Sean here :) (uploaded by Martin in case of confusion)
So any of you who know Ben and Martin (aka Dumb and Dumberer!) know they love to drag their friends into their latest game they're playing. In their defence I did drag them back into MTG (sorry!) and Flames of War, and maybe one or two others actually come to think about it....
Anyway, they were extolling the virtues of Hail, Caeser, so I thought 'oh why not'. Now the key thing in any new game is read the rules, get a demo/test game then choose an army. Well I skim read parts of the rules and jumped straight to choosing an army from the Biblical and Ancients army book, who to choose?
Well an army that was around during the Roman and Ptolomeic empires would be ideal, but not essential. Key considerations for me are,
1) ALL models must be available in plastic. I love plastic and hate metal, I am willing to use metal and resin (which I am quite fond of) for some models,
2) It must be an interesting army. No not exotic, full of elephants and warmachines or super soldiers, it just have to have that certain something about it.
So lets have a look,
Chinese and Indians, awesome, getting models... less awesome!
Romans, heavy infantry, war machines, massive troop choice. BUT Ben is already doing them and they're a bit too popular.
Carthage, again similar pros and cons to Romans.
Maccabees, now here's something interesting, troop choices, well infantry wise not much, cavalry wise lots, but you can't take much cavalry. The interesting bit is in the blurb. For those who don't know about 170 BC the Jews rose against their Persian masters and fought a mainly guerilla war to obtain independence for Judea (in essence the forerunners to the Judean Peoples Front, the Peoples Front to Judea and the oft forgotten Judean Popular Front). As a rebel force they had no uniform or standard equipment, just what they could get their hands on. They'll do nicely.
So what models to use? Metal Maccabean models are available, but only in small packs, so that's expensive and I don't like metal. Plus I think if I did use the metal models there aren't many poses and the force would look quite uniform, which doesn't seem right. Maccabean Judah existed from 170 BC to 37 BC, so armies they could come across, Selucids (Greeks, one of the divisions of Alexanders the Greats empire), Ptolemians (Greeks in Egypt, again deacended from Alexander), Parthians (Persians), Romans and briefly Armenians.
I need to make medium spearmen (actually equipped with, spears or javelins or both) , medium spearmen with long spears (that's a spear that's longer than a normal spear but shorter than a pike, apparently there's a difference!), archers, skirmishers with bows/javelins/slings depending on my fancy and light, medium and heavy cavalry with javelins, spears, bows, kontos (pretty much combine as you wish, 7 Cavalry choices!)
Most of the armour has spears regular or super-sized, which is handy because that is what everyone in the Mediterranean used at the time, so I'm thinking get some Hoplites (long spears), early Roman allied troops and Carthagian soldiers, gives me spears, javelins, various armour, helmet and shield types. Bowmen and slinger sprues and chop and change the bits together. Should be fun. Cavalry, well probably Greek and Roman models will be best I think.
So the models should look cool, but how to give them a united look? Well I'm thinking use of Tyrion Purple for cloth on at least one model per stand (4 models per stand for infantry). Tyrion Purple was an important colour in ancient Israel, though I will substitute this colour for a shade of blue that will identify more easily with Israel, then some hand painted banners and shield designs. Now my painting skills are not up to much, so simple designs, Menorah (Jewish lamp that holds 7 candles, you'll recognise it when you see it) and some Hebrew script, there were certain phrases popularly painted on their shields so I'll go with a simplified version. Maybe the phrase painted across a units shield, 1 character per model. We'll see how it goes....
