Building a WAB Mercenary Hoplite Regiment
Page 1: Painting a Mercenary Hoplite Page 2: Finishing the Regiment
As you can see the fianl result
is a true "Composite" Regiment. The models are from Foundry, Old Bronze Goat,
and one Newline Designs figure. This gives a standard of variety even though the unit has,
for the most part, a uniform color scheme. The nice thing about hoplites is that one
can create a unit of unigue models... some of the Foundry figures are repeated poses, but
each model has its own shield blazon, or carries a shield apron that sets it apart.
Notice the care in how the models are 'ranked up' this was determined by the poses. When the models were based they were pulled and twisted slightly to make back rankers poke through without tapping the front.... similarly one must be careful with front rankers spear butts poking a bank ranker in the face. The shields are a combination of Dark Age Design leftover transfers, and hand painted designs.... black was used throughout to keep things common. The crests were made somewhat diverse but kept to common dyes and bleached horsehair. All in all the regiment loks very smart and made the trip superbly to Historicon by mail then as packed in luggage, with no breakage. I attribute this to glueing the spears into hands before priming and painting.
In their gaming debut in the AtG Imperial Meltdown they held their own, and should have defeated Don Effinger's phalanx' if he hadn't rolled so good.... but they do have the liability of only a 5+ save in Warhammer Ancient Battles. Now I need to get motivated and finish some armored hoplites to join them!
The closeups below show some details, especially the New Design model in the middle, which I have painted as aTheban expatriot. This is a superb model and I wish Newline had a back ranker and command figure to fill out a whole regiment of Thebans or Tegeans.
Questions or Comments Email: jjartist@earthlink.net
01/20/07