Enyalios!

So, after having completed two full corps of Athenians this year, I decided to end on something a bit different. Whilst the next step on this project was allies, I decided to do some allies that aren’t on my project list.

One of the things about DBA is that they list a series of historical allies a certain army can use. Normally, this allows you to take units that your list would not allow – in my battles vs the Scots (see the reports below), my opponent decided to include some cavalry from the Strathclyde list as well. I also see it as a historical reference as to which list I can use in a larger game as allies. Athens has quite a few options, mostly having access to the Mercenary Hoplites and the lists of other city states, but also some access to the Acheminids, Thracians and a few others. But the one that caught my eye was Thebes.

Thebes is one of those Greek city states that I had and had not heard of – most the information I have on them I read after I started playing DBA. The City itself is notable because it was allegorically built by the hero Heracles, and the people considered themselves to be his decedents, which is why you’ll see the Club of Heracles as one of their main emblems. The city itself was situated in the Northern parts of Greece, and was really outmatched by the major powers of Classical Greece – Sparta and Athens. During the Perisan invasion of 480BC, whilst there was a contingent of Thebans at Thermopylae that fought to the end, Thebes eventually joined Xerxes, fighting on his behalf up to and including the Battle of Platea.

What did allow Thebes to punch above its weight, however, was their use of the Sacred Band – an elite force of 300 Hoplites who were professional soldiers, recruited as a counter-balance to the more militaristic Spartans. And the Sacred Band is represented in DBA through the use of the 8Sp element type.

Whilst most of the elements in DBA are a single base, there do exist several double-based elements. 6Kn (6 Knight) are used to represent heavily armored shock cavalry, such as Roman or Byzantine Cataphracts. 8Bw (8 Bow) are generally used to represent a formation of archers sheltering behind a shield wall, such the Persian Sparabara. 8Sp (8 Spear) are a more elite spear formation, and have a bonus in close combat. By taking Thebes as an ally to Athens (they fought together in the Corinthian War against Sparta), I could get access to this unit type.

Whenever I start a new DBA corps, I begin by listing out which units I’ll need to complete the various variants, and use that to define which packs I should order. I also use this option to determine how many spears and even bases I’ll need – given that I’m in New Zealand, buying from the UK is usually a four-week delivery time, and I don’t particularly want to put something on hold for that long because I’m one shield short. I also look into what minis I have sitting around spare – in this case, I was able to use some Psiloi I had spare sitting around, which cut my cost down a bit.

Once the order arrives, I clean it all up – soapy water and a scrub with an old toothbrush is usually enough to get rid of all the extra oils on the minis.

I then add the spears to the minis. As mentioned above, Xyston sells 50mm long brass spears, and I just cut them down to the various type – Javelins used by Psiloi and light cavalry are 15mm long, short spears used by cavalry are 20mm, and hoplite spears are 30mm. I add these prior to undercoating because the holes I normally slip them into are too small to take a fully painted spear (yes, two layers of paint are enough to do that). Also, painting spears on the models themselves is actually easier than painting them separately, especially if you’re dealing with a 15mm long javelin.

I also have a tendency to paint the shields separately and somewhat before everything else. The emblems here are from Little Big Men studios – I ended up using a full sheet to finish these, but I still managed to scratch one after completion, ruining its emblem. Oh well, that’s the one the standard bearer is getting.

In total, this force had 60 humans and 6 horses to paint, which is way too much to paint all at once. I try to cut the paiting into batches of similar models, although, in retrospect, I should have cut this part down further, doing three batches and separating out the standard Hoplites from the light troops, instead of just separating out the Sacred Band as a separate batch.

For Thebes, I wanted another blue colour, but softer than the Athenian Blue. After some thinking, I remebered I had a bottle of Horizon Blue (Vallejo 901) sitting around, from when I was thinking of doing up some WW1 French troops. It was probably a little lighter than I would have liked, almost a baby blue, but I think it worked out well in the long term. I certainly like how the light blue cloaks of the force turned out, and how they contrast against the darker blue-grey cloaks of the Psiloi.

After each batch is completed, I glue them to their bases. It must be noted that the Xyston minis are actually closer to Heroic 15mm than standard 15mm, and in some cases, this can cause some cluttering of the bases. I can mitigate that by rotating some minis to better fit, but I had a bit of a problem with the Sacred Band in this case. Because I had insinsted on 30mm spears for them, despite them being held horizontally rather than vertically, they did have some problems with ranking the bases up. For the next set like this, I’ll definately cut the spears down a bit.

Finally, I add the base texture. This a pretty standard process for me – sand, paint it all brown, drybrush with biege for hilights, and then add flock. For some other 15mm minis, I sometimes add static grass, but for DBx elements, the flock only works out well.

And with that, we have another corps completed. The last project of the year.