Over the last 13 months I have focused on building an Ancient Greek Army. It originally started out as just a small contingent of four units for the large participation game my Club puts on at Cancon every year. However, I really enjoyed painting these models and well, it just kept growing. Right now the plan is over the coming years to flesh it out to two Hoplite armies that roughly representing the forces at the Battle of Second Coronea.
Over the last 12 months what I have attempted a few things that I don’t normally do. Those being mix figure ranges and also convert historical models. When I opened up my first box of Victrix Athenians, which was gifted to me by my mate Wal. What struck me was the range of options available, but as is a common observation of the Early Kits by Victrix, the body poses where limited and I was always wanting a few more dynamic poses to add movement. The only option in the Victrix Range for that is the Unarmoured Hoplite box, which in of itself is a brilliant kit, however does not work all the time. So I looked at my faithful Foundy Miniatures as well as other Ranges by Steve Salah, such as Lucid Eye and Gorgon Studio’s.
What I found was a good fit with Victrix, but the Shields where not right so I took the step to arm the Metal Models with Plastic Victrix Shields and Spears, and what you see below is the result.
I must say its not cheap as you need to buy Surplus plastics to fit out the models but the result is what I was after and ensures that there are two elements (Spears and Shield) that provide a unify thread across the models.
Above is the Work in Progress for my 1st Spartan unit and as you can the mix of plastic and metal models as well as some conversions for Spartan Officers (awaiting dramatic cloaks of awesome. What this has shown me is that done with consideration mixing ranges can be successful and can open up a large number of possible options.
So far this project has been great then on two levels, One the army looks great on the table and Two, it has actually expanded my modeling a little bit more and given me some more options when considering future projects.
Talking of Future projects, this year expect to see Late Romans, Republican Romans and some War of the Roses.
Cheers
JP
5th Column Wargaming 