On The Painting Desk: Battle of Kadesh Project- Walk like an Egyptian

 

What's a nice reader like you, doing in a blog like this?  

Faithful readers know I have been working on an Egyptian army for a Battle of Kadesh scenario.  This army is 6mm miniatures, with units on 60mm x 60mm bases.  Therefore, it is a bit unconventional BUT the units look like proper blocks of troops on the board.  The Egyptian army has 22 bases with something like 30-54 models per base.  Therefore, the army will have something like 880+ little soldiers in it!  

I have been continuing the project using my traditional method for painting 6mm models.  I go into some detail on it in the Project Launch entry.  I won't bother repeating it here.  Instead, let's take a look at what I got painted for the army since we last talked about it.  

First up is some Bow armed skirmishers to scout and screen for the Egyptians forces.  You may notice that they are two different skin tones.  This represents a mix of native born Egyptians and mercenary/vassal Nubians for the army.  In a pinch I could also use the Nubians in a Kingdom of Kush army if I wanted to as well.  

Skirmishers screen the Levy troops as they advance across the desert

Then, after a long delay due to summer heat; I turned my attention to some of the main infantry units for the Egyptians.  These are spearmen with bow support.  These were some of the bigger units with 13 or so strips of 4 minis per strip.  I guess each base is about 52 minis or so.  There are four of these units in total to represent regulars with bows.  This is the bulk of the melee infantry for the Egyptian side of the scenario.  However, you have to recall that the main "killing" weapon of the time was not melee but the ranged bow.  Therefore, the army still has a lot of infantry and archers to paint up. 

The next soldiers I tackled were the Spearmen with Bow support.  These guys were going to represent the Professional Soldiers with attached Bowmen.  They are the main elements of the Egyptian force, but they are also big units!  They have something like 7 rows of spearmen (4 figs each) and 6 rows of bowmen (4 figs) each.  That is about 52 figs per base and their are 4 units of these guys.  That was a lot of batch painting.  

Egyptian Infantry WIP

Actually, painting all the 6mm soldiers isn't too bad.  The hardest part of 6mm models really is the bases!  There are always little gaps between strips that you have to go back and paint, between your rows of troopers.  Not an easy fit at all!  Then, there is the task of painting ground across the rest of the base.  Ugh.  Probably my least favorite part of 6mm models, too much base!  

Anyway, here are the 4 Egyptian Auxiliary Infantry with bow support.  These guys are soldiers regularly called up to duty, not just locals gathered up to fight. Therefore, they are more proper soldiers than the Militia or Skirmisher units.  They will form the backbone of the fighting force, but you can see that bows are still really an important part of this time period and geographies fighting style. 

These units are proper chonky!  That makes 10 of the 20+ bases for the Egyptians complete.  I have a feeling the Hittites may get delayed into a 2024 project! 

I would love to say that is the last of the "big units" but next on my list is a lot of Archer units in ranks.  Those guys have a lot of rows of archers on them, and they will be a chore to work through.  

The army approaches an oasis

Batch painting ahoy! 

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