Ancients! Hoplites, bowmen and light cavalry

Nearly two months passed since my last post, a quite sad fact. I admit, I havn't done much since then. I'm writing my masters thesis at the moment and a computer game ist stealing my time. But I finished some ancient figs that waited long enough on my shelf half painted. I also adapted my old terrain to my changed game board, but I missed to make some pictures (it also looks unspectacular, so you don't miss anything). The last thing I did was to change the blog layout, which you may have noticed.

1. The Hoplites

You may have seen my other four bases of hoplites, also taken from this set. They had no armour, because it were the rear ranks. Now I've done some front rank hoplites. They wear greaves and linen armour. I made them very colourful, because they were rich men and rich men always like to show their wealth - and colours were expensive in antiquity. I have two more bases on the workbench, the last ones. With ten bases you can field nearly every Greek DBA army, that involves hoplites (there's only one exception).

2. The Bowmen

Eight bases of Bowmen from this set. With eight bases I can easily make a FoG battlegroup or use them as psiloi for Greek and hellenistic armies. Their tunics are held in bright brown and sand tones, because bowmen were drawn from the poor classes of the Greek society and could therefore not afford fancy colours for their clothes.

3. Light Cavalry

These two bases are from this superb set. They can be easily recognized as Thracians, a people with a long tradition as mercenaries for Greek poleis and hellenistic states. They'll serve as light cavalry for DBA.

The first 4 bases hoplites

After two weeks of painting (and some other stuff as well) I finally managed to make some pictures of my first quickshaded units. I'm also quite satisfied with the quality of the pictures, something which always annoyed me.

First, some thoughts on my choice. I took the hoplites because of several reasons. They were already deflashed, much work was done already. Then, (later) hoplites are very versatile - they can be used as opponents of  Philipp II. of Macedon and Alexander the Great or as allies. They are also suitable for inner Greek conflicts and southern Italian or Sicilian city states. I'll paint 10 bases of them, enough for every later Greek DBA army or a Field of Glory battlegroup. The miniatures themselves are also fine sculpted and fit good together as a phalanx.

The shields (called aspis in ancient greek) took most of the work. The decals are from LBM and add much to the unit, but they need much preparation. But I think the work was worth it! The grass on the bases is from Mininature. I used three different sorts.

The hoplites shown here are the poorer ones - they can't afford body armour and therefore only wear tunics. I used white and beige, because in my mind these guys are too poor to wear expensive colourful clothes.

Now, the pictures: