Sunday, December 21, 2014

First 15mm Hoplite Unit

I bought TWO Old Glory Greek starter armies for Field of Glory a few years back.  After playing the rules a few times, I found they were not to my taste.  These hoplites have been sitting in their boxes ever since.

Still, I love the look of Greek hoplites, so I decided to paint these up in hopes that they may see the gaming table some day.


These are the "early" Greek hoplites from Old Glory's catalog.  Their later hoplites have piano wire spears, and I did not want to use my Dremel to drill out 400 spear hands, so I went with these figures and their cast spears.  All the hoplites wear a bronze muscle cuirass, so they must be very early indeed, probably pre-Persian Wars.  Some of the figures wear pturges.



Since these were cheap figures, I did not want to spring for LMBS transfers, so I hand painted the shields.  It takes more time, but they look nearly as good.




I used Litko bases with 40mm frontage and 15mm depth, the DBx standard for heavy infantry bases.  The four figures fit comfortably on these bases,



So now that my first unit is done, what is next?  Why 380 more hoplites!  I am painting them all in one go.  So far I have painted their helmet crests, armor, spear tips, and flesh base.


Now knowing my luck, Blue Moon will start making much better sculpts for even less money, so I will have to start all over again.

7 comments:

  1. Well! I prefer your freehand shield artwork to the commercially available transfers. Little works of art!

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  2. Wonderful work Scott and your free hand is exemplary.

    I hear you on the FOG rules. I built a Norman army for it and wasn't to my liking either. Good thing is there are some good alternatives like Impetus(my fav) and Sword and Spear which I hear is fun plus DBA 3.0 and Art de Guerre or some other alternatives newly released. All I believe would require no re-basing on your part to play.

    Christopher

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  3. My poor old Hoplites do it tough with FOG (although given they were originally for WRG 7th Edition I find with FOG they have a chance).

    Great work on the shields. These Old Glory figures look well animated (I'm used to spearmen in just respectful standing poses - these ones are going to get stuck in).

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  4. Try Impetus - it's a fun fast-playing set of rules. Four Dbx bases makes up one Impetus unit so no need to rebase

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  5. THey look great, beautiful Hoplites!

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  6. Magnificent! To paint 400+ shields by hand is a daunting prospect for all but the bravest painters.

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  7. I am all equipped to try Impetvs now! Thanks for the Chrsitmas gift, Jon! I'm really enjoying painting hoplites.

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