"Picking an Ancients Army" Topic

I've been in this hobby off and on for the last 4 years. Most of my stuff has ended up in other people's hands, because money is more important than my hobby…
But recently, I've gotten back in, and am now interested in starting up with 2 armies that can oppose each other, and make for an interesting game.

Tell me your favorite match ups, and I'll consider them :)
The rules I am using are WAB, I'm doing them in 15mm, and using the WABforum lists to play.

Below, you can tell me what your favorite matchups are, and why, and how it would interest other people.

I have some rules though, mostly dues to my interests…
My rules are: nothing before the year 1500 BCE, or after 200 CE. No civil wars. Should include some interesting unit (fanatics, elephants, cataphracts etc.) Both armies should have multiple real world enemies (no ancient british who only ever fought themselves and the romans.) Finally, no classical greek armies. Hellenistic greeks are fine, but I have no interest in the classics!

Let the suggestions begin!

Thanks for doing this, hopefully it's fun, and informational
Thanks
Austin

Roman mid-Republic vs Seleucids. Both very versatile, many interesting opponents, and they contain units from many other armies, so when time comes to go further you're already on the road.

My usual advice is 2nd Punic Wars, but both sides only had a few real world enemies: Celts, Numidians, Spanish. The Romans can in addition fight the Macedonians.

I am afraid this is the reality for most armies 1500BC – 200AD as communications weren't as advanced, and even when you have multiple enemies, they usually are just a variant of each other – e.g. barbarians with differently shaped shields, horse archers with different hats, Levantine armies with more skirmishers or more chariots.

My advice these days is to start from the user experience instead. If you are decided on the rules, then work backwards from what kind of army you like to command under the rules. If the way the rules represent say pikes isn't how you see pikes fight "in real life", then you are likely to be disappointed.

You might also consider the opposite approach, which is to do up a bunch of models that work for relatively generic sorts and then add flavour here and there.

The prime example is probably Gauls, who could swing for anything from the Galicians in Spain to the Galatians in Asia minor, via France, Cisalpine Gaul, and Dacia. Not perhaps entirely accurate, but passable.

Slingers in tunics and little else can cover the entire Mediterranean, too.

Chaps in mail with a relatively large shield and thrusting spears or possibly swords can sub for Marian legionaries, thorakitai and imitation legionaries – again you'd have to put up with things like helmets being a bit hit or miss, and shields are probably best left painted in simple colours or maybe two-tone patterns.

If you can acquire infantry similar to the above without the mail, that gets you (again, at a stretch) a model that can be used as a dude with a thureos in a lot of different lists – and you might be okay with stretching it to include scutarii, and occasions when the Romans undertook lighter equipment perhaps.

Linothorax-wearing infantry with spears and a round shield can again, with some imagination, see use as Carthaginians, hoplites, or possibly Italians of various types.

The wide variety of mercenary use, a penchant for possibly naming troop types after tribal archetypes, and some squinting mixed with a not-that-generous amount of 'we just don't know' can get you pretty far.

Basically I'm in the same boat as you and have spent the last month consider how to go about taking up Ancients (but in 28mm as that's what the club's doing) and those are the conclusions I came to after perusing a lot of galleries, a few ospreys, and a lot of forum posts. It might not be your thing – and indeed the problem becomes if you pursue this path there's no end because morphing your figure collection just becomes a matter of 'minor' purchases that rapidly spiral out of hand. Plus you might not be as inclined to go as detailed with the painting and modelling, but that latter actually suits my lack of talent very well.

I would second the suggestion of the Punic Wars period. But taking a look at the whole picture, not just the Second Punic War.

By doing this you have a wide range of shifting alliances and conquests. Beside the Carthaginians and Romans, you have Syracusians, Gauls and Libyans . . . all with very different armies and a wide range of troop types. Yes, Syracuse has some hoplites, but they also have artillery and many other troops as well; and, of course, the Carthaginians have elephants. The Spanish and Gauls are both opponents and allies serving within other armies.

-- Jeff

Find something historical … 2nd Punic War for instance … and look at it as an exploration, not just a game.

Phil

Punic Wars are a great suggestion but why not Bronze Age chariot armies? Hittites, Mycenaeans, New Kingdom Egyptians, Mitanni: loads of colour & interest.

Or the first masters of war, the Assyrians? Their enemies include Babylonians, NKE, Medes & Israelites if you have a religious bent.

