Alexander the Great * Warhammer Ancient Battles

Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) : Alexander the Great (AtG)
20 years 2003-2023


Part II: The Miniatures of Warhammer Historical: Alexander the Great 

Alexander the Great versus Darius III of Persia

The image above is what I hoped that could have been achieved by me in 2003. I laugh when I remember just how few sources of miniatures we had back then and most were overseas from me. The success of Warhammer Ancient Battles did seem to jump start companies creating or filling out their 28mm ranges. I have always been a 25mm/28mm tabletop gamer, with few divergences to other scales. After 2000 the amount of miniature lines for the Greeks and Macedonian and Persians began to increase. I was inundated with new miniatures and mostly collected Old Glory and Newline and older Essex figures in the past. The Wargames Foundry drop of hundreds of different phalangites and cavalry for the Macedonians for their grand World of the Greek range came as I was writing the AtG supplement. The team effort to write lists and text and play test was going strong with a large group of team mates on the WAB list and other secret YahooGroups that helped me tweak the rules and list anomalies. This team allowed this body of work to come to pass. Without such a diligent and brilliant group I would have drowned. Writing books was not my vocation, it was a hobby. My real job was as a computer game artist. I was currently working on a 'big' title that was sapping 10-12 hour days and often took away my Saturday's. That game was Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) by LucasArts and Sony Online Entertainment, some of you may have seen it. To make things more crazy that game was slotted to be released before the Alexander the Great Supplement. Since I made my living off the SWG, I knew that was where my priorities went first. Time was not on my side to paint miniatures in 2002 and 2003. Luckily that's where the team kicked in and filled in the color section of the book.
         

Because the miniatures needed were new, few folks had painted armies. Most of my figures were 25mm, old and small. They did not fit the bill for photographs. My intrepid editor Rob Broom began to scour the English countryside for miniature help. My friends Don Effinger and Vince Salvato volunteered to take their superb Macedonian and Indian armies to Baltimore and leave them with GW staff there. They would be photographed for an epic looking Alexander vs. Porus set up. However, that never came to pass due to logistics. I also did not have a decent camera and setup so I mailed my few bunches of figures to jolly old England to be photographed at Games Workshop's super digital cameras. They took really nice shots of my Newline and Foundry figures. Especially the Foundry officer with the Alexander blazon on his shield. A design that seemed to inspire many gamers! Rob pulled his connections and painted some of his own stellar figures to the effort. Especially noteworthy was his Darius model- something I had not yet seen. He also wrangled his friends at Gripping Beast who were now creating a new large scale ancients range called Vendel. Their Indian elephants were some of the first available and created a very nice vignette.

              

One of Rob Broom's major coups was getting the massed army shots together and enlisting Neil Bitton to create a Persian army from scratch. There were no readily available Persian heavy cavalry of the period available at that time. Neil painstakingly converted Foundry Macedonians and Greek cavalry by head swapping with Foundry Persian heads. He also had to add trousers. Rob received other miniatures and the army lists were filled out with more Indians, Persians, Thracians, and Greeks from various excellent miniature ranges. I owe a lot of thanks to 1st Corps, Wargames Foundry, Gripping Beast, Vendel, Newline Designs, for providing the resources that helped Rob complete the all important color section. So it is worth posting the credits where so much credit is due:


Over the years I have filled in my collection. I jump back and forth between Persians, Greeks, Macedonians and Successors, Thracians and Indians. There are a lot of very cool miniature armies in Warhammer Historical Alexander the Great supplement. It is hard to focus on just one. Almost all the units in the enemies lists are useful in Successor armies (More of that in part three). So building one army leads to filling out another. I only wish I had access to the cameras and miniatures I have painted over the intervening years so I could have included scenes such as these along with the big battle scenes so expertly crafted by Rob Broom.
    

     
Alexander the Great versus Darius III of Persia




AtG 20 year:


Alexander the Great Warhammer Ancient Battles

 
jjonas@ancientbattles.com

 

02/26/23