Saturday, September 10, 2016

Best Kept Secrets: Black Tree Designs' Fantasy Saracens


HM1230 - Saracen Elite Guards

Black Tree Design is having a sale, which has prompted me to post this in a bit of a rush.

Extended until Sept 11th, 2016. 

Historical and Fantasy Infantry 50% off. 
Giant Monsters 30% off. 
Doctor Who 30% off.

Why the rush?

Because I believe that Black Tree Designs' Fantasy Saracens make excellent proxy Salarvyáni, that's why! And if you agree, you might want to take advantage of the sale...

The figures are scaled slightly larger than our own, but not overly so IMO. I'm not sure how well they fit weapon and armour-wise with the army book descriptions. My book has gone on walkabout and is currently "lost" - possibly forever. A replacement is being sourced. Until then all I can say is "They look good to me"! 

They are bearded. Check. The poses are nicely varied. Check. The weapons are suitable. Check. The armour is suitably exotic, as are the shields. Check. (and we have variant shields available if required...)

The Palace Guards, shown below, appear to have an interesting "push-knife and shield" combination. See the detail pictures. One could use them that way or snip the blade off and use a regular shield.


HM1233 - Saracen Palace Guards


Shield Detail


Detail: Push-knife or plug?


HM1228 - Saracen Slave Guards


...with buckler.

The so-called "Slave Guards" need not actually be slaves for our purposes, merely lower class troops. Light infantry spearmen as were at the Battle of Ry, if memory serves.

The command packs have flags, which are coincidentally not bad for Salarvyáni. I'm afraid I botched the pics and put the standard bearers in the wrong packs. Keeping that in mind, the banner from pack HM1229 (shown broken in the bottom pic) has Arabic writing on it and so will need either substitution or conversion.

I found some Games Workshop Dark Elf bits on ebay that I thought worked well, and are shown below.


HM1229 - Saracen Command II


HM1233 - Saracen Command III


...with Dark Elf banner.


...other Dark Elf weapons.

Lastly, as I am going on about Salarvyáni I ought to remind you of these Scotia Grendel axemen. I may have blogged about these guys before. They get checks for beards, and nice variety of poses. The weapons would be ridiculously over-sized in metal, but made from chlén hide would not be as heavy as they look!


Scotia Grendel's "Men of the East"

Credit where credit is due: I did not paint the Serqu trooper in the pics above. He was done by one of Eureka's in-house painters IIRC. Name unknown.

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