Almost but not quite Issos...

Having spent a lot of time on  Minifigs recently I thought it was about time to do something with Garrison.

I decided to go with an Alexandrian versus Persian battle and Issos seemed a good starting point.

Initial setup. General scenario, Alexander and a few friends forcing a river crossing against a force of Persian cavalry and Greek mercenaries.

The Persians. At Issos, the Persian army was 50:50 Persian cavalry and Greek mercenaries. However, the Greeks took no part in the battle until after the Persians were beaten and simply sat on a hill. Further, I didn't have a bigger hill. So seemed reasonable to just use enough Greeks to fill the hill. Those windows at the back make photography awkward.

Macedonian right flank - Companions, Hypaspists and start of the phalanx covered by a few light archers.

The Macedonian centre. 3 48 strong phalanx units covered by some light javelins.

Macedonian left - Greek cavalry covered by some slingers.

First move, Macedonians start advancing to the river and expanding their frontage. Persians start moving to cover the river but making sure to hold back the cavalry behind the scythed chariots.

Macedonian cavalry move a bit to the right as they approach the river while the archers start to cover the gap. If the Persian cavalry look a bit washed out... those windows behind them make photography a bit awkward...

View from behind the Macedonian army as the Companions reach the river.

View at the end of the first move just before the Companions have reached the river. The Macedonian left is in danger of being a bit outflanked. If the river at the bottom of the picture looks strange, could be because I ran out of narrower sections.

A Christmas Review 2016

Lots of troops gone to winter quarters but some of the more recent recruits are still hanging around. So it seemed a good opportunity to have a Review on the dining room table before it got covered with more edible offerings.

The Successor Heavies...

Elephants flanked by Indian 4 horse chariots - Successor chariots were off on holiday somewhere.... then  the cataphacts, light cavalry in front of them, then general inspecting everyone.

Some of the Alexandrian heavies.

Unbased general lying around to take the Salute... Garrison general, cast by me, painted by Harry.

Alexandrian Companion heavy cavalry

A few weeks ago I posted my current Alexandrian army Review.

Since then I've acquired some painted Companions with unpainted horses, so I've painted the horses, added an officer figure and based them. This means I now have 3 units of Minifigs Macedonian Companion cavalry:

These are the new guys. Must start taking more time over the lighting...

Alexander and his crowd. All these have just been rebased, nothing else.

Thought I had rebased these but haven't - job for the New Year!

In retrospect, couple of things to do - find an officer the third unit and convert one Companion in each unit to a standard bearer as I did with the shielded heavies.

Minifigs Alexandrian Army Review

At the moment I'm actively working on 3 Minifigs armies - Egyptian, Alexandrian and Seleucid. Both the Egyptian and Seleucid armies have quite a few figures either still in Dettol or being painted, but most of the unfinished Alexandrian's only need rebasing.

Being a bit on the impatient side I thought it would be nice to get them all together for a Review...

I set them out in 4 main lines. The first line consists of 'distance' psiloi - archers, slingers and staff slingers. The second line are javelin armed psiloi. Next, assorted Companion cavary - Alexander himself is part of the extreme right flank unit. Finally, the main battle line - Hypaspist units, then phalangites, then mercenary peltasts, finally on the extreme left were all my Thracians.

 On the flanks are the light cavalry...

 Including sarissa armed Thracians.

Most of my close ups of the bulk army didn't come out very well - army's still set up, might try again later.

The majority of these are ex-Harry Pearson collection, some are from my original 1970's army.

Peltasts 2 - the Mercenaries

The standard wargames LTS,J,Sh peltast of the 70s...

This lot started life as 8  psiloi back in the 70's. With a few exceptions, most of my Hellenistic troops wore red tunics.

These ones are ex Harry. Nice shield patterns. I'll probably use these in my Successor armies rather than Alexandrian ones as they carry the thureos. Poor logic as the PB Thracians also carry the thureos.

 

As these ones have pelta rather than thureos, these will find themselves fighting for Alexander.

 

Peltasts 1 - The Thracians

Back in the 70's every Macedonian army had Thracians. These Thracians all had fox skin caps, tartan cloaks, black tunics, white shields and carried a sickle-like weapon called a rhomphaia.

So, naturally, I had a Thracian unit wearing fox skin caps, tartan cloaks...

At some stage I picked a unit that was obviously confused - they had blue cloaks. Probably thought they were Galations in disguise or something. Still had white shields, as did another unit I acquired more recently. Finally, I got some in the armies I bought from Harry that had white shields with colourful designs painted on them... much nicer.

So I left 'my' unit alone, painted up the shields on the other two to blend in with Harry's, then kept my unit separate while the other three just sort of mixed.

As they stand, the Thracians  naturally make four 6 element units.

 These figures are formed from three separate sources.

However, they fit quite well together - main obvious difference is that the 'original' figures with fancy shields have a faint yellowish tinge due to the varnish aging. The figures with blue cloaks have been thoroughly spread out so that they aren't so obvious.

Close up of some of the shield patterns.

This is a view of the back of 'my' unit. Let's face it, the front isn't all that interesting - plain white shields and the ravishes of time mean a couple of figures have lost their rhomphaia and have been reduced to shaking their fists at the enemy. On the other hand, they have colourful cloaks.

Alexandrian Phalangites

Having spent time on the Successors, I thought I would keep the momentum going and get on with finishing basing the Alexandrian phalangites.

The officer doesn't belong here. He's just an odd one that was lying around but I thought he deserved to be used.

This unit is probably the poorest of the 4 Alexandrian phalanx units I've now based from 'the mass', though there is still another one to do that will need a fair bit of work doing. On the other hand, I did base all 40 rather than 32 or 36 of them.

4 units massed together look quite good...

And this is them with Alexander and a few added  Companion cavalry and Hypaspists.

Still a lot of figures to base for both the Successors and Alexandrians, but I'm getting there.

Grant update

OK, the original idea was to just do one unit of peltasts, then I did two, plus the cavalry and phalangites...

 I've added a general to this lot - a Garrison figure painted by Harry.

  

I will have to do some work on the  heavy cavalry spears.

Only have 11 of these light cavalry. Like the shields on these.

The phalangite figure is converted from an artilleryman figure. At the moment it's a 24 strong unit, when I find the other 20...

I like the way these figures are painted. Two 24 figure peltast units seems about right.

Other light infantry include more of the above as psiloi plus archers and slingers. Considering I hadn't originally intended to rebase many of the above I suspect most of this lot will soon be receiving my attention.

At some time I'll do more of these Dacians-painted-as-Thracians. Not sure when.