Another feature of Crusader armies were the Turcopoles. The Crusaders had learnt the effectiveness of the mounted bow from the Saracens and so had started to include them in their own armies. Sourced from the Eastern Christian kingdoms, and I’m sure other relevantly skilled groups, they were still Christian by equipped and dressed more like the Muslim armies. To reflect this difference I’ve gone for a brighter colour palette for these miniatures. However, to highlight the still Christian nature of these troops I’ve included some crosses on their shields.

Like the rest of this project, these guys are from Legio Heroica; they’re CRU-11 (Turcopoles with lance/bow). The horses are the same as Legio’s other unbarded cavalry. There are 3 variant Turcopoles: 2 armed with bow and one with a spear.

The packs we’re using for this project ended up with 4 spear and 8 bow. In game these can either be Medium cavalry or Light horse and this is differentiated by the number of horse on each base: 2 on lights and 3 on the mediums. The 12 figures we have are going to be split into 2 medium and 3 light. The weapons will further differentiate the troops: the medium cavalry will have 2 spear and 1 bow on a base, while the light horse will have 2 bow per base.

Colours

I used a grab bag of colours for the undergarments, aketon and shields. I used brighter colours on the smaller parts and more muted versions on the larger areas.

• White sands (SC-09)
• Sky blue (SC-50)
• Adriatic blue (SC-15)
• Mediterranean blue (SC-51)
• Navy blue (SC-54)
• Prussian blue (VMC 70.965)
• Russian green (VM 70.894)
• Black forest green (SC-41)
• Boreal green (SC-42)
• Irati green (SC-43)
• Deep red (SC-35)
• Blood red (SC-36)
• Antares red (SC-37)
• Skin: Pink flesh (SC-21)
• Hair: Eclipse grey (SC-16)

Aside from these items, the rest of the colours are the same as I’ve used for the other parts of this project.