Elwe, I was being a bit provocative in my original post.

I'd read a post by the guy who does the army lists for Terry Gore's Medieval Warfare minatures rules and he said he was convinced the VG used spears, although he was a minority on this. I suspect he is right - almost all Medieval infantry seems to have had spears, plus a variety of sidearms such as swords, axes etc. I am thinking of giving the VG some stats that reflect the use of spears AND axes, as I'm also thinking of doing with late period men-at-arms. In game terms, this would imply a negate cav bonus and AP property - not yet sure about the balance of att/def stats. It's not a big deal either way.

I am more worried about the kats, as losing them would make the Byz less fun. Yes, troops with that name existed throughout the game period (I found a reference to one trying to persuade the last Emperor not to die fighting in Constantinople), but they may be little more than generic heavy cav. I'm not finding any references to the distinctive heavy mail, armoured horse monstrosities of the game after the battle of Manzikert, but admit my research in this area is rather thin.