"Warlord Games' Greeks - Ancient? Classical? Confused!" Topic

Warlord Games now has an Ancient Greek box set, and a Classical Greek set.
link

I'm not that familiar with how hoplites were equipped. Historically how much difference were there between the two? If I want to be able to game Thermopylae, the Peloponnesian Wars, and later fight against (and with) Alexander, do I have to build two different armies? Or can I get by with one set?

It's really important to study history before falling for marketing crap that companies pull.

I assume that one of the sets have some metal cuirasses and the other doesn't. In truth, metal cuirasses were used well in to twilight of Greece, just not that often. It's also possible that metal looking cuirasses are actually made of leather. Same goes for helmet types.

It looks like 2 sets are totally mixable. They just decided to use "Ancient" and "Classical" for marketing purposes for more variety of poses and equipment. Even 'Spartan" box looks like it's mixable with others. It all depends on how you paint them. Same types of equipment was used throughout Greek world, no matter what modern archaeologists call it now. Haircuts and beards, nudity etc. were going in and out of style and there was always some variety, just like in modern times.

Set 1: "Slightly Earlier Greek Hoplites"

Set 2: "Slightly Later Greek Hoplites"

Good advice from both Igwar and Mexican Jack. Maybe those high crested Thracian helmets might be a bit later-looking for Themopylae (300 Spartans time-frame). Maybe the Pilos type too. But only a purist would have a problem with them. For later period use, who could say when earlier equipment would stop being used – like the Illyrian/Chalcidian types of helmets in the early set. Body armor-wise, the linothorax types would look fine in either period; supposedly the metal cuirass with lowered edges (extended below the abdomen) came later. But again, only a purist would have trouble with these minor details – all hard to see behind the large shield anyway. So, I'd say go for it – use both boxes for either early or later periods if you want. And as far as "Classical" – they could just as well stretch that to Hellenistic; and "Ancient" with Late-Archaic! I may eventually get those boxes too, but right now I have other projects as well has having a bunch of OG and 1st Corps Hoplites already. Best, Dean

No good advice at all Not by any means. Go try to convince anybody that a French revolutionary infantryman could pass for one in the 100 Days campaign. And it is obvious that in a few years some equipment should still be used, not? … Sure? Just go try and then do not complain at somebody telling you it is completely out of theme. Of course you can collect the miniatures you want and then mix them and paint them the way you like, but do not use historical speculation as fact proving you can be certain.

Corinthian "archaic" closed helmets were out of fashion and most surely out of use by the "classical" times of the Athens-Sparta wars, and absolutely out of place in a fight against Alexander's Macedonians. At least, just as out of place as a Punic wars republican Roman fighting under Trajan's orders. Different helmets, shields… Even if you make auxilia with mail and oval shields, the helmets would be impossible to "pass". Again of course it is your army, they are your miniatures. It is completely possible to do as you want with them.

Warlord has two, no mait, three sets of hoplites done by Immortal and perfectly different. Spartans have a majority of Pilos helmets, they have characteristic hair styles too. Early hoplites wear "closed" corinthian helmets, "vertical" crests, bronze cuirasses (and greaves and more protections) and even boeotian shields like Pitt at Troy which were outdated and not used later (most surely the Athenian fighting against Sparta would cut off the sides og his gradpa's helmet and forget about that hot and hard to wear cuirass). Later hoplites wear more "open" helmets, thracian ones, all wear aspis and linothorax, even unarmoured. All of 'em are distinct.

So all in all, you can play them against Spartans, Carthaginians, late imperial Romans, Saxons, Normans, Mongols or Turks. But if you want to be historically correct, even if using history as an inspiration (ImagiNation style), do not use archaic hoplites to fight Alexander or Romans. It's 100-150 years wrong!

Maybe the IX-XI centuries are more given to such a mix, but hoplites are not so. And it is no marketing crap. Crap is saying that marketing early imperial romans as early imperial romans is crap because they could be used to fight Hannibal, or that hoplites should not be marketed as early or late because of helmet/hair style/armour changes.

Napoleonic French changed their uniforms every few months, it seems, usually some useless thingy that particular bureaucrat wanna be clothes designer felt was necessary to improve the recruitment and elan. May be even profit from government contract while at it.

