Saturday 6 November 2010

Their Lords & Masters and some musings on Elephants.

The seleucid phalanx now have command,
and here with the hoi poloi,
Work has been a little slow on these because well the real job has been a little busier of late.
The argyraspids featured in the "Cast of Thousands" post now have a new member as well.
With the further addition of a musician & standard bearer this will bring the Argyraspids up to twenty eight, my randomly chosen basic phalanx number.
Next up will be the first completed Aventine Tarentines & another Aventine Elephant, this will bring my herd up to nine. However I am seriously considering letting go the Vendel sculpts I have, they aren't bad as they go but the Aventine elephants really are very good & they rather show them up I'm afraid.
It's a tricky business buying elephants; currently I have two Indians by Vendel, three Indians by Aventine, an African by A&A, an African by Foundry & two quite diminuative Indians by Ebob.
Despite their small stature the Ebob sculpts are my favourites, I use them as early successor types because their stature suits an astride mahout and pikeman. The Aventine versions are a close second, they suit the later successor era very well with well represented scale and banded armour & good crew figures.
The A&A and Foundry offerings are good representations of the African forest elephant but requiring some mucking about with the supplied crew to make them useful as Hellenistic pachyderms.
Lastly the resin Vendel elephants. I bought these when there was a dearth of alternatives but was never really happy with them; they are just too generic. Hence considering freeing up the space in the stables.

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