Fumbling my way around the world of Ancients

After much procrastination, I finally got my finger out and put paint on metal.

A whole load of infantry equipped with bows.  I still need to paint up some command figures which I am hoping will include a decent number of standard bearers.  This may mean I can increase the number of units.

Some units will consist of entirely bow-armed warriors whilst others will have the rear ranks made up of archers.

I also painted up three units of cavalry for my ancient India army.

I don’t have many figures left to paint from this collection now.  and with the addition of these 116 archers and 24 Cavalry the unpainted pile is dwindling.

The forces of India continue to grow with the addition of 63 Warriors in one large unit.  2 Heavy Chariots and 9 Light Chariots.

Next up either cavalry or archers.  I’m undecided yet.

I’ve made some progress on my little India army to face off against the might of the Macedonian army.

Still early days and I am still undecided on how many I want to put on a base and how many bases to a unit.

I am pretty sure I want to do the spearmen as 8 figure bases.  From there I am not sure whether to go with 4 or 6 bases per unit.

When I have some archers painted, I may do the rear rank of the spearmen units as a row of archers and see how that looks.  The archers are in a wider stance so I may only be able to fir between 3 and 4 archers to a base.

I have also painted up some skirmishers.  I am thinking 3 to a base looks ok.  I think 2 will make them look a little too sparce.

So that’s

96 spearmen so far

16 Skirmishers (although only 15 are pictured)

Total 112 infantry and 10 elephants so far.

The more astute amongst you may have noticed in the last photograph of the Macedonian army there were some rather out of focus Elephant bums.  This was intentional because they were nowhere near done.

I managed to sit down and get some work done on them over the last week before going to work and managed to get them to a point I’m happy with.

10 Elephants to lead my Ancient India army against the forces of Alexander.

This heralds the beginning of the India part of this project.

Well its been a while since I updated this project.

I’ve made a small amount of progress, nothing too fancy.

I have double the number of Companion Cavalry, added 3 units of Light Cavalry and 10 bases of Skirmishers.

I have also started to work on the bases.  Unfortunately these pictures didn’t come out too well so I will endeavour to get some better ones taken.

I now have another standard sized unit of mercenary heavy cavalry, 3 standard sized units of light infantry and at least 3 small units of skirmish cavalry to do before I can finally get to doing the command figures.

I have been slowly plodding along with this little project, although there was a slight delay whilst I waited on another delivery of figures and decals.

I went with unarmed Greeks for most of my mercenaries.  I just like the different shield options that they can have.

I painted up enough to form either 2 large Phalanx or 4 smaller units.   Combined with the previous Mercenaries I painted up I now have enough to form the second line for the centre.

I am really happy with how the army is coming along and now have the vast majority of the infantry done.   Next I may do some more cavalry.

The Macedonian army included many mercenaries for these I am really just using any figures I like the look of.  For most of them I plan to use Greek figures as I like the look of them and they have nice shield designs.

These models however, are actually Successor Thureophoroi infantry.   I have no idea how I ended up with them but rather let them go to waste they are no substituting as mercenaries.

I have six models to a base, although there are a couple of bases which actually have seven models for no other reason then because I had spare figures.

Because the footprint of the unit is what matters it doesn’t really matter how many figures are in each unit (One of 24 men and one of 26 me) as long as they look reasonably close order.

They can either be fielded as one large block or my preference is as two smaller blocks.

I still have to complete the shields on these, which should really add some colour and help bring these to life.

I am fast running out of models for my Macedonian force and really need to order some more to finish the project.  Maybe something to do once Christmas is out of the way.