I’ve been building an Arab/Islamic army for the middle ages over the last month or so. I started with the Gripping Beast Plastic Arabs box and their corresponding light cavalry box. The leaders are metals I bought, also from Gripping Beast. It’s about 54 miniatures in all.

No denying that Gripping Beast plastics are a little outdated. They lack in detail in places and are very simplistic. That makes them easy to paint, though! Even with my busy schedule I finished my 40ish infantry in about two weeks–then had to wait for their shield decals to come in to finish their shields, which was an evening’s work.

The horses… were a little more challenging. Like most painters, I’m not a fan of painting horses, even though I have a fairly streamlined process. I prime black, airbrush desired color from above, then paint the details by hand before finishing with a 50:50 brown wash:speedpaint medium combo.

I will say I didn’t like these horse sculpts as much. There’s little to hold their two halves together as they dry. As a result many of my horses slowly slid apart, which is visible if you look closely. Glaringly so. I rolled with it and will live but if I did it again I’d actually use super glue to put them together.

I’m still pretty happy with the end result. I had some fun here painting little designs onto their outfits–whether simple stripes or dot patterns. I’ve seen people do more but given the size of this project and my giant pile of projects, I settled for a quicker solution.

Next up on the block is my Berber Infantry from Fireforge. I’ve finished building them just this morning and am writing this as their plastic glue fully dries. They’re more detailed–with actual bits of armor and such showing through. I’ll probably use speedpaint to get them done, if only for a bit of a change of pace versus my method for the Gripping Beast Arabs. Once I have those done I should have enough to put together a Midgard force, which I’ll expand next year with the upcoming Arab releases from Victrix should I be so inclined.

I’ve wanted to build an Arabic force for years so I’m pretty happy to have these done. Once I have it all together it’ll be the start of an army I expand across decades. Next up on my painting block after this may be a small Elder Scrolls project to get my Imperials more fleshed out. They just released a proper campaign expansion and I’m hoping to play through it with my usual gaming partner. After that brief detour, I’ll be spending November building up a corresponding crusader force to fight these Arabs in Midgard with my son. He’s properly excited to play with knights and I’ll likely theme our battles around the Portuguese reconquista so as to connect him to some of his heritage–I plan on helping him name his heroes with Portuguese names and everything.

There’s a hidden joy in historicals as you study history and find limitless interesting tidbits, stories, and facts. As my boy gets older I’m hoping I can help him see just how fascinating humans have been all along. Don’t get me wrong–I love fantasy and scifi; it’s just that as a father there’s something much more enjoyable about getting my son into the histories of the places his heritage comes from (America, Canada, China, and Portugal).

That or I’m finding an excuse to justify buying some more Victrix stuff to the wife. It can be both, right?