Ghaznavid Infantry and Elephants

Being primarily a cavalry army there is not a lot of foot in a Ghaznavid army. What little infantry there exists is made up of a few Arab and Daylami allies, and a handful of Ghaznavid spear, bow and skirmishers. The DBMM army list allows only four elements of Ghaznavid spear and two each of bow and skirmishers, but given the Forged in Battle packs are comprised of 24 figures I decided to paint the whole lot on the basis that they may come in useful for other rule sets or as stand-ins:

The spear are nice little figures and are quite heavily armoured:

The pack also includes a couple of command figures:

The bowmen are similarly heavily armoured and sculpted in a straightforward firing pose:

In spite of the fact that Forged in Battle's infantry packs are sold as 24 figure bags I have noticed that most actually contain 26 figures. Given that they don't make any specific Ghaznavid skirmishers and only four figures are required, I used some of the leftover figures from the spear bow packs:

I still have the Arab and Daylami infantry to go, but that is the Ghaznavid foot now completed:

One of the nice variations in a Ghaznavid army is the use of elephants. The DBMM list allows for up to five but also has an option to remount up to three generals on elephants, so a potential eight in total:

Given that most of these are rated as superior and cost 20 points, or 36 points if a general (and a whopping 51 if rated as 'brilliant'), fielding all eight would soak up just over half of the 400 point games we usually play, but they would pack quite a punch. 

The only minor quibble with these models is that the Ghaznavids, being based primarily in Afghanistan and modern-day Iran, acquired elephants from their campaigns in India and these elephants look slightly more African than Indian to me. I would also have thought that they could have benefitted from the troops being in some form of howdah or castle rather than simply astride the elephant, but they are still nice little models:

I normally mount my generals on white horses so they stand out to me and my opponents in a game, but didn't want to have white elephants running around so painted the riders' helmets in bronze:

That's another seventy-eight figures completed toward the project:

Next up and as mentioned above, the Arab foot.