I like those armies, but note what the OP specified.

Successor Wars(Not a cut a dry Civil War as the armies had many unique features to them so would look a bit different due to the different regions they were coming from. Lots of choice here.)
Pyrrhus vs Romans/Greeks
Roman mid-Republic vs Seleucids/Barbarians
3rd Century Rome vs Sassanids(barely after your time bracket)
Punic Wars of course

Christopher

A couple years back I got into doing the Punic Wars with WAB 1.0 and the Armies of Antiquities lists. I bought HAT 1/72 scale plastics. I think I spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 USD on both armies combined. But when I put everything on the table at once each side can field something like 5000-6000 points.
The Romans have of course the legionaries and auxiliaries. But also Spanish, Italian, and "Barbarian" allies.
The alliance that makes up the armies of Carthage are even more diverse due to their mercenary nature.
Also with all the factions within each of these of armies you can fight out smaller battles between them.

Successor armies, esp an eastern one with elephants, like Greco-Bactrian or such.

I have always disliked the "Tell me what I should collect and paint!" threads.

It means you are not all that interested in the period. Paint and collect what interests YOU.
My opinion is irrelevant.

Winston Smith has a point but I assume everyone has to start somewhere …

Phil

I have played in a lot of periods, and have a very broad interest. If I were to just paint what interested me, I would be painting everything from Alexander to Attila, and everything in between.

Thanks
Austin

I play from Ashurbanipal to Botha. Therapy doesn't seem to help.

I think Trojan War is your best bet. Cool armies on both sides. Heroic characters and you can do it as historical or as Hollywood or as Homer as you like and it is all good.

Plus, if you see the Greeks as the Sea Peoples they fought everyone else who was around at the time just about.

With Winston here, play what you want otherwise buy bonds.

I notice Austin that you are using Warhammer. Didn't I read a very positive review several months back by you on Sword and Spear. Why WAB instead of S&S?

I second Sobieski's suggestion.
The Roman's can fight Carthage, Gauls, Macedonians, Spanish, Italian hill tribes that revolted during Hannibal's invasion, Illyrians and maybe some I've forgotten.
The Selucids can fight Ptolemies, Parthians, Bactrian greeks, Galations, perhaps Pergamon, Skythians, Armenians and even Indians at a stretch.
I started with Selucids and Carthaginians, as 2 interesting contemporary armies and by expanding into their enemies and enemies of their enemies now have over 20 different armies.

what we do is use cardboard/mdf bases (the ones you will mount your 15mms on) mark them up as the units and then try out for a while until you're happy with an army – nothing worse than painting an entire army up and then hating playing them. I'd also be interested to see why you've 'gone back' to WAB as I've found sword and spear perfectly pleasant!

Which is, of course, the down side of picking armies with lots of possible opponents. My Carthaginians fight against my Greeks, Syracusans, Hellenistic Greeks, Republican Romans, Pyrrhic, Ptolemaic, Gauls, and my Parthians against the Romans, Bactrian Greeks, Indians, Seleucids……..

My two armies have become fifteen, not all complete, and this shows no sign of stopping !

Another vote for Seleucids and early republican Romans.
The Seleucids have elephants and cataphracts (amongs other troop types), and can fight a lot of enemies. Ptolemies, Parthians, Galatians, …

The Romans army is completely different, and also fought a lot of enemies. From Carthagenians over Spanish to Gauls and more.

I think this is your best option to start with.
As you see, expansion (more enemies)is easy. The question is which first?

Seleucids? You mean the "marching circus"?

Seleucids and Rep. Rome is what I am doing at the moment (DBA/ADG).

Lots of love for the seleucids!
Elephants, cataphracts, warbands, pikes… I may be sold.

There was a question asking why I was no longer using sword and spear: the short answer is I couldn't get support for it.
Nobody was willing to give it, or any of the other ten games I have reviewed more than a cursory look and maybe a playtest.
Besides that, i sold most of my collection to pay for my wedding.
I'm just now getting back into the hobby.

Keep the suggestions coming!

Thanks
Austin

Nice army, monger!
I need them 0.o

Thanks
Austin

I would start by buying generic Greek hoplites and go from there. They fought for and against just about everyone for nearly 400 years. Depends how picky you are of course – hoplite equipment did evolve during this period.

