New Song for Old

 

Last year I wrote a couple of blog articles about my Song army and how I was replacing the figures with ones I felt were more historical. This is a piece about how it turned out.

The original piece "Zhao Kuangyin and Peace Through War; an Early Northern Song army" can be found here, and the second piece "Early Northern Song Army - Update on Figures", here.

I have now finished painting all the figures I bought for the army and they have even taken the field for the first time a week or so ago. Their first two games were successful; first an utterly ahistorical match-up against a Successor army was a crushing victory for the Song, the second against a more plausible opponent, Mongol, was a narrow win in a very tough game.

Overall I am happy with how the army has come out and also how it plays on the table-top. I do have some ideas for expanding it slightly to allow some different troop choices, but I doubt it will change much.

So here is the finished army, unit by unit. I decided on a red theme for the colour scheme based on the fact that red appears to have been the dynastic colour of the Song.

First the generals:

As you can see the flags that were moulded on the standard bearers were a bit underwhelming and so I replaced them just after taking this picture. They now look like:

Don't know why I didn't do it at the start to be honest.

Next up, the guard cavalry:

Three units of ordinary cavalry:

A unit of skirmishing horse archers:

Two units of what the list calls "Vanguard swordsmen", but are really just units of infantry without missile weapons:

Four units of the normal infantry which have crossbows and are also equipped with spears for the front rank. Each unit has an extra figure on a small round base as a marker to indicate when they are in close formation:

Lastly a unit of militia archers who, whilst they can be useful are there as a bit of bulk as much as anything.

I don't as yet have a specific camp base for the army, however, I am pondering what could be suitable and will probably do one at some stage.