Hobby Update: KoM Knights (AOE2 Cataphracts!)

Hands-down, my favorite game of all time is Age of Empires 2. It captivated young me. An RTS game, you started from practically nothing, building up your town, upgrading soldiers and commanding them in battle... every civilization had a unique unit and a different technology tree. It was a marvelously deep and complex game.

It was also my first exposure to the Byzantines.

Being a bookish kid, the word itself was just intriguing. I mean as a kid, how do you even go about pronouncing that?? It just so foreign compared to something like the Vikings or the Britons. In time, I would play more, read more, learn more... go to college for history and school abroad in Turkey to learn more, even seriously considering grad school for medieval history ... all stemming from this game.

I did not end up as a university professor, but the game obviously impacted me greatly.

While the Regnum is in a great place in terms of available hobbied units, I still have a few half-baked, ill-defined hobby goals for it, one of which being to build up a homage unit of sorts, in the style of the Byzantine's unique unit in AOE2: the Cataphract.

The cataphract!

Historically, the Cataphract was a mounted, armored warrior. In the game, the Cataphract is a tanky unit designed to counter the normal counter to heavy cavalry; Pikemen. A counter-counter unit is a neat idea.

The game was released in 1999, and we've since learned it had an interesting art direction, where 3D models were created, and than translated into the game's charming 2D pixel sprites to save computing power when rendering and tracking so many units.

Another Shot.

So this is what I'm shooting for. A knight wielding a sword and wearing a tunic. A helmet with a face/chin guard and horizontal eye slit. A feather plume on the helmet, and a teardrop shield slug across his back. The horse should have barding, but apparently not too much? Heaven forbid we protect the horse's neck you know.

Complicating my conversion is that a whole new version of the game dropped in recent months, with redone graphics.

New and Improved!

Building off of the old game, an "HD" edition was released on Steam in 2013, along with an expansion a few months later, and another expansion in 2015, and even a third expansion in 2016.

Now, a "Definitive Edition" launched late in 2019, revamping all the graphics, adding a bunch of features, and yes, adding even more civilizations. We're up to 35 civs now!

The marvelous cataphract has been redone too, more in line with it's historical image. The barding does further down the horse, protecting more, and looking far more "armored". The knight is also armored more convincingly; the chain veil looks downright menacing now!

The Fireforge Kickstarter, (which funded, and is still taking late pledges if you are interested!) embraces the chain veil look. I haven't settled on the boxes I want, but I'll probably be producing another unit or two of Cataphracts eventually (though iirc the pledge wasn't planning on shipping until December 2020... and that was before the pandemic. Fireforge is based in Italy, so we'll see what happens.)

Anyways, enough blabbering, here is my homage unit.

No quad pattern, so they seem a little dark. And the T-shirt approach does reduce the menace a bit. But these are pretty decent approximations.

Hobbying
The minis are primarily Perry Mounted Men at Arms. All the horses are from that kit, and I opted for the Italian-style barding, as it is the closest thing I have found to date. The horse looks a bit more DE than original, but I'm fine with that. The original look is just too hard to duplicate; it's like the horse is wearing an armored mini skirt than actual armor.

I thought the Germanic/Gothic barding could get me close to the original, but it barding just didn't quite fit, and I wasn't interested in doing much work to get it to work. The Germanic barding will look great on some Soul Reaver Cavalry though! Hopefully I'll have a regiment of those primed the next good weather day I get.

The knights are primarily from the Perry kit as well; each box contains 3 knights with tunics. So the boxes were enough to provide 6 of the 8 knights, with the other two being the very dynamic Norman Knights from Conquest Games. The arms didn't quite work there (the Norman kit has more cloth than armor), so I sawed off some extra arm bits from the Perry Foot Knights kit for some easy conversions. I really liked how those models in particular turned turned out! Helmets were from the various Perry kits as well, though two needed some green stuff face guards. And finally, feathers were procured from extra bits from the Fireforge Mongol Cavalry Box, who are my Mounted Scout troops right now.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with how this unit turned out. The only rub right now, is that I lost a shield somewhere... I think outside while priming. I've searched the area a half dozen times since to no avail.. so I'm on the lookout for a replacement teardrop shield for the unit leader. Other than that final missing bit, I'm calling the unit done.

The view that matters to me. I'm likely the only one fielding these, and the shields are what I think of for the AOE2 Cataphract. Looks like a few touchups along the edge may be needed, but overall, I'm pretty happy with these.

AOE2 Tangent
The unit is intended to stand in as a regiment of knights. I've already typed at length on knights elsewhere in the blog; and the unit is what you'd expect, so instead of blabbering more about knights and how they perform on the table, allow me a tangent to attempt to cross-pollinate some of my interests...

As mentioned already, AOE2 was a formative game for me, but the great thing is that people are still playing it! It has had an active community since launch (I even played some games in a computer cafes in Turkey in 2008), and the HD and now DE editions have reinvigorated the player base. If the pandemic has you stressed an you're missing the strategy of Kings of War games... allow me to suggest you watch some AOE2 matches on youtube (or twitch, if you're more "with it" than I am technology-wise)?

The game is unique when compared to other titans of the genre like Starcraft and Warcraft (never played too much Command and Conquer, so I can't speak to any comparisons there). Without getting too into the weeds:

• Since each civilization has the same basic tech tree, the huge fraction calculus prevalent in most other examples of the RTS genre is quite muted here. The approach here is more like a "master list" with Kings of War, particularly in Historical book.
• Maps are generated by script; the details (hill placement, resource locations) of each one is unique so each game plays out differently each time.
• Except at the highest-level, it's a slower game, more "macro" (strategy and economy) focused, than "micro" (unit control and mouse clicks). 

If you are missing out on a strategy fix from social distancing and no wargaming... maybe give some attention to AOE2? To start you off slow, I'll suggest this video, where one of the more analytic but casual AOE2 youtubers takes on an AI with my Byzantines. The video even has Cataphracts! If you like that, the Reddit has lists of channels and streams, and there was a very good tournament recently with a really fun premise. Lots and lots of content to explore, should any of this pique your interest

Social isolation has produced another unit! The hobby table is still pretty full tough... we'll see what comes off it next!