Zvezda Mongols
Last updated Wednesday, 15 November 2000 First off, let me just say that what follows here are just my oppinions, and hey, I could be wrong! In fact, I've already had feed back from Jason Moffatt (who has ever so kindly provided me a review of Zvezda's Greek Infantry) to say that he really likes these Mongols, in spite of my "funny little figures" comment! Overall, these are, well, funny little figures. They are slightly smaller than their Italeri counterparts and more "chunky". Quite simple and rough castings that remind me of figures that came out for board games such as "Shogun" and the like. Still, they are almost so ugly as to be cute! (Bit of an exageration, but still...) On the plus side, they do at least have foot figures (unlike the Italeri ones), including a couple of one bloke charging forward with one of the huge cavalry lances - he'd be a Spear, me thinks. DBA Army List # 154 - Mongols (1206 AD - 1368 AD)
Ok, so even if you went for the all mounted option, you'd still need foot figures (either for the Ps or to crew a scratch built artillery piece). And since these mounted figures won't fit in real well with the Italeri horses, you may have to consider trying to make an army out of just these. Well, you don't have to of course. You could use Italeri horses, and Zvezda foot, but you'd have a heap of left over figures, which I always try to avoid. You know, inefficient use of resources and all that......OK, so I'm cheap and don't want to have to spend any more money than is absolutley necessary!! So how many of what can you make out of one of these packs? Ummm, you get 3 foot archers, 5 horse archers, 7 heavy cav types, 2 spear and 5 swordsmen. So, if you got 2 packs you could make...
You could substitue 1 4Sp for the 7 th LH. Don't know if this is actually "official", but hey! Otherwise you'd need a third pack for two more horse archers - and you'd still not have enough archers for the 4 4Bw option (or Sp option either for that matter). Actually, Stan Walker has just forwarded me this...
For what it's worth, for a DBM Mongol army, I'd probably go with the Italeri/all mounted option, as these Zvezda foot figures look to well dressed to be considered Hordes. Mind you, I'm not that familiar with the DBM Mongol list, so there could well be another option that I don't know about (Mark Ottley has just suggested that some could be used as dismounted bowmen...). See David Kjuit's excellent Mongol Army Essay for a much (much) more indepth look at this army. By the way, I've got hold of some of these to sell - $NZ 7.50 ea. Anyone interested, please let me know. |