MeG/Hail Caesar 15mm Classical Anatolian Army

 Been furiously painting a new 15mm army of the sort that Mithridates used to send out to get slaughtered by the Romans.

The right wing are Greeks from the city states around the Black Sea, the centre Anatolians from the hills (Pontics, Armenians, Kappadocians etc) and Galatians (professional Gaulic mercenaries) and the left wing Iranian cavalry.

I must confess, I have bought in a lot of the cavalry - I hate painting 15mm.

A few more units of Anatolians to go and I will have a playable army.

Hellenistic Ersatz Legionaries

Hellenistic 'Legionary' Infantry

At a parade in 166BC, Polybius refers to a 5,000 man unit of Seleucid infantry as armed 'like Romans'.

The question is how really like a Roman legion was this Hellenistic unit.

The key military attacking unit in World War II was the Armoured/Mechanised Division. No purely infantry army could win against a foe fielding these units. After WWII, armoured and mechanised divisions remained as the primary military units facing each other in The Cold War. Newly emergent nations with the cash to spare were keen to create their own modern battle winning divisions. They copied NATO or Soviet divisions, buying the vehicles and creating the ranks and uniforms. But these ersatz armoured divisions, good as they looked on paper, were found wanting in a real war. You can't make a Russian armoured division simply by buying the gear. You need Russian to man the tanks.

So what were Seleucid 'legionaries'? Hellenistic armies already had Thureophoroi and Thorakitai, infantry with helmets, large Gallic shields, spears & javelins, swords and, sometimes, mail armour? Even if Hellenistic kings equipped their troops with Italian rather than Gallic shields and heavy javelins rather than spears and light javelins, that wouldn't make them legions.

The point of the legion wasn't just the gear, but the training and battle tactics to use same - such as the flexible maniples, the line rotation in battle, the four types of troops, cohorts and so on.

Hellenistic Infantry

Whatever, Hellenistic legions have become a staple of wargames so I have some for my new 15 mm army.

Mine are sourced from Xyston, and I got them from Rochester Models.

Thureophoroi - Club Paint Challenge

My local wargame club has a painting challenge. I have set my target at painting two units a month for a new MeG 15mm Hellenistic ancients army.

These are Xyston miniatures from Rochester Models.

I haven't bought a 15 mm army for decades and was stunned by the quality of the current models.

Thureophoroi are a type of infantry that were used across the Hellenistic world. They were named after the oval 'Celtic-style' shield presumably adopted after the Galation intrusion into the Greek world; the Thyreos is the shield.

Thureophoroi or thyreophoroi were a kind of jack-of-all-trades infantry type that could operate in all types of terrain. Apart from the shield, they had only a helmet for protection and were armed with javelins and/or a long single-handed thrusting spear thought to be Thracian in origin. Thureophoroi were used to support light infantry and could operate either in loose or order.

They were commonly used by small city states as cheap paramilitary forces. Many Greek mercenary troops in Macedonian or Hellenistic armies were probably Thureophoroi. They would be used to guard the camp or as flank defence for the heavy infantry. Plutarch reports them as ineffective when used as line-of-battle troops against real heavy infantry such as phalangites.

Any Hellenistic army from Alexander onwards should include Thureophoroi.

Eventually some seem to have been up-armoured with mail shirts to produce Thorakitae that were presumably better drilled for close-order combat. Thorakitae may be the 'ersatz Roman' troops reported in late Hellenistic armies although their equipment is pure Galatian/Thracian