I want to try Wargamer Ancient Battles... but I don't want to spend a lot of money. Can't face the investment of time and effort (and money) in a couple of 25mm armies? But still want to try out the "new rules on the ancients block" ? Well, there's no reason not to. As the authors of the rules themselves suggest, the perfect bargain way to start ancient wargaming is in 20mm, with plastic figures. Go on, break the mould, buy two plastic armies and get gaming.
Rather than just make a list of all the plastic figures available I'll just mention which of the Warhammer Ancient Battles / Armies of Antiquities (WHAB/AoA) army lists can be made up with plastic 20mm figures. Most of the figures are still in production and should be easily available from model stores (many of the advertisers in Military Modelling, for example, do world wide postal services). Those that are currently not being produced will take only a little searching for - in the UK at least there is usually a pile of out of production figures available from 2nd hand traders at wargame shows, and not at high prices (although they may no longer be boxed).
The Romans are easy - Airfix Romans (now produced by HaT), or Esci Romans, or the Revell Romans (these last are probably the least nice of the three, being a little spindly).
Barbarians - again, easy. Airfix Ancient Britons (again, now from HaT), HaT Celtic cavalry or Revell Celts or the Esci Barbarians set. The Esci set is a bit of a cross section of Western European "barbarians", so if you get enough sets it would be possible to do the Dacian, Frank or German variants of the Barbarian army type from AoA.
Ancient Egyptians - we're in luck here, the Atlantic Egyptian infantry and chariot sets have bee re-released by NEXUS (hopefully the Atlantic Ancient Greeks will follow on soon ... ). These sets contain a good mix of infantry types - spearmen, mace wielders (these convert quite easily to sling users), and archers. The only bad point about the chariots is that it's difficult to get two figures (driver and warrior) into the one chariot.
Republican Romans - HaT are releasing all arms; four kinds of infantry, cavalry, artillery, the works. And from the photo's I've seen they look like great little figures. They are also easily convertible to other ancients types.
Carthaginians - again HaT miniatures are doing a full range, including war elephants. Their numbers can be boosted by using Revell Celts and Airfix (HaT) Ancient Britons to add variety.
Arabs and Saracens - the Italeri Saracen box of figures is the obvious starting point with plenty of cavalry and camelry. Add extra foot from the Esci Muslim Warriors set and the Airfix Arabs (HaT re-issue). Oddly, the Arab camel rider from the WHAB example troops list has gone from the AoA Arab army list, but is easily put back !
Nomad Hordes - Italeri list a Nomad Horde set in their current catalogue (it may even be out by the time this is printed since the "rival" set of Teutonic knights has already appeared). This could probably be added to by some of the figures from the Italeri Saracens.
Viking/Saxon - Revell have a nice set of Saxons, which will actually do for both armies. The Saxons could be given some variety by using figures from the Airfix Robin Hood Set (now from HaT, of course).
Normans - Revell also do a Norman set, which isn't their best set of figures (which is odd. because the Saxons are really quite good). Boost the set up with axemen from the Revell Saxons, and various foot from the Italeri Crusaders.
Crusaders - The Italeri crusaders set is perfect for early crusaders, with some excellent foot and mounted knights. Other useful sets are the Airfix Sheriff of Nottingham (HaT) and the Italeii Teutonic knights boxes. By careful mixing it'd be possible to put together an Eastem Crusades army to put up against the nomadic hordes.
And all of the above is without even thinking about figure conversions. A good place to look for the sort of thing that can be quite easily done is the "All things toy soldiers" web page at www.hat.com. For example, many of the Robin Hood set can be easily painted up as anyone in the ancient world who wore a simple tunic and carried a bow or spear. The Atlantic Egyptians could, with a bit of work on the shields, be modified to be Ancient Indians ... or, of course, you could just wait for one or other of the manufacturers to produce a dedicated boxes. At the moment it really looks as if almost any figure that could be wanted will be coming onto the market in time. Of course, as more official (and unofficial) army lists appear for WHAB there are plenty of other plastic figures available which will be useful - the 100 YW French and English from Revell spring immediately to mind, so useful for so many different medieval armies.
So, there are at least a dozen of the WHAB/AoA armies easily available to try out for not much money in plastic. For most ar-mies only one or two boxes (or part boxes) will be needed for a smallish (1,000 - 1,500 points) army, don't blame me if you end up with a half dozen or more of them. Should you want to bulk out your army/armies there are also quite a lot of 20mm metal figures available. Qualiticast supply Romans and Celts, Newline do Romans, Celts, Carthaginians, Crusader knights and Saracens, whilst Tumblin' Dice make late medievals and a wide range of dark age (Saxon, Viking, Norman, etc) figures. In irregular armies it's always nice, I think, to have as many different figures as possible, and a few metal ones prevent the need to do any conversions at all ! Don't worry about painting - some of the nicest painted figures I've ever seen have been plastics (unfortunately not my plastics) : if you're a great painter of metals you will also be a great painter of plastics. So, have fun with Historical Warhammer.
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© Copyright 2000 Hal Thinglum
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