Hoplite Army

Basic Information

As you might notice, I ran out of real Foundry shields, so I substituted old Games Workshop plastic Dark Elf shields. Can you tell which is which?
Army:Hoplite Greek
Game System:Warhammer Ancient Battles v1.0
List:Ancient Greek from Armies of Antiquity
Figures:112 infantry, 6 cavalry
Manufacturers:Mostly Foundry old style, Foundry new style and Black Tree Designs. Some Essex and Ral Partha.
Total Points Value:1,500
StatusFinished

Units

UnitCost
Characters
General with light armour, large shield and thrusting spear157
Cavalry
6 Greek light Cavalry with javelins, leader71
Hoplites
48 Hoplites with light armor, large shield and thrusting spear, leader, musician586
20 Spartan hoplites with light armor, large shield and thrusting spear, leader, musician490
Light Infantry
10 Slingers40
11 Archers with short bow44
7 Javelinmen28
7 Javelinmen28
8 Peltasts with shield and javelins56
TOTAL COST1,500

Pictures

The phalanx is here! United State of Athens!
Not known for horsemanship, nevertheless a few cavalry is necessary for any army. Back when Foundry was moving to blister packs, they had a dump sale, half price for remaining stock not in blisters. I bought a big bunch of figures, which started my collections of not only these Greeks, but Imperial Romans, 19th Century Africans and Bronze Age Europeans. Half of these are still unpainted.

More pictures of these figures.

Notes

Rather incredible coincidence: I started making this list, counted all my figures and listed them under appropriate heading with basic options. Then I counted the total cost figuring I'd have to slip in a few non-visual improvements to get a good round total value. Nope. 1,500 points exact. Job done. I guess those six freebie greeks Black Tree sent me last year really made this army.

There aren't a lot of ways to tweak this list for 1,500 point games, but for 1,000-pointers you could drop the Spartans for a generic city state force, or downgrade Spartans to regular hoplites and drop everything else except the general for a very one-dimensional force or... It might be a good idea to split the big hoplite block in two, but I don't have any more musicians.

This could also be easily transformed into a Greek Mercenary list from Alexander, except for the javelineers and archers who do not have shields. The greek mercenary list does not allow shieldless psiloi.

The army isn't completely WYSIWYG as some figures don't have the correct equipment. E.g. there are four unarmored hoplites mixed in. Rather than having a bunch of widowed figures unable to join any unit, I based the unit stats on the majority of figures in the unit. If someone has a problem with this, I don't really need to play with them.

The infantry basing is also non-standard. But as 1" washers actually put me at a slight disadvantage, I doubt most opponents would mind. Unless they're just looking for a way to get me disqualified, which is another case of "I don't really need to play with these guys."

Update: I had 24 of Foundry's "army-style" hoplites lying around for a long time that I finally painted up, mostly to test Tamiya's gray wash. Worked pretty well. Also noticed that there's a new version of Warhammer Ancients and everyone's moved to that. So I guess I have to buy the rules yet again and recalculate the list. With some luck I might even make 2,000 points. Oh, and inventorying the figures I found two more trumpet players. Apparently I had prepared for expansion at some stage. Here's a couple of pictures of the new figures:

I think I need to get a command blister or too, because I'm lacking trumpeters for the army. Finally finished my last hoplites.


Sucks! (8) Sucks by 8 votes Rocks by 17 votes (17) Rocks!

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