Mali mounts for Battle

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Steady progress on the Malian project has been made, and I can now add two cavalry units to the roster, the first being one of the centerpieces for the army; Horon Cavalry:

  

The Horon provided the elite heavy cavalry of the Malian Empire, essentially its equivalent of Knights or Cataphracts.  Evidence for their appearance is limited, but I took accounts saying they wore contemporary armour - either locally made or imported from north Africa - and rode armoured horses, and combined it with the look of later troops illustrated in the 1800's from the neighboring Bornu Empire, which was a late contemporary, and from modern tribal horsemen in the region.

 

The standard is the Banner of the Mali Empire as taken on Hajj by Emperor Mansa Musa in 1324.

 

It seems some form of Bamboo was used for lances, and it provides a nice look, so...

 

The padded armor and other parts are green-stuff applied directly to the largely terrible base models.  More on those below.  Hide Shields were made over plasticard formers with green-stuff, there are illustrations of shields this shape, which appear to be carried behind the rider on the saddle when not in use, suggesting a reason for the unique shape.

 

 

As alluded to, these are heavily converted.  I started with a set of the Gripping Beast Goth Heavy Cavalry, and I can't say I was a fan, apart from limited build options out the box, the detail was poor and the fit, terrible.  I wasn't sorry that I was going to cover 3/4 of each model up, I'd have needed to do a load of filling and trimming anyway.  That aside, I think I spent about 8 or 9 hours just on the kitbash elements:

 

Rather easier, and despite their simplicity much nicer basic models, were a second unit of Hat Industrie Almoravid Cavalry, painted as allied Taureg horse from Timbuktu.

 

There's only one small conversion here, but compared to the GB models, these still have more horse poses and don't require any filling either!

All this brings the core of the force up to 20-24 points in Lion Rampant, but I'm not going to rest on my laurels, I need a few options, and another centerpiece is being worked on:

Kitbashing

WIP

As should be evident, this is on its way to being a general for the force, Nobility appear traditionally to use Palanquins extensively in Africa, and illustrations of the Mande and the Empire often feature them.  This will represent a Ton Tigi, or 'Quiver Master', essentially a Malian General.  There's a long way to go on this yet, converting the foot figures into an Iman and a tribal musician respectively, adding a lot more to the already converted seated leader - an Outpost Wargames Services Inca!  With a head swap so far - and adding a bunch of opulence to his 'carriage'.  But that's all for another day... 

So far, so good..

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