"Popularity of Hellenistic Age armies today ?" Topic

Salutations, gentlefolk !

Have committed myself to return some big favors from a friend by painting him up a DBA/Triumph/LADG-100 army. Now, he likes elephants. So he thinks he wants an army from the Alexander & Successors / Pike & Elephant / Hellenistic era, but he's wondering if this period is popular, if his army will find some contemporary competition.

Now, back around the turn of the century, this was one of the leading eras for Ancients miniatures. Is it, now:
more popular than it was ?
about the same as ever ?
less popular than it was ?

And if you want to give me your opinions on why this is so, and other related areas, you are welcome.

I think its a great period, one of my favorites.

I have Seleucid and Ptolemy armies in 15mm to refight Raphia, lots of elephants. However the armies can also be used for Alexander's conquests as I also have a large Persian army. It's a great wonderful period.

My other go ancients are the Punic Wars because form two armies, Rome and Carthage you can build at least three more Gallic, Spanish and Numidian. Lots of colour and lots of choice.

At the club one member at least has his Seleucid army as his go to army.

Although he did go with Palmyrans for a BBDBA tourney.

They are on my list of to does.

Very popular- same as ever!

I only fight historical opponents so I stay away from competitions, but i have built large armies for three periods and they have worked well:
PUNIC
Carthaginian
Roman
Spanish
Gallic
Numidian

LATE ROMAN BRITAIN
Romans
Picts
Saxons
Irish
Ulster
Strathclyde/Welsh

1066
Vikings
Late Saxons
Normans

All three have been great fun, and I'm now considering the Macedonian-Late Greek-Persian period as a possible future project with Thracians and Galatians moving over from the above armies.
I think you'll find lots of historical competition for An Alexandrian army.

Thanks very much for your comments here !

If you go back through issues of The Courier and other magazines from the 70s and 80s most ancients battle reports, discussions, strategies, etc., usually involved either Alexander's or Successor type armies. So, I would argue that they've always been popular in the hobby. Painting one, however (having just spent a year and a half on one!) is definitely a challenge and there's very little information on what most of the units actually looked like.

By the way, one of the current projects in the queue is a Greco-Indian BBDBA army.

Just need to decide on shield patterns to get back to work on it.

I'm presently working on a 25/28mm army I can field as a Lysmachid or Bithinian army.

pjm

I think a question to ask is where does your friend live?

Are there opponents?

Is there a club(s) within reasonable distance? (If not, is he able/willing to travel?)

What rulesets does he have? Is he willing to learn? (personally, I would design/base my army (which I do) for multiple systems – meaning individually based figures – they can stand side by side and/or be put on movement trays)

Perhaps, building army groups of opponents for the period would be best and then he could invite any willing to play to play as he has all the pieces (kind of like asking someone to play Chess, but you only have black or white pieces hoping to find an opponent with the opposing colour …). (like Corona66 seems to have done)

I have an Athenian Hoplite army. In our group there is a Spartan army, Persian, 2 different Successor armiesand 2 Alexandrian Macedonian armies. Seems pretty popular to me.

Salutations, Mr. WMyers, and other gentlefolk !

Friend lives in the Philadelphia suburbs, somewhere between Valley Forge and West Chester.

Couple of boardgame clubs in area, how well he'll do in converting them ;-) … He's been avid boardgamer for most of his life. He bought a foothill of lead, around the turn of the century, painted some of it, decided painting minis wasn't his thing, so I've bulldozed the dust off of some of the bags…

They're 15mm, IMHO bit small for individual-figure basing, so using ye olde WRG standard.

Am painting some other armies for some mutual friends…

The future lies ahead !