At the Red Barons convention a few weeks ago, where the Mons shop guy was selling off his remaining stock for 50%, I bought a pack of 8 Black Tree Design Pictish Slingers. I have been toying with the idea of building a 5th - 6th century CE Pictish army (Age of Arthur period), and those would fit right in, I thought.

Of course, when checking the book, it seems the Picts did not employ slingers, only javelinmen, bowmen and the nebulous crossbowmen. So plan B is to use them as slingers in my Arthurian army. Unfortunately, the slingers are dressed in Pictish fashion (obviously), wearing just a tunic and no trousers or shoes, and in the case of two of the figures in a loincloth and cloak only. This would not do for a (semi) civilised Romano British force. So, before painting the little buggers, I’m ‘dressing’ them with green stuff. Six of the figures need trousers and shoes, and two need those and a tunic.

As I’m typing this, I have finished two and a half conversions (two pairs of trousers, two pairs of shoes and one tunic) and although this is by far my most ambitious conversion project so far, I’m fairly happy with the results so far. Photos to follow when the conversions are done.

As an aside, the painting queue is now the Pictish slingers, then a Romano British cavalry command group (leader, standard bearer, musician), then 10 ACW Zouaves (which I’ll paint up as Louisiana Tigers for Ebay), and after that, we’ll see. The Celtic archers that were on the queue before the slingers are done and are awaiting photographs.