The Complete Achaeans

As suggested by the title of this post, my Achaean force is now complete. The only thing left to do is texture the bases and we're good to go. As it was my birthday this week, I treated myself to a day off which allowed me the time for a bit of a push on the painting front. Hence, I painted up the last of my Warlord Achaeans; these boys were originally intended for my Trojans but a last minute change of heart saw them re-purposed as Achaeans.

As the Warlord packs contain 8 figures and I'm intending to use groups of 6, I had to dig around for 4 extra figures to make up an extra group. Luckily I had some spare Foundry figures, from the Kings and Heroes pack plus a spare charioteer. I just hope this hasn't left me short for my Trojan leaders!

With the infantry completed, I then moved on to the Leaders for the army; at the moment I'm going for 3 per side. These are from the Foundry Kings and Heroes pack.

Of course I need chariot mounted versions as well. In and ideal world I would have duplicate figures but as the chariots are from different manufacturers this wasn't really possible. Maybe  that's a plan for the future; I know Foundry at least do a version of the guy in scale armour in a chariot. So far my chariot complement consists of a QT Models chariot (in fact the model that started off this whole project), a Newline Designs chariot and a Wargames Foundry chariot (sold as Diomedes).

This only leaves a couple of figures for a Force Morale marker. These are still on the painting stick as I'm awaiting an order of casualty dials from Warbases  The photo is rather poor and doesn't do it justice but I like to think of it as Agamemnon. I'm not sure what it's sold as (again from the Foundry Heroes and Kings pack) but it fits my mental image of Agamemnon; not sure why!

So there we have it, the complete Achaeans. Hopefully I will get a picture of the complete force once the bases are done. All in all I'm quite pleased with the result. I did have a couple of disappointments though.
Firstly, the Newline charioteer, although a really nice figure doesn't fit the chariot cab! Annoyingly I only realised this after I had completed painting it but the charioteer's Dendra armour snags on the internal pole dividing the chariot body. I had to resort to clipping the figures base but even then it overhangs the back of the chariot slightly.
Secondly, I was surprised at the size of the Foundry figures. At the very start of the project I had sized up the figures using a spare Foundry Late Roman I happened to have. Unfortunately, I hadn't realised that the Foundry ranges vary in size. The photo below shows a Foundry Mycenaean next to a Late Roman. What makes it worse is that the Warlord figures also seem to vary a bit. I suspect thisis just the figure pose but the Sea Peoples appear slighter than the Achaeans.

On the plus side I only have a few Foundry figures and I'm using these mainly as Leaders - or in TFL terms 'Big Men'. Literally in this case!
So next up, after the bases are finished, it s onto the Trojans. Or should that be Wilusians, by Vectron's claw.