Monday, January 15, 2007

A New Direction?


I haven't painted anything for months as I have been too busy on Punic War Romans. However, a couple of things have got me thinking about the Spartans again. Firstly, I am painting some Greek light infantry for Cynoscephalae and so have been rooting about in my drawers of Foundry Greeks. Lots of lovely Steve Saleh Spartans and others in there.

Secondly, I am trying to finish all the half read novels I have. One of these is The Ten Thousand by Michael Curtis Ford. I started it and read the first half quickly but seemed to lose interest (something that some reviewers have mentioned). I must give it a go, maybe backing up a bit instead of trying to remember what happened.

Thirdly, I have just picked up Robin Waterfield's Xenophon's Retreat which aims to fill in the gaps left by Xenophon's own narrative (which Waterfield has recently newly translated).

My issue with a Spartan Army for WAB is just that it looks too tough and that historically it rarely suffered defeat. The solution is to morph my Spartan army into a Spartan led mercenary army. This will give me the opportunity to field a lot more troop types including some which I already have unpainted such as Thracians and Athenians. If I do end up getting Macedonians then I can get some Persians (Vendel's look nice) as well.

The final part of the puzzle was finding this excellent WAB Greek Mercenary List:

Hooray!