Sumerians
I picked up some cheap army men in a Dollar Store some time ago.
They are made in China but presumably are bad copies of some Western
manufacturer. I was planning to use a few with their vehicles in
a scenario inspired by the Sonny Chiba movie "GI Samurai" -- about some
20th century Japanese soldiers going back in time to Feudal Japan and
setting themselves up as warlords. But I only would need a dozen
or two of the soldiers and the bag had A LOT. So I've been
thinking about uses for the extras. I thought the figures with
rifles could be easily made into spearmen, but I have plenty for my
existing armies.
Working on Biblical era conversion got me to thinking about the oldest
army of them all -- the Sumerians. I don't know of any Onager
figures (although there is a somewhat donkey-like figure in the Airfix
Tarzan set) so I decided not to try to build an old Sumerian
chariot. I had already put together a four-horse chariot from
some extra horses, figures, and balsa wood so I decided to shoot for
something closer to the Akkadian period or Sumerian successors, which
also has the advantage of making a suitable opponent for my Amorites,
Bedouins, and possibly the Mitanni.
The conversion took three steps.
1) Remove rifle and insert a wire pike. I heated florist wire and
melted it into the hands of the figures.
2) Add a skirt. The figures had baggy pants, so I just pasted a
bit of paper over the gap.
3) Add a cloak. Again paper was a simple solution. I used
very light stock and saturated it with glue to help make it more
solid. I sealed my Sumerians with 100% white glue which also
added strength to the paper bits.
The helmets were just painted bronze, and a long tunic is suggested by
painting the body a solid color -- red, green, blue, or black. I
considered painting the whites of their eyes, as this would look a
little bug-eyed and Sumerian art usually depicts people wide-eyed (a
sign of awe for the gods) but did not, in the end. Unfortuneately
the armymen are probably 1/76 or HO scale rather than 1/72 so they look
a little short next to the Atlantic fugres (but not too bad next to HaT
and ESCI).
Below you can see the two poses I used and a few elements of completed
Sumerian Pikemen. I used ESCI barbarians (no pants, spear) for
the 3Sp/Aux and Psiloi, and Egyptians with a slight haircut for the
archers.
