The Arthurian Warband

The Arthurian Warband naked

This article describes the painting and construction of a small warband of 28 mm figures for table top historical miniatures war games. The group depicted is a warband or comitatus (body guard) of the British king who defeated the Saxons in Britain around 520 A.D..

Many are familiar with the romantic notion of King Arthur from novels and movies, but few know of the actual king who fought the Saxons and was perhaps the last king of a united Britain. Following the decline of the Latin speaking Roman Britain, and prior to the proto-English speaking Saxons, there was a Celtic speaking King Arthur who ruled Britannia. A good book describing the historical King Arthur is John Morris's The Age of Arthur.

The figures are from Foundry. Many people use these figures for skirmish games or Warhammer Ancient Battles games.

King Arthur

This photo shows King Arthur upon his horse with upraised sword. Unlike more conventional paintings of King Arthur, such as the famous Angus McBride painting that adorns the cover of the Osprey Arthur and the Anglo-Saxon Wars, I opted to paint Arthur with black cape and horse tail to make him look a little more fierce and evil.

Arthur's shield has a "chi rho" decal from Little Big Men Studios. These decals are great. They are dry transfers, so simply peel off the protective acetate and rub onto the shield. The decal has a nice crackelure look to it that would be impossible for me to paint. The "chi rho" symbol stands for the first greek letters of the word Christ, as Arthur was a warrior king who believed in Christ.

A Sutton Hoo type parade armor

Arthur's sidekick here is another Foundry figure with a variant on the famous Sutton Hoo parade armour. The figure is nicely sculpted with scale armor and roman type horsehair crest. Before the historians in the audience groan about eastern Mercian armor on an Arthurian figure, it is theorized that the famous Sutton Hoo armor was stolen from the Saxons. My conjecture is that the Saxons stole it from the Brits, who were much better metal workers at that time. Whatever your belief about this beautiful armor, I think this makes a great sidekick for Arthur.

Arthurian Foot Command

To the right is the Arthurian foot command. This is a mix of figures from several Foundry sets. The two central soldiers look like commanders as they have very nice armor. You cannot see it, but they also have nice shields courtesy of Little Big Men Studies. The flankers are Late Roman musician and standard bearers. I've included them because I believe it is likely that King Arthur adopted many of the Roman ways after Rome left Britain around 410 A.D.. Similarly, I've use lots of red in the noble's clothing as it is likely they too adopted many Roman dressing habits.

Foot Soldiers

Here are some Late Roman/Arthurian foot soldiers. They wear white tunics with some fancy design work. I've used a technical Sakura Pigma Graphic pen to ink in the fancy embroidery. The shields are again with decals from LBMS in a mix of Celtic and Christian designs.

Bow soldiers

Here are some Arthurian bow soldiers again with white tunics and fancy shoulder designs. The bows are strung with ordinary thread. It is easiest to follow this process:

1. Take a long length of thread and glue the midpoint to the soldier's hand. Let it dry.
2. Stretch the end to the bow and glue those in place. Let it dry.
3. Trim the ends of the string.

Maybe next time I will add tiny arrows made from brass wire. The firing archers look like they are missing something.

Thanks for reading the article. I thoroughly enjoyed painting my Arthurian Warband figures, and I hope you enjoyed reading the details of its construction and painting. More miniatures-related articles are at Dan Becker's Miniatures and Models site. Thanks for stopping by and reading about my miniatures.