10mm Magister Militum Greeks

Having decided to delve into Men of Bronze, I needed a new army. Ok, 'need' might be a bit strong as I can already do at least one force (Philip II's Macedonians) in 6mm. But I figured that with such small armies, 10mm would look nicer than 6mm.

Wanting to start this project with early Macedonians, I knew I needed cavalry wearing the broad brimmed petasos, some hoplites, and some peltasts. After a few days nosing about the internet, I settled on Magister Militum and placed an order. All photos below give an idea of the different sculpts in each pack, but don't do them justice. They are all nicer in hand than in the pictures.

I ordered two packs of hoplites. The top row here shows the Early Hoplite pack, the bottom row shows Late Hoplites. Both packs let you order spears upright, spears at 45 degrees, thrusting spears, or a mix of all three. I ordered both packs with upright spears, mostly for ease of painting, and secondly for the diorama style basing I anticipate doing.

Both packs have 30 spearmen and the three command figures shown. We can immediately dismiss the standard bearers as ahistorical. The two commanders have swords which is fine but otherwise unremarkable, and the little aulos (double flute) players are great. 

The early pack has a mix of hoplites (10 each), crested Corinthian helmet, crested Corinthian helmet and apron on the hoplon, and uncrested Chalkidian helmet. The late pack has a single sculpt (x30) with a crested Chalkidian helmet. The would be eminently interchangeable (my initial plan) if it wasn't for the size of the hoplon shields.

The early chaps have a much larger rim on their shields than the early pack. In the above picture I have mixed them up a bit; early, late. early early, late, early, late, early. Not sure yet whether I can bring myself to mix them, or whether to pass on the late pack and buy another early pack.

The peltasts have four sculpts to the pack, The upper row in the photo shows both sides of two figures with crescent shaped peltas (peltai?). The lower two figures have longer spears and small circular peltas. If you wanted to do the innovative heavy peltasts of Iphikrates, I suppose you could do so by just using the chaps with the round shields, but I'm happy to mix them all up as bog-standard Macedonian infantry. There were eight of each sculpt in the pack, so 32 figures in all.

I couldn't resist ordering this when I saw it - a sacrificing priest. He's wearing a chiton and cloak, and holding a knife. In front of him is a rock (or rough altar) with a goose or eagle or something similar on it. I plan on using him as the 'leader' figure on my unit of hoplites, i.e. in the front and centre position, used for measuring and working out line of sight etc.

And where would Macedonians be without their aristocratic pony-riders. Macedonian coins of the period all show cavalry wearing the broad brimmed petasos hat also favoured by Thessalians and Athenians of the better sort. However, Magister Militum don't do any cavalry wearing petasoi. Neither, for that matter, do Newline or Pendraken - although Pendraken is planning a new range scheduled for next year, so... who knows.

In the absence of suitable headwear, I ordered Thracian light cavalry. These boys have two sculpts in the pack, six figures of each sculpt. They wear long-sleeved chitons which also turn up in period a(and slightly later) depictions of Macedonians and are bare-headed which I found rather handy. A little slicing of heads and fiddling with putty later, and I have a range of petasos-wearing Macedonian cavalry.

Next step is painting them, but I need to clear the last of my 6mm painting que first. Coincidentally, the last 6mm stuff to paint? Macedonian Cavalry.