Achaemenid Persians
Most of the figures for this army are readily available from Zvedza and
HaT. I began my army when only Zvedza's figures were available,
though, so I had to improvise my Kardakes. I also wanted to do
the semi-fantastic Cyropaedic army, so I had to make up some Camelry
and a "War Wagon" -- in this case a mobile tower. For
completeness, I also thought I should try to model Xerxes' troops.
CYRUS
Cyrus the Great created an army tailored to fight the Lydians and the
Egyptians. The Lydians were reknowned for fierce heavy cavalry
(Knights in DBA terms) and the Egyptians at this time fielded many
archers. Cyrus countered the knights with camelry (whose smell is
terrifying to horses unacustomed to them). He countered the
archers with giant towers from with his own
archers could outshoot the enemy. There is some suspicion that
these
innovations may have been the product of Xenophon's imagination but the
DBA
army lists account for them so I thought, why not?
I wasn't sure what Cyrus' towers would look like, but I also wanted to
be able to field Demetrios' "City taker" in the Successor lists so I
made a
fairly standard siege tower, complete with somewhat phallic battering
ram:
The
top is rimmed with extra Spara -- left over as the Kardakes didn't
need them.
An element of camelry was another gimmick in Cyrus' army:
These are Numidians as riders on Italieri Saracen camels. The
bows, bowcases, etc. were removed from the camels, and used on the
Teutonic knight's Turcopolen.
XERXES
Herodotus records a variety of subject troops in Xerxes' army, the most
bizarre surely being the Ethiopians. They wore lion or leopard
skins, carried knotted clubs and spears tipped with antelope horns, and
painted themselves
with chalk and vermillion before battle. They are also said to
have
carried cane bows with stone-tipped arrows but I don't think they would
have
carried all three weapons at once -- probably there were archers and
spearmen.
Herodotus mentions that another Ethiopean contingent carried
shields
made of crane hides, but I decided that cow hides would look good.
Mine
are made of Atlantic Egyptians, with "Afros" made by carving the hair
or
headdresses round and gluing on flock before painting.
DARIUS III
The Persians learned from their defeats at the hands of the Greeks and
by Dariius' time fielded a number of troops armed in a fashion similar
to
the Greek hoplites. They may have been one of a specific tribes
subjugated by the Persian empire or they may simply have been
re-equipted Persians. These Kardakes were made up of Immortal spearmen
with card shields:
