From AlanD - Historical and Statuesque Cataphracts (140 points)

Hello everyone!

This week I have been mostly painting a box of Gripping Beast late Roman Cataphracts. I quite like these figures, although putting them together was a bit irritating. I also have a gripe with one of the horse poses, as when you look closely none of its hooves are actually on the ground. As far as I'm aware, horses never run like this, unless they are jumping over something, and they certainly don't when trotting along covered in horse armour with a big armoured bloke sitting on them. Maybe they are some sort of hover tank.

Anyway, I'm please with how they came out, and they should give my third- and fourth-century Roman armies a bit of punch.

I'll have a go at cheekily claiming 20 bonus points in addition to the 120 points for the 12 cavalry. So far, I have completed New Acquisitions and Overdue in the first section. I'm happy to (boringly) claim these as History, also in section 1, but if Millsy goes to the pub early this Friday he might consider giving me 20 points in Section 2 instead for a 'Statue of a Famous Person.'

Let me explain.

The weak point of my petition is the 'famous person' bit. However! I can make a good claim for the 'statue' bit. The appearance of cataphracts and clibanarii impressed late-Roman observers with their polished all-encompassing armour, so that at least two authors that I'm aware of (Ammianus Marcellinus and the emperor Julian) explicitly compared them to living statues. Most famously, Ammianus described the heavily armoured cavalry that accompanied Constantius II as '...cavalry with cuirasses, whom the Persians call Clibanarii, protected by coverings of iron breast-plates, and girdled with belts of iron, so that you would fancy them statues polished by the hand of Praxiteles, rather than men.'

As always, I bow to Millsy's sagacity and innate sense of justice. Have a nice weekend all!

From Millsy: You smooth talking devil Alan! It's rare that I have to Google something someone says about me and it is flattering, so if nothing else that inclines me to let you sneak this in under the statues category in the Library.

I've been waiting to see these since you spoke about them last week on the chat. A couple of the horse poses do indeed look like they are floating which is a bit odd. Hopefully that doesn't make them too fragile. Poses aside your brushwork is superb mate, especially the iconic striped lances and coloured horse furniture. A beautiful unit all up and I'm sure they will give Paul a few scares.

140 points for your tally sir!