came and went as they pleased, often abandoning Raumm’s forces at Inopportune times.

So the great dragon hired legions of Gremlins, small, green skinned creatures with long arms. There were teeming thousands of these and they carried themselves about the world in ready-made armies, fighting for hire. They were highly organized and heavily armoured, and although they were sell swords and reluctant to risk their lives for their employers, there were a lot of them — perfect cannon fodder to bulk up an army — and their primary method of warfare filled a yawning gap in Raumm’s forces. Behind a few ranks of gremlins with shields and spears stood deep columns of archers, who rained concentrated bowfire on the enemy, the arrows poisoned or flaming. Behind these blocks of archers, standing ready to kill enemy who broke through or attempted to outflank the army, were platoons of gremlins with sword and shield, the bravest of the soldiers.

On the wings of the infantry regiments rode lancers mounted on barded borogs, trotting slowly forward, their mounts chained together. Large columns of these cataphracts would crash into the enemy, pressing hard with their steel lances.

Wanting all of Raumm’s forces to bear his name, the dragon redesignated these mercenaries the GOR, the Gremlins of Raumm, and provided them with new standards bearing an eagle’s-head finial carved of wood, and a red banner bearing a crow’s skull. The Gremlins took these gladly, and accepted the name. After all, the money was good. “Call us as you please, great beast, as long as the gold flows,” they laughed in their guttural croakIng voices, drinking their grog (borog urine mixed with rum).

Quelle: Khurasan Miniatures auf Facebook