That's heavy, man . . .

Hi,

It seems I've caught the painting bug. Having finished off the first unit of pike for my Pyrrhic army, I then proceeded to paint up these Macedonian / Epirote heavy cavalry:







Impetus Unit Type: CP
Base Size: 8cm x 6cm
Manufacturer: Old Glory 15mm

The initial game plan was make this a more colourful unit than the pike - which vary from figure to figure but use the same palette throughout. I was initially going to colour coordinate between horse and rider, but found it made the unit lack cohesion, so experimented with swapping them around. As it stands, each rider has colours found on at least two others. Not sure if I'm sold on the final effect, but what the hey, I'm experimenting.

I also cheated a little on the figures themselves. Two of the riders are actually on persian horses. I wanted to distinguish this unit of CP from the unit of Itallian CM I'll be doing later. My plan is to use undbarded horses for the latter, which limited my choices for this unit to "barded" horses, of which I only had two poses for the greeks. I figure we're tlaking about a generation past Alexander, so equipment styles could easily move around, especially given the disruption of the Diadochi conflicts.

One of the things I'm finding interesting is that there is a huge range of possible units in the Pyrrhic list - heavy, medium and light cavalry, heavy foot in deep, and deeper units, light foot, skirmishers, elephants. Pretty much everything but chariots, which means being able to distinguish between units at a glance will be important. My plan for basing at this point is to go with the following system.

For infantry, 12 figs per base for super-heavies (really dense formation like pike), 10 for heavies, 8 for lights, 4 for skirmishers. For cavalry, I'll go 6 figures for super-heavies (fully armoured cataphracts, ordonnence knights, etc.), 5 for heavies, 4 for medium, 3 for lights. Keeping basing standard will help with identifying unit types on the table. I've also decided that although it's more figure intensive, I'll go full size for the rear components of deep units - it'll just look cooler. I'm also going to base commander figs separately, so I have to option to attach them to different units as I learn to play the game.

Next up I'm painting up some soviet Shermans I had half finished, and they'll go up on the auction block, followed by some hoplites for the Pyrrhic list. I'm also hoping to get a trial game of Impetus in Wednesday night, so hopefully I can get some pics up later this week.