Thebans and Hamippoi, or Mission Creep

 

My intention for this week was to paint several regiments of 10mm cavalry for the 30 Years War project.  However, while putting away the Theban hoplites after their heroic performance over the weekend, I found a few figures with spears broken off and put those bases aside for repairs.  As I looked at them I thought that maybe they deserved a refreshing paint job as reward for doing well against the Spartans.  Then, on closer inspection, I found that the bases were not consistent - some having magnetic material, others just magnetic receptive material, requiring different types of sabots to hold them - and they were all of the old, plain colour flocking.   From that I moved on to checking on numbers and thinking about optimal arrangements for fielding units either on the Alala! standard of 24 figures, or my 16 figures.  That led to a decision to increase the number of Thebans from the current 112 to 144...

At the same time, I was thinking about fielding some Hamippoi, mixed cavalry and light infantry units found fairly frequently in ancient battles and allowed for in the Alala! rules.  As I looked through unused figure piles for more Thebans, I found a few infantry figures that I thought would be good to go with light cavalry...

So, where are we now?

On the Theban front, one batch of 24 figures has completed repainting and rebasing.  These are all from the HäT Theban Army box

Another 24 figure batch is underway with two more are ready to start on.  8 more figures have been found to bring the remaining batch of 16 up to 24 but I still have to decide which figures to repurpose for the last 24, or whether to buy new figures.  I have also realised that I need to rebase some officers to go with the expanded contingent.  The target is to be able to field 6 24 figure units, or 10 of 16 figures, or 20 of 8 figures if using the Age of Hannibal rule set.  

To serve as Hamippoi, four Newline figures have been painted.  I'm not quite sure what the code is for these.  They look a little different from other Newline Greek Javelin Men that I have done.  Possibly the are Germanic, but they look close enough.

A few Zvezda figures have been taken from their old bases and repurposed as well.

Existing light cavalry bases have had a hole drilled into them to take a strong magnet - dark green in centre of picture above.

The magnets on the base engage with magnetic material glued to the bottom of each of the infantry figures.

The end result is a couple of units of hamippoi to use with Alala! or other rules that allow for them but which can have the infantry figures removed in a moment so that the light cavalry can revert to standard light cavalry when hamippoi are not called for, saving on painting a fair number of extra horsemen 😃

The plastic figures work well with the small  (3mm diameter) magnets that I have used.  The heavier lead figures are ok but fall off if the base is given a sudden tap.  If I do this again I will use 5mm diameter magnets.

And, I have not completely forgotten the 10mm cavalry.  They all now have faces, courtesy of some surplus paint poured out while working on the Thebans.