Thursday, May 5, 2011

From the Lead Archive: The Harii - 28mm Ancient German Barbarians

I have to admit I'm getting a little keyed-up waiting for my copy of 'Hail Caesar' to arrive.  So , like a little kid, I decided to pull out and dust off some of what I have to start playing with (or needs to be built upon).


Here are some Germanic barbarians I painted up to represent Harii warriors. The Harii are a bit of a mysterious lot as they supposedly worshiped the night, or perhaps were a quasi death cult. There is also an interesting theory that based on their location, culture and genetics that they were precursors to the Vikings.

Tacitus writes in his work, 'Germania':

As for the Harii, quite apart from their strength, which exceeds that of the other tribes I have just listed, they pander to their innate savagery by skill and timing: with black shields and painted bodies, they choose dark nights to fight, and by means of terror and shadow of a ghostly army they cause panic, since no enemy can bear a sight so unexpected and hellish; in every battle the eyes are the first to be conquered.

Anyway, I liked how Kevin Dallimore originally painted them for Foundry and so I've shamelessly copied him here (I really liked how he did the Conan black-striped camo thing).

Um, gee, pretty much the same shot here - Ok, just imagine this is taken from a completely different angle which makes the figures look achingly beautiful. No? Well, just squint a bit then.
These are old 28mm Wargames Foundry models - Mark Copplestone sculpts I believe. I plan to do a Germanic barbarian army that will contain several tribes (Cimbri, Suebi, etc.) of which these will be the basis for one unit. I'll post up some other stuff over the next little while.


5 comments:

  1. Just replace the shields with round ones and they'd even look like hairy Vikings!! Nice job!!

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  2. ...or they could just be Vikings with early Danish Modern angular aesthetic. Sorta like Ikea Vikings! They would be issued with flat-packed birch veneer shields with poor instructions.

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  3. After all these years the Foundry Germans are still the best barbarians ever made in 25/28mm IMHO. Nice job btw.

    Christopher

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  4. Thanks! I agree, they are superb models. I'm just happy I had the presence of mind to buy a bunch of them years ago before their pricing went vertical.

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  5. Very, very scary.

    Great looking models.

    John

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Thanks for your comment! As long as you're not a spam droid I'll have it up on the blog soon. :)