Wednesday, April 18, 2012

New Baccus Greeks arrive

I finally got around to ordering those sweet new Baccus 6mm ancient Greeks I've been wanting. I bought 53 british pounds worth of figures, a sheet of shield transfers (barely enough for front rankers) and a bag of MDF bases. I got some hoplites, archers, peltasts, cavalry, generals and casualty figures.



The set was missing two strips of hoplite infantry and one general was broken. I sent e-mail to Baccus about it and got a reply not 10 minutes later from Peter Berry stating he'll send me replacements. Now that's customer service! It's just a pity to post mail from Britain to Finland just to deliver less than ten 6mm figures.


The figures look really nice, some of Baccus' best yet. The "attacking hoplites" with their dynamic looking formation are my favourite. As a downside, the spears look dreadfully thin and seem like they will break easily, but if I can keep them intact until painted and based, I think it'll be fine.



My plan was to use the figures with the Hail Caesar rules. I plan to just convert the inches of Hail Caesar to centimeters 1:1, so that a large 28mm game becomes a 6mm game on a small table. My plan initially was to make 6cm * 3cm blocks the size of the standard unit, but after heeding the advice of fellow gamers, I decided I would make the basing compatible with Warmaster Ancients also. This means the default block of 6*3 centimeters will give way to 2*4 centimeters. Here's what a phalanx formation will look like based with Warmaster standards:



I think it looks good and by making the standard unit 8 centimeters wide instead of 6, it looks much bigger. The bases are used with their short edge to the front by only a couple of units in Warmaster, including phalanxes. By using two stands side by side you get something like this with two or three ranks of figures: 




I think it will look quite nice. I'll have to do some more testing and deliberation, but I'm pretty sure this is the way to go.

By the way, my last post on ancient greek warfare spawned some interesting visit hits on this blog. To be precise, keywords such as "naked greek guys" have now been used to visit. Truly, my blog caters to all, even though I'm not sure the person tapping in those keywords was looking for wargaming stuff.

EDIT: Oh, nuts. Greek hoplites are not rated as Phalanxes in Warmaster, and as such, should be based with the normal sideways base. I'm pretty sure the "attacking" hoplite strips will not fit on the stands as such. More deliberation is needed (and hints appreciated).

6 comments:

  1. £53? That must be around 1000 of the little blighters to paint - just as well 6mm doesn't take too much time per figure.

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  2. Only about 500-ish in this set. with my ACW figures I got around to a painting speed of about 100 figures in one evening when I was feeling up for it, not counting the time it took to base them.

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  3. Man, I can't decide between 60x30 or 40x20. I want to say 40x20 but as much as I would like WMA, it's tough to find the main book and with recent demise of GWH, I don't see much hope for it in the near future.

    Polemos, Impetus, HC, all can work with 60x30.

    But I suppose they could all work w 40x20 as well. Oh blast this basing dilemma.

    Btw, I enjoy your blog 'cause it's nice I see another gamer with such similar tastes bouncing back and forth between games. Though I wish I could paint as quick as you.

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  4. Yeah, Rick Priestley's comments on the future of WMA on the hail caesar group weren't very encouraging.

    I'm also torn between 4x2 and 6x3. Both have their pros and cons. I really like the look of the phalanx when I combine 4 stands on their short edge to make a 8x4 sized unit. Having two or three ranks of troops on two 4x2 stands side by side doesn't look very good, though.

    I think 4x2 would work very well for open order troops, cavalry and small units, but the bigger hoplite blocks need to look the part.

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  5. I am currently building some 6mm Baccus ancient armies and I bought the Hail Caesar rules and army lists but after reading through them I am not inspired and will be getting rid. I think that you need way too many figures to start with if you are doing a 6mm army and also the rules seem a bit dull.

    I was lucky to grab a copy of WMA on ebay for £12 which in my opinion are a superior set of rules and are more 6mm friendly.

    Russ

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    Replies
    1. Depends on your preferences. WMA has a strict basing system and you can't fit many 6mm models on a standard base. HC has a more flexible basing scheme and you can create some truly impressive stands but you have to scale it down since the sizes and distances are designed for 28mm. I think a straight "one inch equals one centimeter" conversion works nicely.

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