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Xyston Persian Bowmen

Being unable to resist a bargain, I picked up these 15mm Xyston bowmen in a tabletop sale at the recent 1-day ADLG event in Reading, and have given them a quick wargames-standard paint job with a lot of Contrast Paints to get them on the table. I always reckon that Persians and other "Eastern" armies are perfect to get the best out of Contrast Paints, and these chaps have certainly come out pretty well both in terms of the vibrant "silk-like" colours and also with how the paint has flowed into the deep lines cast into the design of the figure



They are from the time when PSC were re-casting Xyston figures in Siocast rubbery resin (an experiment which by all accounts seems to have now run its course FWIW).



They are done with almost all contrast paints - Aggaros Dunes being especially good as the leather/linen padded body armour I think. Looking at the army list I'm now not entirely sure where these guys will fit in, but I believe that some of the Successor armies get the odd Persian peasant archer unit too so I'm sure they will make an appearance some day.



My existing Persian infantry are Museum Z-Sculpts, which look great when ranked up in a dense formation but actually don't really stand up especially well when compared directly to these equivalent Xyston sculpts one-to-one. The big difference is the level of detail on the Museum castings is far shallower than on the Xyston sculpts, such that after even a thin layer of sprayed-on white base coat the detail on the Museum figures struggles to take the Contrast paints - whereas the exaggerated depths of the Xyston figures really allow this style of painting to "ping"



It's not terminal - I'll still happily mix these in the same army, and same unit as well - but it is a reminder that different styles of sculpting work better with different paint techniques.

More pics at: https://madaxemandotcom.blogspot.com/2024/07/xyston-persian-bowmen.html