From ByronM - Last unit of Greeks and a group shot ( 90 points )

Well, it has been a long road to get here, but I have just finished off this year's mega project, or at least mega for me.  I find I have a really hard time staying on task and painting any given single thing for a long time, as I get bored with the same thing over and over again.  I also find that I simply can not force my self to do anything but my tabletop quality when painting anything were there is more than 10-20 of them. That has been why traditionally I have stuck with sci-fi games where each unit can be very different.  However, this year I really wanted to do a project that I have had in mind for years and years, ancient Greeks.


Since there is no one else around doing that era in our play group (Fawcett Avenue Conscripts) I figured that I had to complete enough of a force that games could be played with just what I have.  While a longer term goal will to be adding a Persian force to face off against the Greeks, for now the Greeks can fight among themselves, which the did throughout their history.  This led to me doing a mixed Greek force consisting of Spartans, Thebans, and Athenians.  While the Spartans make up about 1/2 of the force the others can be arranged to fight against them, or later with them against the Persians.

While I have taken short cuts on many of the units to make sure I get the project done, and they are not all done to the standards I hold for my single figures (like my Kingdom Death Dragon, or Alice in Wonderland) they look just fine when ranked up on the tabletop and allowed me to finish the army.

With all of that preamble done, my final unit is a group of unarmoured Spartans from Foundry and sculpted by Steve Saleh along side a command stand with figures from Steve as well but this time from Gorgon Studios.  They are awesome figures with a ton of character. If it was not for my dislike of metal figures (I know, heresy around here, but I prefer plastic then resin and metal as a last resort) I would likely have done my whole force from figures that he has sculpted.

The one complaint I have with the figures is the spears that they come with.  Sure they are metal and won't break, but they have no hand grips, no end weight, and just look wrong compared to all the other plastic spears in the force.  I however did not have enough extra plastic spears to kit them out with so had to use the metal ones.

 

As you may have noticed, not all of the Spartans have their logo on the shield.  Only 1/2 of the shields came with the lambda on them, and I tried both hand painting the others and applying decals to the others, neither looked correct next to the embossed shields, so in the end I decided to leave them blank.

I needed a third command stand for the Spartans so I used the last few figures I had from the command set from Gorgon to make up one.  These characters just ooze character so I gave them and the unit some extra attention compared to a lot of the other units.

Last up, since I keep promising it and never actually got around to it yet....  some pictures of the whole force arranged in battle.  There are a total of 16 units, 6 command stands, and 7 casualty markers (I need to make more but ran out of figures).

Overall, while challenging to stay on task for these, I am thrilled with how they came out in the end, and even more thrilled that we will soon be able to explore a new era of combat in our gaming group.  I also have the suspicion they will be requested to make the trip west with me next time I visit Curt and his gaming group.

The Greeks also allowed me to smash my points goal, and along with my relatively simple monochromatic zombie-bomb set a personal best points record that is highly unlikely that I will ever break.


The actual newly painted figures here are:
16x spartans in unit = 80 points
2x spartans on command stand = 10 points
Total = 90 points



From Minion Tamsin:
More glorious Greeks! It's been great watching you plug away at this project and I can appreciate how much of a grind you must have found it, but the pics at the end showing all of them together must bring you some warm & fuzzies. What a magnificent sight they make, but I'm sure you're glad to see the back of them for a while.
That's another well earned 90 points for you Byron.