Amazon Chariots & Cavalry

After a renewed interest in the Trojan War recently, I’ve been working away on more 28mm Amazons from Lucid Eye. I have a job lot of these from various sales that I’m determined to get painted up this year! These are beautiful sculpts but there’s quite a lot of flash to clean up, so I tackled that over several evenings and then got on to assembly and painting.

The chariots went together fairly easily (thank Hephaestus for superglue accelerator, though). With a job lot of horses on the go (16 for the chariots and 8 for the horse archers), I decided to go down the oil paint ‘wipe off’ technique.

The chariots were sprayed dark brown and then painted with traditional acrylics for the cow hide effect. The crew had a pin inserted into one foot so that they could be painted separately and were then glued into holes I’d drilled in the chariot floor. Slightly fiddly but normal for metal assembly, though it got me thinking how I’d love to see this kind of chariot in plastic – maybe Wargames Atlantic will take the plunge at some point? I see they have just released Trojan warrior STLs for 3D printing…

Crew were undercoated white and painted using GW Contrast paints and traditional acrylics using the same techniques I used on my previous Amazons. The chariot just didn’t look right without reins, so against my better judgement, I drilled out the charioteer’s hands and used cotton during final assembly. It looks good though!

The horse archers were a less straight forward proposition. Although the Aenead hints at the majority of the Amazons being mounted, Lucid Eye have only one pack of horse archers (Steve Saleh explained this to me a while back as he considers the Amazon elite to be in the chariots, of which there are three variants available, with the horse archers supporting them. This fits with the Minoan Greek influence on the design, whereas many Amazon depictions follow a more Scythian look).

I decided that I wanted a little more variety and started digging through the bits box, where I found several Gripping Beast bare-legged riders that looked like they’d fit with the Saleh sculpts. Cue a bit of late-night metal conversion pinning bodies and legs together! It’d have been easier with plastics but I enjoyed using up some old models and creating something unique.

A few spare Foundry horses were then added to the mix and I used green stuff (somewhat roughly) to cover up the worst of the damage – they won’t be winning any modelling prizes, but fine on the wargames table.

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