This army represents the force used by a resurgent Byzantine Empire to go on the offensive in the Levant as well as in Eastern Europe against, respectively, its Muslim foes and the menacing Bulgar Empire. Extensive conquests were made against the former by the emperors Nikiforos Fokas and Ioannis Zimiskes, and the latter empire was destroyed by Vasilios II (Basil II).
This is a very popular army, and needs no introduction here, in no small part because of the amazing artwork by Angus McBride in the early Osprey book on this subject, yet the miniatures for it were all created based on earlier interpretations of soldier's dress and equipment which are now generally seen to be inappropriate for this period. Some problems: the kataphractoi used normal cavalry shields, not small ones; the infantry are described as wearing textile armour and felt helmets tied around with cloth; the bow armed infantry in the spearman units were to have multiple quivers and bows; specialist spearmen called menavlatoi were to use huge heavy spears to kill enemy kataphracts; no cavalry other than the kataphractoi are described as having armoured horses; and so on. These distinctions are all reflected in our line of miniatures.
This line is also suitable for Later Thematic Byzantines as well as Byzantine forces up until the Crusades.
Sculpted by Mike Broadbent.
Please note that the models are all available but we don't have images for them all yet, but will be adding more images.
The images to the left show models using our beautiful shield transfers.
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