Friday 17 June 2022

Re-arranging Deck Chairs

 

 

The army above is for 4.49 Anatolian Turkoman.  If I want to convert it into 4.77 Black Sheep or White Sheep Turkomen I will have to add: 1 x Cv, 1 x Ps bow, 1 x 7Hd levies & 1 x Ps handgunners.  The odd Cv element plus a 'dark ages' 7Hd are next on my painting board.  The Ps can be fudged as DBA v3.0 doesn't care what the figures are armed with.  Best get on with painting the Hd and Cv elements then!

Those with a long memory may recall that I posted about the break-up of my DBM Ottomans, and the intention to build a Turkoman DBA army, back in May/June 2021.  Somehow it has taken 13 months to come to fruition.

So that's fine and dandy isn't it?  Well....it would have been if not for the recent acquisition of a load of Tartars.  It seems that the picture I posted (of said Tartars) was formally identified as being of the Huns.  Why do I feel that I can now vaguely see a warning sign saying "Danger Quicksand".

As it happens, en passant, I painted up 2 x 4Bw Huns. Formerly the only proper Huns I possessed were serving as Lh(S) in my Yuan/Ming armies. Now if I promoted some of my other oriental Lh to (S) and rounded up some of my 'german' 4Wb I would have the basis for a 2.80a Attalid or 2.80b Sabir army.  

OK - so back to the DBA army lists.  

(a) Turkomen 'morphs' - shortages are:

4.42 - Islamic Persian - 2 x Cv, 1 x 3Pk (Afghan)
4.75 - Timurid - 1 x El, 1 x Cv (Georgian), 1 x 3 Pk (Afghan)

I have the Georgians and parts for a suitable elephant.  The Afghan 3Pk may be harder to source.

(b) Tartar/Mongol Morphs

As regards the recently acquired Tartars I still have a problem.  In this case size matters - best to keep them separated from the Turkomen.  I have 3 x Cv & 5 x Lh elements in hand. So which variants are worth considering?

3.44 - Tribal Mongolian - 4 x Lh (Mongol)
4.35 - Mongol Conquest - 1 x Art
4.46 - Ilkhanid - 4 x Lh (Mongol), 1 x Art, 1 x 3Kn (Frankish).  
4.47 - Golden Horde or Successor - 1 x 3Wb (Siberians).  
4.52 - Later Nomadic Mongol - 1 x 7Hd.  
4.67 - Jalayrid - 2 x Lh (Mongol), 1 x 7Hd

3.44 & 4.46 both require 9 x Lh (Mongols) & 4.67 only 7.  Don't know if I even want to field such armies!

Being somewhat short of non-chinese artillery I need to acquire more.  A Mongol gun plus a Hunnic stone-thrower look like they will be attacking my plastic soon.  

So there we have it dear readers - my targets for the present.