20mm Ancients

Looking to play some Punic Wars, Sicilian Wars, or Pyrrhic Wars (let's just call it the 'Hellenistic Age') in the near future with my 20mm collection using the gridded ancients rules in Developing the Portable Wargame.  Assessing the existing armies, I noticed that a 24-figure unit (six 40mm square bases) looks way sexier than 12-figure, and also fills up a 6" grid square better.  Switching to this would give me a lot of armies with four heavy infantry units, supported by three or four 9-figure light infantry units (3 figures to a 40mm square base) and at least two cavalry units (I could go with 6- or 12- figure units on this, both look fine).  While a 9 to 10 unit game will work just fine in Developing the Portable Wargame, some of the armies still felt a little on the small side if switching to 24-figure units. So painting has gotten underway and more figures acquired.

Here's what I've managed to finish up this last month, despite a busy summer calendar:

96 Macedon (or Pyrrhic or Successor state) phalangites by HAT.  The pikes are steel wire. They were attached to figures by heating one end (of the wire) over a candle and attaching to the figure while still hot - the soft plastic melts and sticks and the wire embeds a bit.

Some of these are clearly facing to the right, if you look. Its peculiar these were sculpted this way when the overall set is clearly meant to be arranged in a multi-ranked block of sarissas. Oh well.

Thessalian cavalry by HAT.

I'm not a big fan of the figure at back right corner, with his arms out akimbo. I should have used hot water/cold water treatment to reposition his arms. Oh well.

Celt infantry by Caesar miniatures. I paint 16 of these for Hail Caesar over a year ago (two years?). I painted up 8 more and finally based them to get this unit of 24. This unit will really help bolster Carthagenian infantry lines.

Like most sets that feature forward-rushing ancient infantry, positioning the figures on a multi-base can be a bit of a pain. Especially when you have some figures who are clearly not rushing forward. You do the best you can and probably no one else even notices...