From Curt: The Great Siege of Malta: Azab Militia and Supporting Archers (70 Points)

Continuing along with my Great Siege of Malta project, here are some Azab infantry supported by  a few North African archers.

The Azabs, or 'the bachelors', were a volunteer militia made up of young men from the across the Ottoman provinces. They would have been armed with a motley assortment of weapons, basically whatever they carried along to battle. Sources conflict if there were Azabs in Malta during the Great Siege, but either way I thought they'd stand-in nicely as dismounted Sipahis who did make up a significant portion of the Ottoman contingent.

The interestingly shaped shields they carry are of Hungarian origin. I've taken a little artistic license with the decorative designs as I understand it was not uncommon for them to feature mythological beasts and wing motifs.

I used the decals left over from one of my Adeptus Titanicus kits as they seem to fit the bill nicely. 

Regrettably, I only have a few Azabs to show here as I could not for the life of me discover the rest of the castings from my 'lead reserve' (apparently, my archival skills don't extend to the mess of my hobby room). I ended up ordering another batch from TAG to make up the loss, but fearing that the figures would not arrive before the Challenge concludes, I thought I'd just run with these lads, augmented with a few more North African archers to help fill in the ranks. 

These Azabs are from The Assault Group.

Similar to my other units, I made up the flag standard's finial with a blob of greenstuff, some plastic tubing and a bit of cut card for the crescent.

This unit features another custom sabot tray Byron knocked out for me. This is the smaller of the melee troop sized tray - the next step up will accomodate another 6-8 figures and the largest will be that much larger again.

Archers from Footsore Miniatures.

I'm having a lot of fun with mixing and matching colours for these irregular Ottoman troops. The Citadel Contrast paints have come in particularly handy for providing some variety in the robes and turbans.

As to points, we should have 70 points for fourteen 28mm models. 

Thanks for dropping in to take a look, much appreciated!

Curt

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Wow, I love these Curt!  While each figure is fairly simple with just a few colours, the fact that they are all bright and colourful, all different, and many in colours that just do not get used a lot on many wargame figures, makes this entry look fabulous!

The emblems for the shields are a nice pick as well and a good repurpose of some GW product for use in a better game (even though I don't know what rule set you are going to use for this, I can with 90% certainty say it will be better than any current GW rule set).  

While I do not really care for the idea of the contrast paints and having to give up control of what the result will look like, I am changing my opinion on that, thanks to yourself and several other painters showing such nice results this year with them.

- ByronM