Friday 21 November 2014

A Tony Bath question

Friday night at last- thank goodness!
A question- what real life ancient armies did  Tony Bath use to represent his different Hyborian nations?
Thanks
Alan

4 comments:

  1. Tradgardmastare,

    If you haven't done so already, have a look at this link:

    http://www.rudi-geudens.be/html/titelblad_bath.htm

    It might have some of the answers you are looking for.

    All the best,

    Bob

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  2. As I recall, the Aquilonians were Western Mediaeval (mounted knights, long bowmen, that sort of thing). I seem to recall that Shem had something similar. Vanaheim and Asgard (? I'm going by memory here) had Vikings and similar; Bythunia I think Greeks or possibly Macedonians, Hyrkania a vaguely Asiatic horse army.

    I'm betting, though, that these were more thematic than too slavishly following their historical antecedents. I stand to be corrected on this . I still have some of the old Battle magazines in which his Hyboria articles appeared. I could check them out if you like. He also comments on his colour schemes for the various nations' armies as well...

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  3. Archduke that would be helpful...
    Bob,thanks for the link.

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  4. A rather belated comment.

    I tried to link Hyborian armies to countries years ago and basically failed: I could not find enough information and some of what I found was contradictory. You probably already know what follows – and some of it repeats Archduke Piccolo's comments - but, for what it's worth ...

    In “Setting Up a wargames Canpaign” Tony listed the original 28 armies used for Hyboria and in the first part of his “The Campaign That Grew” (in Battle magazine) he linked a few of these to countries. The 2 Viking armies were Asgard and Vanaheim, the Celts were Cimmeria, Hyperborea and Brythunia were 2 of the 3 Greek armies, Aquilonia and Nemedia were 2 of the 6 Medieval armies and the Indian army was obviously Vendhya.

    After this it is guesswork. Given that there are 2 Saracan armies it is probable that these are Turan and Hyrkania, though these counties could instead have the 2 Persian armies. I'd assume based on geography that 3 of the other medieval armies are Zingara, Argos and Ophir and the last may be the Border Principality.

    The inhabitants of Shem are described as grim with heavy balck beards which makes me think of Assyrian bas-reliefs, so maybe Shem has the Assyrian army. Stygia starts out ruled by bloodthirsty human sacfificing priests, so maybe the Aztec army? The last Greek army is presumably in a country bordering on and to the south of Brythunia (so Corinthia?) whilst the Romans are supposedly next to the these Greeks.

    I can't even guess where we fit in the Normans, Egyptians, Carthaginians, etc. Maybe a careful reading of all the many parts in the Battle series plus the two volumes of the “History of Hyboria” that Tony published will link a few more counties to armies?

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