Meanwhile, back at the painting desk, more Macedonians

After my efforts back in March to refurbish my old 'Red' taxis of Macedonian phalangites to bring them up to a standard where they would not look dowdy against the growing army of Romans I sorted through my lead and plastics piles to see how many more phalangites remained unpainted.  Quite a lot it turned out.  The picture above shows several untouched sprues of Zvezda figures and far more Newline lead figures than I recalled having bought!  There were also more Zvezda figures that had been used to make up numbers in the original Red and Blue Taxeis, but which I have now decided to remove and regroup into wholly Zvezda bases, along with quite a lot of HäT figures at different stages of painting.  Nothing for it but to put the nose to the grindstone and work through them as a lot of Macedonians are going to be needed for the Lamian War campaign - by the final battle, Antipater had an army of 40,000, mostly phalangites - as well as for future wars of the Successors.

So far I have removed all the 'Blue' taxis figures from their old bases, put aside the Zvezda figures and replaced them with 17 newly painted HäT figures which now await metal colours and attachment of sarissas.

HäT replacements for Zvezda figures in the smartened up Blue Taxis

31 HäT figures brightened up and revarnished, requiring only rebasing

48 more figures waiting for their turn to be refreshed and rebased with the rest.

I have yet to decide what to do with the remaining 56 partly painted HäT figures.  There are not enough for a full taxis but they could provide another 4 syntagma to beef up forces when required.  I will probably work on the Zvezda figures first.  Again, I don't have enough for a full taxis but they are lovely figures to look at and will add both beef and bling to armies that field them.  For both these groups of figures and the Newline lead figures I will move away from the white base colour used for the red and blue taxeis.  Those were painted long ago without the benefit of good reference works : I now know that more colourful clothing was available.

Colour schemes for these extra HäT and Zvezda figures need to be rethought

Update : 3 June 2024

Refurbished Taxis based and ready for action