Two New Phalanx Finished

Keeping with Ancients but dropping a couple of scales for my Hail Caesar Army. I have added another two pike blocks to my Macedonian army. This leaves me with the figures to do one more block but I have four more to collect at Triples from Baccus giving me eight blocks for starters.

Due to the size of units and army I want to achieve I am still experimenting with what to paint and what to leave out. The red shields have no decoration at all whilst the whites have a simplified Macedonian Star. I really don't know if I can get away with not painting the shields beyond basic colour so your thoughts would be most welcome.

Last week one of our two cats knocked my first block off the table. I found it the next day base up resting on the pikes. Not a little worried I turned it over to find all the pikes were still in place and immediately sprang back in place. Big thank you to Dr. Mike for the tip of using brush bristles for the pikes!

Close inspection shows the use of a black undercoat and being a little sparing with the painting still gives a good chunk of detail. My original block was done in just one day from first paint to flocking. These two took about 12 hours between them and I think I may be able to get that down further. I feel I have the best of detail to effect with these, enough to look correct but sparing enough not to suck up time for little more gain.

The Pike are on 60x60 bases with the poor Hoplites on 60x30 with half the number of figures. I wanted the pike to be more commanding than the Hoplites. Having double the figures helps but it needed the extra depth to reinforce this. Lee's Roman's will also be on the 30mm bases, it also helps reinforce the point that pike are not in battle line formation.

Standard medium and heavy troops are on 60x30 bases, light troops 60x40 as their open formation would warrant more space for less troops. Light cavalry share the 60x60 base size with the phalanx if archers and 60x40 if javelin armed. Skirmish units are on round bases to show their status clearly and make them fit in better with their role.

The army so far, it's obvious I am suffering for a lack of cavalry but I have two units of Companions on the table at the moment, along with some medium infantry. It's still way off game ready but once I have some of the cavalry done I can at least think about getting them out to face one of Lee's armies, that is once he has them rebased. Once I have a fighting force I will start to build up the Persian's, 6mm will really show off the Persian hoard like no other.