Greek soldiers provided their own equipment and used captured enemy stuff left over after religious dedications. Equipment that was made out of metal served several generation of fighters. In addition, fashion didn't change that often, at least from out point of view.

Pilos helmets were poor man helmets, derived from every day hat. Spartans were poorer society, that's why many were equipped with simple helmets. Thracian helmets simulated Thracian hats, Beotian helmets – Beotian everyday headgear, etc.

There were similarities to Napoleonic French period. It seems that dominant military power influenced the equipment and fashion. Spartans are winning – must be their long hair and helmets. Let's copy that, we'll fight better. French are winning – let's tailor our uniforms to French fashion, we'll fight better.

I'm sure there's no real accurate answer, there's so much detail about what was worn at what time that is being guessed at. Some depictions of the Spartans show them wearing linen cuirass with Corinthian helmets in the Peloponnesian war. Some think they wore their red capes and Lacedaemonian helmets during the war. Who knows for certain. I would just do a mixture personally, especially if you were using Helots, they wouldn't be using the more up to date armor so throwing in some classical Greeks might work.

Looking at the descriptions on the boxes it seems that the ancient box has generally older pattern armor than the classical box. That being said it is really necessary to look at all the figure and see which ones fit where. Some older types of armor persisted in later periods, especially in backward areas like Italy. This is supported by archaeological evidence.
Most city states provided their own armor and it is up to the individual to decide what looks best and where. For instance, I like to put Thebans in Boeotian helmets by mid fifth century and most of their hoplites are unarmored in plain white linen. Other units have expensive armor in gaudy colors. This, I believe, reflects the diversity in economic status in Thebes and the necessity to field an army large enough to defend them from their neighbor Athens at a fraction of the cost.
The Spartans are another matter. At the time of Thermopylae they were equipped much like other Hoplites, with individual shield motifs. During the Peloponnesian Wars, they were equipped at State expense and with uniform equipment. I am of the school that believes their armor got considerably lighter to make up for their lack of light support troops.
As people have stated it is hard to prove any of this conclusively, but IMHO it is incumbent upon the ancient gamer to understand why he has chosen his figures and be able to explain it. According to Lykourgas, "A man's words must be harmonious with his deeds."

Well put, Agesilaus. Historical method doesn't promise unquestionably accuracy, just uses the most probable interpretation. Traditionally, historical wargamers have used the most plausible appearance for their figures.

There is plenty of evidence that armour styles changed over the periods covered and no evidence that older styles continued in use (they may well have, but there's no particular proof). So the most plausible look for a Hoplite from the late 5th Century is the look characteristically shown on late 5th century pottery.

Phil
soawargamesteam.blogspot.com

I would also add that most wargamers don't have unlimited budgets, so we have to make one army serve in place of several.

For example, my old French Napoleonic were of the 1807/09 period. However, I had no problem using them to refight any of the Waterloo scenarios. Besides, I like the look of the older style flags. .

My Romans are from the late 1st century BC to the 1st century AD. As such, there are cohorts with hamata and oval scutum, and a couple with segmentata and rectangular scutum, and even one with hamata and rectangular scutum.

My "Celta" cover quite a lot of ground, and a screaming half-nekkid barbarian fits in with an awful lot of time periods, IMHO.

Yes, I try very hard to ensure the historical accuracy of my ancients armies, but that won't stop me from using some OOP troops as proxies when needed. I'm a wargamer, not a millionaire.

V/R

So the most plausible look for a Hoplite from the late 5th Century is the look characteristically shown on late 5th century pottery.

Quite so.

Mind you, that does raise a whole set of other questions about dating pottery, about interpreting the scenes on them (fantasy or reality?), and the fact that production of figured pottery was dominated by producers from a small area (mainly Athens in the 5th century).

Sculpture does come into the mix too, since the Athenians started producing figured funerary reliefs again at the end of the 5th century. Sometimes it can even be dated quite precisely (Dexileos' monument of 394 is the firmest fixed point). Philoxenos' stele (in the Getty) is as nice an illustration of an Athenian hoplite c.400 as you could ask for.