The main benefit of Selucids is that the core is still the pike blocks. Once you have that, its easy to add a little to make it one of the other Successor armies with completely different support troops. Instead of Cataphracts you can have hordes of Thracians with big two handed falx, something similar to Alexander's army, or have a bit of Egyptian flavour. Again, they didn't look exactly the same, but close enough for me.

Phil Barker once wrote "buy an army you love. Then when it loses, you'll still want to keep it".

Or something like that. It's good advice.

For flexibility tho' probably Alexandrian/Successor armies. If the worst comes to the worst they can just fight each other.

I'm thinking Pyrrhic and Republican Roman… The Pyrrhic army has so many moving parts, it can make up the bulk of a TON of other armies at and around the same time period.

Besides, I have a lot of respect for Pyrrhus, he is one of the characters that history tends to undermine, understandably though. He was an excellent leader…for the most part.. And he had some pretty interesting enemies, and lead some interesting (although unsuccessful) campaigns.

Thanks
Austin

Here is my Magnesia game from a few years back at Cold Wars. Probably over 1200 28mm figures. This is one of the great ancient match ups.

‌7B by Eusebeia2002, on Flickr

You can watch the whole slide show at

link

Wow, those armies are AMAZING! Marcus Brutus, that set up is absolutely incredible.

Thanks
Austin

Seleucid morphs into Pyrrhic, which is handy if you want to fight a pike-and-elephant army against the Carthaginians, which for me are the number three choice. But I'd start with Seleucids, since they've got such a bizarre range of bells and whistles available.

As mentioned by numerous others, something along the lines of Romans, Carthaginians, Successors and minor states is probably what you want as they have lots of the "interesting" troop types.

For something completely different, what about the rise of Persia under Cyrus, prior to the Greek-Persian wars? Besides the Persians, there are Neo-Babylonians, Skythians, Egyptians and Lydians. You could even justify an Indian army as they were just on the other side of Persia. Overall, not as versatile as the Roman-Carthaginian-Successors but still colourful.

On another forum, somebody suggested parthia and marian rome.
What do you guys think about that?

Thanks
Austin

LC armies are tricky. Some rules don't give 'em a chance, and in others they're unbeatable.

We are playing WAB… in my experience with WHFB, LC is treated relatively well

Thanks
Austin

How do you say "seleucid"?
I dropped greek in the first semester. I'm pretty sure it's a hard K sound, but idk.
is it "Suh-loo-kid" or"Seh-loo-kid" or "Suh-loo-sid" or "Seh-loo-sid"?

Also, after analyzing what you have said here, and on other forums, Seleucids are the way to go. And republican rome… I can only expand from there

Thanks
Austin

Dagwood, did the Carthaginians and the Ptolemaic lot ever come to blows? I hope the answer's "yes".

Seleucid would have a hard "k" sound in Greek, but in English it's one of those points people despise each other over without any very solid grounds to justify their own choices.

Re: Roman-Parthian: I don't know WAB but generally a heavy infantry army versus a horse archer army isn't the most interesting tabletop encounter. However, a Roman vs Parthian campaign could be interesting. You could even throw in a not impossible Han Chinese enemy. That could be fun. Think of those poor Parthians squeezed between two super powers.

I always say Sel-U-Sid…. not proper, but its a habit. The proper way sounds more like Sell-U- kids, which is fun. LOL

In addition to Romans, Parthians and, possibly, Han Chinese, you also have operating in that region Pontic, Bosporan, Jewish, Indo-Greek, very late Successor, Armenian and Sarmatian armies. Of course, in the west are Spanish and Gallic armies for the Romans.

Sobieski, The Carthagians and Ptolemaics haven't come to blows yet. Maybe that can be my next battle ? They do share the same elephants, though.

I'm now of the view that it's Selukid, but I think Caeser (Kaeser) said Weeni, Weedi, Weeki and the front line of the Roman army were the wellytees.

I tend to favour the hard K because I think Seluekos basically just sounds better than if one were to say Seleusos, but it's really horses for courses (though imagine the consternation when someone says horses for sources!)

Did Latin of that era really use what we use when W to represent when we wrote that down in English as a V?

"V' was probably a consonantal "u", a bit like our "university", though with a different value, of course. Latin has no "J", "K", or "W", and generally wrote "U" and "V" with two straight strokes.

I just go back to what I was taught as schoolboy Latin, and you didn't argue with the Latin master!