"Ancients - painting horses" Topic

How do you paint & organize your units?
Getting ready to paint some Macedonians and thinking of painting horses by units – even though I know/suspect their is no precedence for that in that era, but I think it will look cool. Am thinking of this:
Companions = Bays
Thessalonians = chestnuts
Greek Merc light cav = browns
Paonians (sp?) – duns & sorrels & similar
Thracians – multi colored

Does anyone else do anything like that?

I always mix them up.

There is some evidence that e.g. the Egyptians (OK, a bit early but a very influential culture) considered matching horses to be unlucky.

Phil
Ancients on the Move

For ancients I wouldn't bother unless it was for chariot horses for my racing game.

I would go for it. I run fantasy games, and I needed a means of telling, at a glance, which figure stands belonged to which unit. Racial groups (all the same figure sets/poses) get split up into different Units, often commanded by different players. Once we start moving on the table, they get muddied together, and we lost track of which figures belong to which Unit!

I came up with the idea of gluing small, wooden dowels to the same rear corner of the bases, then cover this with a plastic melting tube/bead of a uniform color, to denote which figure stand belongs to which group. It works, though it is cumbersome to change out the color tubes. Once done, it makes it super easy to differentiate which stand belongs to which Unit.

Your idea would make it less obvious, and less conspicuous on the tabletop. I like your idea. It will be a lot of work to paint them in such schemes, but once done, you will be set, more or less. Cheers!

Incidentally, the thought is grouped together, not exactly the same. So for the Greek Merc light cav (6 figs) they would all be on browns, but not the same exact shade – in fact all six would be slightly different.
Same with the Companion (9 figs) bays: from light to dark and everything between, plus different points, etc.

No reason why you can't. The only thing we know is that Bucephalus was black with an ox-shapped blaze.

They're your minis, knock yerself out!!