A couple more Spartans...and more on the way.

No more hand painted shield designs after these!

I've been desperately trying to clear my workbench of half finished figures and these two Spartans were lurking at the back so I decided to finish them off. I enjoyed painting them so much that I have started another six to form the basis of my second classical Spartan unit.

For the first unit of knights I kept their hoplons bronze and painted motifs on the metal. For the second unit, who are slightly lower status, I will be using coloured backgrounds. For these two I had to paint the motifs but everything should be much easier now I have taken delivery of a sheet of Immortal Miniatures new waterslide shield transfers.

Brilliant idea!

Hoplons are a problem for the LBM type of transfer as the curvature can cause problems but having waterslide transfers should make this a lot easier. I hope to try some out over Easter.

I am also looking forward to seeing Immortals new plastic Hoplites, which they are intending to have ready for Salute next month (not long now!).

I suspect they will be considearbly smaller than the Aritzan/Gorgon Spartans but you never know; they have said they will be bigger than their metals. I have some of their metal Persians and they are quite slight, so we shall see. I may have to take a Saleh Spartan with me in my pocket to compare them. Almost the best thing about them are the accurately modelled spears. Currently, I use the Gripping Beast cast spears and carve a rudimentary butt spike on the end. I'd love to just buy a sprue of spears but I don't expect it will work like that!

Return of the Spartans: Gorgon Studios

Recently the Steve Saleh sculpted classical Spartans have disappeared from the Artizan Website. I searched on the Artizan Yahoo group and apparently Steve has taken the figures to his new venture which will be launching soon.

Yesterday I received a note from Gorgon Studios which is the new venture concerned (launching imminently but they already have a website http://www.gorgon-studios.com/ ). Hooray the figures will be back shortly (although it appears that Gorgon are US based so I hope they get a UK agent soon). There is also an announcement about a new range of Etruscans from Saleh from them. Hooray, again! Steve is my favourite Ancients sculptor and to see a new firm letting him concentrate on these is very good news indeed.

Another file of knights

During my holiday I managed to paint another file of Spartan knights to complete my first phalanx. This takes the unit up to 20 figures and a hefty 550 points: much better for wargaming purposes.

I have bought some light troops and will do those next, along with starting the next unit of hoplites. I also need to start work on Leonidas.

First unit of Spartan Knights completed..sort of.

Well, encouraged by the fact that we have a new recruit at Guildford who is interested in Classical Greek wargaming in 28mm for WAB, I have finished the figures I needed to complete my first unit of classical period Spartan hoplites.

Here they are all, 16 of them!

They are a very small unit of 16 men, so one casualty would destroy their phalanx ability straight away. I probably need to make them 2o at least but for the Thermopylae scenario I am looking at that would probably be too many, but 16 isn't really viable in WAB. Or is it? If I use the sacred band rule, which would be appropriate for Leonidas' bodyguard then they become immune to psychology and never break. I think I may test this out in the next few weeks by pitting them against a bigger unit of Peltasts, standing in for Persians and see how they do.

A Spartan Hoplite sacred band member is an astonishing 27 points so this unit is 442 points! So they better hold!

I have now started work on two more figures who may make another file to bring them up to 20. I may now also paint my Leonidas figure and move the officer to the second unit.