The Sea Peoples: A final basing session

Almost the last thing I had to do to complete the Bronze age collection was a basing.  I have a phobia of static grass, since I am quite convinced that breathing it in is deadly.  This means that I am very much old school, and prefer flock.  For the Sea Peoples it was to be Javis "sand" coloured flock (well, brown ok?) over a dusting of real Cyprus sand collected nearby.  

The completed Sea Peoples and Canaanites.

Sand is one thing there is a lot of here, but even so this was a lot of figures!

I then wet this down with a 50/50 PVA and water mix.  

It sets like concrete.

So this is very much a before and after set of photographs.  The dipping is still to do of course, and during that process some of the dip runs into the base to give a darker more lived in look to the ground texture.  

By Vectron's Over-Mighty Sporran, they are numerous!

   

Old Nestor on his detachable base.  Nestor can dismount from his chariot and attach to this 2p size steel washer. 

Arsephat and the Girgashites triumphant!

The Canaanites had their first run out today, against a marauding Philistine band.  Honours were not even remotely even.

The terrain was straight forward.  I had just run a game of Men who would be Kings and simply removed the 15mm Pathan hill village to make this resemble the deserts of Transjordan. 

The Canaanites deployed on their base line (and I am acutely aware that the table is too narrow for a 28mm game in the standard sense.)  Over the hill the Peleset warband appeared, including a baggage cart bearing a lady who had her chest on display.  This sort of thing drives the Canaanites wild.

I formed two chariot groups, both with chariot runners, counting these as light cavalry types, but with a serious amount of firepower.  Maryannu chariots carried spare quivers, and the chariot runners would also be archers adding to the storm of arrows that was about to descend on the Peleset..  

Drews postulates that close fighting infantry armed with javelins and bronze swords were the demise of chariotry and the maryannu.  I`m not convinced and neither was Arsephat, my Canaanite King.  His loyal (?) sons Yul-Yassib and Adonijah gave the Girgashites three captains, against the two for my Peleset.  In reality the Peleset are only half of my Sea Peoples army, so they lack some command.

Old Nestor took the initiative, occupying the central hill.  Very much the traditionalist Uriah the Hittite tactic that has cost me so many games.

The Canaanite response was to swiftly move to envelop the Peleset flank.  

They began the arrow storm against of the Peleset warbands that were moving up against them.  I will be honest in that the dice were with them.  Did not Arsephat have the sacred relic , the Teste of Baal in it's casket behind his chariot!  There were a lot of rolls of 5 and 6.  The Peleset had a lot of rolls of 1 and 2.  In short order the Peleset were lost on that flank. 

 The Peleset had also lost the Captain on this flank and that added to their troubles.  

Old Nestor decided for better or worse, that sitting on a hill was probably a bad idea, and with Apollo behind him he swooped down, only to find himself in a vicious melee with the Maryannu.  The Girgashites were pushed awy, but their command and control was so much better.  Arsephat rallied the shock and actually managed to put another load or arrows point first into Nestor.  

 On the other flank Adonijah (as played by George Sanders) lead the Royal Guard onto the hill and fought the remaining Peleset warband.  

The battle ended with the Peleset probably having fought too long, losing well over three quarters of their men.

As for Nestor, well "over the hill" is probably the kindest thing the scribes will say.  If he did this badly against the Canaanites how can he hope to take on the Egyptians?

My background music for this game was Legends of Kitholan.  It fitted the game really well.  Just saying...

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.  

Uriah gets his Philistine headress sorted

Uriah the Peleset.  Still needs work! 

My fellow Petains are well aware of my deep interest in (obsession with) the Ancient Egyptians.  Quite why I am leaving my Egyptian forces until last in my Bronze Age project is a bit of a mystery, however my current painting project  is the Sea Peoples, and more specifically the Peleset.   

I sourced the miniatures from Wargames Foundry (my firm favourite and a range of figures I`ve had a longstanding interest in) and Newline Designs, which match perfectly in size but lack some of the crisp detail.  Much cheaper though!

In the case of the Peleset the main difference between the two ranges is that the Newline have a narrower headress, or reed helmet.

Don`t fancy yours much!  

Not only that, the Newline have some interesting vignette sets, such as the baggage cart, straight from the Stillman and Tallis WRG text illustration.  It is inspired by the Egyptian inscription of the fighting in 1177 BC, but there is something not quite right about it as a cart.  How do you get into it for a start!

The second vignette is the Slave trader.  I`m part way through painting this one up too.  Three slaves, a trader and a guard.  Very useful for the narrative type of games I`m planning.   

Almost everything we know about the Sea Peoples comes to us from the Egyptian inscriptions.   This is a double edged sword.  The inscriptions themselves have to be read in context, and often in cultural and religious context. 

From the Medine Habu reliefs

Broadly, according to the Egyptian texts, the Sea Peoples set up camp in Syria before proceeding down the coast of Canaan and into the Nile delta of Egypt.   They had "conquered all before them," but in Egypt they were faced with something new, a large and regular standing army. 

They were twice defeated—in 1207 and 1177 BC in the old chronology—by Merneptah and Rameses III.   According to the Egyptians the Sea peoples had left behind them a great trail of destruction, indeed the great civilizations of the day—the Hittites, the Mycenaeans, the Canaanites and the Cypriots all crumbled.

