Painting those pesky Peleset

Painting those pesky Peleset has not been easy or quick.  

I began the Peleset with a general cleanup.  Scraping and filing away any flash and using a white undercoat, quite thinly applied, but sufficient to colour.  This should allow the colours I use on top of that to be brighter than my usual black undercoat.  

Next the flesh colour.  Let's, reluctantly, talk games Workshop here.   A basecoat of elf flesh, a wash of bronzed flesh and then a second thinner wash of tanned flesh, picking out some detail.  For those without the GW speak that is a light flesh, a yellower one, and then a redder one.  Some of my Peleset, especially the naked skirmishers, require a lot of bare skin painting.  Actually since a good few of these figures are, in the vernacular, "tackle out," it needs some care.

Since I am painting these figures in Cyprus, and my warpainter dip is in the UK, I will have to wait a few months to finally complete these figures, but in the meantime I intend to get as much detail as I can onto the metal.

That's the plan anyway.

The Peleset represent about a third of my Sea Peoples.   They have only one chariot, twenty swordsmen, eight skirmishers  and a baggage cart.  I painted up one command figure on foot, and based my chariot Lord on a 1cm magnetic disk.  This allows me to move him between the chariot with its own magnetic base in the car, and a washer the size of a 2p coin flocked to allow the figure to take its place in the line of foot warriors.

The half painted Nestor

For my Peleset Commander I selected Nestor from the Wargames Foundry Trojan wars range.  This is a powerful figure, nicely posed a sculpture that shouts "command."  I hasten to point out that he is only painted with block colours here, and will have a lot more detail added as I progress.  Even painted at this level it's a lovely figure.

I used the bare skinned option as my chariot driver, but did a hat swap with a Peleset horn player (deciding that I would only need one horn player)  The result is not perfect as the driver's hat looks slightly too high on his head but he will just have to live with it!  I`m quite pleased with the chariot, but again it needs a lot more work.  I will accept criticism that once again I`m using "Brown" horses, however my reading indicates that the varied colours of modern horses are as a result of human interference in their breeding and that the horses of the Bronze Age, as well as being smaller, were almost all dark in colour...  No socks or blaizes on these guys.

As part of my Sea Peoples second tranche order I included a Bronze age slaver set, as well as the Sea Peoples baggage wagon.  The Slaver has a few nude ladies, a manacled slave and a guard in his retinue.  I used Games Workshop Dark Flesh for a couple of these figures.  Since a bronze age slave trader is essentially just a trader, I also did some milliput amphorae and copper plates as trade goods. I will give them a typical Cypriot ware patterning. 

The trade goods reminded me of a wargames magazine article about an Exploration of Africa game where the trade goods, bought from Foundry as their African trade goods set, became the campaign currency.  These could also operate in a similar manner to the boasts rules in Lion Rampant.  I`m essentially a solo gamer, but it's an interesting idea and I may make a few more.

I am acutely aware that a challenge game is scheduled against Dr Pea's Trojan war figures.  All I can say is that my Sea Peoples are demonstrably on track, and I stake three Amphora of traders wine that I will drive the enemy from the field entirely as the outcome.