Thursday, September 27, 2018

Byzantine Cavalry

Just enough to complete my Basic Impetus 2.0 Nikephorian Byzantine army.

 Just three units, but should do nicely.

 Basic Impetus 2.0 list a unit of Light Cavalry it calls Flankers.
This is my representation of them.

 I went for a standard uniform for these guys.

 These are the Tagmatic Kavallaroi with general and Saint Zoe icon.
The icon was printed off the Wikipedia entry for Zoë Porphyrogenita.
Note purple cloaks.

Classed a Medium Cavalry to give them mobility, 
but with the factors of heavy cavalry to give them  a punch.

 Prokoursatores.  
I'm not going to guess at what this name mean, 
but I've gone for a more mercenary look.

Another potent unit, with Light Cavalry maneuverability and the able to charge home.

I have more cavalry to paint if I want to expand the army, but my immediate job was to get them on to the table top.  Stay tuned.

13 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks. They made the army. Now to look at expansions.

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    2. Ha! For me, an army is rarely finished!

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  2. Nice figures. That banner came out great. 😀

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    1. Thanks, Stew. Searching for images on the Internet that I can rescale, print and then touch up provides some good options, especially when it comes to getting the size right for the figures or effect wanted. Touching up with paint also helps blend them in to the figures.

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  3. Don't they look good, though? Looking at the big cavalry unit I thought you might have come up with a very fine solution to the shortage of kataphraktos figures - add in some command, and horse archers in the centre rear. Meanwhile, the kavallarioi could be classed as medium or heavy, as you choose.

    The prokoursatores are skirmishing cavalry, drawn, I believe, from the kavallarioi units. As such some men were armed with lance, others with bow. They were not in large numbers (I think a single 300-,am unit), but there were a couple of other light cavalry types: hypwerkerastai (apparently bow-armed) classed as fast light horse in DBM Their tole seems to have been a distant flank guard. Again, I use the Kavallarioi horse archer figures for them. The orhers were the lance and javelin double-armed light horse. Indications are that they were disappearing in both quality and numbers by the late 10th or early 11th centuries. Still, I include a unit of them.

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    1. Thanks Ion. I had fun playing around with all the figures I had to get groupings that looked the part. I have enough to do another three units or more. The only spare are the lovely four fully armoured cavalry. I will keep them as a DBA element.

      The Basic Impetus 2.0 army lists don't have a lot of detail on the units so your information is very helpful. What does work in BI is the troop classifications and values. I also should go back and look at the Impetus rules as they have a lot more information in their army list, but I fear that if I do that I will want to greatly expand my new Byzantine Army so I can field an Impetus army.

      This Byzantine army has been a bit of a serendipitous project as I thought I was getting more dark age figures for my Viking army.

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    2. I forgot to name the lance and javelin armed lighht horse - trapezetai (where we get our word trapeze from). I gather in their heyday they were something special.


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