The Egyptians describe the Sea Peoples as nine separate groups:  the Peleset, Tjekker, Shekelesh, Shardana, Lukka, Teresh, Ekwesh, Danuna, and the Weshesh.   It is nearly impossible to ascertain who these groups were because we don’t know where they came from.  Actually, with one exception, we don`t  even know where they went!

The exception are the Peleset, the only group that has ever been positively identified, being generally accepted to be the biblical Philistines (who according to the Bible came from Crete)   

The discovery of a Philistine cemetery at Ashkelon in Israel seems to have settled the origins of the Peleset.  Aegean burial practices as well as pottery, radically different from the local Canaanite archaeology.  Professor Cline argues that Ramses settled the Philistines in their five cities after the battle of 1177 BC, and that the excavation of the Ashkelon cemetery can prove this.   

Continuing Egyptian influence in the hinterland of the Philistine pentapolis (I`m really pleased with "pentapolis" it's a word I intend to use in all conversation from now on) suggests a nominal claim on the land conquered by the Philistines.  They may well have been vassals guarding the imperial frontier.  Of course the Philistines quickly rose to a position of power in the region owing to their military superiority over the local population.  

The Osprey illustrations are a useful guide for painting these guys, but I`m still a little wary of the detail needed.  Those reed helmets for instance look great in an illustration but are difficult to paint.   Tackling this on the back of painting my 6mm ancients is probably a good thing.  So it`s fine brushes out, and the best acrylics I have.  30 foot, an ox cart and a Commander in his chariot may not sound a lot, but I really want to get this project right, so it`s taking some time... 

At this point those Egyptians seem as far away as ever!

Unpacking the Sea Peoples

So, unpacking the Sea Peoples.  Don`t get excited... I mean literally unpacking.  Go back a couple of years when I was teaching Shakespeare to kids who were, mostly, never going to understand it anyway, the word unpacking had a different meaning.  It seems to me that just about every historian who ever looked at the Sea Peoples came up with a different theory about them, and most are so fence sitting and non committal that they should never have wasted their time unpacking them in the first place.  

After my Sea Peoples somewhat interesting encounter with airport security, I finally reached home in Cyprus and began to sort them out.  Well over 120 shiny new 28mm figures, from three different manufacturers, the weight was quite startling.  When I add 20mm washers for bases as well as flock and paint they will weigh a damn sight more.  The flock came through security pretty much unmentioned by the way, as did several tubes of Vallego paint.

Bearing in mind that I left the Egyptians and Libyans in Durham I reckon my Bronze age project is pretty much on track.

Firstly this huge pile of metal is not just my Sea Peoples.  There are three Canaanite chariots and a couple of packs of Syrian spearmen in there too.  My reasoning is that I may need someone to raid, and that I wanted to have a go at the Canaanites too.

The Sea Peoples are divided into horned helmet wearers, reed circlet style helmet wearers and a group of guys in wrap around turbans who will be filler for any shortfall in the two main groups.

I`ve also brought three packs of "Civilians" over.  Most of these are Foundry, but I also bought some Newline.  The slave trader with his human property will make a nice vignette, as will the Peleset baggage wagon with an ox and crew.  Please don`t let Phil Barker know but this is not a war wagon, just a baggage element! 

Lastly I have "Old Nestor," in his chariot, with a gang of streakers as my Acheans.  

The Sea Peoples in helmets are my Sherden.  I have some issues with this helmet as portrayed on some of these figures.  My commander (Uriah as it happens) wears a helmet interpreted from the Egyptian reliefs.  It seems to be a bronze pot helmet style with bronze horns and an insignia disk above.  Egyptian scribes were exact, and the colouring of these on the reliefs is almost always light yellow, interpreted as meaning bronze.  

Examples of similar shaped helmets have been found around the Mediterranean, (but not of bronze) and not of this exact type.  They have not been found in Egypt.  Evidence has been based on the Warrior Vase, the Medinet Habu reliefs, and the "Ingot God" from Enkomi, down the coast from me here in Cyprus.  That disk has been interpreted as denoting the Shardana in Egyptian service, differentiating their "mercenary" status from the enemy.  That is of course supposition.  To be honest we don`t even know if it was a disk or a ball since one of these has never been found.  It has been interpreted as an "eye of Ra," or just a sun god disk, but we can`t really be sure of it`s significance at all. 

These three figures are three sculptor's interpretation of the Sherden. (they are probably the sculptor's interpretation of Angus McBrides's interpretation but there you go...)  Since only Egyptian Royalty or Maryannu would wear helmets, and the Minoan and "Greek" archaeology finds seem to point to largely non metallic helmets being worn by foot troops, its interesting to see that the central figure (Wargames Foundry) is much more detailed, and may even be an interpretation of a boars tusk helmet, although some Greek examples are decorated bronze.  His scale armour also indicates that this figure is not in Egyptian service.  Although I haven`t cleaned the casting up yet it`s still easy to see why I am such a fan of Foundry.  This little guy has animation, leaning into a run.  

The Northstar figure on the right, aside from being much taller, is dressed in Egyptian fashion and wears the helmet disk. The Newline figure on the left is less well detailed but also seems to be in Egyptian service.  I think that I can live with the less crisp detail in the interests of mixing different poses into my Sherden warband. 

I have a lot of painting to do.