Introducing... Tiny Crusades

Well, this certainly qualifies as an impulse purchase - I was browsing around the Irregular Miniatures site and came across their 6mm Battlepacks - two opposing forces and a ruleset for a very decent price.  Well, whilst I have plans for Achaemenid Persians at some point, I couldn't resist using the Battlepack offer to try out some 6mm and spied that in the list of forces available for the Ancients deal there were Crusaders and Arab Empire... why not do a little Crusading in 6mm I thought?!

So, I placed the order and didn't really know what to expect but for the price I was happy to take a punt... and when they turned up I was not disappointed!  Now, I've tried my best to work out what each of the things are, but if I’m wrong I will amend this page!

The Battlepack included a set of Irregular's very own Ancient Rule Box - a single double-sided sheet of rules and some coloured cards. I've had a quick read through and think the rules have some interesting ideas - definitely giving me some food for thought.

Anyway, I'm sure most people who might be reading this are here to see what miniatures I got so let's get on with that.  First up, let's look at the Arab Empire force.

General and a strip of Heavy Cavalry to form the leader of the force:

On the foot soldier front, there were two strips each of spearmen and spear command (well, they have standards?):

And 6 strips of archers - the middle ones and the ones on the right might be more Skirmishing types(?):

On the cavalry side there were a couple of strips of Turkish Horse Archers:

And finishing off the Arab Empire side a selection of mounted command, medium cavalry and heavy cavalry:

Onto the Crusaders side - again a General and a Cavalry strip to form the leader:

For the Infantry a mix of spearmen and crossbowmen:

Next on to the mounted strips - first a strip of Turkish Horse Archers, to represent Turcopoles I presume:

As for knights (obviously the thing everyone thinks of when it comes to the Crusades, right?) there were four 'command' type strips and four normal strips:

I need to give some serious thought as to how to point all this up using the Ancients Rule Box.  The rules allow for a couple of different ways to depict units - these forces seem set up for 'System 2' whereby units are mostly 2 strips in size necessitating a bit of pen and paper book-keeping.  I think this might be the best option, but even then I know I still want to add some more stuff - but that'll need to wait until points are sorted so I can keep both sides equal.

As for the quality of the minis - I know it's difficult to make out on unpainted metal, but they have what looks to my untrained eye to be a nice amount of detail without being too intimidating.  Lances and spears had some bends and although mostly easy to put right, I have clumsily broken one lance already. 

I'm trying to decide on basing for these - whilst the Rule Box sets out frontages measurements in-game are in mm rather than base width (etc) so I think I can be flexible as long as I pick a consistent approach across the collection.

Finally - the service from Irregular Miniatures was quick and smooth and I can definitely recommend them based on this purchase.