From Jez Todd - Medieval Pagan Sarmogitian - 165 points

Dear All

Second entry and so pleased can post a completed 25 mm new Basic Impetus army! If you don't know the "Basic" version of Impetus you play with a set 10-12 units. I have a Teutonic Knights army and play this against a matched historical Russian army. Using the Basic Impetus set army lists I was finding that some of my painted tribal light infantry were just sitting in the box, as they were not part of the basic core Teutonic Knights army units. I therefore decided to paint up a third army specifically using these to fit in the set.

Pagan Prussian seemed an obvious choice but felt it would be too boring having another warband infantry type army. Luckily had inspiration for a more unusual army from this booklet about the Battle of Saule 1236.

The Sword Brothers were an early military order that were wiped out in the battle and the remnants got taken over by the newer Teutonic Knights order. They both fought pagan Sarmogitians or Lithuanians. These proved a surprising difficult opponent to kill off. A feature of the Sarmogitian army was its use of light cavalry. It is an interesting army that matches perfectly historically, was relatively cheap to buy as most bases are just light cavalry with a couple of models on. Also thought it would be interesting to play with.  

The painted figures are 12 cavalry and 8 infantry so 160 points. The figures also fit nicely into a box!

All basing is done for the winter campaigning season! The figures are all Gripping Beast matching my Teutonic Knights. Here had to select the most appropriate range and thought Dark Age Picts suited best. I especially liked the cavalry in hoods, I made some small changes to add in some bearskins on the figures and luckily still had some left over characteristic teardrops shields from my earlier painted foot lights. 

The standard style is taken from the booklet but as pagans any animal skull type standard would be fine. For the infantry I already had the required foot light but I need some dismounted bowmen. These are also from the Pict range. 

The final picture shows how I will field the new infantry paired with some previously painted skirmishers to make a new foot light archer unit (this is a T shooter unit in Basic Impetus vocab). In the Sarmogitian army list there is an option to field more cavalry units dismounted but I will just have the required two units and keep the maximum light cavalry. 

Finally with this deployment I would now need some new skirmish units for the Teutonic Knights and here just have a couple of skirmish bases. Again these are using Gripping Beast Picts but just used the more regular looking figures and added a couple of shields with the black / white Teutonic Knights design. 

All in all 160 points worth …. cant wait to try these out. 

Cheers Jez
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You certainly picked an esoteric subject for this submission, Jez; nice work thinking outside the box, except the first pic of the figures shows them in a box... mind blown!

Very nice work on the handpainted shield designs and standard, so we'll say 5 extra points there.

The snowy basing adds to the sense that these fellas are tough nuts who won't let anything as trivial as a northern winter stop them from giving the Crusaders a bit of stick, and good luck to them doing it, I say. The Ordenstaat always was too big for its boots!

Ev