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Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Egyptian Chariots- Divisions Re and Ptah

It seems like I've been working on these chariots forever, but they are finally done! I think Chariots must be among the most time consuming models to make in our hobby, requiring gluing together of the vehicle, painting it, painting the horses, then assembling it all together, and then finally painting and affixing the crew figures to the cab of the chariot. Still, this website, which gives interesting details regarding the construction of the lightweight Egyptian chariots, states that it took modern German carpenters roughly 600 man hours to manufacture a chariot using methods that the ancients used or may have used.

The first four are by Esssex (28mm):

The Green color identifies them as being from Division Ptah in my scheme. Probably not too historical, but makes it easy to tell the units apart!


The Essex horses are larger than the Old Glory ones; for once the smaller horses are probably more accurate, this being the early centuries of horse breeding! 


Another pair of Chariots from Division Ptah.  I played around with the settings on my aged Nikon Coolpix 800 Digital SLR camera, trying to get the colors more accurate and allow slower shutter speeds; overall, I'm probably better sticking with the standard automatic settings and then re-balancing them!  :-)


In the earlier photo, the colors of the Chariot are right, but the ground cloth is too drab. Here, the ground cloth colors are better but the figures are shifted a bit too far into the green spectrum!


Rear view of these Essex Chariots - one w/ Prince, one regular. 


The arrangement used to yoke the horses to the chariot is somewhat different in these models form that used in the Old Glory ones later. 


A pair of Old Glory Chariots from Division Re (yellow distinctive color). 


Rear view; the purple accents are probably again a bit over the top!


Bronze scale armor for these horses!


A final Old Glory Chariot from Divison Re; this one will pair with the Pharaoh's chariot, hence the white horses. 


Contrast the color balance in this shot....


with this one. Again, the colors of the figures are better here, and the ground cloth is better above!


A shot looking down from atop a  Palm tree at the passing Chariot.


All seven new chariots in line - added to the nine I already have done, that makes 16 chariots total!


Ready to trample some Cananites and Sea Peoples in our Historicon game in July!  


Here's a link to a really fascinating and well done NOVA episode reconstructing 2 Egyptian chariots, and testing them out, including shooting from the maneuvering chariot. Well worth the 52 minutes to understand the sophistication of the design! There are some other short (5 minutes or less) links there about composite bows, other Egyptian weapons, and Egyptian leather scale armor, also well worth the a short viewing!

Finally, taking advantage of the ongoing clearance of Essex Miniatures at Wargames, Inc, I picked up figures for another Light Infantry unit, slingers this time, and also 2 more MI archers and a few High Command figures. I don't need them for my Historicon games, so they won't get painted until much later this year!

Peter

21 comments:

  1. 16 chariots! That's a powerful army...and beautiful!

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    1. They're a bit of a pain to make (and expensive, although I did mine for a reasonable cost of about $8/chariot), but the whole force should look most impressive when we put it on the table in July!

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  2. You are amassing a BIG chariot force! All look terrific and will be awesome deployed on the game table. I took photos of a chariot in the Vatican museum. I will need to check my notes but I recall it was not Egyptian but maybe early Etruscan.

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    1. At 16 chariots, there are more in this army than my Assyrians and Indians combined, those being the other armies I have that include chariots.

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  3. An awesome sight of chariots! interesting choices of colours. marvelous!

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    1. Red and blue whould be more historically defensible, but I already used those colors in my earlier units, so I needed to use diferent ones for these!

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    2. The colors you use on your chariots/divisions look striking and it is good to see and read, you are not afraid to use colors on your figures... Great!

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  4. Nice work as Phil said, always nice to see chariots - especially in the splendid colors here.

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    1. Chariots are cool! I have another 4 Assyrian 4 horse chariots to paint some day...

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  5. Fantastic. I love the bright colours. Too many people IMHO go with subdue colour scheme which reflects our modern sensibility but are not representative of the ancient times. Chariots are awesome and you do them right. Bravo.

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    1. Thjanks, Iannick. Chariotrs were certainly the "shock and awe" weapons of their day, and I have little doubt that they tended to have paint jobs to enhance the look - certainly the coloprs of he chariots in paintings that survived on tomb walls are not subdued, if perhaops not green, purple or orange! :-)

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  6. They look great and I like the idea of colours for the Divisions! I've just finishing my first unit of spears with blue shields I think I'll make them my Ptah. What rules do you use Gonsalvo?

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    1. We'll be using Puklse of Bsattle by Berent Oman/OPiquet fior the Historicon games; therafter, I want to try them with Eric B's Archon, 2nd ediotion as well.

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  7. nice painting and interesting info about the chariots.

    John

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    1. Thanks, John. if you had a chance to watch the NOVA video, I though it was fascinating!

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  8. Luverly painting Peter. Six hundred man-hours to build and the same to paint these miniatures, hey?! I presume that they took the name Ptah as it's the sound an arrow makes when it hits a target? haha

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    1. Thanks, James. No, not 600 hundred man-hours for the 28mm versions, LOL! ! Probabl;y closer to 6 hrs per, though. Ptah sounds more like what the struck target muight utter, I'd say.

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  9. These Chariots will be an imposing and resplendent force on the table

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  10. These look superb Peter. I do love an Egyptian army and, as you have noted, believe they should be as colourful as possible. I had a friend in the 80's who did all of his chariots in a bright orange, albeit with a matt finish, and the whole thing worked beautifully and is one of the few that I still remember nearly thirty years on. Lovely stuff.

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    1. Thanks, Lawrence; glad you enjoyed them! it is intersting the things that we remember, isn't it?

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