It has been a while since I worked on my Dux Bellorum forces, so I thought I'd try to get a unit of Irish riders sorted out. Dux Bellorum has been earmarked as one of my focoi for this year; I'd like to complement my existing two armies (Romano-British and Irish) with a few more units each, and perhaps work on a third army if I have the time.
As I have previously lamented, the range of decent 10mm Irish is quite limited and I have had to do quite a bit of substitution with other ranges to get a nice mix of warriors on my bases. It took me a long time to decide what to do to create a base of Irish riders. Dan Mersey makes the pretty astute decision to describe Irish riders as being 'noble' but not classed as 'Noble', i.e. they are wealthy warriors on horseback, but due to the nature of their training, size of horses and equipment, they are not hard hitters like other noble riders.
To represent these wild warriors with horses I ended up ordering a pack of 10mm Copplestone Castings fantasy 'Heroes on Horseback'. These are effectively not-Lord of the Rings style heroes and include a not-Gandalf, a woman, an elfish looking chap and a few warriors with round shields. I chose the three warriors without helmets, the lady and the elfish lad to represent my Irish.
Here they are painted but without any of the base dressing. Three of my five warrior bases have the Pendraken Kiera figure representing the fierce warrior women who feature in the Irish Cycles, so it was no hardship having a mounted woman on this base. I also added a wee wolfhound from Eureka Miniatures.
I've kept the same pallet of yellow, tan and white, and I think the base works really well in the context of the rest of the army.
This shot gives a size comparison between the Copplestone Irish riders my Pendraken Romano-British noble riders. The Pendraken figures (from the Late Roman range) are a fair bit heftier - especially the horses - so I don't know that I'd want to mix the figures on the same base. However, having them on the same table is no problem at all.
The Copplestone fantasy cavalry (rather than the hero pack which I ordered) look like they would make superb generic early Medieval cavalry for Welsh, Romano-Britons, Saxons or even Picts if needed.
