I/26a Later Mycenaean

I painted this army for my daughter after she read the Iliad.  Between waiting for figures lost in the mail during the great blizzards of 2010-2011, and not wanting to deal with the chariots, it's taken almost a year and a half to finish--far longer than it should have.  At the same time, I also painted their Trojan opponents, which I will hopefully post soon.

After much searching, I found very little actual evidence of what color the Greeks or Trojans might have been wearing.  Since the army make-ups are almost identical, I decided to distinguish the two with color:  Greeks are in shades of green and blue, Trojans in shades of red/pink and yellow (in part I based the Trojans on the famous statue of a Trojan archer on which archeologists recently discovered the original colored paint.  In any case, here is the full army in battle array.

1xLCh/Bd (general), 3xLCh, 4xSP, 2x(Sp or Pk), 2xPs

For the four stands of Light Chariot, I wanted to use my daughter's favorite Homeric heroes.  Tracking down descriptions in the Iliad took a long time, but eventually I found something for each.  The first two are Ajax (her favorite) and Meneleus (not such a favorite, but easy to find an identifying characteristic).  Chariots and riders by Old Glory 15mm.

Red-Haired Meneleus and Ajax with his towering shield of bronze

Here is Diomedes, arguably the second best fighter in the Greek host (after Achilles, of course).

The bull on his shield is distinctive, but sort of googly-eyed.

Finally, here is Achilles (or Patroklos) holding his famous shield.  I painted this in abstract fashion: a blue stripe marked with white for the "river of ocean" around the outside, green with brown for the grazing cows layer, green with yellow for the layer of growing grains, gray for the layer of cities, and black with stars and a planet for the interior.

The bulk of the army are these stands of spears--warriors in the heroes' retinues.   These figures are split between Museum Museum (the similar looking ones with figure-eight shields) and Old Glory 15mm (the other ones).

Posing these guys was a challenge.

The army also includes two units of skirmishers, for which I used Museum Miniatures slingers.

Technically, the army only contains 2 stands of them instead of 4, but a mail mix-up left me with extra.

Here are the optional units.  The first one is of the dismounted option for the general's stand, converting it to a stand of blades.  The unique figure is Old Glory, the other three are Museum Miniatures.  Those two brands sure are a good fit, size-wise.

I took this from the back to show the well-sculpted musculature on the Museum Miniatures figures.

Finally, there are two stands which can be played as either Spear or Pike.  The Museum Miniatures figures in Dendra armor had extra-long spears, so I decided to use them and let the player decide which type they are in-game.

The colors are entirely fanciful, but that's the fun of doing such ancient armies.

Some of the local boys have read Homer, so maybe they'd be interested in using these for Game Night next month.