15mm Athenian Greek Command Commission

15mm Greek Command Commission

Paul surprised me at Iceni earlier this month with another bag of figures to paint. He said "I want two Generals elements out of this lot and you can keep the rest." Since I was unsure which figures he wanted to use I painted up all fourteen castings. I have never painted AB Ancients before, they were cleanly cast but the Hoplites had a separate shield arm that needed to be glued onto the castings. They were fairly easy to paint up once I had settled on a colour scheme, helmet crests and sourced some suitable shield designs to copy by hand onto the plain bronze shield faces. The figures are on plain sand bases because Paul will be basing them himself to match his other elements in the Athenian Army he is building.

I think he will like them and once he decided what he wants to keep I may get some figures out of it for my own collection.

15mm Greek Cavalry Commission

15mm Greek Cavalry Commission

As part of an ongoing project one of my club mates is building an Athenian Later Hoplite Greek Army, specifically the one commanded by Iphikrates between 374 BC and 353 BC.

Part of the army commission meant I was asked to paint up sixteen Xyston Greek Cavalry, Codes ANC20025 & 20026. As with all Xyston castings there were lots of fine flow line tags and they of course require assembly. The figures on the website on show using one throwing javelin and with careful drilling out of both hands I was able to provide each casting with two javelins which looks more realistic.

I was asked to proved them unbased so he can match them to the rest of his army.

Iphikratean Peltasts Commission

Iphikratean Peltasts 15mm Commission

As part of an ongoing project one of my club mates is building an Athenian Later Hoplite Greek Army, specifically the one commanded by Iphikrates between 374 BC and 353 BC when he ordered Athenian Marines removed from their ships and deployed as special long speared shielded peltasts classed as Reg Ax [X] in DBM. 

He chose to use a mix of Xyston ANC20018 Peltasts with pilos [16 figures] and ANC 20032 Peltasts with Attic helmets [8 figures]. I also added in two spare modified Museum Miniatures Peltasts Code SE04 because he wanted a couple of spare figures for a command element. He wanted a mix of shielded and unshielded figures for variety so I mixed and matched as best as I could using the 16 shields he provided. Xyston are annoying castings because you have to drill out the hands to carry their very long spears and their shields are loose so they needed gluing on. He will be basing them himself to match his other troops so I just needed to paint the bases sand to hide any bare metal that might show through the basing materials.

Information is scant on what they looked like and the only images I could find had red and white crests where worn and light blue shields with nautical motifs.

I started them a week ago and I am quite pleased with the end result. I hand painted the shields because they were too small to use transfers on without a lot of aggravation. As they say "the cash is useful!"

Xyston Mixed Codes ANC 20018 & 20032

Museum Miniatures Code SE04