Some Grant phalangites

One way and another I'm not getting much done on the wargaming side at the moment - mostly I'm chopping out hawthorns on a hedge and putting a boundary fence in!

The figures themselves are quite a neat conversion. Another four would have been nice to make up the unit - I'll probably add another element of an officer, standard bearer and two musicians to make the unit up.

The notes I got from Harry described them as '44 Phalangites converted from Greek musicians with wire pikes and soldered on shields.'  This is a bit inaccurate - the base figure is actually an artillery crewman.

They appear on page 97 of The Ancient Wargame though Grant had a few more than I got.

Setting up Plataea

 Getting there with an attempt to do something similar to the Charles Grant version of Plataea - similar in the sense I've also tried to match it with the Herodotus version of the Persian army as well. My table is a foot too narrow to allow for the depth Grant was able to achieve in his battlefield as well - in his version, the battlefield looks to be almost deeper than it is wide!

 Anyway, I'm splitting this bit into two parts - mainly because this is a pure experiment. I've set it up and tried to do a short (but very large file) video of the setup as a taster... and at time of typing this no idea whether it will work!

 The picture is slightly out of date as far as the Persian left flank is concerned - updated version will come later.

Meanwhile, this is the experiment - seems to have worked even though the quality is not of the best.

 

Grant Garrison Persian army Review.

As I've already started rebasing some of the Grant Greeks I thought I would start extending the project a bit to rebase more of the collection - and the Garrison Persians being the smaller of the individual forces thought I'd best start there.

Nice to be able to get all the figures in one shot - easily.

Right wing cavalry, PEC6 Cataphract in front of PEC4.

I haven't got much of the infantry, just two units... I assume the Immortals were sold on when the Hinchliffe Immortals were bought.

A mix of cataphracts and PEC3 in front of more cataphracts. Not sure how or why I got all the cataphracts mixed in with the front unit except that 2 figures were'spare' and completed the PEC3 command unit...

I think that this is my favourite Grant Garrison Persian unit. Bit of a mouthfull.

Strangely, not all of the Grant figures were Grant figures. The one with the javelin is one of mine... You may have recognised the figure... I think Harry didn't have enough figures when he based them for his own use and added a sample I sent him! That palamino horse colour seems to be a Harry Pearson trademark...

 The PE3 infantry figures have already be allocated to the 'Xerxes Army' set, it will be interesting to see if I make any use of these in future.

Identifying figures in The Ancient War Game

Is not always easy and I really should have given a few comparisons before... So here's one that matches a figure to a battle, another that simply identifies a figure that was in an unexpected placee.

I should have included this picture when dealing with Corps XX - it's hard to tell, but I think that these are the figures listed in the Plataea game as Median Javelinmen (javelins and shield) - picture is from page 90.

This picture shows Airfix Egyptian conversions facing Garrison Assyrians - page 54. The Assyrian javelinmen were a puzzle for a while - Harry and I discussed them a few times until it became obvious. All the others are 20mm range - these are from the 25mm chariot! Further, pictures of them even appear on 21 and 49 - just wasn't thinking in terms of the 25mm range!

Sadly, I don't own any of these Assyrians or Egyptians...

Usual copyright notice - The Ancient War Game was published by A & C Black Ltd and copyright 1974 (the estate of) Charles Grant

'The only figures in the collection that really show their age'

Not all of the Grant collection are in good condition...

28 Persian light cavalry converted to Assyrian light cavalry. They are the figures shown on page 48 of the Ancient War Game.

A bit tatty and a few spears are missing - though it would be possible to restore a lot of these.

Standard bearer showing a much neater join between wrist and hand than I tend to manage. The standard has lost what I assume to be a skull! For me, the most impressive part of the figures is the helmet work.

This is the picture on page 48 showing the unit. The skull standard is clearly visible!

The unit sems to have seen a lot of action and (I think) is seen here losing to some chariots in the Apocryphal Well battle. It's quite difficult to identify some of the units on these old black and white photos.

Usual copyright notice - The Ancient War Game was published by A & C Black Ltd and copyright 1974 (the estate of) Charles Grant

Corps XX, Recruiting a few more Grant Garrison Persions for the Greek War...

There are a lot of Corps involving Persian types with smallish shields and javelins/spears - basically, minor differences distinguishing the different Corps. The 'Paphlagonian' style according to Greek and Persian Wars includes a plaited helmet rather than the Paphlagonian helmet, plus the shield is just described as a small shield. OK, another tribe listed for that general area, the Drilae at the time of Cunaxa, gerra... so I'm going to say that, in general, I'll use figures with the violin shield as the shield of choice for peltast equivalents, not sure yet about psiloi types...

These Grant figures are a bit of an anomaly. Very simple costume and generally look unfinished - look at the paintwork on the arms holding shields. The unit was originally 20 strong but two of them snapped off their bases.

I'm wondering whether these figures were rushed for a game or something then just not gone back to - something I can relate to well on some of my early armies! There is still some detailing though, for example the daggers.

