On the far side of the River Trimsos, the Hyperborian chariots have begin a flanking movement; meanwhile, the Hyrkanian war engine is dragged laboriously forwards by its sweating crew, as the dreaded elephants advance, trumpeting madly! When I first encountered Don Featherstone's Wargames in the public library, with that classic account of a battle in Tony Bath's Hyborian campaign, I was instantly hooked. Later, looking through the army lists, I found the Seleucid Greeks. There, all in one army were the chariots (with scythes on, too), the engines, and the elephants. What else could I do but start buying? That first army was a strange and wonderful thing. The available information was not entirely accurate, and later I had to make several alterations. The unsuitable cavalry became the nucleus of an Antigonid army, but the only thing to do with 144 pikemen in metal cuirasses, which should have been linen was to repaint the lot. My horse painting left a lot to be desired in those days. I had read that duns could have zebra-like markings on their legs; I should have checked a picture of a zebra before painting vertical stripes. The gem was the unit of militia cavalry ordered by post from Minifigs. The designer had decided to act on Phil Barker's observation that some of them had used an axe instead of a sword. Unfortunately he did not realise that this meant a tomahawk, and so provided them with three-foot battleaxes: the Mesopotamian Mounted Lumberjacks! [I remember them! Those figures, plus some foot Ancient spearmen with solid thick cartwheels for shields plus telegraph poles for spears, were the reason I stuck to Airfix long after the majority of the wargaming world had gone mental, I mean ‘metal’. The perks of ordering by post and having no shows to attend to see what was on offer. Kenn] Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior #138 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2002 by Solo Wargamers Association. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com