Generally though the majority of the visual evidence can only be dated with confidence to a given half-century or so (which is partly why, pace Dogged, I don't find his comparison with the vastly better documented late-18th and early-19th centuries particularly telling).

All that (including Phil's point) makes me think that it's fine to have e.g. some Athenian hoplites still wearing closed Corinthian helmets (and metal greaves) in the Peloponnesian war (on the basis of classical red-ground and white-ground pottery) – which were not so very different from what was deposited in the 'warrior' graves of the 7th-century Argolid. In practical wargaming terms I think that you could probably use the same Athenian army from c.500 to c.380 without too much anxiety. Things change sufficiently over the 4th century that you might well want a significantly different army for anything from then on. All of which is, in fact, compatible with how Warlord describe these boxes, I notice now.

But even then, at table-top distances it wouldn't be particularly obvious (or worrisome to most people) if you had a more-typically-fifth-century phalanx fighting at the Granicus or Issus, for example. From several feet away I can't readily tell the difference between a Corinthian and a Thracian and an Attic helmet on a 28mm figure. As Dean observed details of body armour are usually obscured behind the shields, which are what draw the eye.

Agesilaus makes an excellent point too. What he describes for his Theban army would probably go for Athens too – there was surely a difference in the quality and flashiness of the equipment used by the 5,000 or so hoplites who were most frequently deployed, especially for any long, distant expeditions, and the thousands more who would only have been mustered for local defence or short-term incursions into the neighbouring Megarid or Boeotia.

I've always figured, generally speaking, you're safer using older styles in newer periods than newer styles in older periods. Archaeology and pottery tell us that item x existed and was in use by y. We can't say definitively it wasn't in use before, but we know it was a possibility that it might still be used later.

For example, there's nothing to indicate that the linen cuirass even existed at the time of Troy, but we know the bell bronze "muscle" cuirass existed by the time of Ipsus. That means that while having a Greek at troy in a later-style linen cuirass is pure conjecture, there's nothing to preclude the possibility that some bumpkin of a mercenary hoplite wasn't wearing his great-grand-daddy's armour in the latter fight.

Make sense?

It states quite clearly in the descriptions which era applies for each box. However, not wanting to spoil Warlord Games profit margins, surely one box with the ability to swap bodies, heads, legs etc would have sufficed for the two periods in question?
And Evilben and firemonkey are spot on….you can get away with older style armour in later periods but not the reverse….(not always though)….

Are those the Immortal Miniatures hoplites boxed under the Warlord Games name? I do have those sets.

It is impossible to tell what the difference between the two sets is from the Warlord Games website. The "Ancient" hoplites don't look all that Thermopylae era to me. They have lots of shields with the "aprons" attached and I see a couple of Boeotian style helmets in there.

The second or "Classical" set has some helment types that are newer or post Persian War era plus a few earlier Chalkidian era helmets. I would agree with others that the "Ancient" set might be better for the Persian Wars era.

So if I wanted to do Syracusans fighting against Carthage, which set would be better?

@taskforce58 -
It is generally acknowledged that helmet and armour styles shift from the Thermopylae period to the Hellenistic era; helmets shift from Corinthian to a great diversity of lighter helms, whilst armour on average decreases from bronze to the linothorax or nothing.

I believe the Warlord/Immortal sets do reflect this distinction. At least this was so for the old Immortals, but I've yet to crack open a Warlord box.

If you want accuracy then you be prepared to include many non-closed helms in the Greeks v Alexander. Otherwise, play an army that has miraculously preserved its great-grandfathers' gear.

For Thermopylae, you can use the newly re-released Spartans in linen armour (linothorax) by Warlord/Immortal, or the Gorgon Miniatures range, which has a Leonidas figure. Both are great sets, though Immortal is slimmer than Gorgon.

You shouldn't feature pilos helms at Thermopylae, that would be too early. And no lambdas either. If budget is an issue and time is not, you can always convert a set of plastic Ancient Hoplitai to Spartans by adding braided hair with greenstuff.

@FreeportPirate – the Classical set would be better for Syracusans. You may also want to look at Gorgon's Etruscan range.

"But only a purist would have a problem with them."

You make it sound that that would be a really rare wargaming phenomenon…

I'd be curious to hear which are better for Syracusans as well!

Classical Im thinking.