Slitherine

The title says it all. A group of us are just getting into ancients gaming (you can guess what we usually play from my screen name), and I'm in search of something fairly diverse and relatively mobile troops. In general, I favor quality versus quantity, but I don't want to play Romans. I've been looking at early Armenian and Pontic so far, but I would like to get some other input given my level of inexperience.

Nebelwerfer41 wrote:The title says it all. A group of us are just getting into ancients gaming (you can guess what we usually play from my screen name), and I'm in search of something fairly diverse and relatively mobile troops. In general, I favor quality versus quantity, but I don't want to play Romans. I've been looking at early Armenian and Pontic so far, but I would like to get some other input given my level of inexperience.

In period I think Armenian and Pontic would be kick arse. Out of period I think you'd get your arse kicked.

The beauty of things like the Armenians though is that their bulk troops can be used by multiple other armies, and thus accept your 'diverse' requirement.

Go here: http://madaxeman.com/wiki2/tiki-index.p ... y+Armenian and here: http://www.madaxeman.com/wiki2/tiki-ind ... se+of+Rome

Ian

This one falls somewhere between a normal horse archer and cataphract army, and a horde of rubbish army.

I have to say, that doesn't sound like a "glowing endorsement" of the Armenian list.[/quote]

Nebelwerfer41 wrote:

This one falls somewhere between a normal horse archer and cataphract army, and a horde of rubbish army.

I have to say, that doesn't sound like a "glowing endorsement" of the Armenian list.

Yes, not sure why who-ever wrote that said that.

Why are you staying in the Rise of Rome list?

Either which way - I think the Saka (Immortal Fire) are good. They can 'travel' into the Rise of Rome period.

Ian

Immortal Fire is a good place to start. Very easy to morph a hellenistic army as your tastes/play style changes.
I have even seen pike miniatures trimmed down to make spearmen

Alexandrian Macedonian is quite nice army.. And can be morphed into many others. You have a diverse army of pike, light foot, Medium foot, shock cav, shooty cav, Light horse ect.. I think it would be a good army to get into the genre.

Nebelwerfer41 wrote:The title says it all. A group of us are just getting into ancients gaming (you can guess what we usually play from my screen name), and I'm in search of something fairly diverse and relatively mobile troops. In general, I favor quality versus quantity, but I don't want to play Romans. I've been looking at early Armenian and Pontic so far, but I would like to get some other input given my level of inexperience.

First Army gentlemans weapon of choice: later Seleucid

My Favourite and in my opinion the most flexible and Morphable of the Rise of Rome armies that can be a high quality army is Later Seleucid.

You can play it
- as a mass phalanx army with lots of superior pike and/or legionaire wannabes.
- a mixed arms phalanx terrain army with loads of decent Medium foot to escort the pike int.
- you get decent support troops (thracians/theophoroi)
- you can essentially make a quality terrain army my maxing the MF and taking an aitolian ally
- You can play it as a quality mounted army by maxing the cataphracts, gallic Cav Xystophoroi and taking a Parthian Ally.

You get to play with heaps of gimicks
- Camels scythed chariots and elaphants

The Troops pretty well morph into any successor army.

I would recommend Seleucid because of the diversity. Loads of different troop types to collect. Pikes, legions, cataphracts, lancers, light horse, peltasts/theurophoroi, Thraciancs. You can then move these into loads of other armies whilst you build up those. Its a decent fighter as well.

Pontic isn't a bad place to start on Helenistic armies either. There are a lot of troops that could see duty in both Pontic and Seleukid and then you could gradually add bits and pieces to make some of the other successors at the very least.

Nebelwerfer41 wrote:

This one falls somewhere between a normal horse archer and cataphract army, and a horde of rubbish army.

I have to say, that doesn't sound like a "glowing endorsement" of the Armenian list.

I don't think "horde of rubbish" is meant to be pejorative, swamping the enemy with large numbers of low value troops can be an effective tactic. Back in the old DBM days didn't an army with 150+ bases of "irr Ax(I)" win an IWF?

I don't think "horde of rubbish" is meant to be pejorative, swamping the enemy with large numbers of low value troops can be an effective tactic. Back in the old DBM days didn't an army with 150+ bases of "irr Ax(I)" win an IWF?

No

dave_r wrote:

I don't think "horde of rubbish" is meant to be pejorative, swamping the enemy with large numbers of low value troops can be an effective tactic. Back in the old DBM days didn't an army with 150+ bases of "irr Ax(I)" win an IWF?

No

The most horde like army to win an IWF was Dave Handley's Saba, Graham Evans's Skythians were also quite numerous, my Armenians were one of the more 'quality' armies to win in recent years and Jason Broomer's Sinhalese continued the lots of troops trend. This year Hannu won with Leidang so in BM at least there does rather seem to be a bias towards lots of OK troops rather than a few really good ones.

The same does not at the moment seem to be true of FoG although lots of small BGs of reasonably good troops seems to be popular.

That's it: Melbourne 2005. Made Phil change the rules in DBMM so Ax(I) only count as half an ME.

Russian infantry does well in WWII games, if you can manage to paint all those figures.

Phaze_of_the_Moon wrote:That's it: Melbourne 2005. Made Phil change the rules in DBMM so Ax(I) only count as half an ME.

Well except for it didn't have 150+ bases of Ax(I) - it was based around Bd(F) and Cm(O), but did have Ax(I) filler - and Phil was blissfully unaware of the results and his concerns with killer + filler started well before that.

philqw78 wrote:I would recommend Seleucid because of the diversity. Loads of different troop types to collect. Pikes, legions, cataphracts, lancers, light horse, peltasts/theurophoroi, Thraciancs. You can then move these into loads of other armies whilst you build up those. Its a decent fighter as well.

From the initial request I have to say that Seleucid army seem to fit the request bill nicely. Plus there is plenty of choice in manufacturers in all the different scales.

Phaze_of_the_Moon wrote:Russian infantry does well in WWII games, if you can manage to paint all those figures.

Well it was comrade Stalin who is attributed to have said "Quantity has a quality all its own" - and it was proven out in WW2 in several ways.

Another vote for Pontic or Seluecid.

Since nobody has brought this up, I will

You may want to look at Gauls, they are surprisingly diverse. You can get the superior hf, mf, lots of superior cav, or chariots, and other stuff.

Thanks for all the input. I think I'll go with a Pontic army due to the amount of cav and possibility of getting Armenian cataphracts. Now, I'm off to the modeling forums to get some advice on painting!