Being so plain I think I'll use these as Paphlagonians and the ones I'm painting up as Corps XXI, the Cappadocians - being listed as 'Syrians' make it sound as though they should be a bit more colourful. None of these three Corps - XX, XXI and XXII, will look anything like the figures in Greek and Persian Wars!

The second Corps of PE3  currently on the paint bench, that will suffice for Corps XX and XXI - meanwhile, Corps XXII, including Phrygians, has been 'Garrisonised' by using the Garrison Phrygian...

Some Grant Byzantines

Not many of these, but beautifully painted...

A total of 21 archers including a standard bearer who's lost his standard.

Strangely these figures have nearly blue coloured bases like some of the Persians - no idea why.

5 more nicely painted figures.

The faces actually have character!

And finally a couple of Roman ballistae - 'normal' green bases.

One weird thing... list of followers seems to have gone from my blog again!

A few 'forgotten' Persians...

As in, they weren't in the display cabinet and I found them when I was sorting the Byzantines...

These are really well painted figures.

I didn't get a good shot of the standard - quite a nice bull's head.

The 'army' itself was still set up so I've rearranged things to get a decent shot - I'll also retrospectively include this picture in the original posting!

And then I'll start taking a few pictures of the Byzantines as originally intended!

Charles Grant's elephants

Mostly a quick response to 'please tell me you have the elephants as well'

I've got 3 of them. I did post a couple of pictures of them about 6 years ago, here's those 2 pictures plus a few more...

One of the original pictures posted giving them a bit of context with the book.

As can be seen, one seems to be intact, one has a broken tusk, one has two broken tusks (pieces missing). To make these figures 'work' the ears were 'repositioned'. Looks a bit odd if you look closely - if you don't, it is strangely difficult to notice.

As they stand today. I've done no restoration work apart from regluing the broken tusk.

Crews on these are Garrison conversions, The elephants are Airfix Zoo set rather than Tarzan set - just checked on PSR  to confirm! Personally, I always used the Britains baby elephant. Being a strange kind of person, one of Britain's elephants was painted white, another one was painted pink. Perhaps a good thing that those particular ones are long gone.

I think they could do with a bit of a clean up though.

Never mind the tusks, I think the trunk is also looking a bit iffy!

Corps IXM Aeolian Greeks - ex Charles Grant

Aeolia is an area in Northern Greece. Tribes in that area were not noted for hoplites and the later Aetolian League in Northern Greece fielded and army consisting of mainly light infantry and peltasts with very few hoplites or cavalry. Thinking about it, I decided to bring some of the Grant figures back into active serve - so I'm going to use a lot of the Grant Greek lights as Aetolian League army, but also to provide the Aeolian contingent of Xerxes army.

Quite a few of the Charles Grant figures I have are in 'The Ancient Wargame'

Not sure whether the figures in this picture are the same as the ones I'm putting in today - but could be and the Aetolian army almost certainly will include some or all of these!

I've put them as Ax rather than Ps but of course have enough to decide that on the day of any battles anyway.

Neat command group - think that's meant to be a trumpet!

Like the paintwork on the shields.

Something a bit like the Battle of the Apocryphal Well -Set up

A bit like, trying to scale a 9'x7' battle down to 4'x4' table while using a different rule set and terrain...

OK, the Battle of the Apocryphal Well is one of the battles in The Ancient War Game.  Assyrians versus Egyptians, Egyptians won. Being a while since I've done any Ancients, I just felt that I wanted to do something, this won out over Thymbra which (hopefully) is not going to be that far off... As Thymbra will be an all-Garrison affair I decided it would only be right for The Apocryphal Well to be all-Minifigs. Most of the figures are ones acquired from Harry, the Assyrian Ax are an Internet buy and a lot of the Egyptian light archers are ones I bought, stripped and repainted.

One problem I've sometimes had in the past has been working out which moves were which when I tried to sort out the after-battle photos. I'm therefore trying something - labelling every move. This may be a benefit or it may be just too intrusive - soon see.

On scaling, I roughly halved the number of figures in each unit and converted that to the nearest(ish) DBA elements. It was a pretty rough series of estimates. As the Assyrians didn't originally have a general figure (?) I added an Assyrian general in a chariot and also gave the Egyptians an 'extra' chariot for their general - ie, they should have had 4 chariots, gave them 5. I also let the Assyrians have their full complement of Spears rather than half to help counterbalance the shortage of Assyrian element numbers and the fact that the Assyrian Spears are armoured whereas the Egyptians aren't. The final figure worked out at 35 Assyrian elements facing 42 Egyptians.

The initial set up

The Assyrians

The Egyptians

Most of the figures are straight from Harry's collection. The General's chariot is one of my conversions - cataphract horses, Garrison Assyrian chariot wheels, 2 of the crew converted Garrison with a Minifigs 'S' Range officer.

The Egyptian chariots.

Unit sizes aren't compatible with the requirement so the extra element needed has been provided by a slinger element.