I have been wanting to get to some of the Byzantines posted for quite a long time. The center piece of my dark age collection will always be around them....as the Bulgars/Avars, Russ, Franks, Arabs, Sassanian Persians etc...all make for terrific opponents. And needless to say they are always a popular choice for wargamers. Couple notes: I have went with Crusader Miniatures for these with one substitution and that is with the shields. My aim is to represent a later time frame circa 800-1000AD a period in which some uniforms would not be out of place and for the heavy infantry the shields would be largely circular not the kite/teardrop that became more common after 1000AD. For this purpose I simply substituted Gripping Beast oval shields in place of the crusader ones. I also went with 32 figure infantry units mostly for authentic appearances. Byzantine heavier infantry (Skutatoi) would often deploy in ranks of 16 and by using 32 figure unit 8 wide and 4 deep would look appropriate. Also, roughly 25 percent would be armed with bows....so a 32 figure unit with 8 bow figures comes out to 25 percent. Lastly, I went for an uniform color for these with a common shield design....later Byzantine would have the capacity for this and it simply looks nice. For this unit I chose a scarlet red (red was a common color for the bzyantines to use) and the shield design is hypothetical. I often do not use shield transfers and for ease of painting I prefer not an intricate design that consumes too much time (after all 24 of them require to be painted) but must have enough color to cause some pop for visual attractiveness.
